MaW’s Blog

Monday, 30th June 2003

Tennis, jobhunting, frustration

Filed under: Life — MaW @ 22:22

I have said it before and I will say it again — jobhunting stinks.

Right, now I’ve got that on my chest, what is there to say? Well, narrowband hell is approaching its end as ntl are supposed to be installing our cable modem on Saturday. I’ll believe that when I see it, but I’m optimistic nonetheless. After all, Tim Henman won his fourth-round match today, so why can’t I get broadband on Saturday? They seem about equally improbable to me.

Speaking of tennis, watching the Henman/Nalbandian match, it occured to me how much nicer it sounds when women are playing and the umpire refers to ‘Miss Asagoe’ or ‘Miss Srebotnik’ or ‘Miss Davenport’. Why can’t we have ‘Mr. Henman’ or ‘Mr. Nalbandian’ or ‘Mr. Agassi’? Maybe a little extra formality would help Mr. Rusedski keep his cool when a spectator is incredibly rude and uncouth in calling a false ‘out’. Some kind of sound insulation technology needed there I think — or some PAVA.

I’m not going to comment on jobhunting. Nothing more has happened, and nothing more looks likely to happen. At least I can expect a reply of some sort from one company, even if it is negative it will be nice to know someone has paid me some attention. Time to hassle some more of them I think. I might have to go back to Blue Arrow, but the thought of data entry temping is quite frankly enough to make me shiver.

Ooops, I commented on it. I guess it’s on my mind a lot at the moment. That and the looming prospect of getting a car, now there’s a scary thought. Scarier than that is the cost of the insurance of course — but a car would increase the range over which I could look for jobs quite dramatically.

The EU are about to bring in software patents like the ones in America. Personally I think that’s a very stupid move, but it looks like it’s too late to do anything about it as usual. The big businesses speak in a language politicians can understand, and don’t, on the whole, care about what’s going to happen to individual people as a result of passing such an insane kind of law. We already have a regulated software patent system, why get something stupid like in America where you can patent the process of placing an order with a single mouse click?

Stupid Americans. There are other things going on there I don’t really want to think about too much either. SCO are going down the pan of course — what remains to be seen is how much of Linux and Free Software they’ll take with them. The FSF are opposing it of course, as they should, but still finding time in the middle of it to cry foul for SCO not calling it GNU/Linux. They’re right, GNU/Linux is the only accurate term for the entire system most people think of as ‘Linux’, but now does not seem to me to be the appropriate time to remind us of it. There’s more at stake than Richard Stallman’s ego.

This was supposed to be a fairly catharthic entry, but it has really just made me even more frustrated. I should learn to relax more I guess, I thought I knew how but it’s just continuous shit these days. Still, things could be worse… at least I haven’t fallen out with my parents yet.

Monday, 23rd June 2003

I can survive without a cable modem, honest!

Filed under: Life — MaW @ 20:55

No, I mean it, I can…

Really, I can…

Someone get me out of this narrowband hell!!!!!!!!!!

Friday, 20th June 2003

Will somebody please tell me…

Filed under: Life — MaW @ 15:44

…how I’m supposed to get 4+ years of commercial C++ development experience when all the jobs which would give me experience require 4+ years of commercial C++ development experience????

It’s highly frustrating. Someone give me a job. Please!

(oh, and this is the 100th blog entry. Shame it’s a ranty one really, would’ve been nice to have something happy to post really)

Thursday, 19th June 2003

So now what?

Filed under: Life — MaW @ 9:42

So, the ninety-ninth entry in my blog. Gosh. Ninety-nine. And what have I accomplished, other than a disturbing amount of shuffling around of the layout, re-writing of the templates and far too much repeated rebuilding?

Pretty much nothing, as far as I can tell.

Which is also as much success as I’ve had working out where to find a job. Why isn’t there a user manual? Gargh! I shall tear all my hair out before this is done (although that might be good, it’d save me a trip to the hairdresser).

Wednesday, 18th June 2003

More mines

Filed under: Games — MaW @ 10:23

Yup, got some more mines in. He’s not very happy about this now, but I’m making a reasonable profit on it all… of course, if I had a few more turns things would be considerably simpler. But that, I suppose, would defeat the object.

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