Saturday, August 05, 2006
ISO new job
So the huge news is my job stability has gone from a 12-24 month window till lay offs to a 1-9 month window! Yikes! So I am working extremely hard to find a job in Orange county within in my pay range before the start of Quarter 4 on October 1 and hiring freezes.
I had my first interview Friday that I thought went pretty well, but I am competing with 10+ canidates so I can't be sure of what I am up against. It is a mid level engineer position at a nationwide consulting firm. The office itself was impressive similar culture to CTG just more casual. I think I could learn a lot there and so far they have been the most receptive to my salary expectations.
I have 2 other strong job leads. One is a position of last resort. While it pays okay it will not be much of a challenge and skill development will be up to me. However the other opportunity is outstanding, International consulting, and training. However the pay will probably just hit my minimums. The perks though are so tremendous I'd be an idiot to turn it down. Another IT manager used to work there, and gave my resume with a sterling recommendation to one of their EVP's and introduced me to the guy. Hopefully I will hear from them soon.
Fortunately CTG, has been very up front about the looming layoffs and have been understanding with accommodating our needs to look for work.
What motivated me to write an entry tonight were two articles that have been circulating in the Tech news that have been irritating me. First, there is a huge thing being made right now about PS3 issues. Specifically, it costs to much, it is too complex and therefore it will have a small customer base and as a result of that developers are pulling out of making games for it. I'll start by saying I am not a console gamer. I am so out of it with console gaming I thought no one in their right mind would pay $400+ for an xbox 360. Yet they were sold out on launch date. So now we have the Game media telling us, gamers won't pay $600 for the new PS3. I think they are dead wrong. The kind of people that bought the first 1 million 360's (some paying a $1,000 for package deals), were not buying the latest XBOX, they were buying the bragging rights and prestige to owning something in high demand that cost a lot. Console have reached a point where they are luxury commodities. As long as a shortage can be guaranteed and the same million people will get in line again and drop $600 or more to say they had it first. There are around 275 million Americans, even if just the top 1% of house holds needs to purchase the console it is a smash hit.
The second thing that I found irritating was Symantec's white paper today on Vista vunerabilities. In short the paper says, if malware is disguised as needing to run with legacy permissions or is mis-identified as an admin level process it will be able to compromise vista at a root level, UH! DUH! This article, followed PR this week from the Black Hat conference giving credit to Microsoft for doing a good job with Vista Security. To me this is Symantec flat out trying to justify it's own survival. Granted Microsoft has taken a shot at Symantec with it's own Anti-malware solution, however if Symantec made the best product like NOD32 they would have no need to fear. Microsoft is just beginning to delve into Malware prevention and removal, with the time and resources at Symantec's disposal it is laughable how much better NOD32 is compared to Symantec, Mcafee, and Trend Micro whose revenues and experience should allow them to create a superior product to Microsoft or NOD32.
In the last month, I have been reading a lot more then gaming. I've read Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton. It is a love story hidden below a great Sc-fi mercenary story. I really liked the ending and enjoyed classic Hamilton mercenary action :)
I also finished reading Fall of Hyperion. Interesting story, the writing in Hyperion was better. This one had more of a plot, I just couldn't get into it much.
I am now reading a collection of true stories written by Chuck Palahniuk. If you are a writer you should pick this up it is very insightful. So far he is arguing that the contemporary drive to succeed is a sort of drive to be able to choose who you socialize with. Self-Destruction on the other hand is a reaction to the loneliness the success builds and the self-destruction devolves you back into the mob.
I added another set of pictures, this time of my Death Valley trip from last thanksgiving. One of these days I will get around to uploading my new Europe trip. I was starting to get short on web space, but I just saw doteasy.com who hosts my domain is now giving me 100MB of space wooh. Also on the travel front, I will be going to Washington DC for the first time at the end of next June after Mike leaves for his honey moon.
I also went to Comicon again this year. For me, it is now officially too big. The highlight of the show was seeing the Boondocks Panel. 2 years ago when I went to that panel maybe 70 people there. This time at least a thousand! The good news is production has already started on Season 2 and I now own season 1:) On a side note I also got the new Chappelle season, I can see what Dave was upset about, it was not as good as season 2 and it really was doing more to enforce stereotypes then make fun of them.
Friday I saw the boondocks panel and did some shopping. Saturday was a zoo, in short due to the crowds and stupidity of security in and out of the convention I did not get to meet Kevin Smith or see the Simpsons movie preview. However, I did get to see Rose Mcgowan, Rosario Dawson, and Quinton Terrintino for the first time.
As usual I have also been seeing at least one movie a weekend.
Saw a pre-release of "A scanner Darkly", a little predictable, but I enjoyed it overall. If you are into stoner humor you will really like it.
Also saw Clerks 2. I have seen all of the View Askew movies. This one really picks up after Clerks 1. I enjoyed it a lot, it was very funny and I could empathize with what Smith was saying to our generation. What I got out of it was, don't do what you are "supposed" to do, do what will make you happy. The other theme was don't underestimate the less then beautiful people.
I saw 'The Ballad of Ricky Bobby tonight' holy crap, that movie was FUNNY! I did not stop launching the whole time. Damn the critics see this movie. Although, I will admit to watching Nascar occasionally so that could have been part of it... In other sports news I have completed my draft picks for Fantasy Football.
I think that is quite enough for tonight. I am going to work on tweaking my resume so more and writing a template interview thank you. If any of you know of decently paying System Administrator positions in Orange County drop me an email.
~Art
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I had my first interview Friday that I thought went pretty well, but I am competing with 10+ canidates so I can't be sure of what I am up against. It is a mid level engineer position at a nationwide consulting firm. The office itself was impressive similar culture to CTG just more casual. I think I could learn a lot there and so far they have been the most receptive to my salary expectations.
I have 2 other strong job leads. One is a position of last resort. While it pays okay it will not be much of a challenge and skill development will be up to me. However the other opportunity is outstanding, International consulting, and training. However the pay will probably just hit my minimums. The perks though are so tremendous I'd be an idiot to turn it down. Another IT manager used to work there, and gave my resume with a sterling recommendation to one of their EVP's and introduced me to the guy. Hopefully I will hear from them soon.
Fortunately CTG, has been very up front about the looming layoffs and have been understanding with accommodating our needs to look for work.
What motivated me to write an entry tonight were two articles that have been circulating in the Tech news that have been irritating me. First, there is a huge thing being made right now about PS3 issues. Specifically, it costs to much, it is too complex and therefore it will have a small customer base and as a result of that developers are pulling out of making games for it. I'll start by saying I am not a console gamer. I am so out of it with console gaming I thought no one in their right mind would pay $400+ for an xbox 360. Yet they were sold out on launch date. So now we have the Game media telling us, gamers won't pay $600 for the new PS3. I think they are dead wrong. The kind of people that bought the first 1 million 360's (some paying a $1,000 for package deals), were not buying the latest XBOX, they were buying the bragging rights and prestige to owning something in high demand that cost a lot. Console have reached a point where they are luxury commodities. As long as a shortage can be guaranteed and the same million people will get in line again and drop $600 or more to say they had it first. There are around 275 million Americans, even if just the top 1% of house holds needs to purchase the console it is a smash hit.
The second thing that I found irritating was Symantec's white paper today on Vista vunerabilities. In short the paper says, if malware is disguised as needing to run with legacy permissions or is mis-identified as an admin level process it will be able to compromise vista at a root level, UH! DUH! This article, followed PR this week from the Black Hat conference giving credit to Microsoft for doing a good job with Vista Security. To me this is Symantec flat out trying to justify it's own survival. Granted Microsoft has taken a shot at Symantec with it's own Anti-malware solution, however if Symantec made the best product like NOD32 they would have no need to fear. Microsoft is just beginning to delve into Malware prevention and removal, with the time and resources at Symantec's disposal it is laughable how much better NOD32 is compared to Symantec, Mcafee, and Trend Micro whose revenues and experience should allow them to create a superior product to Microsoft or NOD32.
In the last month, I have been reading a lot more then gaming. I've read Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton. It is a love story hidden below a great Sc-fi mercenary story. I really liked the ending and enjoyed classic Hamilton mercenary action :)
I also finished reading Fall of Hyperion. Interesting story, the writing in Hyperion was better. This one had more of a plot, I just couldn't get into it much.
I am now reading a collection of true stories written by Chuck Palahniuk. If you are a writer you should pick this up it is very insightful. So far he is arguing that the contemporary drive to succeed is a sort of drive to be able to choose who you socialize with. Self-Destruction on the other hand is a reaction to the loneliness the success builds and the self-destruction devolves you back into the mob.
I added another set of pictures, this time of my Death Valley trip from last thanksgiving. One of these days I will get around to uploading my new Europe trip. I was starting to get short on web space, but I just saw doteasy.com who hosts my domain is now giving me 100MB of space wooh. Also on the travel front, I will be going to Washington DC for the first time at the end of next June after Mike leaves for his honey moon.
I also went to Comicon again this year. For me, it is now officially too big. The highlight of the show was seeing the Boondocks Panel. 2 years ago when I went to that panel maybe 70 people there. This time at least a thousand! The good news is production has already started on Season 2 and I now own season 1:) On a side note I also got the new Chappelle season, I can see what Dave was upset about, it was not as good as season 2 and it really was doing more to enforce stereotypes then make fun of them.
Friday I saw the boondocks panel and did some shopping. Saturday was a zoo, in short due to the crowds and stupidity of security in and out of the convention I did not get to meet Kevin Smith or see the Simpsons movie preview. However, I did get to see Rose Mcgowan, Rosario Dawson, and Quinton Terrintino for the first time.
As usual I have also been seeing at least one movie a weekend.
Saw a pre-release of "A scanner Darkly", a little predictable, but I enjoyed it overall. If you are into stoner humor you will really like it.
Also saw Clerks 2. I have seen all of the View Askew movies. This one really picks up after Clerks 1. I enjoyed it a lot, it was very funny and I could empathize with what Smith was saying to our generation. What I got out of it was, don't do what you are "supposed" to do, do what will make you happy. The other theme was don't underestimate the less then beautiful people.
I saw 'The Ballad of Ricky Bobby tonight' holy crap, that movie was FUNNY! I did not stop launching the whole time. Damn the critics see this movie. Although, I will admit to watching Nascar occasionally so that could have been part of it... In other sports news I have completed my draft picks for Fantasy Football.
I think that is quite enough for tonight. I am going to work on tweaking my resume so more and writing a template interview thank you. If any of you know of decently paying System Administrator positions in Orange County drop me an email.
~Art
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