I'm still alive - I swear!

Just haven't posted anything in (quite) awhile. My wife and I went on a short vacation last week, just a few days away from home at the Belterra Casino/Resort. Nice resort, cramped smoke-filled casino (yuck), and in a VERY remote location of the Ohio River. Seriously remote - the nearest 'town' (Vevay, IN) was 8 miles away and was TINY. Consisted of a graveyard, couple churches, Family Dollar, Dairy Queen, Gas station with attached Subway, and a bowling alley that seemed to never open. The town's big claims to fame? Being never the Belterra Resort and being the home of the Switzerland County Visitor's Center. Quite the bustling metropolis, eh?

Despite that, we had a good time, didn't win any money unfortunately - but didn't lose our shirts (house, cars, etc.) So we could have done worse. We happened upon Indiana's most remote McDonald's (check out pin A on this Google Map), and also stopped over in Cincinnati - got some bowling in (because we had to practice with our new bowling balls, of course), had dinner out with friends of the wife, and went out to a movie with the father-in-law. All in all, a good time. But over much too soon, really. Had the remainder of the week off at home and then had to come into work as normal today - blah. Oh well, perhaps I'll finally have some luck on the 'Need a new job' front - I've got another interview coming up on Monday.

Wake up, Kermit

The animation is so-so, but the idea and execution are good - The Muppet Matrix

New addition to the family

My brother and his wife had a baby yesterday - they now have 4 girls! Here's a picture of her :

Christina Ann, Born 4/5/06 at 7:44pm, 7 pounds 1 ounce and 19 inches long.

She's very cute, isn't she? Congrats to my brother Josh and his wife Errin!

No news is not good news

Never heard anything back about the interview I had on the 13th - so I'm guessing I didn't get that job. I had an interview Monday for a position with the City of Columbus, and I think it went well. Hopefully I will hear something about that soon, because they want to do second interviews for it, and I'd want to (hopefully) get in for one before going on vacation, which starts on April 9th. Boy, do I need a vacation.

So, you think YOU'VE got a terrible job?

There's always someone out there with a worse one - (WARNING: Video clip with naughty language!!)
Worst Job in America

Enter the Urban Ninja

Watch this - this guy is one hell of an acrobat!

A fun site for the children of the 80's and 90's

Greetings all! Had an interview for another job opening on Monday, it went pretty well (I thought), and I should hear something back from them soon. Sounds like it'd be a fun job, so I'm really hoping I get this one.
I have a fun link for you today, Retrojunk - Your Memory Machine. Lots of articles about old cartoons and movies and TV shows (mostly from the 80's and 90's), and video too - old commercials, TV show intros and stuff like that. Lots of nostalgic fun for those of us old enough to remember this stuff :)

I'm still here

Been a long while since I've written anything here, sorry about that! Still no happy news on the job search, I've got a few resumes out there and hopefully still have a shot at a job with the City of Columbus. I have no idea when I might hear something from them - I've found that the wheels of government tend to move slowly when they actually move at all. Anyway, in other news I've been playing with my new 60GB iPod a lot recently and I really love it. Just got a FM transmitter/car cradle for it last night, it's very cool. Also, not to change the subject, but since I haven't given you any cool links to browse to recently (and I've been feeling guilty), here's a fun one - Guimp, the world's smallest website. You can play games on the site like Pac Man and Pong and even Asteroids - but the site is a 18 pixel by 18 pixel box! It's crazy tiny - you should check it out!

Google makes video from the National Archives available on Google Video

This is a great idea - Google will be working on digitizing the video content of the National Archives and making it available to all through Google Video. There are some samples available on there right now, like this one - the 1969 moon landing. Very cool!

The search continues!

Still no definitive answers from anyone on the job front, I had an interview Tuesday and I think it went OK. They said I should hear back from them next week if they want me to come back for a second interview. Still waiting to get my results from the test I took for a job with the city of Columbus - I took the test over 2 weeks ago and still haven't received notification yet of how I did. I called them yesterday and left a voicemail, and they called back and said I should get something 'by next week'. So we'll see how that goes. I'd really like to know one way or another on these prospects soon, so I'm really hoping they do let me know next week as promised. It's so difficult to find a new job... but hey, at least I've had a couple of interviews! Up until recently I wasn't even getting THAT far, so getting to a first interview is at least progress in the right direction.

I wonder...

So I'm sure you've heard about Ritchie Sambora and Heather Locklear and their marital difficulty (if not, you can read about it here). I wonder... when she found out and they talked about it, did the conversation maybe go something like this?

Ritchie: Heather, what's up?
Heather: Ritchie, I found these emails, and frankly, I think You Give Love A Bad Name.
Ritchie: Ah baby, no... you gotta believe it ain't like that - I love you, I'm Livin' On A Prayer here baby!
Heather: Look, we knew it might never be a Bed of Roses, and now it looks like it's over.
Ritchie: Ah, baby no - that's some Bad Medicine!!

Yep, I'll bet it was just like that :)

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Greetings all! Unfortunately posting to the blog has taken a back seat recently to the big job search, and to being crazy busy at my current (cruddy) job. It's really been bad, but hope springs eternal! I have an interview with the city of Delaware on Monday, and I'm still in the hunt for a job with the city of Columbus (should hopefully be hearing from them soon). With any luck something will pan out soon, and I'll be telling you all about it right here folks!

Still hoping...

Haven't heard anything back on the "Matt needs a new job" front - yet. Got a few irons in the fire still, and unfortunately none of the places I'm in the process with are moving very fast. With any luck I'll find out something from one (or more) of them next week. I'm still hopeful that at least one of these will pan out... Wish me luck!!

Keep EVERYTHING crossed...

Cause with any luck, I'll have a new job soon. Haven't been able to post recently cause things have been CRAZY at my current job - it's just incredibly busy, and I haven't had time to write any posts up of any significance. So here's a quick post, just a fast update - I'm working on three different jobs I'm currently in the running for, one I am waiting to see if I get a second interview, another I filled out a pre-screening questionnaire and turned it in yesterday, and the last I have to take an exam to see if they think I'm qualified or not. I'll be taking that on Monday. So, we will see how things go over the next couple of weeks - but with any luck, I'll have a new job soon.

Well THAT was annoying

Hello, and thanks for reading an official NOT 'spam blog'. Apparently Blogger has bots that sweep through blogs they host and flag them as 'spam blogs', disabling them from posting till the owner fills out a form and submits it to Blogger. And my blog was flagged yesterday - I just got access to post back today. So I had already written the post below this one, and decided to go ahead and publish it too. Silly automated processes, but it's all better because the Blogger admins have my blog on the whitelist now. Still was a pain in the rear though.

It was 20 years ago yesterday...

Yes folks, on January 19th, 1986 the first computer virus was discovered. It was a boot sector virus, and was spread from infected floppy disks (ah, those were the days...), a far less serious problem than the worms and trojans and other crud traversing the networks of today thanks to the internet. So in honor of this historic moment in history, let's all make sure our anti-virus programs are up to date and we do a full virus scan, what do you say?

Arrgh...

I hate cars. I totally hate them, with a passion. It never fails, just when you think one is running alright and everything is fine... BAM!!
I had a problem a few months back with the power window on the passenger side of my truck (this is not the actual truck (mine is magenta), just a picture I found so you could see what it looks like). It was stuck down, and I couldn't get the power window to roll back up! I could pull it up so that it was closed at least, but it would slide back down if you hit a bump. So it turns out that the regulator for that window had died, and after a few days and $500 (or so) dollars, it was fixed. Well, now (of course) the DRIVER side window is broken - only this time, I can't get at it to pull it back up! So it's stuck ALL THE WAY DOWN, and folks, it was a COLD drive to work today. I'm very annoyed and pissed off, and since I'll bet the regulator on that window is dead (cause it just figures it will be), it looks like I'm also out another $500...

iPod users are not as likely to steal music

According to a study conducted recently, owners of Apple iPods are less likely to steal music than users of other MP3 players. The survey of US and UK music buyers reveals that even though 25 per cent of people admit to downloading music from file-sharing services, only seven per cent of iPod owners do so. I guess we iPod owners are just an honest bunch, eh? This sure would seem to contradict Steve Ballmer's opinion of iPod users, back in 2004 he told reporters in London that "The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'". Oh well, I guess you can't be right all of the time, right Steve?

Email spam on the decline - uh yeah... sure it is

Here's another quick post for today - I found a funny opinion article written for The Guardian that seems to think that spam emails are on the decline. Right - SURE they are :) I get quite a bit of spam still, but I'll admit that very little of it ever hits my inbox. The majority of it is filtered out by the spam filters I use - my ISP provided accounts (which are POP accounts) I pull down with Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5, and it has a really great built in junk mail filter. I also have a Google Gmail account, and their spam filtering works really well too. I still get spam - but I can just delete it easily and never really have to look at it much. Which is nice, since I'm not looking to buy any penny stocks, or help out the Nigerian Finance Minister, or increase the size of my member.

Computer problems driving UK citizens to alcohol and smoking to cope with the stress

Howdy all - sorry I haven't posted in so long, but I've been pretty busy recently. Having to come back to work after a vacation sucks, hard. Anyhow, I was reading this article from BBC News about a poll conducted by UK charity Developing Patient Partnerships about what causes stress for them. 30% responded that 'IT Problems' cause them the most stress, and out of the 1000 people polled, 27% of men and 23% of women said they would light up a cigarette in such situations. And more than a third of men and a quarter of women have a drink to cope with stress. So it looks like computer woes are leading people in the UK to ruin - I know that my problems make me wish I could have a few drinks every now and then!