My falling muscles still really hurt. Earlier I spent a few minutes itemizing every part of my body that hurts and and it was an impressively long list. Some of the pains were easy to diagnose. For example, my ass hurts because I kept landing on it. Other aches were tougher to figure out. Why were my triceps so sore?

Later, I was playing with Daisy on the floor and I tried to push myself off the floor. Ow! Triceps are apparently the muscle that I exercised each time I tried to get up after falling on my ass. It kind of surprised me that I would be so sore from the simple act of pushing myself off the ground, so I tried to compute how many times I fell.

I snowboarded for about 3 hours. The majority of that time was spent listening to an instructor, being on the chair lift, or resting. So, maybe I actually boarded for 15 minutes or so. I probably fell every 15 seconds. So 4 times a minute for 15 minutes is 60 times. Also, sometimes the wind literally blew me over when I was just standing on my board, and there were a few other times when I just sat down for various reasons. Let's say I had to get up off the ground about 75 times, all in all. I guess that's like doing 75 repetitions of some horrid tricep exercise. When I think of it that way, it makes sense that my weeny little computer programmer triceps would be sore.

The next question to ask, of course, is why did I fall so damn much? Here was the basic problem:

Primarily my instructor was trying to teach us how to do turns (heel edge and toe edge turns, I think they're called). She stressed that we should get going straight downhill, with our boards flat, and then press down on our toes to turn right or lift our toes to turn left. This all made sense in theory, but in practice it didn't really pan out.

You know how elevators work? You walk up to an elevator and press the Up or Down button, and then you wait. Maybe the elevator comes immediately, maybe it takes a couple minutes, or maybe it's broken and it never arrives. That's EXACTLY what my turns were like. I'd press down on my toes and wait. Maybe my turn would start in a second or two, maybe it would take 10 seconds, or maybe it wouldn't happen at all. Meanwhile, my board is pointing straight downhill and I'm PICKING UP SPEED. This generally caused me to panic within a few seconds, which invariably led to a spectacular crash.

But, enough about snowboarding. Let me tell you about the ad I found on Craiglist last week. It basically described a computer programmer with my exact qualifications and then said this:

We're working for a software company looking to interview java app developers in the SF area to learn more about what you think of things. If you fit the specs, we would love to talk to you at your home-office. You'd receive $200 for your time (less than an hour.) The interview would be video-taped, but only for internal purposes - it would never appear online or on TV.

$200 for an hour of my time? To hear me talk? Everybody has a price and mine is apparently well under $200. I replied to the ad and we're all set up to do the interview tomorrow morning.

When I replied I suggested that perhaps we should choose a location other than my home office, which is an utter pig sty. It's messy and cluttered and probably a bird flu vector of some sort. The interviewer responded, adamantly assuring me that a messy office was a good thing and that my work environment was an important part of the interview. In fact, part of the interview would include "a brief explanatory tour of my workspace". That should be amusing.

Here's a picture of my "workspace". You'll just have to believe me that it looks much worse in person. I'm really looking forward to this part of the interview:

"Uh, here are the sweat stains on my chair. This pile of paper contains candy wrappers. DON'T LOOK IN THAT DRAWER!"

I'm sitting here debating whether I should clean up in the slightest. Also, what should I wear? Usually during the AM hours, I'm in my bathrobe, but it might be a bit too ratty, even for cinéma vérité. I could just wear jeans and a t-shirt, the standard programmer uniform, but maybe I'll compromise and go for a sexy set of pajamas. Oh, decisions decisions!

When I told my coworker, Al, about this interview, he was skeptical about the video taping. I believe his exact reply was, "Hm. I'm pretty sure they're going to ask you to fuck something."

For $200?!?! Not bad!