Author Archives: The Cyberwolfe

About The Cyberwolfe

The owner of dis 'ere blog.

Must be my lucky week

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Well, that work-from-home tech support company finally got around to calling me back for a phone interview, and that one went pretty smoothly too. They shot several situations at me and liked the way I handled things, so I think I can expect an offer from them. I did ask about their call averages, and they say 3 to 6 billable hours a day is common, which means that I could make a decent living doing this on it’s own, plus whatever biz I can drum up for my own company.

Maybe I should go buy a lotto ticket…

Gee, that didn’t take long

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Just got back from my first interview since being laid off back in March. The interviewer is a fairly large corporation doing a bunch of computer stuff, from basic repairs to full builds, with educational and government supply contracts. (At least I know they’ll be around for a while.)

The interview went well, but it was pretty short. More of a preliminary interview to see whether or not they should keep my resume for round two. I’ve said before that I have been hired every time I’ve been interviewed, but I think this time I have only gotten myself the second interview.

Here’s hoping!

Tax credit for IT training!

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CompTIA Press Room – News has this to say:

Washington, DC, May 20, 2004 – At a Capitol Hill briefing hosted by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) today, CompTIA hailed US House introduction of the TRAIN Act by Representative Jerry Weller (R-IL) and other congressional leaders. According to CompTIA, the bill will facilitate greater training and re-skilling opportunities through a tax credit for qualified information and communications technology (ICT) training, helping American workers and the companies that employ them stay more competitive here and abroad.

It needs our help to pass, folks – contact you local representatives and urge them to pass this.

Because everything’s better in the dark

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Well,after many months of procrastinating, I finally went down to the store and bought myself a little birthday present with the fundage my old man sent me: one of those illuminated keyboards.

Specifically, the Zippy Technologies EL-715 I chose the black frame, and I’m fairly impressed with it so far. It’s what passes for daylight up here in Portland right now, (IE, overcast) so there’s still some light creeping in through the blinds, but I am happily typing now without turning on the overhead light so I can see the keyboard. (If you haven’t figured this out, I cannot touch-type to save my life.) This should reduce some of the eyestrain I have been getting lately while spending so much time at the keyboard hunting for work.

Functionally, there is no tricky software for the keyboard, and the keys are a scissors-type, much like that of a laptop. It is quiet, but still has good tactile and auditory feedback on each keypress. There are a couple of things I would change about it if possible: first, the frame of the keyboard comes up a little high in front, so if you’re like me and tend to hit the spacebar with the sideof your thumb, it can get in the way. Second, the last keyboard I had was laid out a little differently than this one, so I am apt to make some mistakes until I learn the new layout. Nothing big here, folks, just me being picky. But not picky enough to go back to the other keyboard.

Conclusion: a good buy, especially for us cave-dwellers who hate the light of day.

Wanted: Decent Job

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Since I haven’t been getting as much traffic as I’d like to see on the job-hunting side of things lately, I think I’ll take a moment for some shameless self-promotion.

I call myself the Techie From Hell. This is mainly due to my ability to troubleshoot my way through a problem and come to a solution of some sort or another, usually a good one. Much like the Marines, I analyze, adapt and overcome obstacles in my path. I learn quickly and broadly – I often am able to learn enough about my co-worker’s jobs to take over in a pinch, or to speed up my own work by eliminating steps.

I have work experience in the following areas:

  • CATV / High-Speed Data / Telephone operations from the distribution plant to the customer.
  • Computer networking over LAN, WAN, ATM, ISDN, POTS, DSL, Cable modem, and Satellite.
  • Computer repair, configuration and troubleshooting.
  • All Microsoft Operating Systems, most Microsoft software suites, Linux (several distributions) and some Mac OS X familiarity.
  • Electronics repair, including surface-mount technology (SMT).
  • Project management.
  • Employee hiring, training and discipline.
  • Customer relations.

If any of that sounds good to you, I am looking for an entry- to mid-level job somewhere in the IT industry, but I’m really not being that picky at the moment. Serious email inquiries will be sent a copy of my resume; spammers trying to sell me something will be persecuted to the best of my ability to hound them to the ends of the earth.

Thank you for your time. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled blogging.

Weekend Update

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Well, that was mostly a bust.

Went to the Kriegstreiber Tournament this weekend out at Milo McIver state park. A pretty small event, it only attracted 4 or 5 merchants, and not enough cars to fill the parking lot, despite the Royal presence.

Friday was a quiet night, since we arrived after 8pm, and it was just the four of us in the Fabritzio camp, quite a small turnout for us.

Saturday’s weather couldn’t decide what to do with itself. The morning started overcast, then the sun came out for a couple hours, so we went wandering around to see what was out there. Like I said above, not much. It wasn’t long before I was forcibly reminded of the opportunistic drives of plant life: we had had enough sun for everything around us to send off about a billion spores of pollen, and my allergies hit me full force.

Later on that evening, we found ourselves huddled up in our cloaks playing Gin Rummy as the lightenss behind the clouds faded (AKA the sun set), we realized there were much better things we could be doing elsewhere, rather than shivering in the dark playing cards. An hour later, we were on the road home.

That’s the benefit of a local event, I suppose.

The death of radio?

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The HoustonChronicle.com reports that the record industries have finally found a way to resurrect the payolla scandals of early Rock & Roll.

In a strange twist, it seems that it was the radio station’s idea this time around. We know it is illegal to pay a station to play a song on it’s own; however, if they play it as an advertisment ( “And now, Avril Lavigne’s Don’t Tell Me, presented by Arista Records.”) it is perfectly legal.

The upshot of this is that it completely invalidates the Top 40 charts, since they only count the number of times a song is played. This method, even though it’s paid for, counts as a play. With the amount of late-night and early-morning airtime available at low rates, this allows record companies to seriously skew a song’s rating using ad-plays.

Just one more reason the music industry sucks.

You want my opinion? Go check out GarageBand.Com and hear some new music from small bands for free.

Linux star Torvalds moving to Portland

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Oregon Live has good news for all us Linux geeks out here. We’ve had the OSDL for a while now, and Linus has finally decided to come supervise things himself, and to get out of the insanity that is the Silicon Valley.

Everybody’s favorite quote from the article:

“The plan was to try to acclimatize and have time to grow webbed feet (although I’m told there are implants available) by moving during the summer,” he [Torvalds] wrote.

Fun with definitions

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I wanted to make sure I had the use of the word “meme” correct, so I did a quick dictionary search. The second definition has an interesting point.

Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas
can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some
ideas survive better than others; ideas can mutate through,
for example, misunderstandings; and two ideas can recombine to
produce a new idea involving elements of each parent idea.

(…)

Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans
(and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts)
cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become
more important than biological evolution by selection of
hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for
tolerably obvious reasons.

Camping tips for the city dweller

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Because Kylanath asked:

Things to take camping

  • Tent
  • Rain-fly or tarp for the tent
  • Sleeping bags
  • Water
  • Something to cook
  • Something to cook it in
  • Fire or something else to cook it on
  • Something that doesn’t need to be cooked for when you can’t get the fire lit.
  • Something to eat it with
  • Socks!! Lots of socks!
  • Appropriate clothing
  • Sunblock if clothing isn’t appropriate
  • Towell. Maybe two.
  • Toothbrush and toothpaste
  • Painkiller for when you bash your finger pounding in tent stakes. (Booze is good for this.)
  • First-aid kit for when you nearly slice off a digit trying to open a can of beans with a bootknife because you forgot the silly can opener. (Booze is not good for this.)
  • Something to do in the tent for when the air has only slightly less water in it than the lake.
  • Flashlights for those after-dark nature calls
  • Charmin so you don’t get poison oak on your tender bits because you improvised.
  • A picture of poison oak so you can recognise it, before you improvise.
  • A shovel. (Cats bury theirs, you can bury yours.)
  • A scary story, a song or other spoken entertainment. C’mon, it’s a tradition.

That may be a bit much for some situations, but over 20 years of camping has given me a pretty good idea. Enjoy!