waider

So it looks like I'll be visiting the corporate mothership to complete my indoctrination Seattle in mid-June. Holler if you're interested in meeting up; I'll have at least one weekend to play with.

So if you're working in a corporate environment where the in-house messaging of choice is Microsoft Exchange Instant Messenger, but you're not inclined to use a Windows machine, please to be availing of my RVP (Rendez-Vous Protocol?) plugin for Gaim 1.0.1 (and possibly upward) which will allow your Linux machine to talk to such a system. Also, quite possibly, your Mac. I'm still working on the latter. Actually, I lie. I'm fiddling with the file transfer code, and the Mac option is dependant on me hassling a cow orker for access to his machine during non-office hours.

Door to DART: ~10 mins
DART to Tara Street, walk to Aston Quay: ~35 mins, fare €1.90 (single)
Bus to James' Gate: ~10 mins, fare €0.90

I think I got extraordinarily lucky with the bus (noone wanted to get on or off for the whole length of the quays) and the inter-mode timing (DART arrived within minutes of me getting to the station, bus was waiting at the stop when I reached it and departed within minutes of me getting aboard) but it certainly looks like a viable commute. I walked from the office to the DART on the way home - 30 minutes, roughly - and just to reassure me that not all was sweetness and light, the DART was running slowly due to some problem with a level crossing, meaning the trip home ran a good deal longer (the southbound DART wasn't as fortuitously timed, either).

I called into Doolin's new office today. For those of you not keeping up, Ray didn't shut the company down completely; he's currently keeping it running out of what I'm sure must be his own pocket in order to try and nab any business going in the hope of cranking things up again. The office is very dot-net-nineties, by which I mean it's a large, unpartitioned single room which the phrase "open plan" doesn't even begin to cover. It's not far from Google's office; I quipped that they could drop over and ask where to find things. The boss was having some trouble with his wireless card which noone in-office could sort out, so I had a quick look, but ultimately determined it's one of those wacky Windows things that requires a precise, illogical sequence of steps to fix and I didn't know where to start beyond ripping things out and reinstalling drivers, so I shrugged and left it. My main reason for calling in was that Ray finally set a price for me on the laptop I retained (the same one which ate its backlight) and I wanted to pay him before I forgot.

On the way back, I picked up an espresso and a shortbread slice at the DART station. Note to zadcat: the espresso wasn't bad, and defaulted to a double-shot. Of course, not being a coffee connoisseur, it probably TOTALLY SUCKED and was EXCESSIVELY WEAK and I didn't notice.

It's the last of the July, which means I've now been unemployed for a full month. This isn't quite as surprising as it might appear at first glance; beyond attempts at two high-profile companies, and a brief unhappy flirtation with an agency, I haven't really been trying to find new work.

One thing that's been bouncing around my head for the last month is to do something completely different. I'm not simply talking about getting out of computers and into, oh, basket-weaving; more contemplating liquidating what I've got and getting out of Dublin, maybe even out of Ireland, and finding something else somewhere else. It could well turn out to be computers in a different county or a different country, since whatever else I can say for myself, I'm good with computers. The "sell up and leave" aspect opens up more possibilities than anything else, since it removes concerns about rent and that sort of thing. And the things keeping me where I am right now are largely inertia and a good pub.

I'm not looking at this with rose-tinted glasses, mind. I went through this dance several years ago, and ultimately discarded all the options and stayed in Dublin, but back then I at least had a larger social circle to keep me occupied. Since then, most of that circle has dissipated for one reason or another; my closest connection from that group is several hundred miles and at least one timezone away. I guess the bottom line is that I may never have quite this level of detachment again (or I'd like to think that, anyway) so I should maybe grab it while I have the chance. I guess I'll stack it on the thinking pile for now, though.

Maciej Ceglowski waxes lyrical on unemployment.

Driving cross-country to get to an interview with five minutes to spare was not exactly how I'd intended approaching this, but hey. I should know by the weekend if I'm hired or not.

There's no punchline. Sorry.

conor 1	so you heard waider is looking for a job?
conor 2	yeah; I could forward him some stuff from our office, maybe. But, tell me. What does waider do?
conor 1	anything he wants to.

This is true, except that I'm paraphrasing from what "conor 2" told me. "conor 1"'s punchline is pretty much verbatim.

So I’ve just received details of my redundancy payment, and in addition to what I shall refer to as a substantial sum of money (let’s just say that a certain credit card will be getting cleared as soon as this money lands in my account), the boss commissioned a local artist to paint a watercolour of some part of the Doolin area as a memento. As Kathryn put it, "nicest boss ever".