>> Want to allow others to check whether the backup job succeeded? Maybe I 
>> could delegate some admin rights? Or maybe I could develop an MS-DOS 
>> script that scans the log folder, finds the newest job log, copies it to a 
>> temporary folder, concanenates it with a custom-written PostScript program 
>> implementing a text-formatting engine, thus transforming the text file 
>> into a PostScript page description, map LPT2: to a network printer, and 
>> copy the file to that, thus printing it?
> 
>   There, you see? To me, you're a damn clever guy. There's no way on this 
> earth that I could do anything like that.

As I've mentioned, one day I got bored so I learned PostScript in my 
lunchbreak. Depending on how you look at it, this was

- A waste of company time.
- Learning a new skill which later came in handy.
- A solution looking for a problem.

Actually, *originally* it just printed the raw text files. But for some 
reason, when our printer prints raw text, it cuts the edge off the 
printout so the first 2.5 characters of each line are unreadable. It 
also allows long lines to run off the edge of the page rather than 
wrapping them.

So I built a custom PostScript text formatting engine. The concatenation 
turns the original text file into a PostScript string literal. The main 
PostScript program then parses this string, breaking it into pages, 
putting running headers and sane margins on the pages, and line-wrapping 
any long lines (with visual markers to let you know they're wrapped).

Of course, a normal human being would have just fixed BackupExec so it 
prints properly. It used to, but then one day it stopped, and I couldn't 
work out why. A normal person would fix that; I went with the 
over-engineered solution. (Ask Warp above over-engineering...)

>> Need a cup of coffee? Maybe I could... uh... implement some kind of Tcl 
>> script to... er... tell you when it's coffee time or something?
> 
>  LOL, yeah, I need some coffee right now... :)

I hate coffee. It's so bitter...

>       I really don't see your problem, you have the knowledge and skill no 
> doubt about that. Just keep trying, and apply for *loads* of jobs! And not 
> just the big companies, try smaller companies too. You'll get there!  :)

"My problem" can be summarised thus:

- I don't do C. My skills with C++ are weak at best.
- I have no programming experience of any kind.
- I have no experience or qualifications with any other kind of 
high-tech field I might want to target. (E.g., logic design, computer 
graphics, mathematical forecasting, data mining...)
- I can't find companies to apply to.

The last one is probably the killer. If you don't apply to anybody, you 
don't get hired. End of story. It seems that getting hired requires 
applying to countless tens of millions of companies before anybody takes 
notice.

The company I just applied to designs things (so, they want people with 
experience with VHDL or Verilog, people who know how to operate 
osciliscopes and test meters, people familiar with power optimisation 
techniques, etc.) They write device drivers for their stuff (so, they 
want C programmers familiar with kernel-level programming for Linux, 
Windows, and real-time OSes). They also do a lot of graphics work (so 
they want experienced graphics experts).

I am none of these things. I feel I could *learn* every one of them, 
given the opportunity. (Well, except kernel-level development. That's 
just crazy talk!) But I won't be getting that opportunity, because "we 
feel that other candidates have a skillset that better matches our 
requirements". (IOW, they found somebody who already knows this stuff, 
so why hire somebody who might be able to learn it?)

I manage to find a high-tech company doing stuff that actually interests 
me (yes, apparently they really do exist), and they're still actually 
recruiting (despite the global recession). But no, I don't get hired. *sigh*

(I still wonder how graduates being hired for a graduate position would 
have more experience than me... It's not like there are courses in 
writing Linux device drivers!)

It seems to get anywhere, I need to be churning out hundreds of 
applications per week. But actually I manage to apply to maybe one job 
every 3 months.

>     Hey, just thought, have you tried BT? They pay good money and there 
> might be something for you with them.

Hahaha... Yeah, if you can endure the institutional blame-shifting attitude.

The entire BT ecosystem seems to revolve around who's the best at 
dumping all the problems onto somebody else as quickly as possible, 
without doing any actual work. Nobody *cares* which department is 
_supposed_ to be responsible, it's all about how quickly you can make 
any problem into somebody else's problem, not yours.

Great atmosphere to work in, really.

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