Tag: work

Where do you want to go today?

Don’t close this window just yet – this post has nothing to do with Microsoft. On the contrary even…

For a few years now I am nursing the idea of working for a humanitarian or environmental organization. I haven’t yet researched the subject, but just try to imagine how good or bad that would be for me personally. So far, I can imagine all the good things, except maybe for the salary.

Lately I was trying to figure out what organization would I choose to work for if I had the free choice. Would it be Greenpeace? Green cross? Red Cross? UNHCR? DHA? There are so many choices that it’s really hard to pick one. All of them seem to have good intentions and all of them have a list of good deeds under their belts.

If you were the one to choose, which organization would you choose and why?

In case you know only Greenpeace, here are a few lists for you:

Not good enough

I have finally received the reply from Google. They say that they have considered my application carefully, but I am no fit for their team. Maybe not yet. Somehow this was pretty much the answer I was expecting. I can’t say that I am disappointed though. Obviously, I have to work on myself and try again at a later stage.

I have asked them if they have any guidelines for people who apply for the second time, or if they even have any minimum period between the applications, but I haven’t got the reply yet.

I am on the right track

Either I am very lucky this month or I am doing something right. First, Google recruiter asked me if I was interested in working for them. And now I got another offer from someone else. This time though there is nothing major. A one time task to transfer a bunch of blogs from Nucleus CMS to WordPress. Since I wrote the script to do migrate my blog, they figured that I might be the right person to help them out.

I am glad. I am glad that my blog starts to bring in a little potential. I am glad that people find stuff that I do useful. I am glad that there is yet another example of how Open Source Software works. I just did something for myself. Than I published it. Few people found it useful and customized it to their needs. And now someone else found it who don’t have the skills or time necessary to do the necessary changes, so they are willing to pay me to do it for them.

That feeds my enthusiasm and helps me both to develop and advocate Open Source Software.

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.