Month: November 2005

Identical is bad

I have two identical computers under my desk. One is to my left and another is to my right. My workstation is to the left. The computer to my right is not mine and I don’t have anything to do with it. It just has to stay there.

During the last two days I spent more than two hours troubleshooting all sorts of wierd problems with my PC. Yesterday I had a problem with DVD writing. I was inserting the empty disk, but the drive woldn’t recognize it. Software was insisting that no disk was in the drive. Today I had a problem with USB storage. I was sticking it in, but nothing was happening. Not like it wasn’t recognized. More like the USB port itself was dead.

I was running all sorts of debugging, tracing, and monitoring. I almost got as far as kernel compilation. Luckily I realized the source of the problem before that.

You see, I am right-handed, so reaching to my right is easier and simplier for me. Add to the fact that for the last five or so years, my office workstation was always to my right. Needless to say that I have to be more careful and pay more attention in my new setup. Otherwise, strange things can happen to my productivity.

Google hiring like it’s 1999

I thought that this article – “Google hiring like it’s 1999” – might be interested to all those of you who follow my Google posts about the job interviews.

In its most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 30, Google added 800 employees, bringing its global work force to 4,989. That’s more than triple the total from just two years ago.

Now he gets all romantic

Maxim has been learning recently how to return all that love and tender that he gets from us. Specifically, he is learning how to hug and kiss. And although he is still too clumsy and wet about it, both Olga and I just love the sweetness of these moments.

When he gives a hug, he pushes his body against mine and grabs my neck with both of his hands as hard as he can. If can reach the hair, that’s good too. You might confuse this behaviour with an attack, but it’s not. While doing this he has the biggest and sweetest smile on his face.

Kissing is even more gross. He just started to get the concept. So far he got to the point of mouth touching face. Unfortunately, any action that involves his mouth, also involves it in a wide open state. And considering the fact that his teeth are popping up, he is heavily drooling pretty much any time of the day or night. So the kiss turns into a really wet business. He still has a problem with actually hitting my head with his mouth, so when he succeeds, he laughs out loud like he just won the World Rally Championship.

Anyway, with all the clumsiness, humidity, and pain, these moments are pure happiness. Hopefully, he will practice more often and perfect his procedures. Until that day, we’ll enjoy what we get…

Free tests at Brainbench

It’s been a really long while since I looked at Brainbench.com. I used to take a lot of tests an even have few certificates from the early days. I even remember when it was called something else.

Anyway, today I got reminded about this huge repository of tests and certifications and I decided to check it out. Overall there are more than 600 tests that cover a large part of both practical and theoretical computer industry. Here is the list of free tests that you can take.

Just to see if I still have it I took a couple. And passed. The results weren’t as high as they could have been because I wasn’t fully focusing and I was in the middle of the noisy office, but I am satisfied anyway. Check the results below, if you are interested enough.

Continue reading Free tests at Brainbench