I was just looking over some old records, and discovered something that, at the time, escaped my attention.
Between early 2002 and mid-2007, my cable company (AT&T) raised my rates for the same service by about $35/mo, or nearly 50%. Naturally this was done bit by bit — a dollar this month, 5 dollars that month, &c. Discovering this filled me with rage, and made me regret not canceling the service years earlier than I did.
That’s the last money you’ll get from me, you sneaky SOBs.
Better the rule of law than the rule of men.
But better the rule of men than the rule of lawyers.
I can’t recall if I mentioned it or not, but I spent a good bit of time looking for work when I was in Colombia … not there, but here. Between the Internet and Skype you can do 80% of your job search without even setting foot in the US. It worked out, and since mid-May I’ve been working at Motorola on the MotoCast team.
(Do I really need to mention that everything I say here is on my own account, and not on behalf of Motorola Mobility, Inc.? Yes? Well, consider it said.)
Now I’m on the other side of the table, and looking to hire. So if you’re a sharp engineer, I’d like to hear from you. Nice-to-haves include Java, mobile, multimedia (GStreamer, transcoding, &c.), and server-side, but the real requirement is great coding chops.
Relative to some of the criteria I’d laid out for what makes a good job, I can tell you that you’ll be working with “hot” technologies (mobile, “cloud”), writing a marketable language (mostly Java, some Ruby, and as much Python as I can sneak in), and solving important problems on an important product.
Compensation is good, work arrangements are flexible, and the people are agreeable. If you live and work on the San Francisco peninsula, please send me your resume. (Helpful resume writing tips here.)
So, Britain’s GCHQ (the UK’s equivalent of the NSA) has put up a programming contest to attract coders. (The punchline is that the gig only pays $39,000, so good luck with that, chaps.) There are several parts, and the only one that appealed to me required the user to implement a little VM. Since I’m a sucker for simple machines, I thought I’d give it a go. (The original puzzle is here.)
The FARCs top dog just got killed. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
The funniest thing about this story is the following comment from the link:
Five Decades and the fighting’s still on? With all the killings and maimings and bombings on all sides aside, can’t someone or group or neutrals come up with some form of negotiated settlement and permanent solution to this “cancer” in the innards of Colombia?
You gotta love fools like this. The solution is victory, and today it is one step closer.
Incidentally, it is my view that in 50 years Colombia will be the preeminent country in Latin America. “What about Brazil?” you ask. Well, in Brazil they elect leftist guerrillas, and in Colombia … well, they deal with them differently. This difference will tell over time.
In that connection, I’d like to mention in passing how delighted I was to see the Colombian FTA finally signed. Long overdue.
The Internet has a lot about it that is admirable, but it is also a completely open book which is mostly filled with mindless, narcissistic drivel, pornography, bigotry, self-delusion, paranoia, redundant nonsense, and spam.
Love that “mostly”.
For some reason, I’m inordinately fond of claiming that a particular song belongs to the “my-dog-left-me-and-my-wife-got-run-over-by-a-truck” genre.
Speaking of which: Take it away Roy Clark
I like to drop by Yahoo’s Colombia site every now and then. Although I like to joke that they only run three stories (Shakira, floods, and extradition) you do, in fact, see some interesting stuff.
Today, for instance, there were these two stories:
EEUU podría enviar al Congreso acuerdos de libre comercio
Mahmud Abas buscará en Colombia voto clave a favor de Estado palestino
The first story reports that Obama may finally send the Colombia, Panama, and South Korea FTA agreements to the Senate on Monday. The second story reports that Mahmoud Abbas is poking around Colombia for support in re: his quest for a Palestinian state. (Colombia currently holds one of the rotating seats on the UN Security Council.)
I’m just saying.
If you’re lucky enough to live in a state that hasn’t, say, lost its mind, learn from our example and don’t make our mistakes.
People sometimes ask me if I have any pets. My usual response is: “No, but I have a houseplant I’m very proud of.” As it turns out, however, I do have a pet. Well, sort of. The adorable little guy to the right has been hanging around my apartment for the last week or so, and I seem to keep surprising him while he’s out and about. (Like almost all of his genus, he’s very shy. I think I probably nearly gave him a little spider heart attack while taking his picture.)
He’s about 2.5in leg-to-leg, and an excellent climber. (He can climb right up those vertical window blinds without problems.) He’s also passionately committed to the theory that if he stands still he’s as good as invisible. This doesn’t strike me as a good theory, but based on his size it’s obviously served him well for a good long while. It warms my heart to know that he’s out there, fighting the good fight against the 6-legged banes of my existence. And isn’t that just the cwuootest widdle face!?
(Editorial note: Some parts of this post may be written slightly tongue-in-cheek. OTOH, I genuinely do like and admire spiders. Maybe it’s because they build traps — there aren’t too many animals that do that. Much cooler than merely building a nest, or those lame dams that beavers build. Now, if the beavers put in hydropower installations — that would be cool.)
