A waste of bits and bandwidth

Well, it may have been a wee bit premature to say that my contract “is there to be renewed”. I spoke to my manager yesterday and he told me it was a go but apparently not.

Off I went to the office this morning, more preoccupied with how long a term to go for than anything else. The boss was surprised to see me and told me that the client had yet to agree to anything. He felt bad that I had gone in and graciously told me to bill them for a couple of hours for my trouble.

Maybe it’s for the best though I have no confidence in my judgement at this point. If nothing else, the headhunter job is looking a little better to me. All I know is that my head feels like it may implode with everything that’s going on, or not, as the case may be. I just want a freakin’ job that doesn’t involve me worrying about losing it at quarter end.

I don’t even have to love it; I’d be content not to hate it.

No Biff, this isn’t about you. You can put down the phone.

After the soccer finals were over, there were hoards of Greek fans driving down Denman, having a little parade. No one really cares; this isn’t Commercial Drive but it’s not a big deal.

The lead truck, towing a cardboard trailer and overflowing with yahoos, moves into the intersection while a guy going the other direction in a passing Corvette says something to them.

Obviously he wasn’t congratulating them on their win as they immediately stopped, jumped out of the idiotmobile and chased him for half a block before he turned down an alley and sped away.

By now the truck/cardboard trailer/yahoomobile is blocking both lanes, traffic is gridlocked and the people who were just caught in this mess are also blowing their horns. The idiots ambled back to the truck, had a meeting to decide what to do, finally deciding to continue with their parade.

This morning I went to Starbucks on Denman and was sitting out front enjoying a coffee and waiting for my phone to ring. There is a woman in her early sixties next to me working on a crossword. All seems well. Then she takes her stir-stick, sticks it deep into her ear and starts mining. She was rewarded with a big glob of wax which she inspected closely, then wiped on her napkin and went back in for a second go.

My ‘headhunter’ finally got back to me after lunch today and the job isn’t as attractive as she made it out to be. I’m still interested but not as much as before. The term is shorter than I’d like and I was shocked as she had told me it was permanent. In headhunter speak, apparently that means permanent for the term of the contract. Sorta like life is permanent until the time of your death.

My contract is there to be renewed if I want so I’ll see if I can do another two weeks in case this new one works out. There is a good chance it would be extended again after the project is over and there have been hints that I could be made permanent at some point. Maybe I should ride it out and give it my best shot. I do like it there…

Rogé commented on Biff’s blog that “The last few years of software were rather painful. I had lost the desire, the drive, the ambition.”

Yep, I hear ya man. I hear ya… That doesn’t mean that I’m giving up to do something else but it seems a whole lot easier to contemplate at this point.

So what happens after I update my wardrobe with some summer fashions? It rains. I guess I should have seen that one coming; I mean it’s not like I have a car to wash anymore…

Headhunters piss me off. I think they’re the real estate agents of the employment world; sometimes required but a bloody pain in the ass to deal with.

Mine asked me to make some revisions to my resume and send it to her today which I did. After thinking over some of our phone conversations from Wednesday, I decided that I had some questions so I included the questions in my email.

Given that I’ll need to sign some sort of contract Monday, I really need to get some answers before I go in. Did she answer them when she responded to my email? No. She completely ignored them.

So I call her. She’s not there. Now it’s 5:30 and I still haven’t heard anything. *Blood pressure rising*

Lastly, I changed the menu (located on your left, Paul) to something that is a little lighter. The old one was 24kb of JavaScript and really seemed like overkill for a simple navigation menu. The new one is CSS based and uses a 1kb JavaScript file so it should load faster as well.

Hmmm…. can’t come up with a good way to finish this entry…

This concludes today’s transmission from the mothership. Drive safely.

I got up late this morning after a few drinks with Shnewt last night. He’s been stressed and so have I, so we figured that drunken foosball was the only solution. It was surreal to play amongst the ruins of what once was their apartment. It’s probably for the best that Rachel has been gone the past few weeks…

Wow, was it nice to get paid yesterday. Even after setting a quarter of my cheque aside toward the taxes and paying a bunch of bills, I still had a good chunk of change (for me…) left over. After surveying my closet, I decide to buy some clothes. Anyone who knows me will tell you that this isn’t something I do often or particularly well but it had to be done.

I headed out to Pacific Center and did fairly well, getting a well needed wardrobe update. Maybe tomorrow I’ll buy groceries…

I also picked up some music on Future Shops Bonfire site. I bought a $20 card and came home to get some music. I guess it’s a good service; obviously I don’t like the restrictions but the music comes in WMA so it plays on my device.

A lot of new CDs have some sort of DRM which pisses me off so downloading what you want (legally) is pretty convenient. The site is a little buggy and doesn’t have the most complete selection but I’m not sure that any of the sites do. The Bonfire site is actually a subdomain of Puretracks and as far as I could tell, the prices were between .99 and 1.19 on both sites.

Jobs news is varied. My contract is officially over but they told me to come back Monday so we’ll have to talk duration if they want to extend it. I’m thinking shorter rather than longer.

A little birdie (with magnificent, lavender plumage) told me about a job at his employer which was cool, so I sent a resume to them.

The Richmond company is still “looking at their needs” so whatever.

Finally, I got a call from the headhunter with a new opening which also sounds good and could have me testing something that Carmen wrote. How weird is that?

Hopefully one these works out… Both are transit friendly as opposed to buying a car and driving to Richmond which is a big deal. I’d like to work with Carmen again but I’d also like to work with Gino and Angelo again too.

Mostly though, I just want to work…