I had a phone interview earlier this evening. A guy from Cisco who I heard from a week ago finally called. It was a fairly lengthy interview with a lot of technical questions. I did ok ... could've done better, could've done worse. My overall impression of the interview was that it revealed that there are still some things I need to study to bring myself up to the level of other people who are currently working in the field. To compare it with a phone interview I had with someone at Yahoo, I was able to answer all but one of the questions put to me, because I was answering questions about things I had worked on for a long time, had detailed knowledge of, and had enough time to consider some of the solutions to the difficult problems. At least at the end of the interview, the guy acknowledged that I did have some experience in TCP performance, so it's a small victory, at least. Also, since there are lots of people out there who have spent quite a bit of time in IETF working groups, running simulations, developing code, etc., realistically, I shouldn't expect to do better than them in an interview, having only recently started to get back into this stuff.

Although I'm sometimes bitter about being laid off, a positive of the experience is that I've had time to carefully study some things I've wanted to study for a long time. Also, I'm in much better health and spirits. One of my former dance teachers told me last night that I looked much better (lost weight) and happier.