Mundane day-to-day stuff

I’m simultaneously excited and nervous, since this week I’ve had two job interviews for a job I want. Apparently I’m a good chance - there is only one other candidate for the role. Plus the role pretty much has everything I want. The money is much better than my (very low paid) previous job; it is well-located, so no long commutes; and it gets me back into development, which is what I want to do.

The job is an unusual hybrid role - it is primarily tech support, but the product is mainly used by website designers and developers, so it is far beyond the standard “try checking if the caps lock is on” level. Plus there is the promise of .Net development down the track. Sweet!

AFL Grand Final starts in an hour. I will be watching, if only because everyone does in this town.

Now, to Russian language learning. Language learning takes up an awful lot of time. I will look rather silly if, at the end of it all, it is of no use to me. I hope that doesn’t happen. I’m not as fluent as I’d hoped I would be by this point. There are various reasons for that - I might elaborate on them in a future post. For now, I’ll just throw some links your way in the off-chance that anyone is interested.

http://anaitiss.livejournal.com/617975.html - Ever wanted to have a young, beautiful Russian careerist hack political activist on your Skype contact list? Maria Sergeyeva, Putin cheerleader and YouTube star, has publicly posted her Skype username on her blog. No idea if she speaks English.

Putvedev’s faith-based initiatives - Discussion of vacuous speech by the just-mentioned Maria Sergeyeva at Scraps Of Moscow (in English).

Cheburashka - Children’s claymation cartoon from Soviet times about a monkey-like creature whose best friend is a crocodile that plays the accordian. The linked YouTube playlist has several episodes, all subtitled in English.

Long-suffering MOAI fan: Markk! Long time no see! What you been up to?Markk: Getting married, coffee-ing, learning Russian, looking for work.

Married, eh? Congratulations!Why thank you. Sorry you didn’t score an invite.

No worries. Looking for work, you say? Why is that? Did you lose your job?Unfortunately, yes. The company was in a very bad way, so they could no longer afford to keep me.

So what you looking for?Programming. Microsoft dot Net ideally. But I’m not fussy. You need someone to clean bins with their tongue for minimum wage? I’m your man!

OK - and you say you’ve been learning Russian? Why is that?I actually started that last time I lost my job, to keep myself sane. I needed an intellectual challenge, and I’ve always wanted to learn a language, so off I went. It’s quite difficult though. My Russian is still quite плохо*.

But why Russian?I find Russian history and culture interesting. Not sure why, but there you are.My long-running obsession with Communism might have something to do with it.

So, you actually going to blog regularly this time?Don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.

And how’s the coffee-ing?Wow, you just used the word ‘coffee’ as a verb! I like it! But I’ll answer that question - in my next post.* Russian word meaning ‘bad’.

I know it’s been a while, so for the sake of those interested, here is an update on latest goings on in my life.

First of all, wedding preparations for Marjorie and I continue. We are organising bridesmaids dresses, invitations and countless other wedding-related miscellany. But we are not the only ones getting married; my sister was married last Saturday, my brother will be married six weeks after me and my best friend a week before that; so it’s all happening!

Second of all, I am learning Russian! This is partly inspired by my brother, who learned a language himself recently. I picked Russian because of my interest in Russian history. I’d like to travel to Russia one day - and many other countries as well; I just want to travel!

Добрый день to any Russians reading this.

Hopefully I’ll be back blogging more regularly soon. So many times I’ve come across something I’d like to blog about.

Until then, I leave you with something I discovered today: Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir performing Stairway To Heaven:

My brother recently quit his job in order to take a trip to Spain, that he’s been planning for a long time. Good on him.

Back in 2006, he got me a job. I was fired in June 2007.

Why was I fired? Because of this blog! You see, in June 2007, there was a work-related disaster that killed 11 people - while I was on shift. Like most employees, this made an impact on me, so naturally I blogged about it. My mistake was mentioning the company I worked for.

The day after publishing the post, I was pulled aside by management and asked to delete it. I complied immediately, and thought that would be the end of the matter. I was wrong.

The day after, at the start of my shift, I was pulled aside again. This time, I was asked to hand in my security pass. I was told that a decision had not yet been made on my continued employment, but that they would call me later. This was a transparent lie, but I didn’t call them on it. I also didn’t feel the need to tell them about the other pass I had that they didn’t know about. (I arranged to have this returned at a later date.)

All in all, it was a rather shabby affair.

Fortunately I was able to find employment shortly afterwards at another company, where I remain today. They shall remain nameless.

Admittedly this is a little crappy, but here it is - Australian Rare Coins Online, a site for those collecting Australian rare coins. It’s a work in progress.

If you know me, keep July 19 free.

I canvassed you, the readership, for 30th party ideas. Now I’ve made up my mind - it will be a scavenger hunt / dinner Amazing Race themed combination party!

The guests will leave the starting point in staggered intervals. From there, they will follow a set course of things to find and do, and questions to answer. Prizes will be on offer for the winning team.

After that, we all go out for dinner!

The party shall be a blatant copy of one my brother did for his 20th a few years ago.

I’m still organising the details of what will happen, where the race starts and ends, etc. The race is about 70% organised, the rest of it is 5% (approx.). I hope to get things ready enough for invitations to go out in about a week or so.

If you live in the cold, dark wilderness of Alaska, or somewhere slightly more subtropical that still occasionally gets cold sometimes, you are probably interested in keeping warm when it does get cold.

I used to live in an upstairs bedroom of a largely unheated house, with only a coil heater to keep myself warm. Unfortunately, it was one of those heaters that can only heat effectively if there is no ventilation, and only a small room at that. My room was quite large, and for some reason the window couldn’t close properly. The coil heater simply couldn’t provide enough heat to cope with the incoming cold air. I needed something more hardcore - I dare say comfort glow heaters would have been up to the task.

In the past, I’ve found gas heaters get a room toasty warm, and typically are more cost effective than other types of heaters.

Gas heaters are good for outdoor heating also. They are a common site in outdoor seating areas in restaurants in my area.

One of the most perplexing questions about opening or running a small business is where to get finance.

The most obvious option is, perhaps, a bank. But most banks are notoriously conservative when it comes to providing finance for small businesses. They would rather deal with big businesses. After all, big businesses tend to be much less of a risk.

Fortunately, there are finance providers available to bridge the gap between capital and small business. Restaurant Business Loans are one establishment who specialise in providing finance to, you guessed it, restaurants.

I support finance businesses of this nature. After all, it is small business that keeps our economy ticking over and our workers employed. When small businesses prosper, we all do.

Normal blogging shall resume here shortly.

A couple of things shall change though. As follows:

• All comments are now to be held for moderation. Sorry, folks, but there is too much spam about and I simply don’t have the time to individually delete each one. My aim is to check comments every 24 hours or so.
• No nofollow links are now off. Again, spam. Hopefully this will deter the pesky spammers.
•  I’m going to do some paid posts, probably. I simply can’t afford to spend time blogging nowadays unless I get at least some dosh for my trouble. I’ll keep doing non-paid posts and hopefully keep things interesting.

That’s all for now. See you all soon with some quality blogging!

Hi everyone.

After several months of not blogging, I have decided to break my silence. I’ve been waiting until some inspiration has come to me to write on a certain subject; I hereby give up on that approach, and shall now just talk at you all, if only to reassure you that I’m still alive.

How you all doing, anyway?

In particular, I’m thinking of Pete who has about 15 or so blogs at last count, not to mention his own business, and wife, and kids, who must be sorely neglected by this time surely, what with so many blogs to feed. How many blogs can one man maintain?

Also, I’m thinking of “The” Molk(s), at least one of whom still continues his quest to lose weight, I’m pleased to see.

And to everyone else, including but not limited to Robert Hruzek, Ben of Hello Internet and however many others.

While you wait for me to say something substantial, go read about the thorny mathematical problem that’s just been solved by a dog.