• I'm down-to-the-wire. I called BR@RH several times. The last call was a promise for a call-back from the receptionist. But, so far, nicht, ingenting, nada-por-nada.
• I will call Charlie from the State-of-Texas tonight and if Charlie does not signal positively then I'm calling NG tomorrow.
• Pipe-fitting here I come.
• Hee-hee (sheepish grin) I talked to S@s and employment still sounds good but I want to hear about a job offer soon as I will have to accept another job offer elsewhere.
• S has me slated to talk to his so-called H Guy.

•  I called BR@RH a couple of times today but no life. I suspect I'm wasting my time.
• The plan now is to put as much live Java on my website as possible: Axis webservices, JSpringApp et. al.
• I have a feeling I will call Charlie White tomorrow and then when I hang up I will be calling NG@NO.
• This day's jobsearch basically sucked... Nothing uplifting whatsoever.

• I called the Whirlpool India Call Center.
• The call center guy got a bunch of info from me and said the electronic control module part will be in the mail tomorrow.
• No technical service is covered so I will have to install this module myself.
• I hope I don't have to flame Whirlpool.
• In reference to the previous bullet I had some young gal waste my cell phone minutes by leaving me a voice mail message. Why don't people use my landline?
• Everything remains to be seen in the pudding. If I get the plastic electronic module tomorrow and I'm able to install it without some huge negative experience (no pun intended) then I will tip my hat to Whirlpool. Otherwise they get flamed.

A man, a miss, a car -- a curve,
He kissed the miss and missed the curve -- Burma Shave (1948)

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

• Since this is a Back-Blog I will be expanding with some comments in the days after the purchase of Karl's new (used) car: a Toyota Prius.
• In summary I think Karl and I are definitely impressed with the vehicle. What is really surprising is this 8 year-old vehicle is still one of most fuel efficient vehicles on  the road today discounting the so-called all-electric Smart Car.
• So far we drove from: 1. the John Eagle Honda dealership on Dealership Row (290 @ Eldridge) to our mechanic for the pre-purchase inspection. 2. back to the Dealership. 3. Back home. 4. to Wal-Mart in Tomball. 5. Back home (Magnolia). 6. A short trip to the tennis courts at Magnolia Junior High. 7. A short test drive by Mom and the car stills shows 6 bars of a total of 10 on the all digital gas tank gauge.
• The car's MPG has steadily risen since Karl started driving it and is now hovering in the 44.8 MPG range!
• The only downside to owning this vehicle is the maintenance will have to be done at a Toyota dealership. Specifically, the Cypress, TX Toyota dealership is where we will be trying to keep the Prius in good condition.
• Alas, Karl cannot drive his new Prius this weekend because we were not quick enough to get the turnaround delivering the Farmer's Insurance requested info: VIN, make, model, year, etc.of the vehicle to be put on our insurance card.

Found on: mindlikeasword.com

Read more...

A hundred prisoners are each locked in a room with three pirates, one of whom will walk the plank in the morning. Each prisoner has 10 bottles of wine, one of which has been poisoned; and each pirate has 12 coins, one of which is counterfeit and weighs either more or less than a genuine coin. In the room is a single switch, which the prisoner may either leave as it is, or flip. Before being led into the rooms, the prisoners are all made to wear either a red hat or a blue hat; they can see all the other prisoners' hats, but not their own. Meanwhile, a six-digit prime number of monkeys multiply until their digits reverse, then all have to get across a river using a canoe that can hold at most two monkeys at a time. But half the monkeys always lie and the other half always tell the truth. Given that the Nth prisoner knows that one of the monkeys doesn't know that a pirate doesn't know the product of two numbers between 1 and 100 without knowing that the N+1th prisoner has flipped the switch in his room or not after having determined which bottle of wine was poisoned and what colour his hat is, what is the solution to this puzzle?

•  I got a call from a: Carrol to work as a pipefitter for NG (rehire). She gave me an 800 number to call.
•  I got a call from good ol' Charlie White about the Austin Java Job. They like the good ol' boy look on my website.
  

•  Well it sounds as if the Dems in Congress are going to make a showing of trying to get the bonus money back.
• But, in reality it appears the CEOs and the EXECs are going to: Bone Us!

•  I got a call back from RH today and he promised to call back with the day and time the sexingtechnologies.com folks plan to interview me about the job.
• I got a reply email from RH with the URL: griglobal.com but I had already found it by that time.  Google incorrectly shows: griglobal.com but the correct link is: sexingtechnologies.com.
• I also got a call from Clint who ask me about if I was called over the weekend but I had to tell him: no calls.
• Clint promised to get back with me when he gets more info. This is not a likely prospect at this juncture.

• Two weeks ago or thereabouts I was struck with a very slow Usermin webmail client. I suspect the issue with the my webmail client is there are too many directories.
• I have spent several days on a lot of these web-mail projects most of which are ancient. I tried a couple of Java webmail clients but either the project admin/owners were arrogant asses or the project software had no hope of running on my system.
• The up-side to everything today was the fact that I was able to clone nullwebmail via my Netbeans IDE and make some diagnostic edits. And, I successfully performed a hg outgoing and hg push using the ssh:// protocol URL in my Cygwin terminal. And, the hgwebdir confirmed all changes as pushed to the remote Linux box. But to my surprise when I opened the file: src/webmail/main.c I discovered their where no changes!?
• I sent an email to the Mercurial folks but their SMTPd has a habit of delaying mail. Matt Mackall and company are not very friendly albeit they are running a so-called FOSS project. I admit that I like hg much better than SVN, CVS, PVCS or SCCS. But, getting help is another question.

•  Karl took his SAT today and upon his return he is very upbeat and confident.
• Now, for a reward Karl and I will go car shopping.

• I talked to Clint again about the Austin/Linux admin job. I created the Linux admin Word doc he wanted and replied to him with the attachment.
•  I got a call from Donna yesterday. It was bad news: she explained that the client was not interested as I was not senior enough. Donna is great. She was borderline apologetic without being in anyway condescending or crass. Overall, we had a very good discussion and she was much more supportive than the usual recruiter types that only say something like: we will keep you on file for future opportunities.
• Donna also sent me an email of an associate or friend in Spring, TX that she recommended to me. Her friend/associate runs a website that is mostly graphic design but is also somewhat website oriented. I will have to navigate this resource as a possible contact and job network link.
• Final Analysis: Donna was one of those rare consultancy recruiters that has some empathy for her marks.
• The recruter/job candidate is a very strange symbiotic relationship at times.

• I got a cold call from a kid named: Avril Do (French Vietnamese). I had to complete his so-called matrix for a shot at HP. The matrix was a good exercise in Java and I added the so-called Java API tag to my resume.
• Another kid named: Clint wants a Linux Admin in Austin. The conversation was good. He needs a so-called paragraph outlining my Linux skills.
  

• I never thought a college level 5 day assignment would have kicked my butt.
• But! I only have myself to blame. To salvage something from the harrowing experience I should blog about this somewhere public where it might do somebody good.

• The past two days (the entire weekend) I put in a valient effort to complete the proqual.net DVD rental employment test application but alas I discovered late last night that I had not done enough work up front in the design and analysis to complete the program with the intended outcome.
• So, I zipped-up what I had in terms of partial functionality and mailed it last night (early morning) to the guy interested in me at proqual.net  At least I learned what not to do with a test. Getting in a hurry only puts you further behind in software development.
• I did send in a couple of TWC ads but nothing that will garner anything like a job.

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail.
Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones that can.
-- Third Law of Software Envelopment

Never trust a computer you can't lift.

• It is the end-of-the-day and I will expound on the very strange interview I just had with Brandon Riley at rht.com in the woodlands today. Brandon presented me with an unusual situation: the target employer wants to fire the geek that is currently manning their web-based tracking application. And, of course replace the unpopular employee with a new employee. I am very suspicious of this and besides the recruiter just wanted me to visit in person so he could see how old I am. It is very funny how the recruiters and the employers try to hide the fact that age is a big issue with these people.
  
• Today was very active with many phone calls and emails from interested recruiters and employers. It never seems to fail that I get an explosion of folks all wanting to talk to me at the same time. In reference to the first bullet I am somewhat hopeful that I can get the job that will be vacated by somebody that is getting the boot.
• I got an email from Krishnan with an attachment. The attachment is the requirements for a so-called DVD rental website. I have 5 days for the design and delivery. I will start on the task tonight.
• I also got a reply email from Donna @ bpsconsulting. She has me scheduled to discuss further my experience and background with a guy named David.

• I had an interview today that was to date the most rude individual a person could possibly have for an interviewer. knexusresearch.com called me (a scheduled interview). The interviewer jumped all over my resume asking questions that seemingly had no real direction or target. Then just as abruptly as he fired off the questions at me he hung-up the phone on this note: ...we will be looking at other candidates. (click...)
• It never seems to fail: the human condition is revealed for what it really is when the situation for the majority of us gets into the red-ink the ass-holes come crawling out of the wood-work. In fact there is a mathematical correlation between the state of the economy and the number of ass-holes that become more visible in your life: the number of job opportunities is inversely proportional to the ass-hole level of some interviewers. This means: as the number of jobs is reduced the asshole level of some interviewers increases. The only way of summarizing the events of the previous bullet is simply: WHAT ASSHOLES!
• Not all is black though: right after the ass-hole interviewer I got a call from a Charlie White (good ol' boy) who was very pleasant and gave me some hope that next week there should be some movement on an interview from them.
• And, I had a very good interview with some folks representing proqual.net. The interviewer was tough on the interview questions: namely he asked me to write a function or method to return a fibonacci number given a particular input, say, f-in (effin' get-it?) where f > 1. The function then is to return the same number as a fibonacci number or the return will be -1 for failure i.e. the input number is not a fibonacci sequence. They plan on hiring 2 to 3 people so my chances are good.
• This interviewer was tough but fair and considerate.

• As a public blogger I do like to use erudite English Prose when possible but I can't control the anger and so blowing off steam I must say: pumping another $30,000,000,000 (Dollars U.S.) into a miserably failed institution such as: AIG is beyond all fathomable human understanding. The Final Analysis: THIS SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  
• What are they thinking? The U.S. Congressional pensions must be hidden in this mess somewhere. Otherwise, I don't understand how and why our misrable U.S. government has to continue supporting an outfit as miserable as AIG.
• If the U.S gov. had stepped in when AIG thought it prudent to write a $600,000,000 (Dollars U.S.) check to Prudential for the write to decimate my old company there would still be several hundred if not indirectly thousands of people still with their jobs just off of down-town Houst, Texas.
• Apparently the contents of the previous bullet are not important to entities such as our U.S. government.

• The day has not begun well as the CRAIGSLIST Reader has only uncovered a couple of jobs. And, that was scourering two whole states: Texas and Virginia/DC. Texas as a job-search state sucks as a given. But, Virginia/DC sucking too is equally depressing if not more so.
• But things got better later on as I interviewed with another DC company proqual.com. They were supposed to tech-me-out later in the day and if that proved OK then I was supposed to take a written programming test. As it turned out they did not call back last night.
• From a conversation with Donna Fernandez of bpsconsulting I put together last night two .zip files with a README to reply email to Donna such that Anish could have a type of portfolio on my work @ FirstAm, CBRES and Germania Farm Mutual.

• This afternoon an interview w: Anish @ BPSConsulting. The interview went quite well in my estimation. Anish wants me to talk to Donna in next coming days (hopefully tomorrow) and then it appears I will be making a trip to D.C. for a face-to-face interview. I have a gut feeling that I will find a Federal agency in my future.
  
• I ran the CRAIGSLIST jobsearch client (robot) today but it only came up with one new job in VA/D.C. and zero (0) in Texas.
• Does the job market suck or what?