The job just comes

Fortunate and grateful

In my career life, I have been so fortunate. In the last 12 years, I have hardly had a job where I have had to do all the footwork, rather, there has always been someone, some company, some contract in which I have worked that has lead to another opportunity somewhere else.

I realise, I am never so aggressive about looking for work even though in some cases one should be concerned about knowing when the next bank bloat would be.

But then, I learnt the most important lesson about work just when I went freelance contracting that each day you are appearing at work, you are writing your reference and laying out the paths to success or destruction of your career.

The evil men do

Two CVs came in prospecting for work from people who had worked in that company a few years before. The department manager was new and knew nothing about them so he sounded round other staff about these people.

The report was so bad, I cringed, one had spent all his time running another business rather than doing his work, the other was considered lazy and lackadaisical have done some unmentioned damage to the systems in their tenure.

Basically, this report made them unemployable, since the IT world is fluid, the dispersal of people means that this message would propagate eventual to other opportunities, to redeem themselves they have to be aware of this situation and begin to rebuild their reputations anew – what is almost impossible is rebuilding that with old contacts.

Certification is just the beginning

The lesson reinforced my views about character and professionalism at work, most especially when you are on a short-term contracts, my next job came about through two avenues; a contract that barely lasted 5 weeks and an agency I have worked for since the beginning of the year, it would probably lead on to other things.

I remember when there was a rush by people to attain vendor certifications to move from postal clerk jobs of £7.00/hour to the entry-level £20.00/hour contract jobs in IT Support. Many saw the MCSE and CNE as ends rather than means of developing new careers.

The contracts usually only lasted no more than 3 months before they moved on, having left jobs as fumblers, problem creators and unprofessionally aggressive people with eyes for the money only. By the time they had the first pay packet, they were in the car showroom looking for a show-off Lexus automobile.

I would want to believe that that generation of sorry and hapless contractors have either been eliminated from the market or they have learnt to make better use of their acquired certification to improve their knowledge and usefulness to industry.

Giving thanks

In the end, I believe my life is encompassed with favour and grace rather than sheer luck and good fortune, though in a secular world they all seem to matter.

What better thing could I have done with all these wonderful happenings than to go to church and give thanks for all the blessings that pour into my life everyday.

A coffee blend bereft of Java beans

The last hurdle

Having spent two years on my masters programme towards a degree in Information Technology, I have reached the last hurdle but one. I have done 7 out of 8 modules and now this would have been the last module before my 8 month dissertation.

The module I have left till last is a programming module, just when I found out through the wording making object-oriented programming a core requirement for the degree I could get a could get a waiver, the rules changed.

This is one bridge I must cross, this is one chalice from which I must drink to attain the wisdom of sages as object speaks to object, revealing some, concealing some and at times changing into other things.

Who C, U C, I C, no way

When I first tried C++, it appeared I had entered a class where everyone had their dreams C and spoke to their dog in C++ not forgetting the C# (C – sharp) that accompanies anyone with any musical talent.

I saw it all and I just thought, I cannot compete in this class, I still dream in plain English, I don’t have a pet and I am probably tone deaf – nothing piano-nanny cannot cure with a teaspoon full of sugar.

Unfortunately, C++ does not attract as much a crowd as the alternative object-oriented programming module in Java.

Java addiction

Everyone sniffs the aroma and they are high on the caffeine of Java beans and every kind of macchiato and latte you can concoct from that exclusive blend.

After going through some tutorials, I almost got intoxicated on the stuff, I was day-dreaming of possibilities and opportunities, casting myself as a programmer that has come of age – I almost deluded myself, but it is not an impossibility.

Am I afraid of this thing? Not really, I have my deep premonitions, but I have done quite well in other modules, this is not a cinch but I intend to do well against the odds.

I need a long holiday – Now!

Now, in the impasse between contracts, I feel I need a break, going out to some sunny climes is a moot point, and Spain has been on holiday in the Netherlands for the past 4 weeks. It does not however tempt me to breach the Arctic Circle.

Anyway, I still have a thing for the Canary Islands, but cannot guarantee that I would be able to get a hotel that offers uninterrupted Internet to my room.

My mind, my body craves for a break, somewhere distant from home, the routine, the smells and the everyday people including school work.

So, Java is postponed for another 24 days, by which time, I hope there is inspiration, heart, gusto and a serious inclination to mount the Java bull and steer it in the direction of a good grade.

I really feel like a long holiday – have card, would travel.

Force-fed with Ones and Zeroes

Daytime parcels for night time delivery

Earlier in the week, I picked up a parcel notice from my mailbox. I am still surprised that courier and delivery firms have not cottoned on the fact that the working population in the Netherlands would probably not be at home between 9 to 5, at least the morning shift of 9 to 5 rather than the evening shift of 9 to 5.

I am still of the opinion that evening deliveries is a niche business proposition for any business that decides to get into that business. Basically, everyone with a landline which would be linked to an address can register with a simple code indicating they prefer late deliveries for the period between 20:00 to 22:30.

The information is then accessed by the courier/delivery company when a parcel arrives and for every evening delivery request there is aa annual subscription for the search and a charge for the delivery. The money people can sort out the best pricing model.

So, if anything as big as a thimble is addressed to me, I need to find time to go down to the main post/parcel point with my passport and the parcel notice, it cannot fit in my postbox.

Persons Unknown in silly databases

In the Netherlands, you can put two notices on your postbox latch, No to flyers and unsolicited mail and No to trash – a good deal of what I pick up invites my wife for a beauty treatment amongst other things. I have taken the stuff upstairs but I am yet to find my wife – they must know something I don’t – in my conscious life, I have never been married.

So, the day I got a cold call asking to speak to Mrs Yours Truly, I simply told the caller to stop trying to have an affair with my wife and never ever to call this number again. That serves 2 purposes, a salutary warning that would reverberate and the conscious effort to expunge my name from their databases at best or an annotation – crazy man, don’t call him.

Before my visit, I can check on the Internet to see if the parcel is on location or still in some delivery truck doing an Amsterdam tour from a postman’s perspective.

Big Parcel Big Surprise

So, after showing the post counter my parcel notice and passport the postman produced a rather huge box from UPC – my jaw scraped the ground – I stuttered in bewilderment – I never ordered that.

So, the postman said, UPC (the cable company that delivers my cable TV and Internet services) has been delivering digital media boxes to all addresses with the 6-month free offer which switches to an extra EUR 2 thereafter.

However, if I do not want the service they would return the box at no cost to me. Decision time – I agree to take the box, next problem how to ride back home with a box under one of my midget arms.

My television which is just under 10 years old, was purchased in the UK and it does not work in the Netherlands because the PAL system is really an array of subsystems that do not work together – the UK uses PAL I and the Netherlands uses PAL B/G.

I have always needed an intermediate Dutch VCR to convert the signal to one my television could show with picture and sound in sync. There was a time in the 80s when televisions had the ability to decode 7 systems, but we have gone backwards on that advancement.

The UPC MediaBox

Do the first thing I did, not knowing if the UPC MediaBox would do the signal decoding was to remove the cheap Dutch VCR which could not even do Long Play – I could not believe after I got the VCR back home that any VCR could leave a factory in the 21^st Century without Long Play – well, you learn.

So, I plug in the Media Box, connect the SCART cables and the RF Input from my cable socket and switch on TV and MediaBox.

All instructions appear in Dutch, I can read more than I have ever been able to speak, so I configured the system which threw up 106 or so channels and a good few radio stations (I eventually found the setting to switch to Engels [English in Dutch]). Within 15 minutes the pictures arrive and now I have to note the new locations of my favourite channels as well as find out about the new ones.

News Overload

As I have often been called a news junkie, I was on the hunt for the additional new channels – now I have BBC World (Balance), CNN (Propaganda), Sky News (General), Fox News (Yankee Tripe), Bloomberg (Staple for Creative Accountants), CNBC (Money talk in strange English) and Al Jazeera (The missing Middle East perspective) – These are my personal views which might not find true with my audience.

Then the Discovery Channel comes in four guises and my TV has been stuck on Discovery Channel – Civilisation feeding my fascination with the Second World War.

It appears you do not have a plasma, high-definition television with ambi-light to go digital – my trusty 28” Sony Television has just had another lease of life as Ones and Zeros get forced down our necks to move us all to Digital Television in the Netherlands.