New Webcam

I've been thinking for a while that I would do a "places I hang out" series of posts, but I don't have a digital camera. However, I've just bought a new notebook, which has a web cam in it. While obviously more limiting than a camera (soon to be purchased, I assure you), it takes OK pictures for the web.

So here's a sort of panoramic view of my desk.















Wow, that was painful, from taking to pictures, right up to putting them on my blog. Surely there's a better way. Any why is there that great big gap at the start of any table? My "photos percentages" post (don't know how to link to it) had the same problem. Maybe it's a CSS thing. I know what CSS stands for, but that's really the end of it.

Three and a half months!

That's how long it took for Google to decide that I wasn't qualified for the position I had applied for. The official word:

There isn't currently a position within the ... group that aligns with your skills and experience.

Perhaps they didn't read my resume. If they had, they might have picked up on that a bit sooner, and I wouldn't have spent the last 3 and a half months emotionally preparing to leave the country.

Job Update

It seems the hiring committee which is to decide my fate was cancelled last week, as they were all off skiing (!!). In any case, it will be another week or so before I hear anything.

Rained out

It's hard to begrudge the rain, the beautiful, solid, healing rain, but it certainly got in the way this weekend.

We went to see the Ten Tenors at Centennial Vineyards, Bowral, on Saturday night. It didn't occur to me that it would rain, as it was stinking hot in Wollongong, and besides, it hadn't rained in ages. As we arrived, were directed to a parking spot, and hiked the 20 minute hike to the outdoor amphitheatre with all our picnic goodies, I started to lose confidence. The sky had a definite threatening look to it, and despite the compere's insistence that the cloud was going to split in half and go either side of us, I was starting to get wet.

As we passed through the security checkpoint, I was surprised to find that umbrellas weren't permitted past that point. I'm yet to think of any reason for such apparent insanity - perhaps they thought that a bunch of wine-loving, ten-tenors-concert-goers were going to start stabbing each other with them or something. They helpfully threw them in a pile to the side for collection on the way out. As I've said, rain wasn't on my radar, so I didn't lose my much pilloried coral reef umbrella, thanks be.

We settled in and cracked open the champagne and nibbles. Grace Knight was on first, and she sang all the same songs she's been singing for years, which was nostalgic if not particularly interesting. James Morrisson was much more intersting and personable, but by this stage the rain had forced me to retreat to a port-a-loo, from where the sound quality was distinctly non-optimal. As the rain got harder and harder, I found it harder and harder to justify hiding in the loo when other's might actually need to use it, so I turned my collar up and made a dash for it..... but of course, there was nowhere to go. I got back to our patch to find the gang, drenched, packing up and starting to head out. I was leaning towards sticking it out, but the temperature had dropped, the sun was down, and they were all soaked to the skin. It seemed I'd weathered out the worst of it in the loo.

The scene at the security checkpoint was chaos, with people trying in vain to find their umbrellas in the pile, before giving up and just taking one off the top. By the time we made it back to the cars, I was as wet as anyone, and almost as miserable. We wrung out our clothes as best we could before getting in and heading home, without having had even a glimpse of the ten tenors.

The concert being cancelled (as far as we were concerned) and the picnic being adjourned to the dining room table, we nonetheless had a lovely dinner, complete with metal cutlery, real plates, and dry clothes.

Life post, as promised.

Such as it is, this is the state of my life.

Things are a bit tense at home - one of my flatmates has a girlfriend, who's spending a *lot* of time here, and not really contributing. It's causing issues, not so much for me, but for the others. Everyone's being a bit unreasonable, in my personal opinion. Only a few months to go, however. We always knew that the whole thing could end in tears - it's just that I always thought they'd be mine.

I bought a new computer, a Dell XPS M1210, or something like that, with lots of built in goodies, including Vista (that will be interesting), web cam, Skype, TV tuner and some other stuff. I couldn't select a Dvorak keyboard though, so I'll have to prise the keys up off the keyboard and put them back down in the right places myself. I'll probably have to reinstall the operating system as well, or else the damn thing will keep defaulting back to Qwerty.

I've got way too much work to do, which means I'm spending heaps of time procrastinating. Unhelpful, shall we say, although many other adjectives (most not suitable for polite company) spring to mind.

That's what passes for my life, presently. The Registry is suffering for my lack of free time. Sorry 'bout that, for any SCAdians reading.

The Interview

You could be forgiven for thinking that this blog was about a single job application. Meh.

After spending what was obviously way too much time deciding what to wear, I was by far the best dressed person on the entire floor. Even the receptionist (who was male with a slightly British accent, and who referred to a bunch of flowers that had been delivered as a 'leviathan' - which was enough to make me want to say "Does it say Dublin on my application? It's supposed to say Sydney!") was wearing a t shirt. I felt particularly self conscious in my shirt and tie.

The first interview went fine. I was asked a single SQL question, which was trivial in the extreme, and I almost second guessed myself looking for the trick. Then something of a puzzle about dropping marbles. Not sure how much I can legally say about that, or indeed any of the experience - I did sign a very long and complicated document, which I have to admit I didn't read it it's entirety. In any case, I didn't actually have to solve the differential equation, which I was happy about.

So that was OK. Then came the second interview, and I'm afraid that I panicked at the first technical question. The interviewer sat there, staring slightly past me, as I dug my grave deeper and deeper, getting more and more flustered. In the end, it took me over half an hour to solve a problem which he'd introduced as "a relatively easy one", and even then only after some prompting.

If we got to any of the 30% "organisational fit" questions that were supposed to be asked, I didn't recognize them for what they were. Perhaps I'd spent way too long on the last technical question - I was there for over two hours, all up.

So that's what's going on there. Life post to follow, as soon as I get one.