Sunday, May 30, 2004

Swish! Nothin' but net.

I could have written this post directly after my interview. If I had it would have looked something like this.
"WOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, IGOTTHEJOB IGOTTHEJOB I GOTTHEJOB. I KICK ASS!."

I've had a weekend to get over this and get back to reality so you don't have to suffer my gloating at the world.

So yes, I had my second interview and they offered me the job. On the spot too. I was expecting to be dangled from a thread for a while before they put me out of my misery but that wasn't the case. The people I've met so far have been great, the overall 'group' manager who I had the interview with on thursday was a good guy, real down to earth. I like that, nothing worse then Highfalootin'.

hmm. brain no work now. tired. me stop. update later.

except for this which has just come to me.
Faith no more - woodpecker from mars.
what an odd song. reminds me of prince of persia.
I really like it. not mad about the rest of the album.

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Expedition Mark II

Well I'm in a cybercafe in dublin whiling away the time before my next interview. Yep, you heard right, they called me back. I'm frickin' ecstatic. This time round I'm being interviewed by someone a few rungs up on the ladder. But I feel good. Feel confident. Show me the money!

Seriously though. Everyone and their hamster are wishing me good luck. With so much goodwill behid me I could go into the interview with no pants and
still get the job. Just to be on the safe side, I'm gonna keep the pants on..

In other news "Ripley" is earning her keep. I have been up and down on the train more times than I care to think about. But I was hardly once bored 'cause I could always fire up the old IDE and get some work done...

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

just say Arrr!

Pirates say Arrr!.
Arrrgh! just doesn't make any sense.
Arrrgh! is the noise 3rd rate actors make when they get stabbed in movies
and comic book villains make when their plots are foiled by the hero.

just thought I'd clarify that.

Expedition Report

So I had my interview yesterday. And blimey if I wasn't thrown a curveball. I was expecting a java exam, as in heres a bunch of questions answer 'em as best you can you have fifteen minutes.
instead I got "here is a problem. Here is the slowest piece of crap laptop we could find, it has jdk1.2, here is notepad. you have 45 mins. go."

I didn't complete it. It's not that the problem was technically difficult but between nerves, second guessing my implementation and a laptop with a function button where CTRL should be ( causes real problems when you decide to move a block of code to a different method..) I only completed a third of the solution. V. disappointed.

On the bright side I managed to compose myself and I'm pretty sure I breezed through the technical interview. It was just a normal conversation between two people who spoke the same language.

The subsequent HR interview was trickier. She spoke HR-ese, "Where do you see yourself in 3 years time","Have you ever dealt with conflict in the workplace","what would your strengths and weaknesses be?" these questions may seem straightforward questions but there are right and wrong answers.. saying "I can't tell what I'm doing tomorrow never mind 3 years time." isn't what they're looking for ;)

I should get a call in a day or so to let me know If I have to do another interview or go back to the drawing board.. watch this space.



Friday, May 21, 2004

Polly Jean.

Been listening to tracks off the new PJ Harvey album ("Uh Huh Her" *EDIT* thats the title of the album and not a comment on my part, just in case you were wondering*END EDIT*).
you can find em here on her website.

'The letter' and 'Who the fuck'. I think they're fantastic, even better
than the tracks off the last (great!) album , which was my first proper introduction to her stuff.

And the best thing is I'm gonna see her live at Witnness ( Sorry, Oxegen .. still think Hydrogen would be a better name since it's Heineken and all. Maybe they're trying to be clever and not do the obvious.)

Oh yes. I have a job interview on monday. I'm both thrilled and terrified.

Fridays are great.


Thursday, May 20, 2004

Perspective

Another touchy-feely blog entry . Avert your eyes to this if you ain't interested.

Y'know what, sometimes you just need a good kick in the nads to realise that things ain't so bad ( metaphorically speaking of course). I was bitching about all this stress and how things seemed to be mounting up. And then something really important came up (no I ain't telling, it's not important to you, dear reader) and I forgot about all the crap I'd been whining about the other day. It paled into insignificance.

The important thing is being dealt with and doesn't scare the living crap out of me anymore. But those other things they still seem insignificant.Their false image of importance shattered. (give me a week though and i'll be harping on about 'em again)

I guess my point is (not that I have to have one, or you should expect one. This is a blog after all) that there's a silver lining to that kick in the nads sometimes. ;)

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Overwhelmed

Sometimes everything just happens at once. Good things and bad and either way they all seem to be one more thing on the pile of things that need to be dealt with. Which creates stress which I do not deal with very well.

People who can like, I dunno, 'switch off' that constant buzzing that is stress are alien to me. In my head all these things become blown out of all proportion and sometimes you just wanna crawl under a rock and wait till it all blows over. ( you cannot of course do this because by the time you crawl out from under that rock theres a whole bunch of new things for you to deal with cause you ignored the last bunch.. and none of your friends recognise you cause you're hairy and smell from living under a rock.) I've been told to make a list and prioritize. Sounds like sense to me. All I gotta do is find five minutes where I have time to compose such a list ;)

I've got an interview for the previously mentioned job. Or at least they're trying to set one up for me , It happened to be on the one day where I have an appointment I cannot possibly postpone. nuts.

lots of buzz about Gmail going on. Check google news. You know where it is.

I should be on commission ;)

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

News from the Edge.

People who ain't living here anymore often ask me 'what news?' . I am of course the last person you should ask this question of, for the simply fact that I can never think of anything that has happened when asked.
One of the more extreme examples of this is a conversation with the Flat Earth Soc Quartermaster who has lived in the big smoke for bloody ages now. We spoke pretty regularily on the phone and during these conversations the dreaded 'any news' question would be posed. 'No, nothing' I would say. This conversation was repeated many,many times.
Anyways, long story short It turns out it had completely slipped my mind that one of The Quartermasters close friends had a baby. Not exactly an insignificant event. Doh.
SNIP.
I had intended to write the latest news from sligo here to prevent a re-occurrence of the situation described above, but I can't think of anything.


Freddy Vs. GhostBusters

Also anyone who knows me will know what this means to me..
the new album and NME have heard some of it!!!

Random thought: Y'know when you get old and you can't work anymore. I want to still be doing something interesting. Something you can talk about and people will listen. I reckon voice acting is the way to go, Hell I think that'd be a pretty cool job now.
I don't have a particularily flexible voice or nothin', I'm lousy at impressions. But I think I'd have a good voice for that kind of thing. just a thought.

Monday, May 17, 2004

Its so shiny.

I got me a new toy.. Sony Viao. It kicks seven shades out of my desktop p.c. So far I ain't got round to really pushing its capabilities but I did try the Unreal 2004 demo, which it had no problem with.. no slowdown, no sluggish response. Nice.
Huge installer though, even for the demo, over 200 megs. I'm assured by someone more au-fait with the gaming SOTA that this is 'cause 64bit textures are the norm these days(back in my day we didn't have textures, and we liked it!), and that the full install is 6Gb! Which I think is daft. but that's probably just because I only have 40gb space on my laptop which don't equate to many games at 6Gb a pop.

the incredibles - now this looks funny!
Garfield - this I'm not so sure.

That's enough for now. Maybe more later.

Friday, May 14, 2004

One of then Co-inkeydinks

Woohoo!
I'm working as a contractor at the moment in sligo, but I have been looking at getting permanent work in dublin. So about a month ago I was looking for jobs on monster.ie and irishjobs.ie etc.. not having a great deal of luck (or indeed any).
One of my former workmates ( a contractor from india) mentioned to me I should try @ccenture, cause they paid well and seemed like good folks to work for.. so I checked out their website and sure enough they were hiring.

Now I was redoing my c.v at the time so I held off on the application but I mentioned the job to my girlfriend. She said she knew someone who worked there (small world eh?), anyways I got into contact with this friend who from this point I shall refer to as "the insider"! So anyways I'm chatting to the insider and I gave her my c.v to pass on to her superiors (if I get hired she gets a finders fee. sweet) after being on a buzz for a while and having great hopes not much was happening..

couple of days ago the insider comes back to me , her boss ain't sure if accenture are still hiring and when I check out their website again I can't see the Java developer jobs. "Ah well" i said "scratch that one"..

This morning I got a phone call from @ccenture HR. Admittedly they were just calling to get some more details (salary, job level, availability) but she seemed enthusiastic and fingers crossed I'll get a call for an interview. Time to start brushing up on those none existant interview skillz!

maybe nothing will come of it but Its really cool when life throws you what you need just when you need it.

in other news : Tekken 5

Thursday, May 13, 2004

"The Dawg! You are named after the dawg!"

doubts about Indy 4

Booo. Spielbergs doing another movie (which likely puts Indy IV back even further ). This one is about "the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics" ,. Oh well that sounds like a much better movie than Indy IV, good move there senor spielbergo. You have noticed that Harrison ford will be in a zimmer frame by the time you get to filming??

Still in the meantime theres always spidey 2 ,the new batman .. in fact the comic book superhero thing seems to have gone off the wall..Marvel have licensed practically all their characters.. even such non events as Sub-mariner and luke cage...

And it looks like Guillermo del toro is revving up to start work on Mountains of Madness drool.

I think Hellboy and punisher are the next two to hit screens on our Island..

Thats enough movies for the time being.
yeti sports : when you are finding it too easy to get work done..



Wednesday, May 12, 2004

test.

This is just a test to see if the blog by email feature is
working.

Hello World.

...bet that title's been used a few times for blog entries, but who am I to break with tradition! So this is my first blog so apologies if it ain't up to scratch. Dunno how much time I can devote to it. Sure we'll see.
I chose blogger cause of a couple of reasons:

1> Its run by google. I like google. Hope their free email thing works out, i'll sign up for that too!

2> Its got some nice features! post by email (which means If I get a fancy phone again I can post on the move..)

3> It was easy to get set up on.

I figure the folks who are gonna be reading this are my mates in Sligo who I will (all going according to plan) be abandoning for the big smoke pretty soon. But you never know maybe I'll attract a huge following. ( And pigs will fly.)