The Major

Author: FourMajor

  • Yay! The Library is Closing!

    Today I have decided to go to the Western Addition library so that I can go to Lily’s BBQ afterwards. By the way, the Zagat guide gave Brother in Law’s a 23 (out of 30) on food, and a FOUR on decor. Seriously. A four.

    Anyway, so of course I had to look up the address and hours for this library branch. And now I find out that this library is closing for renovation very soon. In fact, they’re having a freakin’ party (pdf) to celebrate the closing. This seems a little messed up. The branch will reopen in the spring of 2008.

    I am not saying that it doesn’t need renovating, but it seems a little strange to celebrate the fact that a community educational resource will be unavailable for about a year and a half.

    At least I will get to see it before it closes, and I might even make it out to the little party just to see the absurdity of it all.

  • A Little Tidbit

    I just found out that my monthly MUNI pass is good for the cable cars too. I thought I would share this here because it is hard to find this information stated clearly.

  • Not Working is Treating Me Well

    It’s the middle of my first week without a job. It is going great so far. I’ve been waking up at a decent time so far – 7:30 to 8am. And I’ve made it to the library and reached my study goal each day.

    If things keep going as they are, I’ll be able to pass this first test within about 2-3 weeks. If I had a job during all this, you can guaran-damn-tee that it would take me months to be able to pass this first test. I honestly feel so much more productive without a job.

  • A Good Prospect Down the Drain

    So I interviewed for a position in the financial district in SF. It wasn’t a “dream job” like KEI and hotornot.com, but it did seem pretty sweet, and I was excited about it. The position was for a system administrator working mostly with Unix and working with some Windows. I got the lead through a recruiter.

    I interviewed there on Friday, and the interview went pretty well. He assigned me a quiz to complete at home and I really enjoyed it. It had one question where I had to run nmap against his network and use other tools to find out as much as I could about his network. I spent a good deal of time on Friday taking this quiz.

    I evidently did pretty well on the quiz, because he assigned me the next task – installing Apache and Tomcat on his Ubuntu GNU/Linux server. I didn’t ace this one, but I did well enough…

    He asked me to come in today for a second interview. From the sounds of things, I was very close to getting an offer. Well, I got a call yesterday from the recruiter, who told me that the CEO now didn’t want to pay the recruiter fees…after, AFTER they had already agreed to those fees.

    So here I am, missing out on a job because some big-shot CEO somewhere decides that he’s going to change his mind. It wouldn’t have been so bad except for the time that I spent completing the assignments, and going to the interview. Ten hours of my time, and I can’t even be judged by my qualifications for the job.

    Oh well – several months of CCNP studying, here I come! Last day here at GuardianEdge is tomorrow.

  • Thanks

    Dear Guy that Peed on the Toilet Seat,

    Thanks.

    Sincerely,
    Stuart Matthews

  • MetroNaps

    MetroNaps – allowing workers to take a nap in the middle of the work day, at a very reasonable price.

    This really needs to become mainstream.

  • I’m Coining This One

    You can measure the change in your life by the change on your keychain.

  • Heard From Google

    Just a few minutes ago, Google emailed me about a Technical Support Engineer position. Damn it all. It would be cool as hell to work for Google, but I am putting my foot down on this anti-tech-support thing of mine.

    One interesting note – the woman that emailed me used Outlook for her email client.

    Update: The woman who emailed me was nice enough to thank me for letting her know I wasn’t interested, and the reason why. So I will do her a favor and let my readers know that she asked me to let others know about this opportunity. I don’t have too many Northern California readers here, but if you’re interested just shoot me an email to stu@fourmajor.com.

  • meebome Released

    From the brilliant creators of meebo, a web-based, multi-protocol IM client, comes meebome, a little flash app that you can add to your website to allow real-time chat with the people visiting your site. Think integrated google chat within GMail.

    I’ll be adding this feature to my website tonight.

  • $431,660.69

    $431,660.69

    That is what the salary of every Exxon employee would be if they split the profits evenly. Is that not enough for everyone?

    OK, let’s suppose that the top 1,000 employees just have to be better than everyone else. So let’s lower the salary of 82,700 of the employees to $300,000/year. That leaves the top 1,000 employees making $11,319,999.75 per year. Really, is that not enough?

    No, it isn’t, evidently. You can be damn sure that there are plenty of people working for Exxon that make $20,000-$30,000/year. I don’t even know what else to say about this.