6 months

it is the last month of my 3 month contract and i was planning on have a quiet word with the guy who hired me to ask if he still wanted me to stay or if i should put the word out on the street that i might be available in 4 weeks. anyways, he beat me to it and told me today that they wanted to offer me a 6 month contract. i was a little surprised to be honest, because i do not really think i am doing that great a job for them in the infrastructure team. most of my time is spent working with the programmers in the development team and i have not really done too much on the infrastructure side of things for them, which is why they hired me. 

actually, they probably hired me to work with the developers so the rest of them would have more time to do the infrastructure work. yes, that makes sense now. that is why they want me to stick around longer. anyways, i verbally said i would do it.....but i saw a couple of other contracts that are paying ridiculous money so i applied to them as well. they will understand if i have to jump ship for silly money. i probably wont even get called in, but like i always say, always apply. let them turn you down. dont turn yourself down. if i stay at this firm for another 6 months i will still be happy. 

in previous posts i have been critical of pharrel and the neptunes. to me a lot of their good stuff sounds like a rip off of teddy rileys production on the michael jackson album, dangerous, and when they have done other stuff its just poppy shite. that song that did recently with robin thicke was shite. that song he did with daft punk, that got to number 1 was shite. 
anyways, after all that, here is when they did something good. 

commodification part 2

further to my last post about the commodification of personalities online, here are 2 more examples from people i know. one of them has written his job on facebook as being a finance director. er...no you are not. you do helpdesk 1st line support and you help the girl in accounts when she needs invoices organised. why lie?. actually, yes ok, lie if you want, but there are people on your facebook that know what you actually do, and you might make yourself look like a big shot in front of people who do not know you, but you look silly in front of the people that do know you. its pathetic. 

in the second case, a friend of a friend has just got a job at a large american internet firm, that everyone has heard of. he got the job through another friend who is a manager there and hired him. i heard that this guy was good from someone i know, so i thought i would look him up on linkedin. 

for me there is a test to find out if someone is bullshitting and that is if they are specific about the skills they have and what they have done. as the saying goes, there is no 'I' in team, but with regards to resumes, i only want to read 'I's. i want to read experience that conjugates verbs with the singular not the plural. 'we built', 'we delivered', 'we....' whatever. fuck all that, what did you do?. i built, i delivered, i architected. thats what counts. 
anyways, in his linkedin he writes 

"experience creating and delivering Internet software, systems, sites and campaigns"

"I understand the Internet from the wires up to the app, along with a wide range of development/deployment tools & techniques"

Specialties:

» Computers

» Internet

» Bullshit detection

fuck me, have you ever read more generic, non specific bollocks ever from a techie. i thought bullshit detection was one of his specialities. i cant be because his detector should have been going off full blast when he wrote this. 

experience..delivereing internet software, systems. eh???, all of them?. which ones? sun, oracle, apache, IIS, websphere, sharepoint, lotus notes, java, asp, C#, VB, weblogic, netscape, linux, windows????. 

"I understand the Internet from the wires up to the app", non specific again. TCP/IP, UDP, Muliticast, DNS, IGMP, BGP, EIGRP, OSPF, Cisco, Juniper, F5, Barracuda, Watchguard, ASA, PIX, Sonicwall, X.25, ethernet, token ring.....etc????. 

"a wide range of development/deployment tools". i know developers and there are lots of specific ones. i know sharepoint developers, and i know people who do java and c, and i know people that do vb and asp and .net, and i know people that used to do flash and javascript and cold fusion. their specialties dictate the development tools they use. people who do .net tend not to use eclipse. guys who do java dont use visual studio. be specific and stop bullshitting in broad generalizations covering everything. hey, maybe he does know everything, but i am pretty confident he does not. in fact i suspect he might know not much at all. 
how do people fall for this shit?. if i saw a profile like that i would not give it a second look, or i might but only to mock it. its no wonder some people need to get friends to hire them, but you would not get an interview in any good company where you would have to do some real work.

i have been critical of a lot of the people that work in tech departments in finance, but there are also some staggeringly talented people you come across and i very much doubt he is in their class. they are very good, they deliver projects and they know their shit and they are specific about what they know and do.  

its 2 more examples of playing to a crowd of people that dont know you and embelishing your internet presence to make you look better than you are. 

they play this at my gym. its not that good but its good for background music to train to. 

Lorde

i was supposed to work today but it was only an hours work and 2 of the permie guys were in and i asked them if they could do what needed to be done and they both showed no sign of wanting to do it. i am a contractor so i give less of a fuck than you guys, so i said i could not do it today and i will do it another time. i already had to go to work the last 2 saturdays and i have to go in next saturday as well, so fuck it. i want and need a weekend off for myself. 

went out last night with a couple of friends including a friend of mine from school who is in the army and had been in afghanistan ( or as they call it, 'the ghan') a few months ago. he has also been to iraq. fortunately he returned home with his limbs in tact. it was interesting to read that tony blairs son got married last weekend at his fathers country estate. i was a bit surprised to see pictures of him wearing a suit. usually people in the military wear their full ceremonial uniform when they get married. turns out he is not in the military and he has chosen not to fight his fathers wars. its left to people like my friend to go out there and risk his life. 

on the subject of going out, i checked my facebook when i got home and a couple of friends of mine had posted where they were out and put up pics of themselves having drinks with their friends. they each posted a few times over the course of the evening giving a running commentary of where they were. what is that makes people want to advertise every tiny detail of their lives?. i dont and a lot of my friends dont, but some do. 

i think to some extent it shows a lack of confidence and wanting to present an impression and side to yourself in the belief that you think people are interested and that they might think you are cool or a more interesting person. its the commodification of personality, where its something that has value associated with it depending on how much you post, where you post from, who you are seen with and witty quips that they post. one of they guys checks in every time he goes to the gym, every time he goes out for drinks or dinner with his girlfriend and its a barrage of pics everytime he goes on holiday. the only problem there is its constant pics of him and his girlfriend. er, i know what you you look like and what your bird looks like, but i dont know what cannes, or dubai or prague looks like, so i would like to see those places instead of 40 selfies. 

in a post NSA/GCHQ/Ed Snowdon world, individual privacy is a privelege and i am surprised that people have been convinced to voluntarily give it up. i dont share every detail of my life of where i am all the time. i dont want to and i dont think its interesting information for anyone. i like to see pics if a friend of mine goes on holiday to tokyo, but i dont give a fuck about pics if he is drinking in a bar in soho. 

we dont need to share every detail of our lives on the internet. its not necessary. save something for yourself and your close friends or your wives, husbands, girlfriends etc. dont let William Hague read it all and know everything about you. its none of his fucking business. 

here is a song about the commodification of personality. a very good song. 

obedience

i went out for lunch with the other 3 guys in the team, including the guy that is a volunteer police office. i previously posted about what i thought about it.
anyways, its 12:30 in the city of london on a sunny lunchtime. there is traffic in tight roads and the pavements are full of people. we get to where we need to cross a road and everyone stops waiting for cars to pass before they find a break in the traffic and all cross the street. everyone was stopped at the kerb, except the guy who is a copper. there was a minivan turning into the street and he deliberately steps out right in front of it and stops in the middle of the road in front of it and stares down the driver. i was thinking, what the fuck is he doing just standing in the middle of the road and why did he just walk out into traffic, but did not say anything. 

him and the driver end up staring at each other for about 5 seconds and to be fair, the driver would have been well within his rights to say what are you doing just walking out into the road and whats your problem and why are you standing in front of my car staring at me like i did something wrong?. anyways, the driver said nothing and the copper walked carried on walking. i waited for the minivan to drive off and crossed the street behind him as there was no other traffic. at the place where we were having lunch, one of the guys mentioned what happened and the copper said something along the lines of "yeah, i was waiting for him to say something and if he did i was going to get my police ID out and nick him". i did not say anything but was thinking to myself, "man, you are such a cunt". 

what is the point of deliberately being reckless by stepping out into the road in moving traffic, stopping a car, standing in front of it and then staring down the driver and then almost hoping for a confrontation just so that you can get your police id out and call for back up or whatever the fuck is you were going to do. what a fucking waste of time. do some real police work and patrol rough council estates were the local residents are so intimidated by gangs that they are afraid to leave their houses after dark. do that if you think you are such a hard bastard. dont be waking out in front of mini cabs on fleet street on a thursday lunch time in the sunshine and then trying to provoke them into saying or doing something, knowing full well you are not going to get chinned with 200 witnesses around. 

there is also a test for what he did. would he do the same thing in front of a police car?. would he deliberately walk out into the street in front of a police car, make it stop and then stand in front of it and stare down the driver. no he fucking would not. 

we get nuggets of his exploits and his law advice the days after he has done one of his police weekends. yes, thats section 47 of the road traffic act, that is section 23 of some other fucking law, blah blah blah. fuck me, you must have serious self esteem issues or you must be under the thumb or something for you to A: want to give up your weekends to ticket people for minor traffic infringements B:to spend time away from your family to do so, and C:to feel so proud about it and boast about it in the office. 

here is a clip thats relevant not just to education but afterwards and the principle of intimidating people over little things and then 'nicking' them.   

no cali

having been at the new place for about 6 weeks now and i am getting a sense of the politics there. they clearly do not get on with one of the guys who looks after asia/pacific region offices and they clearly do not like the director in charge of IT. i have tried to be a little more social and have gone to lunch with the other guys but i still do not say much. i can't. i am a contractor and its not my place to say if someone is being a prick. i can think someone is being a prick and i can write on my blog someone is being a prick, but i will not say it at work to people who are there. they can bitch and whine about it and its all justified because both of them do seem like pricks, but you will not hear me say it. 

i am a contractor. i am here to do a job and get paid. thats it and i like it that way. when i listen to them legitimately complaining about shit, i do feel glad that i am not a permie. i have been asked by a couple of guys there about contracting and what its like and if they should do it. i always try to be truthful and tell them it has its good parts and bad parts, but when there is work out there and you dont have too big a gap between jobs and the market is bouyant, then its great and it suits me down to the ground. i have gotten used to be the newbie and not knowing anyone in a new job. i dont mind asking questions and it does not hurt my ego to do so. i dont need to show off or be seen to be important and i am not chasing a bonus or a promotion. 

we are in september and this is usually the time i would be going to california, but i cant this year. i cant really justify it even if i could take the time off work, which i cant. there are projects and stuff going on and i cant leave it for a week. i would not want to even ask, because i know it would not look good. anyways, i have been lucky because we have had the best summer since 2006 and its been beautiful most days for the last couple of months solid. the gods smiled on me and knew that if could not go to california sunshine, then they would bring california sunshine to me. am provisionally trying to put together a week in france or spain or portugal sometime at the end of the year or at the beginning of 2014. will see how it goes. 

i can be a bit of a snob when it comes to music and i do look down on bubble gum, chart, pop music as being shit, which most of it is. this is ok though. they play it at my gym and it sounds ok.