October 2005 Archives

I've install Solaris 10 on an old machine donated by a friend (cheers Craig!) in preparation for starting my new job. I bought a KVM so I can use my glorious 19" Belinea monitor (cheers Andy!) and my 'pass the earplugs' Model M keyboard (cheers eBay!). I've got a separate mouse for each machine, as the KVM knocks out the scroll wheel and extra buttons on my various mice, and to be honest anyone living without a scroll wheel in this day and age should be ashamed of themselves.
The install went quite smoothly, if slowly (the machine's only a K6-533 with 184MB RAM and a 24X CD drive). The graphical install's a bit of a joke, as it consists of the text installer, but in a window. Nice one, what was the point of that?
Speaking of irritations, Emacs isn't included in the base install, so I'm having to use the dreaded vi to edit files. Seriously, that editor is brain damaged - having to change modes to move the cursor around is nuts. I'd imagine it'd be marginally better if the esc key wasn't so far from the home keys. I'll have Emacs in as soon as the network switch arrives (only one network connection in the room) so I can download the package. Also, the default shell is the old-skool POSIX Bourne shell. Easily fixed, but when you hit tab expecting a filename to complete, and you actually get 6 characters of whitespace, it's a bit weird.
I'm starting to think Linux has been too kind to me all these years.

Audiophiles are idiots. I'm not talking about the Sony-CD-player-NAD-amp-and-a-nice-pair-of-Mission-speakers crowd, no sir. True audiophilia is a whole different beast.

Are you an audiophile? Yes? Kill yourself.
But give me your vast reserves of cash first.

The problem with the Sourceforge releases is resolved: all files across all releases must have unique names (there was already a file named 'multiburn' in a previous release). I must have known this when I released version 1.41, but by the time I got to releasing version 1.42 (which had turned into 1.43 by the time I got this problem resolved), I had forgotten, and I still can't see any mention of this requirement anywhere on the Sourceforge site. It looks like each project is assigned a single directory on a server somewhere, and new releases don't get subdirectoried.
Apparently, I'm not the only person that finds this annoying.

In reference to 2005/10/12: I got the job! I'll be a support engineer for a rather large Unix vendor. Yay!

If you've been watching the front page, you'll know that I was recently offered a job at a certain Unix vendor. I am very happy.
Also, I'm having a bit of trouble getting new versions of multiburn onto my sourceforge page. It's a bit weird. The script is just a text file, but I can't associate it with the project. I've sent a support request, so we'll see. It's probably my fault...

Things to note:
1) I couldn't care less about celebrities. (See?)
2) Regardless of 1), I am still deeply amused by The Superficial

Update: Ha ha ha. OK, I was perusing the logs for this here site, when I saw that someone got here by googling for "Total Repair Solutions". Sure enough, hit no.7 is my frontpage where I call their head of IT a [removed for fear of legal action] (see 2005/10/03).
That's quite funny in and of itself, but have a look at hit no.3. (The Google results may well have changed by the time you read this, so here's the article). Looks like TRS is a bit of a cowboy operation anyway. I'm a bit glad I didn't get that job now.

More turmoil on the job front. An interview I thought had been permanently cancelled a month ago has reared its not-so-ugly head. I really want this job too. The interview's on Thursday morning.
When will the madness end?

Huzzah! The 'ILikeJam Australian Money Plant'® is back! It was gone for so long (and how I missed it...), but lo, it has returned. It's a bit closer-up than it was before, though. Best viewed when it's daylight in Australia, for slightly obvious reasons. Andy, if Vicky gets a bit homesick, point her in this direction. Proceed to the instructions.

OK, so I wasn't going to post anything until I actually started for fear of jinxing the whole thing, but I'll go for it anyway...

I GOT A JOB.

Seriously. No shit. Straight up. I've only been trying to get something for the past two and a half years.
So, let's have a look at what's happened to me between leaving Uni, and now, shall we?

• Started, and paid for two semesters of, a CCNA course. Course folded, leaving me £500 down, with nothing to show for it.
• Did a 6 week unpaid work placement at the BBC, doing desktop support. Good experience, but mind alteringly boring.
• Went for two interviews at Total Repair Solutions. Got the job, yay! Then had the job taken off me, with no reason given. Their IT head got his secretary to field my calls and went home early that day. What a [removed for fear of legal action].
• Went for an interview at Hampden Stadium for a job both myself and the interviewer knew I could do with my eyes shut. Decided not to proceed, as I thought I had the job at Total Repair Solutions. Arsebiscuits.
• Another interview at a small IT firm in Edinburgh (which dealt with Linux quite a lot). Didn't get the job, as there was a more experienced applicant. Fair enough.
• Dell recently hired 400 engineers for their new Glasgow call centre. Adecco were handling my application. A couple of days ago, they phoned me to find out if I'd been hired. Yes, that's right, they phoned me to find out. What sort of agency doesn't even know if their clients have been hired?

Anyway, I've handed my notice in at my current (minimum wage, hump-busting type) job, so I'll do my last shift there on Sunday 16th. I've been working there for a quarter of my life.
Here's to the literally hundreds of people who threw my CV in the bin because I didn't have '2+ years experience in a commercial support environment' or 'a 2/1 honours or above in a computing related subject'.
Cheers, guys.
P.S. As a matter of policy, I don't post anything relating to the companies I work for, so if you want to know who gave me a job, or where I'm about to leave, that's tough.