Gis a Job

Well, it's been an odd week. My installation of the Forte for Java, completely shagged my JRE for IE6. This meant that, if I went on any webpage with embedded Java in it, not only would it refuse to run, but oftentimes, the browser would crash. That's progress for you.

I haven't mentioned much about my job search. I think I'm not wanting to jinx myself. Well, not any more than my abject lack of confidence in myself has already done.

There are a couple of possible leads on the cards. One is a job back at Galileo, and the other is either a contract or a permanent position at an (as yet) unknown company, through a recruitement agent.

I'm not sure which I have the better chance of getting, if any. I have lots of very relevant experience for the Galileo job (because I used to work with the guy who left, creating this vacancy), but there have been a lot of internal candidates for it, so they'll have some of the industry experience too.

The other job... well, apparently, I'm a strong contender, as they're finding it difficult to get people with middleware experience. I have middleware experience. In fact, I've worn many a cumberbund. (bu-bum!). Seriously though, it appears that all that fiddly, awkward work making old software talk to new, I did at Galileo, might actually help me get a job somewhere else! Who'd have thunk it?

Tomorrow, or Tuesday, I'm back on the offensive again. I'm going to do the cold-calling thing - which, like most people still in possession of their soul, I hate doing.

There has been an increasing incidence of me actually getting my shit together today. Well, lately in general.

I'm currently attempting to refresh/blow my mind about Java development. I got a bargain book, written way back at the beginning of the century - in 2000 (and no, I don't want to hear from people claiming the century started in 2001). It cost me a mere $14.99, and included a CD of Java development softare.

I now think I know why the book was so cheap. Because the software, JBuilder 3.5, has more bugs in it than that tomb in The Mummy. I mean, simple stuff like dialog boxes not appearing that should, according to the help system.

Anyway, I've not just re-installed Sun's Forte for Java - Community Edition v3.0. The only bummer on the horizon was that it insists you run an iPlanet web server.

After filling in about 2.4m details on iPlanet's download page, it allowed me to download their web server. Finally, it looks like I might be getting somewhere.

I already have Micro$oft's Visual J++ installed as an add-on of Visual , but I'd like to steer clear of using yet another MS product.

So, I'll start again tomorrow. For now, I need my beauty sleep.
Badly.

So, Sunday was "Oscar Night". In case you were wondering, I didn't win any.

My friends Jim and Julia held their annual Oscar party, at their place in Parker. It was good to see them again, and Ben, their minature Snauser!

Parker is a former one-horse town, that's become the fastest growing suburb of the greater metropolitan Denver. Many of my fellow Britons, who moved to the US when I did, were herded towards buying property in Parker. If you read my piece on Highlands Ranch, then the same applies to Parker. It's possibly a tad less like Germany, but the houses are just as beige as those in Highlands Reich.

Suffice to say, that none of my friends, in either Parker or The Reich, are of the extreme right-wing Baptist persuasion.

There was a buffet of food, and what looked like a tin bath filled with ice and beer. Sadly, I was designated driver for the night, so had to be sensible with the beer.

Whoopi Goldberg hosted (in Hollywood, not in Parker), and was remarkably funny. Unlike Steve Martin last year, she came across as doing her own material, and a lot of it was improvised. She made me laugh, which is not something she's done much of in the past.

I've no idea which channel we watched it on, but it didn't involve the prematurely embalmed Joan Rivers, and better yet, no-one was interviewing stars about their dresses.

God, I hate that question, "So who are you wearing?". Not that I get asked it a lot. Probably because the answer is limited to Eddie Bauer, The Gap and Levi's. If Apple starts making clothes, that'll add a fourth name. Come to think of it, I did get a free t-shirt from the Apple Store when it opened.

The point being, it's a question indicative of the uber-lameness of those pre-Oscar fashion spotting commentators. Come the revolution, they'll be up against the wall, stood next to the car salesmen.

I was disappointed that Lord Of The Rings didn't win best film, and that Memento didn't do better. I guess Memento isn't mainstream enough for the Oscars. At least it did well in at the Indepedent Spirit Awards.

Denzel Washington got the gong for best bloke, even though his film, Training Day, was a cop flick. Oh well, he's a nice guy, so it's not the end of the world. I was just glad that professional grumpy lout, Russell Crowe, didnt win it.

Halle Berry won best Actress, and was completely freaked out by it. I've never seen anyone so completely lose it at an awards ceremony. that is unless you count Oasis and 'the plot' at the Brits a few years ago. She was in bits, crying uncontrollably. She actually managed to go through all the major emotions; Crying, Fear, Anger and Joy. I think she was in danger of winning another Oscar, just for the acceptance speech.

I'd like to have seen Gosford Park win more Oscars than it did, but I guess it's not the sort of film that usually wins Oscars. It probably didn't have enough Americans in it.

What I was going to talk about in my last post, was my love of music (hence the promise of not getting too personal about my feelings, which then descended into that rant above).

When I lived in the UK, I was really into music, both listening to it, and writing/playing it. Every weekend my friends and I would spend hours in record shops, finding new and interesting bands. At other times, I'd have friends round with their instruments, and we'd play together in my study until the small wee hours of the morning.

I moved to the US, and this all seemed to stop. Probably because I was in the sleepy suburb of Littleton, where they wouldn't know an independent record store if it came up and bit them. After a while, I moved up to Wash Park (Washington Park -a fashionable area of Denver), but despite being ony three blocks from Twist & Shout, things didn't improve.

In the past month or so, however, my passion for new music has been re-ignited. I've bought several new CDs, including one by Hooverphonic. I also have a few more, obscure music purchases planned.

The point being, I'm on the verge, and have the urge(!) to embark upon a new music writing project. This will be my most 'out there' stuff yet. It's an old 'never-actually-started' project idea, from the morning after a very late-night jam session (making music, not jam) with my old buddy John.

We came up with some new sounds on my synth workstation, and his guitar (plus myriad of effects pedals) akin to that of Portishead. The project/band would be named Mangotsfield. This is another suburb of Bristol (in the UK, as is Portishead) where I lived for the first three years of my life.

I've made a small start, but between looking for a job, housework(!) and dog-minding, I'm not getting much done. Eventually, the sound should be a mix of influences from Portishead, Massive Attack, Morcheeba and any of the newer bands I'm discovering. These include the aforementioned Hooverphonic, Lamb, Baxter and The Supreme Being of Leisure.

So far in this blog, I've not talked about me as a person. Don't worry, I'm not going to! I occasionally go to the homepage of blogger.com and randomly select one of the "ten most recently updated blogs" from the list on the left. All to often, I end up with some angst-ridden teenagers self-obsessed ramblings.

... the Tangent now departing on Platform Five...
"I have nothing to offer the world. Maybe I should lose another 5 before the prom, or get a tan" - yes, an actual quote from one of the randomly selected blogs. Perhaps Little Miss Californian Mall-Rat should consider that in some parts of the world, outside cosy middle-class America, "losing another 5" happens to children because they have no food, and not because they believe all the -annorexic propaganda shit they (barely) read in teen fashion magazines.

Don't get me wrong. I've nothing against people being well-off, or middle-class, or teenagers. I've done all of those. But, I'm reminded of this very poignant article in The Onion, back in September 2001.

Aaaaarrgh I've just lost about an hour's writing. Stupidly, I though that if you click on a dialog box and then press the key combination to close that app, it'd close that application. But no. That'd be too much like the OS doing it's fucking job! No, instead, it closed my browser, in which I'm writing this blog.

...So The Producer Said To Me
I think Ronnie Corbett would have been proud of how far I've managed to side-track myself in this posting. I started off by saying how I wasn't going to subject you to too much introspection, and promptly descended into a mini-rant about just that. What I was going to talk about was my passion for music. I'll blog that next.

I ended up having to email the folks at blogger.com about the missing archives problem. I'd followed the recommended procedure for curing the problem, but it didn't work. I even tried a few tricks of my own, but no joy :(

24 hours later, and no response from the blogger.com people.

Not that I'm aware that there are thousands of people going through my archives, but it's a problem that needs fixing.

It now looks like the blog intro updates have taken effect, but you're still only able to see the past five day's blog entries.

Given the nature of the Blogger blogging system, there's very little I can actually do, without access to the JavaScript, but I think I've found a solution.

More later.

I've been noticing some problems displaying the archive list of this blog. It might be that you will only see the current five days-worth shown in the archive list.

Also, I've updated the intro to this blog, but it doesn't seem to be appearing.

Investigations are underway, and the guilty parties will be soundly beaten with DHTML-authoring manuals, as soon as they are cornered.

Busy bee that I am, I totally forgot to fill you in on my excellent day, last Saturday.

The whole day was great, for a number of reasons.

Around 1pm, I took the Beetle downtown, and went to the LoDo branch of The Tattered Cover Bookstall. I was attending a talk and book-signing by Michael Moore (activist/filmmaker/TV presenter).

I've been watching Michael's work for years - both his TV shows were co-funded by the BBC, so we used to get them when I still lived in the UK - so he's a bit of a hero of mine.

The place was packed. I'd say there were about 700 people there. Standing room only. Michael gave a speech, bordering on stand-up comedy, that lasted nearly two hours. For the first 45 minutes, I couldn't even get near enough to see him.

After the speech, the book-signing commenced. I went downstairs and got a late lunch, in the store's coffee shop. My signing number was 443, so I was in no rush to stand in line. When I eventually went back upstairs, there was no queue, but Michael was still signing, whilst giving an interview to camera. He signed my copy of his new book, "Stupid White Men", and let me get a couple of pictures. This is Michael, and this is Michael and Me.

Yes, I know that grammatically, it should be "Michael and I", but it's a play on words. Michael's first film, was an award-winning documentary called, "Roger and Me", about how General Motors had ruined his home town - Flint, Michigan.

The day didn't end there, and the evening was a good one too.

I've just seen the funniest TV commercial I've seen in years. It's for Midas - a chain of car repair garages.

It's narrated by a guy posing as a Midas employee. He talks about the guarantees they offer on their work.

It then cuts to him behind the Midas counter, explaining to an elderly woman customer, how all the parts they replace, come with a lifetime warranty.

She replies, "Lifetime warranty? Then can you do anything with these?"

At which point, she pulls off her coat, revealing that she's topless.

Mercifully, as she disrobes, the camera cuts to a view behind her, but we're left in no doubt that she's only wearing knickers.

Or
20,000 Leeks Under The Seafood

Looking through some old pictures I was reminded of the cooker/microwave combo device that used to be in my previous house in Littleton, Colorado.

It was the oldest and scariest-looking kitchen appliance I've ever seen. I've a feeling that the other appliances were scared of it too.

Nothing that works using radiation should remain in use when it gets to the age of that microwave. If it had been back in Britain, CND would have been camped outside, trying to get it decommissioned.

They reckon it was put in the house when it was built, in 1974, but I think it was a lot older than that. I suspect it may even have been from Middle Earth.

It was so old, that instead of a digital readout, to count down the cook time etc., it had numbers painted on revolving cylinders - like those old petrol pumps. It also had many dials, each with multiple indicator needles, and big, scary switches with faded markings. You were never quite sure whether you were setting it on "defrost", or "sterilise everything within 20 feet".

Having used it, and stood in front of it whilst it was on, I'm not entirely sure I'll still be able to have children.

Its appearance, all dials and switches, combined with its age, lead me to christen it, "The Jules Verne Microwave". When we were using it, I often used to dramatically shout the command, "Set the controls for 1874". There was always a moment of trepidation when pressing the big orange button, to activate it, in case I had miss-dialled the settings, and was going to suddenly find myself back in prehistoric times.

At least then, we could theorise that maybe the dinosaurs were killed off by eating too many microwaved pizzas. I can see the History Channel running a special, which has some archaeologist saying, "We can't be certain, but we believe the stegosaurus died from excessive Pepperoni".

It's been a crappy week. The chief antagonist has been the INS. For reasons not properly unexplained, they denied me a B1 (Business Visitor) visa. They also suggested I leave the United States.

On Wednesday, I had a meeting with an immigration attorney, who couldn't believe that this had happened. He said, as I'd been previously told, that the whole point of the B1 was to be able to go to interviews for jobs. He's suggested applying for a B2 (Tourist Visa) instead. We also discussed my options beyond that, in terms of getting a work visa. Once I have a job, I can get an H1b visa, or I can start my own company, and get an E1 (Investor's) visa. I won't go into all the costs, as it's too horrible to mention, except to say that generally, employers pay for an H1b, and then nickle and dime you whilst you work for them, to get the money back.

Of course, the problem is, that in the current mini-recession, no-one wants to take someone on, with the added expense of paying for their visa, even if you eventually get the money back.

I've started looking at Canada as another possible place to work. This sounded like a good alternative, as theoretically, immigration is easier there. Today I spoke with an HR person in a Canadian IT consultancy, and her message was one of doom and gloom, akin to that of most American corporations. She made it sound like it's not that easy for Britons to just turn up and get a job and a work permit. I'm going to ring the Canadian Consulate on Monday, and get the official line on this.

I've also started looking outside Colorado, for jobs. Still, nothing biting. :-(

OK, so this was a bit of a down posting, and it's the only one I've done this week. The thing is, it's an accurate representation of my week. I've been royally shafted by Galileo laying me off before getting me my Green Card. Every employment agency I've mentioned this to, can't believe they did such a mean thing, especially, as I have so many commitments in the US.

Actually, I feel at bit better for getting this off my chest. That's odd, as for several days, I just didn't want to write my blog because I new it'd be depressing stuff. Now I've done it, I feel better for it! I promise to go back to the more light-hearted amusing stuff real soon.

Friday 1st March
What a day! It snowed last night, and most of today. I'd say we had something like 8-12 inches of the white stuff. But what a good day it's been!

A few days ago, I got a call, out of the blue, from an agency downtown. They'd seen my resume on the web, and wanted to get together and chat about finding me a job. Bless 'em!

I had my meeting on Friday afternoon. It was OK, fairly informal, and a friendly bunch of guys and gals. They all looked about 22 years old, at the most. The interview was conducted at the desk of one of them, in an open-plan office where everyone else was on the phone. If I didn't know better, I'd have said they were selling double-glazing - they had that look about them. Afterwards, the team all trouped out, one by one, to introduce themselves to me. The only one I felt I'd trust holding my wallet was the receptionist.

It was the getting there and getting home again afterwards that was the problem. Not because of the snow, but because of bureaucracy encountered trying to park. I'm not going to go into detail, as it's too tedious to mention. Suffice to say that it involved two underground car parks (parking lots), and I think I now know where some of the, so far un-tried, war criminals are now working.

In fact the only humourous event of the afternoon, was me, trying to run in deep snow, across busy downtown streets, whilst wearing my best suit, and my ankle-length Next overcoat. This coat is one of my favourites, and is almost double-breasted when buttoned up. Consequently, given my constricting outfit, and the depth of the snow, plus the urgency of my journey across, I ended up running like Niles Crane (of TV's Frasier).

The evening was better. If I thought it was damn cold that day, the evening had that licked, big-time.

I'd got a call, just before leaving for my interview, from someone at my NPR station I belong to. I'd volunteered to help with the current pledge drive, and they needed me on the phones that night. The station, Jazz 89 is, as the name suggests, all about jazz music, in all its forms.

A side note for non-US readers:
NPR is National Public Radio. Public Radio in the US is a network of stations that are non-commercial. They rely on (voluntary) membership dues, and donations from listeners, and local businesses. Consequently, they all have to have membership drives a few times each year, to drum up funds.

I had a great time, and met about four of the DJs to whom I regularly listen. They were all just everyday people when off-air. None of them acted like celebrities, which was befitting of public radio. One of the DJs I met, Rodney Franks (who's show I love), had read my own pledge out on air the day before. We ended up chatting, and it turned out he'd lived in Britain for a couple of years, in the 1970's.

The other phone volunteers were a good bunch, and we had a lot of laughs between calls. I swapped cards with one of them, who it turns out is a professional photographer.

I've put my name down for further volunteer duties, as I think it's important to support NPR stations. It's such a great concept, and one I wish they had in Britain. I know we have the BBC, which is non-commercial (allegedly), but that's paid for by a compulsory fee for pretty much the whole population, and so lacks the NPR spirit.

It was also suggested that I should come into the sometime, and record an endorsement for broadcast. I think it was the English accent which swung it. I suggested we could freak people out, by running a tape of me announcing, "You're listening to The Today Programme, on BBC Radio 4", at the start of the breakfast show, whilst the punters are still half asleep.

Saturday 2nd March
Took the dogs down to Chatfield state park, for a walk in the snow.

Went downtown for dinner with friends. We went to the poshest Cajun restaurant I've ever been in, followed by a quick pint in The Celtic Tavern. Froze our butts off walking to and from the car. I think it was below zero fahrenheit. Seriously.

Sunday 3rd March
An excellent start to the day! Drove downtown and had brunch at Dixons. UK readers please note, this is not the popular but useless chain of electrical retailers I'm talking about, but a bar/restaurant, on 16th Street, just north of Wynkoop St.

This was followed by a lengthy visit to the LoDo branch of The Tattered Cover Bookstall.

In the afternoon, I got my (belated) Christmas and birthday presents from SWMBO. This was in the form of an Apple AirPort Base Station, and an AirPort Card. Despite the name, neither of them are used in the airline industry. It's all about wireless networking folks. Being able to sit anywhere in the house or garden, and get online without having to trail lengths of cable after me.

OK, there's the catch-up. It's not all that interesting, but I'll rework it and try and add a few laughs in somewhere.