"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:49746599$1@news.povray.org...

>>    You getting another job and actually doing some work for a change is a 
>> whole new issue.
>
> You telling me I'm lazy now?

 LOL, no, not at all, but I think you'll have a shock if you get a job that 
pays good money. They'll keep you on your toes for their money, that's for 
sure, but I'm sure you could handle it. :)

  Seriously though, if you use their internet the way that you have been 
with your present company, and they find out, you may be out of a job 
quicker than you think. That's all.

     ~Steve~

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>> You telling me I'm lazy now?
> 
>  LOL, no, not at all, but I think you'll have a shock if you get a job that 
> pays good money. They'll keep you on your toes for their money, that's for 
> sure, but I'm sure you could handle it. :)

As ridiculous as that sounds... I could actually go for some interesting 
challenges to tackle. Right now I'm *inventing* them.

Need to back up that server? Maybe we could use the COPY command? Or 
perhaps I could design, implement and test a program written in Haskell 
to do the job?

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?

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?

Kinda running out of ideas here...

>   Seriously though, if you use their internet the way that you have been 
> with your present company, and they find out, you may be out of a job 
> quicker than you think. That's all.

Well let's hope I can find a job that involves me doing stuff that's 
more interesting than loafing around a newserver, eh? ;-)

(Surely that can't be especially hard...? A job being more interesting, 
that is. FINDING could be quite hard.)

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:49746c99$1@news.povray.org...
>>> You telling me I'm lazy now?
>>
>>  LOL, no, not at all, but I think you'll have a shock if you get a job 
>> that pays good money. They'll keep you on your toes for their money, 
>> that's for sure, but I'm sure you could handle it. :)
>
> As ridiculous as that sounds... I could actually go for some interesting 
> challenges to tackle. Right now I'm *inventing* them.
>
> Need to back up that server? Maybe we could use the COPY command? Or 
> perhaps I could design, implement and test a program written in Haskell to 
> do the job?
>
> 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.


>
> 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... :)


>
> Kinda running out of ideas here...
>
>>   Seriously though, if you use their internet the way that you have been 
>> with your present company, and they find out, you may be out of a job 
>> quicker than you think. That's all.
>
> Well let's hope I can find a job that involves me doing stuff that's more 
> interesting than loafing around a newserver, eh? ;-)
>
> (Surely that can't be especially hard...? A job being more interesting, 
> that is. FINDING could be quite hard.)

      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!  :)

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

       ~Steve~

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>> 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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Is this any good?

 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45506

   ~Steve~

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St. wrote:
> Is this any good?
> 
>  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45506

Yep. And I applied, FWIW.

Never heard anything back though...

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:49747d9f$1@news.povray.org...
> St. wrote:
>> Is this any good?
>>
>>  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45506
>
> Yep. And I applied, FWIW.
>
> Never heard anything back though...

 Chase it up. Point them to your paper that you wrote.

   ~Steve~

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>> Yep. And I applied, FWIW.
>>
>> Never heard anything back though...
> 
>  Chase it up. Point them to your paper that you wrote.

And which paper might that be?

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:49747fec@news.povray.org...
>>> Yep. And I applied, FWIW.
>>>
>>> Never heard anything back though...
>>
>>  Chase it up. Point them to your paper that you wrote.
>
> And which paper might that be?

 LOL, the longest one. ;)

 I can't remember what it was about, (apart from something to do with 
Haskell of course), but you've written more than one?

  Those papers could be good ammo for you in respect of finding a position.

      ~Steve~

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> I don't know... I actually found a company that's recruiting rather than 
> firing. And not just one vacancy, but about 30 or so of them. And *all* of 
> them targetting graduates with no experience.

Our company website still say we have a load of graduate vacancies, but I 
know that now we are on the trendy "hiring freeze" the same as many 
companies and nobody has been arsed to update the website.

I suspect many companies are in the same situation.

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