January 2005 Archives

No time to speak, except to say that I think that I will be so busy that I will rarely blog at work unless I get here. Interesting company, though. I have been in meetings for some 15 hours so far, but that's just training. I love the 20 minute ride to work, too.

Okay, gotta go.

I guess that after 40, there isn't much to look forward to.

So Nika likes cats, Godzilla and Strongbad. But me? I prefer more physical, spontaneous and candid comedy.

It only gets funny at the very end, but hopefully you can make it through that far. And after. Fuck, Rose and I were crying when we saw it.

And there's always Foamy the Squirrel. Fuckin' hilarious, if you can understand him. And what kind of a name is "Foamy"?

________________________________________
From: Rick, Slick [mailto:slickrick@newcompany.com]
Sent: January 19, 2005 10:01 AM
To: JonasParker
Subject: RE:

Cool.
Can you start Monday?

________________________________________
From: JonasParker [mailto:jonasparkeratcheeseorgydotnet]
Sent: January 19, 2005 10:06 AM
To: Rick, Slick
Subject: RE:

I can.

I guess I fucked up on that test, because I haven't received anything back from them in the last few days. Whatever.

The great thing about sales is that if your coworkers like you, they won't forget about you. I had lunch with a couple of guys from the old job on Monday. When I won my stereo system, the management had broken into it and stole the instructions and the remote control. I never though much of it because hey, I already knew all I needed to know about the thing (except that there was a remote). I got an email from Ned, my counterpart at the old job. (By the way, I'd mention the company's name at this point, but they search Google regularly for their name to see how well Google is working for them. What the hell, I'll call them Penisoft.) He said that the controller mentioned that they had my stuff there. We and a very disgruntled employee that we get along with proceeded to have lunch in Côte des Neiges.

Subscribe to my RSS feed. Make me feel love. Here, just go here and set up an account. Then make use of all those RSS feeds that your favourite cool sites have and use them. It shows you who has updated. You don't have to go from site to site all the time (unless you want to). Everything is all in one convenient location. When you want to enter a new site to subscribe to, just enter the site's name in the add field (or the RSS URL if you have it) and bang! You're done. And see the blogroll at the side? That's all RSS, baby. So do the RSS thing. You'll like it. Really.

It just gets lamer and lamer. You'd think that after the online stuff, and then the voice mail bullshit, I'd get to maybe talk to someone real. No dice.

I have made another skin available. Click "SKIN THIS SITE" to see at the side to see. It's called Ruthsarian's Gargoyles. Best seen in Firefox or IE with a high resolution. I don't know how to make it more IE friendly. I still have to tweak it a little. The colours may change once I understand the code a little better.

I just did that Interactive Interview. At first I thought that I must have lied my ass off for them to consider me. I couldn't remember what the position was for, but then I looked it up. It was for a business analyst position. Anyway, what bullshit. There were six questions, one of which was "What is your name?". Let's see if I can remember the other ones...

• What attracted you to this position?
• We've all had good supervisors, and sometimes we have had bad ones. Describe a situation where you had to handle a conflict between you and your supervisor.
• What was your favourite position you've ever had? (It wasn't THAT kind of position!)
• How would your coworkers describe you in terms of attitude, quality of work and contribution to the team?

There was one more, but I can't remember. Somehow, I actually expect to be called back. They'll probably only offer $35000 if they offer me anything. Somehow, by writing here I feel like I risk being fired before I even have the job. Yet I don't really care. At least, not for this position.

V has it right, though. How seriously can you take a position that will likely pay you crap, doesn't allow you to speak to anyone until the third step in the process (as if résumés aren't enough anymore, you have to fill out on online survey, then do a voice mail interview before they'll even look at your CV), and then...well, I don't know. I'll laugh if they call me, though. Call? Who am I kidding. If I'm lucky, I'll get a voice mail. An automated voice mail, for Chist's sake.

I have the privilege to be surrounded by some pretty talented people. One of them happens to make some pretty cool music. He calls himself Chez Jonesy. I urge you to download the first two albums for free from his site. (By the way, I will see if I can do anything about his 1996-inspired site.) See if you can identify all the samples from the song "Think It Over". I am terrible at classifying music, so what would you describe this as? Feel free to listen to the entire first two albums before telling me.

I have also put up three tracks (low bit-rate, because it's my bandwidth this time) from his newly released third album, "L'Orange". Enjoy.

UPDATE: I was just informed that the first two albums are not available for download. The tracks from L'Orange tracks are still available so far, though.

You know how when you are out of work, and you apply for ten positions, and someone gets back to you but you can't remember which position it is for? That's me right now. But here's the kicker. It's an interactive interview. WTF is an interactive interview, you ask? Aren't interviews interactive by nature if not by definition? Apparently not. Here's what to expect from an interactive interview:

Are there no excellent female whistlers anywhere? You know those guys that can whistle and sound like better than songbirds? Why aren't there any women that do this? I have never heard a woman whistle like that. Come to think of it, I have only very rarely heard women whistle a tune for the pleasure of it.

Just wondering.

This cartoon highlights some experiences at my previous job pretty well, although the reality was that no one actually would have told me anything at the time of my great transgression:

If she had complimented him on his suit, would he be justified in feeling bad about it?

That was quite late. Sorry. No, I'm not, really.

Last night was the first Yulblog event of 2005. My best yet, and I've been to three. I know, I'm a vet. Actually, I found out that the fifth anniversary is going to be in two months. I felt like the world's biggest noob. N00000B. There will be the regular first Wednesday thing, then a party on the weekend. Hopefully. There's nothing planned yet. Hopefully we can get some kind of place on the cheap.

One of the evening's highlights was the presentation of one Alex Lauzon. A shiny laptop appeared from nowhere, and suddenly I was looking at this Powerpoint-type thing that introduced Alex to the rest of us. It began with "Je suis Alex Lauzon. Et ce soir, je me Yulblog". I also found out that he has never watched Seinfeld. Is 32 years old (I think) and has been single since August. It was a really good way of not having to repeat the same shit again and again. It went over well because most of us are geeks, even Nika. Props go to her for reading the presentation out so well, even the grunts and such.

Have any of you heard urban legends or true stories of Boy Scouts jerking off onto a piece of toast? The last one has to eat the toast? I haven't, but apparently Nika, Paolo and Dan have. I made it quite clear, although I don't remember why, that I do not eat cum on toast. I do not eat cum, like most. I do not eat cum in the fall. I do not eat cum at all!

You know that last beer, the one that will do bad things to you if you drink it? The one you probably should not have had? Well, I had most of that beer, and a shot, thanks to Philippe (I can't remember your blog, sorry) and I paid for it slightly this morning. So I will be doing very little today other than blogging and reading and sleeping.