Well, my blog STILL exists. heh, neat.

Hey guys and gals,

Well, here it is the end of 2018 and I've just found out that my blog still exists. Pretty cool since my last post was 7 or so years ago!

I'm starting a new job @ T-Mobile on 12/27/18 and can't WAIT to get started. It's only a 3-6 month contract to hire, but that last part is the important part. I may FINALLY find a 'home' to settle down at and with any luck avoid interviewing EVER AGAIN! Boy would that be cool!

LONG time no talk

I'm baaaaaaaaaaack.  I thought I'd check in and see if my blogger.com account was even still active.  Apparently it is.  So, what to say.  It's been quite some time since my last post and here I sit drawing a blank.  Lots of stuff has gone on in my life since 2009.. about two years worth of stuff in fact!

Linda is finally home!

My wife was living and working down in Los Angeles and only moved back up to Seattle (Edmonds) over memorial day 2011.  She was down there for the better part of 9 years, but finally got the opportunity to transfer up to the Seattle office of Aon Risk Services.  This, needless to say, was quite a happy day for me, let alone her.  She brought another cat with her (long story), but he's getting along with the two we have at the Edmonds house, so all is well.  His name is Mo, which is short for Mouth, because apparently when he was a kitteh, he was quite .. talkative.

So, what else.. well, I'm getting more and more involved, finally, with the local dev (software development) community, mainly via twitter.  I've realized that I really should be doing a technical blog, but am unsure whether or not I should simply turn this one in that direction, or create a new one.  I'm thinking a new one is probably the best idea as the development community may or may not give a rats rear what's going on in my personal life.  For that matter, I'm not sure if ANYONE reads this as it is about lil ole me's personal life, and was meant to keep family abreast of what's up with me.  Sadly, most of my family are rather technologically challenged.

Today is my last day @ my Frontier Communications contract.  I feel like I had a serious growth spurt while here (as a developer of course), and will definitely miss the people here as they have been just wonderful to work for and with.  I'm heading to *gasp* Eastgate to work with the fine folks at Ramp Group, where I'll be doing all manner of challenging work.  The good news is that I'll only have to haul myself down to Eastgate once or twice a week and will be working from home the rest of the time.

I suppose that's it for now.  I think I'll post a link to this on twitter and see what happens.  ; )

I should probably be blogging about my job search, or .. something.

Well, since Monday, November 3, 2008, the day I got laid off and my cat died, I have not had a job. I have been working on the web site (http://PillowTalkProfiles.com) I built for some friends (for which I'm getting an equity stake), and thankfully that's keeping me busy, but I'd sure love to find a good solid job!

It amazes me that with 18 years in software development, I can't get any more traction than the occasional rejection letter/e-mail. And you know it's bad when you're excited to have gotten a rejection because at least you know someone at least read your resume! Of course, if you think about it, they may not have even gotten that far. Maybe they're simply a company willing to take the time to let you know that you didn't pass muster for whatever reason; perhaps because you were 742nd in the pile of resumes.

Ah well, such is life during these fun economic times. Just gotta keep plugging away as there really isn't any alternative besides giving up, and I can't see how that would help anyone.

-S

Our beloved kitty Bert passed away monday night.

The hardest part is that we have no idea WTF happened.

We had just gotten him over his urinary blockage incident (which almost killed him!) and he's been acting, well, just fine! We really thought the worst was behind us, I mean, he was only 8!

What happened is this; He was doing just great Sunday night (11/2/08), then monday morning when the cleaning lady showed up, she found him "foaming at the mouth" and breathing through his mouth as well. (Cats only 'pant' when they're very freaked out apparently) So, she took him to the vet for us at about 10:30am.

So, after finding out that my job was ending that day (I was on a contract and was told that it would go to the end of the year) I got home and went straight to the Vet and the vet said she wanted me to take him to the emergency vet place for observation as he seemed to get a bit better after she treated him for having gotten into some pesticides (which he hadn't, but thats what she assumed given his symptoms.) So I take him to the emergency place and they do their intake and ask a bunch of questions about what he might have gotten in to, but there is nothing here that he hasn't already been exposed to his whole life so we were kinda stumped. The vet guy said that he was going to give Bert a seditive just to see if calming him down a bit would help.

I left the emergency vet place around 7:30pm and went home. I'm sitting around watching T.V. and at about 9:20pm he [the emergency vet] calls and says that Bert's having a "neurological episode" (very possibly a stroke of some kind) and I told him to go ahead with CPR (we already said thats what we wanted) then I called Linda.

That went about as you'd expect. I told her that one of us needed to call them back and she decidec to be the one to do that. So, she calls them back and found out that he wasn't going to "come out of it" and be ok so she told them to go ahead and put him down because she/we did NOT want him to suffer any more than he may have already / up to that point.

So that is basically how we lost the 2nd of our two very loved kitteh's.

Of course, we still have P.I. (Polar Ice as named by the place we adopted him from) who we also love very much. At this point we are unsure as to whether or not we will get him a buddy/brother.

-Scott

Whoa.. things have changed

Imma try to start blogging again, so I came here to login and things have changed! Not too big a deal of course, and in fact I shouldn't be suprised given the fact that its been like 2+ years since I've done anything here.

heh, more later,
Beavis (Scott)

Wow, I really should blog more

...but the thing is, there is a lot of stuff that I just can't talk about in public. You see, I do watch the news and I know that company's are nosy these days and the LAST thing I need is for the people I work for to know what goes on in my private life. ;)

-S

What is the BPDG?

This is a VERY important question!

I know many of you may get as far as the web page I'm directing you to and not want to read it all, but trust me when I tell you, this is going to affect every last one of us.

PLEASE read this blog entry ( http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000113.html ) from The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) ( www.eff.org )

Short of that, the following couple of paragraphs should definitely get your attention if you’re a parent who likes taking pictures of your kids!

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Unintended Consequences

It's outrageous that Hollywood would demand a law that intentionally breaks technology so that it can't be used in lawful ways, but the unintended consequences of this regime are even more bizarre.

Virtually everything in our world is copyrighted or trademarked by someone, from the facades of famous sky-scrapers to the background music at your local mall. If ADCs are constrained from performing analog-to-digital conversion of all watermarked copyrighted works, you might end up with a cellphone that switches itself off when you get within range of the copyrighted music on your stereo; a camcorder that refuses to store your child's first steps because he is taking them within eyeshot of a television playing a copyrighted cartoon; a camera that won't snap your holiday moments if they take place against the copyrighted backdrop of a chain store such as Starbucks, which forbids on-premises photography because its fixtures are proprietary works.

**************************

So, sit back and allow Hollywood to get away with this crap and don't be surprised it becomes VERY difficult to so much as take a picture of your kids! I'm guessing, but its probably more about what your senator's and/or congressmen are allowing Hollywood to get away with actually.

Just HAD to say something about THIS crap!

-S