Firstly… Remember that great job interview I had on Friday? No? Well you should, it was only Friday after all… Well I got the call yesterday to say I actually got it and I start tomorrow morning.
Does this mean my life of shitty temping jobs has finally come to a close? I sure as hell hope so, as most of those jobs were soul sapping and mind numbing, but it also means all my comedy material has gone, no more temping related jokes… None. EVER!
At least I hope not.
But anyways, It will be good to get back into the swing of things, probably means no more watching David Blaine go stir crazy in his box, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it won’t get good till the 3rd or so week.
See? Not a helluva lot happening now. I hope he makes it through the full 44 days though, just to see how loopy he becomes. Should be a good enough warning for anyone.
In response to this inflammatory remark in the latest Strong Bad Email, I thought I should reply in a witty way like:
“I’d rather be squirrel handed than wearing boxing gloves…”
Or
“Gregor is a weird name? Well, yo mamma musta loved you to call ya Strong Bad”
But I’m better than that, and although it’s not directly referencing me (despite my many attempts to get a SBE read out), I’ll think it really is cause how many left handed Gregor’s do you know?
I finally have got the DNS address changed over to my RUWebby webspace. So any linkwhores out there should change the link to www.gregorsmith.com/blog/ stat!
Other than that there isnt much else to say, the bosses are away on a weekend away in the Republic of Ireland (yes, another trip away) so I’m on unofficial server watch until they get back. Here’s hoping it’s as uneventful as last time.
Today I sat for about 8 hours watching live football on TV, been a while since I’ve done that… That’s usually reserved for major events like the World Cup or European Championships so this was a nice distraction.
It all began around 2pm with the build up to the Scotland vs. Faroe Islands game on Sky which Scotland won 3-1… Then over to BBC1 for Englands tricky trip to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia which they done their usual come-from-behind victory to steal the game 2-1… THEN it was straight over to BBC2 to see Wales showdown in Italy, but in the end it was really men against boys. Despite a spirited performance, Wales were humiliated 4-0 and were lucky it wasn’t more.
I had two very different interviews today… One was insufferable and the other was almost joyous. How often does one get to say that?
Interview one was at The Black & White Mortgage Company and I DID not belong there. A recruitment agency put me forward for it and to be honest, I want to know what that person was smoking at the time when she did it. Because before the interview I got literature off the company and it clearly said they were looking for “Fully CeMap qualified Mortgage Advisors with minimum 3 years successful track record in mortgage sales”.
Yeah, like that’s me…
So anyways, I smiled and tried to bluff my way through the HOUR long, torturous interview as best as I could, relying on my past experience of working for Scottish Amicable/Prudential… Hmmm, maybe that’s why they thought I was good for this job, but I never done sales or anything remotely near it, and I was only there for 2 months.
So yeah, lied my ass off throughout the interview and, hell, even I was starting to buy it towards the end… If it wasn’t for the fact I can’t sell for shit and I’m dangerously unqualified, I think they would have offered me the job there and then. C’est la vie, moving on…
Interview two was surreal, It was over at iomart and it was for a job in my chosen field… Web Design, so I was simply oozing enthusiasm for this position as it’s what I’ve wanted to do for a great many years (well, the last 5 anyways) and finally all my hard work could be paying off. And basically I had to talk the interviewer through my work (3 versions of Scam City and some Content-Monkey stuff outlined in my portfolio) and I got the vibe that the guy was somewhat impressed.
“When could you start?”, he asks… “Monday”, I reply, always a good sign I think. But he’s interviewing people on Monday and I’ll get an answer then to provisionally start on Wednesday. So finger’s crossed.
In the meantime, I need a $1000 loan to buy Macromedia Studio MX 2004. Sure, I could wait for a *ahem* copy to surface but, dammit, I want the exclusive limited-edition Macromedia MX 2004 T-shirt!
Where have I seen this before?
Asteroid heads for Earth
September 2, 2003Scientists were today warning of a possible asteroid collision with the Earth.
An asteroid around 1.2 km wide could hit the earth on March 21, 2014 and has been classified as “an event meriting careful monitoring” by astronomers.
But they say the probability of the asteroid hitting Earth is just 1 in 909,000 and the risk of impact is likely to decrease as they collect more information.
The newly-discovered asteroid, known as 2003 QQ47, has a mass of around 2,600 million tonnes.
Its orbit calculations are currently based on just 51 observations during a seven-day period.
The giant rock was first observed on August 24 by Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Program (LINEAR), based in Socorro, New Mexico.
The observations were reported to the Minor Planet Centre in Massachusetts, a centre for all new discoveries of asteroids and comets. The asteroid has been given a classification – known as a “Torino hazard rating” of one – defining it as “an event meriting careful monitoring.”
March 21st 2014 you say? That would be Melody’s 36th birthday, nice present huh?
Anyways, I’m lazy so I’ll steal a few stats from The Copydesk…
The 1.2km-wide asteroid, known as 2003 QQ47, has a mass of around 2,600 billion kg, and would deliver around 350,000 megatones of energy if it impacted with our quiet little planet.
The Hiroshima bomb – named ‘Little Boy’ – was dropped by the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 bomber, at 8.15 in the morning of August 6, 1945.
Its payload was roughly 12-15 kilotones.
When it exploded above the city of Hiroshima, ground temperatures reached about 7,000 degrees, and it wiped out approximately 140,000 people.
If 2003 QQ47 impacted on Paris, almost all of Western Europe would be obliterated within 10 minutes.
The current odds of 2003 QQ47 impacting Earth are 1 in 909,000 – just shy of 1 in a million.
The odds of winning the jackpot on the UK National Lottery are roughly 1 in 13 million.
Of course, the chances of it hitting Earth have been shot down in a media frenzy but thats neither here nor there… One story yesterday made light of the initial chances of 2003 QQ47 hitting Earth.
Sky News said a bookmaker was taking bets on the prospect. A spokesman for William Hill bookmakers likened the 1-in-909,000 odds of doom to the chance that a manned expedition to Mars would arrive and discover the Loch Ness Monster there, or the equally probably scenario that Elvis Presley would reappear and marry Madonna
We now know that the latter two scenarios are far more likely than the world ending in 2014 due to an impact by asteroid 2003 QQ47.
So I guess it’s best not to smoke ‘em if you got ‘em just yet.
I’m bored/boring. I don’t do much…
I invariably spend most of my day hunched over this computer but I don’t actually do anything. I visit a handful of sites (some of which are listed down the side, some are message boards) and maybe I’ll download a few choice songs but really… Where does my time go?
Mostly it goes on Instant Messengers in which I’ve been noticing a continuing trend…
The No-Shows!
14 of a possible 144 people I know are online (8 of those are either busy or away), now I’d never expect everyone to be online at one time, but I have noticed fewer and fewer people are signing on nowadays. Has the golden age of IM programs finally passed as more and more people embrace the “real” world?
Or do I spend too much time here taking note of the fact no one else is here?
I mean it. Whatever you’re drinking, swallow, and set it down. ~stevenf’s The LJ Times, random LiveJournal excerpts presented in the style of a serious newspaper, has the potential to be dangerous to your nasal passages otherwise.
The OmniWeb feature that inspired it, the ability to view-source, edit it, and see your changes, sounds wonderful, and I don’t know why other browsers haven’t stolen it.
And as fun as it is to make fun of LJ-style writing, I still think it’s a wonderful thing. There is exactly one way to become a good writer: write. Not everyone writing “omg: Kevin’s sooooo hot!!!!” will turn out to be a good writer, but every one of them will end up a better writer than they were when they started…
Actually I think blogging is damaging my writing skills, or at least allowing them to atrophy.
Seriously though, just writing will help you improve your writing a bit, editing your work will help you improve dramatically. It is the editing process where you really learn what does and doesn’t work, and become cognizant of your voice as a tool that you can use with intention.
Blogging discourages editing. I occasionally go back and edit old entries, but no one will ever see those except a few lost souls Google sends my way.
Seems like there should be a way (for a certain type of blogging) to productively re-shape the metaphor; change the blog’s role into a wiki-style recent updates page that points into an actual web of contextualized content.
As Hemingway said “there is no such thing as good writing, there is only good re-writing”…
So, it’s been two years since the two planes hit the two towers of the World Trade Center. How much has been accomplished in those two years?
The Taliban were driven out of Afghanistan, but most of it remains a No-Go zone. Iraq was “conquered” but soldiers are still dying today on the lawless streets. Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein still remain at large.
And that’s it.
America vowed to go it alone against terrorists and those who harboured them and screw the rest of the world. Britain, naturally, jumped to America’s aid and are only now realising the consequences of following “Dubyah” into a war they had no right being in.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a sad, sad day (f’in “patriot” day) and I still recoil when I think about that day, watching 3,000 lives disappear live on TV. But I had almost forgotten about it. It was only yesterday I noticed that date was 9/10 and that got me thinking about all the shit that’s went down since.
On a more positive note, my new job KICKS ASS! I spent yesterday loading my brand new PC full of software. I wish I had a CD Burner, but oh well, software piracy will take a back seat here… Today has been about hard work (strange concept if you ask me) and I’m churning out the goods like it’s going out of fashion. Infact I better get back to work now.