Bet you didn’t know you were gambling with your privacy when you went and bought you a rent-to-own computer, did you? Neither did quite a few people who rented from 7 companies who’ve been smacked down for including software that enabled the companies to take pictures of the would-be owners. Those companies had apparently taken pictures of children, people who weren’t fully clothed, and couples having sex. Of course, the companies quickly settled, but I bet the folks who were caught on much too candid camera are now planning to directly purchase their machines from whoever manufacturer of the year is this year. and I bet so are a lot of other folks after this mess. And folks wonder why I both buy direct from the manufacturer where possible and whipe the thing when I get my hands on it. Well, if you didn’t know before, you do now. Hey. It works.
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Smile. You’re on rented camera.
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Wanted: employer. Must have: good grasp of English language.
Let’s assume you’re in the market for a job. Let’s also assume you have the qualifications to fill pretty much any position you could lay your hands on. Now let’s also assume an ad like this one rolled across your desk.
.Net Devleopers at Zylog Systems Canada (Ottawa, ON)
Given the above assumptions, would you, a clear thinking, educated, presumedly decently written individual, jump head first into a position overseen by the creator of this ad? If you answered yes to that question, please move to Ottawa and call this company immediately. clearly they need you. If you answered no to that very same question, please immediately move to Ottawa and call this company. Clearly, they need a replacement for the creator of this ad. Things to note, in other ads I’ve seen from this and similar companies:
- It’s “I’m”, not “Im”. You’re a professional employer, not a 16-year-old texting addict. Similarly, “you” is how the educated say it, not “U”.
- Do not spend the first 3/4 of the ad asking me if I can answer yes to your 50 questions that feel more like a personality survey than a job ad. Who are you, what do you need, and how can the skills I have help you get there? Two of those questions, you should be answering. That third one? that’s my department.
- And for the love of cheese, I’ve said this before, do not, as in ever, tell me to send my resume to a hotmail address. That is, unless you’d like me to instead send your job ad to /dev/null–which I’ll gladly do, if you really really would like me to.
I may not possess a university level education, but I’m qualified enough for most things–just as soon as I can put most of those things on paper. Still, if I were qualified for a job like the above, you’d have just turned me off of it. But, thanks for trying. Now, let’s talk bilingualism.
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Shout Sister awesomeness.
I mentioned yesterday that the thing to do in this apartment now is a local choir. I tossed this link out there if you were curious to check it out. They performed last night, and because it’s me, that meant I tagged along with recorder in hand. Good effin’ lord, they’re awesome. Keep an eye out, if you’re local to the Ottawa area. They do this often, and they’re worth it. rumour has it they have a huge show in June as well, so if you can find an excuse to be in Ottawa, see them you must. There are chapters elsewhere in Ontario as well–Kingston’s got one, as does the Pembroke area, but hey. I’m in Ottawa now. So it’s the Ottawa one I’m focused on. Sorry. Because they rule hard, and I don’t yet have video evidence to prove it, have the audio evidence I sort of stole while at the show. Oh, and speaking of stealing, somebody should probably tell May’s dog he’s not actually supposed to be the star. Context when videos exist. As for right now, have a listen. then keep an eye out in your area for a chapter of theirs. Or better yet, come to the Ottawa one–and say hello to both May and myself in the process. Sorry in advance if the quality isn’t what you expected. I’m blaming that guy over there.
[audio:Medly.mp3] -
So how much of Ottawa spent yesterday afternoon in the dark?
Something else I’m going to need to get used to. When there’s a power issue in Ottawa, this building usually isn’t part of it–well, unless management breaks something but that’s a whole other entry. So neither May nor I knew there was interesting times until we had stuff to do. That stuff to do took us to Algonquin College first, where I’m assuming the problems first showed up–only one of their buildings, conveniently enough the building we needed to go to, was without power. We were still able to do most of what needed doing, so whatever. We escaped the college, and on our way out, the rest of the campus pretty much went dark. Supposedly it was fixed fairly quickly, as when we went to grab supper on the way home, places in that area had power. It turns out Hydro Ottawa, yes *that* Hydro Ottawa of the almost semi-annual bill increase, broke their connection with Ontario’s power grid. And there went a good chunk of Ottawa’s hydro. If I was still living where I was at this time last year, I’d very likely be mocking the power outage from a different perspective. But now I’m curious. aside from the college and probably my old apartment building, how much of Ottawa was in the dark and for how long?
Also this proves something. May and I are not allowed to go anywhere together. Bad things happen. Although, it usually provides material for the site. Okay forget what I just said.
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Geek stats. Because trivial geek is trivial.
I recently did some tweeking to the server on which this and a couple other sites run. Specificly, I tossed a second hard drive in for the sole purpose of–hey, I likes me some extra space, kay? It had the side benefit of being able to pretend I’m an actual, honest to goodness, proper system administrator. Or maybe it just gave me the extra room to exercise common sense–you be the judge. In so doing, I learned two things about me and my users.
Thing 1: my users don’t actually use much. I’ve probably got the most space going, and that’s at well under a hundred gigs. All told, user data, OS data and miscellanious crap I haven’t gotten rid of data comes to about 5% of the actual primary drive’s available space. Hot damn, I said. Then I looked at where I put my backups.
Thing 2: Holy Christ–backups much? Both drives on the server are 2 TB. So basicly, they’re both smaller than the external HD I’ll be glomming on to when funds come in shortly. I mentioned how much of that space the actual userspace takes up. The backups of said userspace? 55% of the second drive. Yes, nearly 1 TB of the second drive’s 2 TB is backups. As opposed to about 86 GB of the primary’s 2 TB actually being used. Paranoid sysadmin is paranoid, perhaps? I mean, drive failures aren’t entirely common, but hell, should one mysteriously decide to show up and say hi, I’d likely be offline for all of an hour–not counting how long it takes folks to get around to replacing drives. Not bad for a mostly improvized server job, yeah?
Short version: I likes backups. Apparently, way too much. Also tiny users. I have that much diskspace why, again? Oh, right–I have uses. Just uses. Stop asking.
So. Anyone want hosting? I’ve got the room.
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James’s take: Oh, my effin’ god. Exploding now.
Every so often, I’ll accidentally come across something local that kinda makes me go holy crap the awesome. that sort of accidentally happened last weekend. Well, actually, it happened earlier last week, more or less–after a trip to starbucks. One of the folks what works there told May and I about a restaurant not far from there. It apparently only opened a few months ago. They call it the Big Rig Brewery. They make their own beer, plus you know everything in that restaurant’s pretty well made to order. May will probably come up with her own take on the place, but here’s what you’ll find right when you walk in.
From start to finish, awesome slaps you in the face ten-fold. First, and this is an unusual thing for an Ottawa area restaurant, you’re strongly recommended to make a reservation before you go. At first I scratched my head about that one. then we showed up. Oh, my everloving god, the packed. The place is huge, and still I swear it was nearly to capacity. They had decent music, when you could hear it. Just about everything at one point or another ended up played. The service was absolutely amazing, right from when we walked in. Which, if you do the foursquare thing, is quite consistent with what folks who went there before us were saying–yes, for the anti-foursquare types among you, that’s a plus in foursquare’s column, not that I use it very often. Within 10 minutes of getting seated, we had drinks on the way. And because their menu’s online–that’s a plus in just about any restaurant’s column if you’re me, we pretty much knew exactly what we wanted and had it ordered inside of 15. Which edges me towards what we went there for.
Pretty much all of their food has something to do with the beer they brew right there. Usually, if it’s not used to cook with, it’s a recommended pearing if you’re in the mood for something alcoholic. May doesn’t do beer, and I wasn’t in the mood, but that didn’t make their dinner choices any less brainmelty. Or mouthmelty, if you’d prefer. Almost every sauce, seasoning, breaded thing, and pretty much everything else had, if not as the base then as a somewhat minor ingredient, one of their lines of beer. Oh, and let’s not forget–the beer they cooked with was usually the one they’d recommend pearing with. which if I went that way would have probably made it awesome squared, but I’m not sure I could have handled that much awesome.
I’m not usually big on onion rings, but what the hell. I’m there for the food. So I had the onion rings. And holy effin’ crapcracker. Natch, they were beer-breaded. They also, I do believe, may have just made me reconsider my opinion on onion rings. Maybe. But only if I’m there. And only if they go with the rum and coke I chased them with.
I had that, and pasta, which was also freakin’ awesome aside from the lack of garlic bread–really, who doesn’t serve garlic bread with their pasta? I think, though I’ll have to review it, their pasta was one of the very few dishes that didn’t actually use any of their beers as an ingredient. Still, it was wicked enough on its own. I very nearly required a forklift to get me out the door. So of course that meant I had to try dessert. For the record, apple pie goes just fine with rum and coke, thank you. It did nothing to help my requirement of a forklift, but you’ll have that.
Here’s the thing about that restaurant. Yes, we knew what we wanted, more or less. But here’s why it took us 15 minutes to actually get it ordered. Their menu is effin’ deadly. I mean that. It’ll run you over, then turn around to make sure you haven’t moved. We knew what we wanted, but there were about a dozen possibilities between the two of us. so figuring out exactly what we wanted on this particular visit was, well, kind of fun. In a “let’s split your brain in 6 different directions” kind of way. And if/when we go back there again, there’ll probably be twice the breakage. If only because I’m pretty sure we missed a page or two when browsing the menu the first time.
If you’re in the Ottawa area and looking to find somewhere to eat, drink and be merry, the Big Rig Brewery is on Iris street, just behind the Ikea–it’s the only Ikea in Ottawa, so if you can find that, you can find the place. Now here’s the thing. Yes, the food is absolutely awesome. The beer probably is too. But you get what you pay for. So you might want to make sure you’re not gonna run the risk of going broke if you decide to take an evening and go have a little something. But if you do decide to go, it’s well worth it. Oh, but if you’re a foursquare user and you glom on to the mayorship before May does, I’ll just leave the two of you alone for a few minutes. The winner can find me later–I’ll be at the bar, likely enjoying my third rum and coke.
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Because everyone needs a shameless plug once in a while.
And since this is a thing that’s close to home, why the hell not? May has started getting back into the whole singing thing. And she’s doing it with a pretty decent local choir group. They have the occasional public performance deal going on–including one tonight, so the story goes. I’ve heard some of what they do, and they definitely stick in your head a little. If this is the kind of thing you’re in to, you need to be over here, and you can read May’s take on it on her own site. If you’re bored and happen to be in and around the Ottawa area on a performance night, check them out. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. And now, because it’s been way too long since I’ve thought about sleep, it’s high time I go catch an hour.
PS: If this works, new toy. I rave about that later. Maybe.
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things that make you say hmmm.
I would mock this, but I’m not entirely sure how. Or if it would even be effective.
Oct 8 5:49pm: odsp rat. bastard
Guessing somebody doesn’t have a very high opinion of the folks running ODSP? Or people on ODSP? Or both? Hey, I can relate to that first one. And I’ve met a few of the second one. And I guess the search engine figured I’d agree with the sentiment. Who says those algorithms are dumb?
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Because your week is not complete without one of these.
I’m not entirely sure what this person was hitting at when it dropped them here, but…
Oct 1 6:31pm: old folks saying about being loose
… I sincerely hope you found it, pal. I also hope it’s not going to turn into another one of those endless streams of searches for anything and everything worldsex–which I still get, in 2012, even though i wrote this post in 2007. But hey, if it does, I’ll have plenty to mock.
PS: I’d really love another several easy evenings that lead to the creation of posts like that one. Just preferably with more caffeine than I had with that one. that post? Should have been longer.
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In which I have become a tween–no, not like that. Pay attention.
So the last time I was doing any kind of active blogging, Twitter was breaking things. At least, breaking things when it came to clients that were seldom updated and easily breakable. That prompted me to experiment with the Tween app for Twitter. It initially threw me, but I’ve started to give it a second look. Here’s the thing about it. It’s simplistic, it’s clean, it’s *just* a Twitter app–sans the 80 million other thinggies that make certain other apps more like accidents than, well, apps you’d actually want to use. Oh, and it has home timeline streaming–without 8 metric tons of lag. The tabs for your various feeds (really, who the hell came up with calling ’em buffers, anyway?) are laid out like you’d expect–they get the hell out of your way until and unless you want them. And if you’d rather not be distracted by Twitter–yeah, I know, yeah right–it’ll sit in your system tray and you can forget it exists (I’ve actually done that). Since killing the client I was using and running this, this machine’s been complaining a bit less. Translation: it runs on the laptop just as soon as i’m sitting in front of it. Basicly, if you’re not using Tween for twitter, please start using Tween for twitter. No, seriously. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see if I can find the top of my stack of twitter.