| The new place |
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| 11:42pm 02/09/2004 |
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Yup, journals don't work for me.
They never really have actually.
Blogs, however, they work. That's not keeping a journal, that's listing stuff i consider useful, interesting, or some other such descriptive word like that.
So, for the relative few who give a crap, I doubt you'll ever see another post from me here. Maybe, rooly rooly occasionally, but I somehow doubt it.
If you want tho, feel free to read my blog. If you aren't a programmer, I doubt that you'll gain much use out of reading it, but feel free to try.
You can see my blog here |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| And so it ends. |
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| 12:40pm 01/04/2004 |
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mood: busy music: Backstreet Boys - Larger Than Life
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Today is my last day at Intology.
I think i have everything covered. I've unscribed from all the mailing lists that i'm on that are part of work.
I've updated my .net passport to use my new home email address.
I've updated my memberships to undercover music news, LJ, hoyts, ICQ, seek, urbancinefile, msdn connection, ausdotnet, blah blah blah. The list seems to never end.
I've got my work mail forwarding to my new email, so that i can still find any i might have missed.
I've burnt copies of all my code so that i can use it for future reference.
I've burnt copies any other software here that i'm entitled to have.
I've agreed to sign a 30 day contract giving after hours support to the project i've been working on for the last 2 or 3 years. The client is so worried that with me leaving everything will fall apart that he's offered me money to fix any problems that come up in the next month. Payment hasn't been discussed, but i expect 100 bucks an hour.
I've still got to backup my mail, but i'll do that last thing, so that i don't miss any.
I still need to uninstall all of the 'useful' programs that i have installed on my workstation, so that people dont' realise how many hacks i had in place :)
At 4 oclock there's going to be a pissup for my farewell. I think i'll end up having to call jordie to come and drive me home, but we shall see.
Now all i have to do is work out what to do with my payout. I need to pay back Ma and Pa a loan they gave me last week. I need to get some clothes to wear to my new job. We really want to buy issy a new bed, because she's almost too big for the cot. But i'm not going to be getting paid in a fortnight, so i need to get rent and other payments paid for a fortnight from now, as well as for this week. I have to wait another couple of hours to see how much it is after tax. Probably not enough :(
Gee, having to sort all this shit out is so much fun. Really.
Boing! |
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| The end of an Era |
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| 10:31pm 04/03/2004 |
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I handed in notice today. I decided that i wanted to go to Telstra, and that i really didn't want to have to niggle over tsa's buy back price, when i really didn't want to stay. So before they could make an offer, i said 'let's cut the bullshit. it's not about the money, i think i need the change. let's leave it at that'. They were happy enough.
My last day of work at Intology is April Fool's day. |
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| Follow your heart |
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| 11:57pm 03/03/2004 |
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mood: pondersome music: Good Charlotte - Wondering
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I got the job. Allowing for the four weeks notice i have to give, i start work at telstra on minday the 5th of april.
The pays not _quite_ what i was hoping for, but only not quite, and definately good enough to win me over.
I'm quite looking forward to it actually. Especially the part where i get a laptop. I hate laptops, they're annoying bloody things, too damn small, cost way too much for a decent speed, the screen is no where near big enough, i'm too wide to type on a narrow keyboard....blah blah blah. but it's mine (so long as i work there). mine mine mine. i could code on the couch. i doubt i will, but i _could_.
And my current bosses have already started scrambling. I'll find out in the morning what their counter offer is. I'm actually scared of them making an offer too good to refuse - i feel like the time is right to make a change, and to build up my skillset even more. but what if they offer a total bucket full of cash? gonna feel pretty wierd if i have to turn down an awesome salary...
So i'm hoping in typical tsa style they can't actually come to the party, only poke their head through the door for a minute or two.
A month from now, i'll be a telstra employee. |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| Strange things are afoot at the Circle K |
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| 02:20pm 02/03/2004 |
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Well, this has been an interesting weekend or so. There's been a big lack of sleep, and some exciting times. Mostly there's been (and still is) a big cloud of unknown hanging over me.
Allow me to start at the start.
I work for Intology. I'm a programmer. I'm a damn good one (although my stored procudure and sql statement authoring is a little under par). I write windows apps, web pages, addins for windows and office, windows services, a whole bunch of different things. I'm extremely fluent in VB.net, ASP.net, VB6, C and C++, HTML, and the IE DOM. I can get by with javascript, C#, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I can develop for windows or any of the assorted unixs. i'm pretty crap at using word and excel, but i can type a letter. I have over 5 years experience in teh industry (the standard requirement if you don't have a degree) AND a degree in IT. I am way underpaid.
There's a friend of mine called Noonie. He works for Telstra. He writes web-based reports of complex billing data for very big companies. It's very much database driven what they do, but there's still the web front end. He gets paid well for what he does.
He's been wanting me to work where he works for a while now - we work well together, i know a lot of what he does coz i help him with it on weekends, and he's seen how good i am. but there's been no openings. It's telstra policy to get people from inside telstra before going to recruitment agencies when a positiion is available, so all positions that have opened up before now have been taken by internal people.
About 6 months ago we updated my resume, and he showed it to his boss, just on the off chance. His boss read it and said 2 things:
1) we dont' have a position at the moment, and there won't be one for a while.
2) when i do, i damn well want him here.
And that's where it has stayed.
So now we move to the friday night just gone. We go round to visit Noonie and the rest of his family. The first words out of his mouth was 'we need to update your resume again. get ready.'
Someones leaving his department, and they haven't been able to fill the position internally. so on thursday last week someone comes up to noonie and asks him for my resume. This person is in charge of the future direction of department. he says he doens't have it anymore, it was ages ago. so they ask if they could have an updated one by monday. he says sure.
Then on friday the bossman of the department asks noonie if he has my resume yet. noonie says no. his boss says 'well hurry up, i want to interview him'.
So i spent my weekend writing my resume, trying to squeeze a decent amount of detail on all the things i can do into as short a space as possible. it ended up being 5 pages long, mostly describing my programming experience.
We got it all done sunday night, and all was good.
Monday morning at 8.30 i get a phone call from noonie. he's already got to work, printed my resume and shown it to his boss. his boss has shown it to that first guy that asked for it. noonie is calling this early because they've already all read it and want to interview me. that afternoon.
So i had my first job interview in over 5 years yesterday. tell you what, man my mouth was dry afterwards - noonie said it's a very good thing that it went so long. we sat and chatted for almost an hour, discussing what i'd done and what they do and what i'd be doing if i worked there and stuff. sounds pretty good, but check back up teh top what i'm not so good at: stored procedures and sql statements.
What will my job be, should i get offered a position? Well, funnily enough, about 70% of my workload will be writing stored procedures. But that's ok, i've not learnt that much about them yet because i haven't really had the opportunity to play with them. i'm sure i can pick them up easy enough.
So i've had to tell one of my bosses at work what's going on, because he'll be getting a call soon doing my reference check. I don't know if he's told any of the other bosses yet.
But my loyalty to my current work is flagging. i've always thought i was appreciated round here, and my pay was so low because it's all they could afford. it seems it's not true. i went searching the company file store on the weekend to try to find an old resume of mine, to give me something to work with. I accidentally opened the wrong file,a nd discovered that one of the developers here who has less experience, no degree, and is not as good a coder as i am is getting 15 thousand more a year than me.
So screw them.
Benefits of staying where i am: i might be able to push my salary up if they counter an offer from telstra. i'll still get to play with the coding that i enjoy doing. But i'll still not get payrises very often, and i'll still have to put up with bad resource management, and i'll still have to end up working a lot of unpaid pvertime.
Benefits of going to Telstra: a substantial payrise, a company laptop, less hours, frequent payrises, a decent package.
Me thinks i've made up my mind. |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| An assortment of different coloured pocket fluff |
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| 03:24pm 02/02/2004 |
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mood: working music: Outkast - Hey Ya
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I finished The Hobbit over the weekend. Well, technically i didn't quite - i finished the last level needing one chest. So i need to redo the final level. This is no big deal, really, since the final level was actually really really easy.
But i'm not hurrying to do it, since the final level was really really easy.
I think they ran out of time or something, because it was so damn simple that it's not funny. Ok, so i missed one chest, so i guess it's not _that_ easy, but i didn't die once, and i didn't to stop and work out a single puzzle, and it was fairly short too. Oh, and get this - to go up a level (and gain an extra hunk of health) you need to collect about 1000 courage points. So obviously, if you've collected everything on the way through the game, you'll be a fairly high level when you get to the final one. There's a max of 20 health chunks, of which when we started the final level we had 18 - all gems up to that point, and had bought 2 more as well (i think it was 2). We could have bought more, but we spent all our early money on health potions and stuff, instead of saving up for the 2000 penny each health bubbles. But I digress... On the final level, do you get rewarded for being good th whole way through? Hell No! On the final level, there is an unlimited number of courage points to collect. Courage points are either hidden around the world, or picked up whenever an enemy dies. The final level is set during the war of the dwarves, human and elves against the goblins. There's fighting everywhere. It's basically only scenery, but every time a goblin gets killed by someone on your side, the courage points appear, which you pick up. So by standing invisibly in just the right spot, you don't get involved in the fight but pick up shiteloads of courage points - so within 30 seconds i'd gone up the last two levels without hardly blinking. No fair for me who spent all the time collecting everythign on the way, when other people who didn't try can be level 20 on the final level too!
A bit of a disappointment really. But that's ok, because the rest of the game is so damn good, that i don't mind. The second from last level would have to be one of my favourites - not that much fighting, and lots of puzzles. Tis good!
I've discovered a web page with mp3 downloads on it. There's a lot of crap, but some good ones too - saves me the hassle of installing kazaa and getting all the extra adware adn bloatware and virusware that comes with it. I was only looking for one song, and i got it straight away :) For some reason, i don't know why, i quite like the song that was number 1 recently by Outkast - Hey ya. I have it now and can listen :)
Lately i've discovered an enjoyment in trying to nut out cryptic crosswords. In the local newspaper there's two different ones each day, and Australian and an English. Don't bother with the Australian - it's too damn easy :)
The english cryptic crosswordis much harder, so it's more fun. Of course, it's normally too hard, but that's ok - the fun is in the trying. Myself and friend of mine are spending the nweekends now trying to nut them out. Between the two of us, we can generally get about half or so of each crossword (most of the time). I figure the more we practice, the better at them we get. Maybe :)
Did some cleaning up of the garage on Sunday. Yes, i'm shocked by that statement too :)
There's still a heap of unpakced boxes and stuff, but they're all piled up again in one stack, with the hard to stack items sitting on squishings couch that the Salvos wouldn't take. There's like room to walk around in there and stuff now! It means i've got room now to actually work on the Noon's couch that i promised to fix and has been sitting in the garage waiting for me to clean up in there until i have to room to actually fix it. Once that's done, i can give it back and they can give me their dining chairs that have all become wobly, and i can fix them for them too!
I inherited the bed ends and slats (not the side runners) of a single bed from them as well - i took it for the scrap wood. Did some thinking yesterday while cleaning up - i could probably build a bed frame out of it to put issy's cot mattress in, and then we have a bed for her (that she's been wanting so bad and can't afford) for almost free! Just nails and glue and stuff is all it'll cost. Me likey this idea way mucho.
Watched the deleted scenes from J&SBSB last night. Including the intros to each scene, it's over an hour and a half long!!! Way cool. The bloopers were only about 8 minutes tho, which is not so good :( I like bloopers.
I'm done. Can't think of anything else to type. Can't be bothered to talk about code. Stick a fork in me. |
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Read 6 - Post |
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| My birthday. |
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| 01:51pm 31/01/2004 |
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mood:  content
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While she may not realise it, squishings bought me my birthday present today. She did really well, choosing a dvd that i've been wanting for a while.
It was a very hard choice actually, between this one and Natural Born Killers, which is one of the best movies ever made. But in the end i succumbed to the one that was the same price but was a two disc set.
So, squishings, thankyou so much for my copy of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. You are too kind :)
PS: Thanks also go to Target for putting up with Issy the whole time we were there, every 5 seconds there was a yelled out 'Mummy, look at this!' or 'What's that?' or 'What doing, Daddy?'. But the voucher got spent and Issy survived.
Ooh, and i picked up a pair of boxers for $1.51 out of the bargain bin. Pretty good when you can normally only them in a two pack for $15. Sweet! |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| First attempt |
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| 08:15pm 30/01/2004 |
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Well, let's see if we can make a real entry, what say?
We got The Hobbit for the PS2 fro christmas. A couple of nights a week or so we've been playing it. Tis a very cool game indeed! A lot of people play games and are happy just to get through each level. Uh-uh, not me! For each level you are told hold many Silver Pennies, Courage Points, Chests, and Quests are to be found/opened/completed. Well, we don't go onto the next level until we've found every single one of those little bastards.
This plan is all well and good - it extends our enjoyment of the game, and draws it out to a decent length playing time, which makes much better value for money (we'll just ignore the fact that i didn't pay for it in the first place!). Hell, a friend of mine has it and she finished it in about 4 days. That's fine, but no fun :)
So our plan was working well. Too well. I knew it all had to come crashing down at some stage - and i suppose it did at an opportune time.
There's a level called 'Flies and Spiders' which is the part where in Mirkwood where Bilbo has to save the dwarves from the spiders. We started playing this level on roughly the 8th of January. We got to the end of the level that night missing 5 Silver Pennies, 1 Chest, and 7 Courage Points. Well dammit you fnooger! That's ok, that's what playing this is all about - we always make an extra save game at the start of the level so that we can go back if we need to. So i did.
The next day i played it for the second time, and found the missing chest (which had the missing 5 pennies) and a missing Gem (which gave 5 courage points. I was still missing 2 other courage points.
Not to be perturbed, i tried again the next night. Still 2 missing.
On the friday or saturday of that week i threw my back out. It started sore, and each day got sorer and sorer. I was supposed to start back at work on the monday after my 3 weeks off for chrissy, but i could only walk around for small amounts and sit down for very short periods - mostly lying down for me! Not really a way to work :)
It took so long to get better that i had 4 weeks off instead of 3. I spent that week pretty much flat on my back playing this farking level - always coming up 2 courage points short.
Jordie gave up, and moved on to the next level - after all, if there's about 4000 to be collected on each level, and we only missed 2 altoghter, that's pretty damn good.
So we completed the next level (Rescuing the dwarves from the elves by putting them in barrels and floating them down the river to laketown) and the one after that (hanging out in Lake town). We got both of these 100%.
We even started a little on the level after that (in Smaug's lair).
Remember that we only normally play at night once Issy is in bed, and weekends are generally out coz we're off free-loading - i mean visiting - the Noon's (or reinstalling Squishings computer...and her bf's). I've been back at work since then for 2 weeks.
So this week i thought i'd try to find a walkthrough. I tried a while ago (even tho i hate cheating and i was determined to find these 2 damn points without it) with no luck - the game was just too damn new. But i found one now. And i used it.
Yes. *hangs head* I am a cheater.
If it helps, it didn't help much. It didn't tell me where these two gems are. It did help in that every so often the walkthrough would have a checkpoint - it would give an update an how many coins, gems, and chests you should have if you've completed up to there. So this gave me an area of about 10 rooms to look even extra extra harder in that i already had.
Wouldn't you know it, it's a bug in the damn game!!
There's this one big room that once you get to the middle you have to fight a shit load (and i mean LOTS!) of spiders. This is fine, and i get through there without much hitch.
From there, you walk through another couple, then climb a massive tree. Once you climb the tree, turn around and go back to that first room.
Having got back, one pissy little spider that should have come out before decideds that _now_ it will come out. You kill it and get two courage points.
How freaking frustrating!!! But it's good to have it done finally. Since then we've redone the next two levels, finished the one in Smaug's lair, and i'm closing in on the end of the level after that.
Yay me.
This game was definately value for money. And we're still not finished! Mind you, if you ever get stuck playing this Flies and Spiders level, come talk to me. I could do it all blindfolded now :)
You may have noticed (me thinks it's pretty damn obvious) that i have a certain...skill? Talent? Whatever you call it, i like to call it verbal diorhea on paper. I write. And write. And then some more.
But i got through the level, so i'm happy. At least with that.
Work is crap at the moment. I'm currently working on two and a half projects - that is, almost all my time on one, patches and changes when requested on another, and ...) I have shite loads of crap to get done, and no time to do it in. All of a sudden my main project the bulk of it needed to be finished yesterday (seriously - i was told on wednesday that i had to have it done on thursday if i could - after all, it only looks like about a days work. Bzzzt. Try about a week and a bit!), and the second one by the end of next week (luckily, i was able to palm off some of the things that needed doing on that one to someone who's now on holidays).
And the third? It sounds like a pretty good application. I can't discuss the details due to the fact that i doubt any of you have signed the same peice of paper that i did - if i tell you what i'm doing it's an actual offence (i still haven't even worked out who it's for - might be the police, might be asio, might be someone...who knows?). But it a good little system, and they want a prrof of concept from us.
Sound sweet? It does. Give me a while to come up with a fairly good user interface, nut out the details for the backend server, and this will come up nicely.
But wait! It was promised while i was on leave, and it has to be delivered in the last week of Feb.
Now, at my work there's 5 technical staff (1 of which is the sysadmin and therefore not a coder). So 4 coders. 3 of these are at least at the competant level (the 4th is shit house...and i mean big time). Of those 3, two of us are what i consider to be very good programmers (not the use of 'us' there :)
However, the two good coders are busy on other projects. The other competent one is now on leave as of today for a month.
So who's writing this system? The incompetant coder and one of the company's directors.
I've known about it since i went back to work two weeks ago, and every time i think about it i get angry.
Yet again, my workplace has fooked things up before even getting out of the gate! No coders available, incorrect assumptions made left right and centre, and the client wasn't even told what it was they were getting!
So for the last two weeks i'm constantly being bombarded with 'how do i do this?' and'how do i do that?' and (today) 'by the end of next week we need the search server up and running, you can write that, right?'.
Now, i can squeeze in some extra coding here and there (hell, my company has _never_ expected people to actually take a lunch break - let alone considered paying overtime) but this is getting ridiculous.
And on top of this, they designed it wrong from the get go.
'Oh, since you've written a lot of this this before, we figured we could just patch in your code', they say.
'Uh, no, i've written something similar, but that was for a web site, and this is a client application', i respond, suddenly getting worried.
'Yes, so we figured we'd just host a web browser control and use your ASP.net stuff.' they answer smugly.
'Get fucked.' i reply. 'it doesn't do all you need, some of what it does you _don't_ want, and you want to make the client pay for IIS licenses _as well_ as everything? So there's a vb.net client...a vb.net server..._and_ some of it is hosted on the web? Uh-uh. No way.'
'But why?' they ask, thinking there's nothing wrong.
So two hours later i finished my rant on how they had this all wrong.
I'm winning. Mostly. He's still insisting on hosting a web browser control. For one page. At least IIS is gone - the HTML is generated client side. Why? The client trialled a web-based search engine, and besides, searches are more intuitive on the web. So they say.
Get fooked the lot of you!
On that not, i'm going to grab another beer, have a smoke, and see if i can finish nutting out Monday's cryptic crossword.
night everyone! |
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Read 3 - Post |
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| Virgin diary |
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| 04:52pm 28/01/2004 |
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mood:  tired music: angels - robbie williams
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Why am i doing this? I don't keep diaries. This is going to last about two days, and then i'll never touch it again.
I guarantee it. |
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freddcowman's journal