Randomness

[Distracted]

One can only hope it keeps the viewers' interest.

[Alelou]

I have a feeling these two can keep up an entertaining Thin Man style of bickering right through any relationship and on into marriage. And there's bound to be some angst along the way. It will be interesting to see if they can keep it going, in any case.

(Besides, I also want to know if Esposito will ever speak to Ryan again... or if Esposito and Lanie will ever get back together ... and I even like Castle's kid, who really did write a lovely graduation speech, and I don't even mind Castle's mom -- so yay for interesting secondary characters.)

[Kotik]

Твою мать! What a day!

02;00am
My alarm clock makes sudden uninvited noises and I silence it violently.

02:30am
Standing before the bathroom mirror, I spot a furry fat guy on the other side. He looks distracted and unattentive, so I take the chance to quickly shave him. He seems so shocked he offer no resitance. Now he looks even more ridiculous.

03:00am
I'm too bloody lazy to make coffee. But there's a beer in the fridge, left over from the weekend. I inhale it and start feeling moderately human.

04:00am
I arrive at the train station, pay a ridiculously overpriced ticket to Mainz and enter the train on auto-pilot.

05:30am
I arrive in Mainz an quickly inhale a coffee and two fags.

06:00am
I sit down in the back of the car of a slightly alternative looking car sharing group, who takes me to Stuttgart for the ridiculously cheap price of 12,- Euro thingies.

07:00am
On our way to Stuttgart, we come by the Hockenheim Ring. Unasked I start explaining to my fellow travellers, how local authorizies lobotomized the once legendary venue. They all nod knowingly, even the Bulgarian in the passenger seat, who didn't understand a single word in the first place. He is positively surprized by my russian knowledge. I feel good.

09:00am
I'm standing in front of the Stuttgart central station waiting for the arrival of my job agent. After two and a half hour of non-smocking, I readjust my nicotine level by inhaling a few fags.

10:00am
I'm sitting in the car of my job agent on our way to the black forrest.

12:00am (is noon pm or am? )
We arrive in the town of Tittisee. While I giggle obnoxiously about the town's name, the agent searches for the domicile of a local cupbearer. We find one such locality and the agent invites me to a meal. We both devour a copuious slab of dead animal with mushrooms and chips, washing it down with a pint of the local brew.

02:00pm
We arrive at the customers headquarters in a town called Lenzkirch. That thing is about as far south as you can get in Germany without being Swiss. The negotiations go very well and I bag a new contract for 24.000 bucks over the next 3 months. I feel mildly euphoric.

05:00pm
The agent and myself arrive at Freiburg central station. The agent wants to fight his way back on lots of back roads as the Autobahn is horribly congested, while I take my chances with German Railways.

05:03pm
I have only three minutes to wrestle a valid ticket out of one of those ridiculous vending machines. Not looking too closely because of the time pressure I select some special offer ticket that costs only half the normal price.

05:10pm
I'm standing in a ridiculously packed regional train. The temperature in the crowded cab is approaching something in the vicinity of 40°C or more. I'm sweating like a pig and so do most of my fellow travellers. Calling the air putrid is an understatement of biblical proportions. I take the chance to inspect my bargain of a ticket and with horror I realize that it is a 18-hours 'ride all you can' flatrate, but it is only valid in regional and suburban trains. Epic Fail

06:00pm
Switching trains at the city of Offenburg. The new train is not as packed. I immerse myself in cloud of deodorant spray to avoid people thinking that I'm starting to decompose.

07:00pm
Another train switch at the city of Karlsruhe. It's a 15 minutes wait, so I buy myself a beer and inhale a fag (smoking is prohibited in all trains).

08:00pm
Guess what... Another train switch this time with a 40min wait in Mannheim. I buy two more beers and burn another 3 fags.

09:45pm
I arrive at Frankfurt for the final train change. I buy three more beers as a late night meal and enter a suburban train towards home - the city of Offenbach, or as we call it Ankara on Main, because Germans are a minority here. During the train ride I spot an enormous woman, who makes me look like Twiggy with a terminal case of bulemia. Having been up for nearly 20 hours now, I'm too bloody tired to mock the vertically challenged hippo, so I just try to stay awake instead.

12:00pm (is midnight pm or am?? )
I'm nearly finnished with the second of the three Frankfurt imported beers and currently proof-reading the completely pointless "dear diary" post I littered the forum with.

The things you do for 24.000 quid....

[Cogito]

He looks distracted and unattentive, so I take the chance to quickly shave him.

Sounds like a hell of a long day, glad to hear the outcome was what you wanted.

[Weeble]

And they wonder why I am enjoying retirement.

6:35 am Dog gets me up for her morning ritual, piddle poop eat breakfast 2.5 hour nap.
6:45 am Figure the dog has it right. Climb back in next to the wife
9:30 am We get up and start our day....

weeble

a tough day for me is when my Detroit Tigers are on a west coast road trip....

Hang in there Kotik, I'm cheering' for ya

[Weeble]

And they wonder why I am enjoying retirement.

6:35 am Dog gets me up for her morning ritual, piddle poop eat breakfast 2.5 hour nap.
6:45 am Figure the dog has it right. Climb back in next to the wife
9:30 am We get up and start our day....

weeble

a tough day for me is when my Detroit Tigers are on a west coast road trip....

Hang in there Kotik, I'm cheering' for ya

[putaro]

So was that the OS job, Kotik? I hate interviewing for jobs. The only thing worse is being unemployed...well, unemployed and broke. Unemployed with money is a great thing

[Kotik]

@putaro

No, the OS job went bust in early april. The project lead actually wanted me on that project and lobbied for it, but upper management decided that it made entirely too much sense and hired a freshly graduated student, who works for 40 euro per hour in contrast to my 75. Three weeks into the work they realized that they hired the wrong guy, but management was too chicked to admit that and they cancelled the whole project.

The job I got yesterday is in a spectacularily beautiful region near the swiss border


The company has its headquarter bang smack in the middle of a huge holliday region called Hochschwarzwald (Upper black forrest), so for the next 3 month I'll be working in what technically is a mountain holliday resort
It's not the job interviews themselves, who bother me. I usually do well in those, but it is the fact that as a freelancer I have to cover the costs myself. Since beginning of the year I've spent about 2.000 euros travelling to different job interviews all over Germany and Austria. Even more unnerving is the fact that I usually do very well in them, but often the job goes to someone, who works for scraps as people think: "why pay 70 euros/hour for a guy with 15 years of experience, when we can get a guy for 40 or 50 bucks, fresh from uni?"

Well they usually find out why, once their greenhorn fails due to lack of experience, but other than satisfaction of having been right that has no real value for me.

[Silverbullet]

But Kotik, you get to see one of the most beautiful areas in the world: Germany and Austria.

I had one (1) job interview in my life. Spent my entire life in one job. Well my entire working life.

I don't envy you Kotik other than your travels.

SB

[Cogito]

"why pay 70 euros/hour for a guy with 15 years of experience, when we can get a guy for 40 or 50 bucks, fresh from uni?"

It's always best to recruit graduates fresh out of university, while they still know everything.

The old saying about software can be applied to people too:

Good, cheap, fast: pick two.

[Kotik]

It's always best to recruit graduates fresh out of university, while they still know everything.

*snort*
Plop one of 'em down in front of a RS6000 with nothing but TWM and vi for fun. Let's see how much they know.

[putaro]

Plop one of 'em down in front of a RS6000 with nothing but TWM and vi for fun. Let's see how much they know.

An RS6000? A prettified IBM toy. What was that stupid system admin tool - SWIT? With the little guy who ran while the command executed? We always thought he should fall on his face if the command failed.

[Kotik]

It's SMIT. And if you see the guy running it just means you can't use the command line

[Cogito]

Well, I did wonder why you were using that newfangled TWM. That graphics monitor works perfectly well as a teletype, you know.

[Distracted]

Should I split this topic into an "Incomprehensible IT Techspeak" thread? Because I sure don't understand a word of it!