shine

there was a point last week after i accepted the contract at the bank that i wanted to change my mind and tell them i was not going to do it after all. i know exactly what is ahead of me and i know its going to be shit. i then went to the gym and had a think about it a bit more. its good to clear your mind and exercise and its condusive to clear thinking. anyways, after my work out i decided that actually i would not back out and just do it but that i would put on a full court press to find something else in the next 3 weeks before i start. sometimes you just need to step back and think clearly about things without any distractions and the gym is a really good place for that. its no coincidence that i study more when i train harder. 

actually there is one distraction at the gym. lingerie model was working out on sunday as well. i got talking to her a couple of weeks ago and it was hard to hold a conversation because she has had a boob job and its spectacular. anyways, she was there again this weekend but i just waved and nodded. its hard to concentrate on what she is saying when i talk to her. will catch up with her next time i see her there. 

also as is usually the case, my phone has started ringing off the hook all of a sudden. there are a few other contracts going at other places and i will take any of them if they come through. will see how it goes. even if something comes up after i start at the bank, its no bother. i also had to fill in the forms for all the security checks that i have to go through and it took about 3 hours to fill all the forms in. welcome back to the world of mind numbing bureaucracy. something is going to come up soon. i can feel it. 

today its depeche mode - shine. this is an album track from the exciter album. glastonbury festival is on next weekend and will be populated by middle class cunts who are into middle of the road shite that gets played on radio 1. the headliners are the rolling stones, mumford and sons and arctic monkeys. i rest my case. depeche mode should have been headlining. they have 3 decades of material and are an important british band, but i guess they probably fall into that middle ground where they are not elder statesman of music nor bright young things that 18 years olds are into. i am glad they are not there. i feel cooler for liking them and they are cooler for not being there. they are still producing new material and not just living off 'everything counts' or 'enjoy the silence'. 

turn the lights down and the music up and enjoy the beautiful sounds and lyrics of one the best bands in the history of british music. 

editors

fuck me, you would have thought i was going for a job at the NSA. i have to go through a shit load of security checks. i have been through it for every contract and i had forgotten how much of it there is. its fucking shitloads. i have also been applying for other contracts. when the guys that are interviewing you are telling you that its a shit boring job, you know its bad. i still hold out hope of doing an interesting job one day although i do not think that will happen at any of the large banks in london. oh well. we live in hope. 

i downloaded the new editors album and like the first single, it sounds ok, but just a bit conventional. it does not sound strange or dark or interesting or original. it sounds well produced and well performed but just a bit 'middle of the road'. i have not heard the whole album yet, so i might change my mind on more listens. 

this was the first single from their last album. this is strange and dark and interesting. 

lux aeterna

a couple of things. first up i got offered a new contract today. its at another large bank, which readers of this blog will know i hate working at. strangely enough, the 3 people that interviewed me for the job all told me it was going to be a boring contract and pretty shit. never had an interview where the people actually say its a shit boring job, so it really must be. on the flip side, the pay is ok, and although i dont need the money, i do need to work, if that makes any sense. i can not be just bumming around decorating the house and fixing stuff. i would actually like to go out and do a job. the money is secondary, though relevant, but not the primary reason. 

secondly, my friend who told me he had go the job at the hedge fund, (and which his friend torpedo'd me for ), actually may have jumped the gun a bit. turns out that 2 weeks after he expected to get an offer, one still has not been officially put to him. to add insult to injury, his current contract which was going to be renewed will now not be. one minute it looks like you have 2 jobs and the next you have none. oh, well, i hope he did what any sensible contractor would do and saved his money and created a buffer. actually, i know what he did and he did not do that. that fella spends money like crazy. 

anyways, the new job wants me to start on july 15th. as usual i have to go through a shit load of security checks. i will spend the next 3 weeks still on the market and if anything better comes up i will take it, but if not i will go with this place. i am not going to turn anything down and whilst it might be boring and dull, i will concentrate on the positives. lots of people get paid miles less to be stuck in jobs they hate. perspective on how lucky i am is something i need to keep reminding myself. also, its about 35 minutes on the train and i have a ton of books piling up that i want to read so will get to do that on the train for an hour every day, and maybe lunchtimes as well. i might not learn much about computers but i will learn more about angola, the taliban, and latin america. 

this is a phenomenal piece for music from the film, requiem for a dream. 

Nine Inch Nails - Came Back Haunted (Audio)

swimming with sharks

its like swimming with sharks out there in the cut throat world of IT contractors. a few weeks ago i wrote this post, fuckers, where a friend of mine tried to fuck me over for a job that he was going for. in it i said that "if he ends up getting the job in a few weeks time it will confirm that he was behind all the shit" 

well, i got a mail from him yesterday saying it looked like he had landed that contract. i asked him how he fared in the technical test and he said it was ok but he missed out all the exchange and citrix sections, which is similar to me, although i did answer 2 out of the 5 questions on the exchange section correctly, whereas he missed them altogether because he has never done any messaging. 

i am pretty sure i did better than him overall on the test so it would be appear that the pissing in the ear of the manager there has worked and i have been fucked.
he once mentioned in a conversation about another interview that they had asked him obscure cisco routing and switching questions and when i asked what kind, he mentioned that he had been asked to explain what a class A,B,C address was, why they were organised like that, subnetting, and what the broadcast and network addresses were of various network subnets. jesus wept, that is basic TCP/IP. fuck me backwards that is IT 101. christ , i thought they were going to ask you how you would enable spanning tree on some switches or configure EIGRP on a router. thats cisco shit. what you were asked is basic IP.

i might not be able to list off the top of my head what the difference is between Exchange 2007 and 2010 (because i have never used 2007) or the difference between Win2008 and 2008R2 (because i always used to patch and update win2008 to the latest level and when r2 came out, the latest iteration would always be used whether it was specified or not by anyone, but TCP/IP and subnetting is the basis of all connected computers in every network. 

who cares really that its iis7 in 2008 and 7.5 in r2 or that its hyper v1 in 2008 and v2 in r2. you use the latest one. i never get asked to install windows 2003 anywhere. always use the latest. its got the latest patches and the latest updates and is most secure. no one would choose an older OS. 

 its also a little galling seeing as i helped him get into his current contract when he was out of work and i briefed him on what the interview would be like, after going through it myself, and turning down the offer from that bank because i had already accepted another contract elsewhere at the time. 

a lesson has been learned. dont trust contractors. they would sell their mothers for money and would fuck over anyone, even people that help them get jobs. one of the very few exceptions is Edward Snowdon. 

at some point in recent history popular music became bland and safe. there are very few bands doing anything original that are getting exposure on tv or mainstream radio. the airwaves are full of middle of the road generic bands like mumford and sons, foo fighters, kings of leon, beady eye, miles kane, jake bugg, etc, but it was not always like this. there was a time when there were songs getting into the charts that had lyrics that were a social commentary on slumlords profiteering by exploiting vulnerable people and even name dropping nazi war criminals. this is carter the unstoppable sex machine - sherrif fatman. 

Stereophonics - Graffiti On The Train

Middle Class Rut - "Aunt Betty" [Official Lyric Video]