For those of you playing along at home, in the grand tradition of crappy things happening to me on my birthday we (the BHH that is) got notice that our lease was not going to be re-newed June 1998. The word that best summed up my reaction to this news was *WAH*!!!!
Not having a job when I left 3Dfx, I dorked around for a couple months, and basically drove myself insane with boredom after about one day. Anyway, I started looking for a job in a pretty low-key sort of way, and ended up talking to some recruiter. The responses from recruiter types fit into one of three categories:
During this time (and continuing to this day), I ended up reading a lot of news (Usenet not the Merc), and saw a posting in comp.lang.ml advertising for a research programmer position in the Compose group at IRISA. Programming languages interest me a lot so I appplied even though I don't speak French and am not an academic. Anyway, they offerred me a job, and true to the random-ness of my nature I accepted.
The French (contrary to a lot of American opinions) are no dummies, and don't let just anyone into their countryl. Foreign nationals need a carté de séjour to work, and just entering the country requires a visa de long séjour. This was all complicated by the european penchant for taking the month of August off and my ignorance of proper beaurocratic procedure. I finally got notice from the Consulate that the OMI (Office des Migrations Internationales) had finished up their side, and all I needed was a physical examination and 5 passport sized photos. The examination was only noteworthy for the question dealing with the number and morphology of my testicles, but my attempt to use this picture was declined.
Well, I'm here now (and have since returned), and (contraty to my previous opinion on the matter) the French may be dummies (me as well since I believed them).
Somehow they let me (someone speaking no french whatsoever) into the country with a simple statement "everyone here speaks english". Translation "everyone in this group speaks english (to varying degrees) but no one else (even in the department) will". In fact, they were paying for me to take french lessons, but I never spoke french to anyone other than my french teacher since my vocabulary didn't last much longer than a few seconds.
alors, au début la vie était dure mais une collegue m'a conseillé à trouver un etudiant franç&ais d'anglais pour partager l'effort. et voilà ça marchais (well, not really since my vocabulary now lasts for a few minutes rather than a few seconds).
When I am not busy being a big geek, I try to get on my bike and ride until exhaustion. My current poison is commuting on a fixed gear conversion of my trusty Serotta, and night riding on a single-speed ibis that I picked up used. (I was told recently that this is the hip thing to do, but I've only met two other fixed gear riders around here (SF Bay Area), and I've never seen a single-speeder during the day or night). There are a lot of great cycling resources out there, and most of them can be found here or here for mountain biking. The Stanford Cycling Club is a great group of people that make spinning your legs in circles for hours at a time fun.
During my unemployed phase I was able to tear myself away from Usenet long enough to get back to reading, sleeping, and listening to npr. (I used to spend time watching tv, but in a recent of fit of sanity I got rid of it and my car). I'm sort of behind on comics these days, but these have never really let me down: Dilbert, Fox Trot, Dave Sim's Cerebus, and of course Sandman. Of course you can't go wrong with a little Calvin & Hobbes.
Looking to me for guidance is a bit silly since most people in the world are wiser than I. However, it is possible to get a peek at their collective wit. If this is not enough for you, here is proof that the 'real' world is a really weird place.
If you are like me, you have no idea what the future may bring then you can get some guidance from the cards. Of course most of you are probably purists anyway and would prefer the time honored horoscope, which is probably more accurate anyway.
Anyway, here is what one reader thinks of my current attempt...
If you want to see what I've been looking at letely (I ask 'Why?') here is my bookmark file . For real pop-culture pleasure check this out.
There are shit-pots of search engines out there, but I've found that Google is by far the best for getting good hits. (I'm feeling lucky). If you want a whacky portal you probably have a better idea than I do about where to go.
Here's poem that I found pretty interesting.
Laters...
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