I hate looking for a job. I thought the only reason to be mad at DefenseWeb Technologies for laying me off was for breaking their promise that they were not going to lay me off no matter what happened, but now I know that the real reason to be mad is that I have to deal with head hunters.

They are so upbeat, optimistic, but most of them have nothing to offer but empty statements. They want me to visit them and be ‘interviewed’, insist it can’t be done on the phone. But when you get there, its just a re-reading of the resume, most of the time with no clue as to what any of it means. It could have been done over the phone without making me drive for 2 hours each way. They put you forward for positions that I swear don’t really exist as I never hear from them again. Everyone I speak to says the same thing whether it be here or back in England.

On the positive side I think I may be close to a new position. I’m having a face to face on Friday for a job that sounds really interesting. They are looking for a boatload of developers and can’t find any; yeah, basically they’re desperate! Wish me luck.

With the rush of Christmas away, and the theft and house break-in on our return, I’d not checked up on my brain-tumour blogger in England for some time. I was sad to read last night that he lost his fight on Boxing Day. That makes both of ‘my’ tumour sufferers taken to this curse of a disease. Although they both lived with the cancer for longer than my mother, it is proof again that it is a diagnosis of death.

Just today my wife got news of two people well known to her dieing very recently from a cancer of some kind or other. And just as with my mother, these are all good people who did not deserve to be taken from us so soon, and so unkindly.

I’m blogging too much, I know, but here goes another. This time a little meme about my music library courtesy of jschwa.

Sort By Song Title:
First: ‘Til You Can’t Tuck It In by The Beautiful South, from the excellent Painting It Red album.
Last: Zorro Gris by Schifrin, Lalo & Orchestra Ensemble, from the soundtrack to the movie Tango.

Sort By Time:
Shortest: Untitled by Lamb, weighing in at 7 seconds.
Longest: When Will I Be Famous by Bros, I am astounded to see that I have a 29 minute and 10 second remix version of this 80’s hit. Astounded and embarrassed!

Sort By Artist:
First: ¡Cubanismo!, I have most if not all of their albums, absolutely essential if you like that Cuban latin vibe.
Last: Yukihiro Fukutomi with Second Sight [Yukihiro Fukutomi Remix], a little ambient groove that you’ll most likely like.

Top 5 Most Played:

1. Cool by Gwen Stefani | 11 plays
2. Because of You(Jason Nevins Acapella) by Kelly Clarkson | 8 plays
3. Hung Up by Madonna | 7 plays
4. Stickwitu by The Pussycat Dolls | 7 plays
5. 30 Minutes by t.A.T.u. | 6 plays

As I already mentioned some of Brawley’s finest young adults decided to use our house as their playground whilst we were away in England over Christmas. They first broke in when my in-laws were here feeding our dogs, the two girls said they had permission from Erin to use the hot tub. First clue that things were amiss was that they didn’t know how to get to the hot tub. Later during the week my mother-in-law noticed doors open, lights on or off that she hadn’t set and so was certain people had been in the house.

Before we left I had set two cameras - one on top of the fridge downstairs which would show activity in the living room, and the other looking out from the computer, the idea being to capture an image of the computer being stolen but it also looked out to Erin’s bedroom.
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I bought a Dell Axim x51v to replace my stolen iPaq. I found a page that had coupons and other information to get discounts, and sellers on eBay always have $45 off coupons that you can buy for $4 and apply to almost any Dell purchase. Bottom line: got a $600 Axim for $300 direct from Dell.

Had trouble getting it to sync with Outlook though. After much installing and crap I eventually traced the problem to my personal firewall software, Zone Alarm, which was blocking attempts to send data to the Axim.

Now I don’t use Outlook at all, other than as the backup store for my PDA. Instead I use the always wonderful Thunderbird which today announced a brand new version 1.5. If you don’t already use it, I encourage you to check it out.

Big news of the week is the announcement of Apple’s Intel boxes and the hideously named MacBook. I guess they’d run out of iNames but that really is lame. Sweet hardware, and the new iLife totally rocks but still too expensive to justify a purchase for me.

I’m almost ready to put up my rogue’s gallery from the New Year’s break-in, I’ve narrowed 300 pictures down to 15 and will put them up soon.