Personal

Being a bad father

“He is a really messed up father”, “His parental rights should be revoked”, “He should never ever have another child”, and “I wonder if his wife knows how bad he is” – these are things I read in the eyes of a few mothers looking at me and Maxim in the park today. Of course, I gave them a reason to hate to me – not that they needed one though – but they were overreacting too.

Continue reading Being a bad father

Scary Bloglines thingy

The scariest thing just happened now with me and Bloglines. I was scrolling through my feeds, reading occasional items. And there was one feed that I wanted to unsubscribe. I never ever tested the unsubscribe from feed functionality from my phone before, so I was somewhat worried. But I click it anyway. And it says OK. And done.

I wanted to go read the rest of the items, but it looked like there were no feeds. It got me worried even more. I quickly went to my blogroll page to see if any feeds are there, but it was empty. Nothing. Not even one.

By this time I was practically freaking out. So I jumped to my computer and used the normal browser to navigate to Bloglines. I was hoping to see the plumber, but Bloglines seemed just fine.

I clicked to open my feeds and the folder was empty. I started to feel the pain of a heart attack. Decided to re-subscribe to a few feeds that I could at least remember. And, oh thanks to all the superpowers, I see this error message:

There is a problem with the database.

And before I finished writing this post all my feeds were back. And before finishing this post, I did the backup of all my public feeds into OPML file.

ABS or no ABS

Today I almost got into a car accident. My car’s breaks use ABS. The other car was a bit older and didn’t have ABS. And it was exactly this combination that helped to avoid the accident.

Continue reading ABS or no ABS

Excellent SMS notification ringtone

With all the sounds out there I was surprised at how difficult it was to find good ringtone for SMS notification. All of them are either too noisy, or too long, or too disturbing, or too complicated. Finally, I came across one that really suits me well – sound of 50 cent coin (WAV, 300 KBytes).

1. Google. Check.

My jaw is officially on the floor and I don’t have even slightest idea when I will be Adrenalin-sober again to pick it up…

For the last five or so years, there were only three companies that everyone I knew wanted to work at.

Ok, maybe not everyone, but most of the IT people. And maybe not all of them wanted to join Microsoft. But you get the idea. These are not only the tree most successful computer companies, but three corporations that realize the Geek Power.

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in those parts that I communicated with, it was considered impossible to get a job at either one of these companies unless you lived in the USA and was exceptionally bright. Until very recently that is. Just a few years ago the new trend appeared, that suggested it was possible to get hired while living in another country. You still had to be exceptionally smart and you had to be willing to relocate.

On numerous occasions I was hearing the jokes, semi-jokes, and serious discussions on how cool it would be to work for one of these companies. All of these discussions though were ending with a deep sad sigh and words expressing the absolute impossibility of something like that happening in reality.

Now, the roll the drums, please…

I have received an email today from Google’s recruiter, asking if I am interested in working for Google. Me! For Google! Danz! That was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor. Hard. I checked the message back and forward and I am 99% sure it is not SPAM, mass mailing, or a joke. Neither it is a job offer yet. But I am still stunned.

Needless to say I have a lot to think about, but I am not at all in a condition to do so. I’ll have to take some time. A day or two. I’ll let you know if I’m OK and back to the normal life.