Interesting Times
I'm not quite sure how to start this entry off, as it's about a few assorted things rather than a singular main topic. So for lack of a better plan, I guess I'll just dive right in :D.
The first thing I wanna mention is I recently got a new computer. Not very exciting, I know, but, for me it is a wonderful thing. Not because I'm fetishistically excitable about computers or anything, but simply because my old computer was over 6 years old, and while it had once been a faithful functional device, over those years it gradually came to really, really, suck. It wasn't that I had loaded it with intensive programs that were designed for machines made after it was or anything either - I hardly ever gamed on it, and pretty much just browsed the Internet and used basic applications like Word. Yet, for whatever reason, and my personal theory is that since pretty much no one uses 1 computer for 6 years and upgrade well before then, they aren't built to last that long anyway to save on manufacturing costs, and my old computer was just physically wearing out like the human body does as you get old. Whenever I voice that theory it seems to be met with at best scepticism, but anyway, whatever the actual reason is, my old computer was painful to use, as in random 5 minute freeze-ups in Internet Explorer, 2 minute freeze-ups on the desktop - 2 minutes doesn't sound like long, I know, but try just stopping and sitting there for 2 minutes, do nothing except watch the clock in the corner of the screen until 2 minutes have elapsed. It was like that for me randomly, except I couldn't watch the minutes go by because even the clock froze, only to jump forwards X minutes when the machine finally broke out of its daze, and Heaven forbid I try to do anything as ambitious as programming. So, yes, like a wheelchair-bound man who has regained the ability to walk, please excuse me as I relish in freedom from a long-carried and unjust burden. My new computer isn't even very special by modern standards. 2 gigs of RAM, 320 gigs of memory, it was a pretty economy buy, although with the software that came with and such it still totalled out at an approximately £600 price tag. For the record, last I looked have less than half that in my bank account, including the savings part, and I didn't buy it either, my dad did. So yeah, really could not have afforded it by myself, and even though it's nothing special, it actually runs - it doesn't freeze up as a matter of daily routine, and it even runs programming applications smoothly, and that for me is a source of immense, neo-euphoric relief.
Which isn't to say everything's been going smoothly. After my father and I bought it and brought it home and set it up, we used a special link device to copy over most of my old PC's content to the new one, preserving settings and file structure and such, which was nice. One thing the transfer couldn't copy over was applications, mind. We did that, and set everything up, and couldn't get online. A number of tech support calls later, which my dad insisted on making and handling, it turned out my current modem was simply not compatible with the new PC. My father, who has spent his entire career working in IT and IT-related matters and retired about a month ago, had never heard of such a thing, and when I told my friend from university later on, who is very tech-savvy and knows his hardware and has a beast of a machine at home, he hadn't either, but there you have it. My new PC couldn't get online, and since the previous file transfer hadn't copied applications, such as all my code-writing programs, the machine was basically useless. A (thankfully free) replacement modem was sent and arrived several days later, during which I was running a Frankenstein combination of my old PC, new monitor, old speakers, new mouse and keyboard, just cus.
Another thing that happened, shortly after I got my new modem, or router as it technically is, and switched to my new PC, is I got to go to my first ever job interview, wee! That's actually probably a little pathetic in how long it took, but firstly between the economy and having a PC that made trying to program at home like trying to train for a swimming contest in a desert until but days ago, I think it's excusable, and secondly, what the Hell, better late than never right XD? Anyway, I had this thing, which was more of a full day event than a regular interview, and which involved me wearing a suit, something I feel so out of character doing. I need to practice my tie knots, it seems, as I couldn't get it done up and ended up just carrying it folded in my pocket the whole day. The company I was going to see was Cable & Wireless Communications, if that means anything to anyone, and I got there in plenty of time, which was good as I had a minor scare at the front desk when they asked for some information I didn't have on me, but after a bit I got sent through anyway. That was actually the last moment of real nerves in all of the day for me, happily enough. Myself and I believe 15 or so other candidates were due to show up, although a few didn't and we totalled in at 11 or 12 I think. I had some lingering nerves for a few minutes, but they faded pretty quickly as I sat with my fellow candidates, most being graduates like myself, and I basically broke the ice and got some conversation flowing. It's strange, because believe it or not I can actually be quite shy, but honestly I've done the "New big unfamiliar thing/place" scene so many times I've kinda gotten the hang of it. School, and a second school, and a part-time school, and a boarding school, and a college, and another college, and university... I've kinda gotten used to feeling like a fish out of water, somewhat. The day officially started at 10PM, although I arrived (first!) before that, as did several others; by the time we had lunch I had long been chatting and cracking jokes to the whole room like I was back in uni. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.
The staff who were hosting us introduced themselves, encouraged us to avail ourselves of the water and biscuits laid out, which I already had been, and gave a presentation about the company and the jobs on offer, as there were 2 different roles being interviewed for, 1 of which I wanted, although I think that each role had 2 spaces to fill. As part of the day's events we had been told many days ago to prepare a little presentation of our own, 8 slides/15 minutes, to make on the company's past, present and future, with the added twist that on the day itself we would be paired off with another candidate, not of our own choosing, and whom we'd never met before of course, and would have to mix our 2 presentations into 1, while sticking to the original 8 slides/15 minutes specs. This, along with 2 15-minutes-ish interviews, would form the assessment we went through. I was paired with a guy whose name I believe was spelled Juan Virgil, and who was Italian or Spanish, I think Italian but he had studied in both countries. He was a nice guy and held 2 Masters, and was probably the most qualified candidate out of all of us, but felt nervous as English wasn't his native language, and he hated giving presentations even in his native language. We had 1 hour to combine our presentations, which I think we did pretty well, and as it happened I and Juan were up second. The first group to go up had some minor technical difficulties I heard, a little fiddling with the projector to get it in focus by the staff running things, a few minutes of slight hassle at best it sounded. I will detail in crisp, concise form what happened when I stepped into that room to give our presentation.
The laptop we were to use was password-locked, my guess is a passworded screensaver since the previous group had been using it only minutes ago, and the staff had to wait for the person with the password to arrive to unlock it. The projector was turned on, but was too out of focus for their satisfaction. After extensive fiddling, they gave up and sent for a second projector. A second projector came, and they couldn't turn it on. They tried a different plug socket, and the projector turned on upside-down. They turned it over, and the device was whirring like a chainsaw being heard through a radio. The projector stopped working, you could smell burning. I am not making this up. It was still whirring madly, presumably overheating massively, and I was sincerely worried it was going to catch fire or experience a minor explosion. They took the second projector away, and were about to settle for the first one, when they decided as a last resort to try hooking the laptop up to one of the 2 flatscreen TVs on the wall behind them. This worked, and we gave our presentation. Each group was scheduled for 20 minutes, 15 for the presentation and a little extra for questions after. We were in there for 40 minutes, and our presentation stuck pretty close to its set time.
After that, I was honestly having too much fun for the slightest bit of stress or anxiety for the rest of the day. When we got back one guy joked that I had hacked it to happen, and to the whole room I was just like "Yeah, I hacked a projector, I'm that good, you guys are screwed". Hehe, oh man I was having fun, I said more than once I should just apply for jobs whenever I want a fun day out, even if I have one. Lunch was an enjoyable affair, despite the bizarre traditional practice of providing sandwiches mostly filled with utterly alien combinations. Being old-hat at these things, I quickly staked out the plain, sane ham sandwiches, and left the others to enjoy the kiwi fruit and giraffe variety. After that came first one then the other interview, spaced out as they were doing us 2 at a time, 1 in each, and I filled the time between with enjoyable banter with the other candidates, while in the interviews themselves I reckon I didn't do badly, which is good being my first time at it, and feedback on questions I asked like how my CV looked was pretty positive, so all in all I had a really fun time. I should hear whether or not I got the job this Monday, so by the time people read this I may already know. I reckon the sheer odds are against me, as there were 4 spaces and about 12 of us, but it was my very first interview so I'm not expecting it to be that easy, and it was a good experience and fun whatever the outcome.
After I got back home, I got a call from my friend, Joe, my aforementioned tech-savvy university buddy, inviting me over, which was awesome as it's always great to visit him. I got changed out of my suit and headed out, catching a train to be picked up by car on the other end. I spent the night there, where I was treated to a Pizza Hut dinner which included a large pizza for us each and Stuffed Crust on mine. Joe is the kind of friend it's almost impossible to express how much you appreciate them to as one male to another in a heterosexual way without it getting awkward. I just want to put it out there though that he is awesome. We played games and watched Anime together, and I got to see Sonic 4 in action live in front of me for the first time, as he had gotten it a couple of days ago. He even let me play one of the acts first time, one that he hadn't, which was really great of him. It was Act 3 of the Mad Gear Zone, for anyone who owns the game, which had the level gimmick of being chased by a giant crushing buzzsaw-riddled wall. Hehehe, I sure picked a Hell of a level to learn how to play on XD, but at the cost of several lives I did actually manage to beat it, wheee ^^! I passed the controller back to Joe as I didn't wanna steal the first crack at the boss, who turned out to be pretty damned tough, and in the end I was actually the one to beat him, on my second try, so I feel kinda cool about that, hehehe, although credit to Joe, he got within 1 hit of killing him more than once - we just thought his second stage had about 6 hits like the first, but it only had 3. We also played Bully, which was surprisingly addicting, and some COD: Black Ops, in which I managed a couple of moments of competence while we played online together, and shot Joe a few times as he painted the town red with my blood offline. Spent the night, continued the fun in the morning, eventually left together as Joe had uni classes, but we caught lunch out together, and it was in a nutshell a really awesome time. The interview the day before made my day, but that awesome visit right afterwards made my week, hehehe.
On a final note, I'm still in the process of fully sorting out my new computer. It was without any sound for a few days, as I had to unplug my speakers to make room to plug in the router, whereas the modem hadn't needed plugging in. I sorted that out a little before the interview, but more recently it turns out my printer/scanner is completely incompatible with Windows 7, my new PC's operating system. Joe and my dad were, once again, taken aback when I told them. I'll need a new one, but in the meantime I had to unplug my computer, and hook up my old computer again and boot it up, just to use the scanner to scan my passport for a formality related to the job interview, then shut it down, unplug it and plug in my new PC again. Another thing I need to do is set up the programming environment on my new PC, since I couldn't transfer that over from the old one. Forgive the tech-speak, but I downloaded the JDK, again, which includes the JSE, which I need to install Netbeans, which I can use to write in pretty much every language I have proper experience in. Using Netbeans was the biggest reason for wanting to upgrade, as while I had it on my old computer, it chugged like Hell. I'm talking, literally, freezing up for 8, 10 minutes right in the middle of writing a line of code, no special reason, just, bang, stuck. It took me literally hours, 2, 3, more, I forget, to write 3 web pages that should have taken 20 minutes. I could not work like that. So I downloaded Netbeans, and tried running the 2 projects I had started on back on my old PC before giving up, 1 Java-based, and 1 PHP-based. The Java one wouldn't work, and the PHP one wouldn't work. After much Goggling and trying things out, I gave up and called Joe. I think I woke him up, for which I apologise, but he did help XD. On the PHP front, it turned out that even though I was doing the exact thing he had told me to do last time, remembering it and doing it correctly, it still was not working, and in the end the only way I fixed it was to start a new project and manually copy over the contents of the old one. Now this worked, and since I also downloaded WAMP I can once again work in HTML, MySQL, and PHP, but whereas most people probably have this idea of programming as some field of logic and reason and intellect, where complex problems are resolved with savvy moments of insight, I don't know why the old project wouldn't work, Joe doesn't know, neither of us know why the new project did as they were set up identically, and we were basically metaphorically hitting the thing with a spanner and praying things would rattle into some functional order. As for the Java one, we couldn't get that working at all, even though Joe went through the same steps on his PC, because he didn't hit the problem I did, and he doesn't know how to fix it as he thinks it's a Windows 7 related issue. Are you starting to see the experience with computers and technology I have as a matter of course? I've gone to quite some lengths to describe things for that purpose, as I could likely have made this entry half as long, but I hope to capture but a morsel of the sub-dimension of illogic and insanity I swim through, day and night XD. Give me a seasoned skilled technician with a powerful grasp and grounding in rationality and reason, and I'll give him religion. My father, who has made a career of managing people and projects and problems on a major scale, is regularly foxed and dumbfounded when he visits me to handle what by every account should be a trivial matter. I'll make you believe. Come visit me, and that logic, that reason, that sane solid world you believe in, where things happen for reasons rather than just because, and you can progress towards a goal in a neat chain of cause and effect that can be understood, and finding answers makes sense instead of simply having you gasping "Thank God it's working now!", that happy little place of sense, will melt like ice in a desert. Enjoy being able to exert some kind of rational influence over the world and events around you, because if you ever take to hanging around me for long, you'll find a world where you'll feel nothing else so much as that your every effort is just dancing for the twisted amusement of some unseen influence, that you have absolutely no power to change or control things at all and can only flail around and hope you entertain whatever is toying with you enough for it to grant you small mercies, cheese for the maze-rats.
If I wasn't so lovable I don't think I'd have a single friend XD.