Nachos

XKCD is a really funny webcomic. I’ve been reading it for almost two years.
Here’s the newest one:

Nachos

P.S. XKCD’s main website was redesigned to commemorate the shutting down of Yahoo! GeoCities. It resembles the websites built at 90s with all those animated GIFs, backgrounds, images, etcetera.

Book: Extraordinary Narrations – Edgar Allan Poe

I started this book since March, and I just finished it the last week.

It contains the following short stories:

• Eleonora
• Metzengerstein
• The Imp of the Perverse
• The Black Cat
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue
• William Wilson
• The Purloined Letter
• The Pit and the Pendulum
• The Fall of the House of Usher
• The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
• The Gold-Bug
• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
• The Tell-Tale Heart
• The Cask of Amontillado

If you ask me which one I liked the most, I’d say: The pit and the Pendulum.

The Pit and the Pendulum

Here we go Ubuntu!

I just finished the set up of a “server” running Ubuntu. The “server” is my old P4 1.3 ghz desktop PC.

It was on the closet getting dust, so I decided to set it up using Ubuntu. I’m planning to install XAMPP so I can get Apache, MySQL and PHP.

Why do I need all the stuff?
During my job hunt I realized that most of the job offers require knowledge in SQL so I thought that it would be good to learn a little bit more about it.

Here’s my configuration:

• Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop
• VNC (As I’m using my old PC, I didn’t want the old, big CRT monitor on my small, full of things, desk so I followed this guide. Likewise you’re gonna need a VNC Client; there are a lot of them but on my Macbook I use Chicken of the VNC.)
• Linksys running DD-WRT (my LAN)

To install XAMPP I will follow this guide. Also in this same page you can find a lot of practice examples; the author of the blog has called these posts “Operaciones con bases de datos ofimáticas y corporativas”.

Any recommendations?

Ubuntu

Welcome Back to Reality

It has been 3 weeks since my vacation trip was over, everything over there was great and I just have to say thank you again to all my family.

Getting back to reality, the situation, at least in Guadalajara, is really bad. During this 3 weeks I’ve been looking for a job without any luck.

I’ve had three job interviews: iGate told me thanks for coming but as you used to work for TATA we can’t hire you because we are Indian Companies and we have an agreement (WTF?); i went to HTC as well and they told me to wait for a call back, which I haven’t received yet.

The last one was for Flextronics, but I didn’t go directly to Flextronics, instead I went to this Agency called ESCARH and the HR girl promised to call me back on Monday (tomorrow) so she can set an appointment for me in Flextronics.

I just need a lot of patience (and a little bit of extra money to keep surviving).

Job Wanted

Knott’s Berry Farm: Silver Bullet

Here I am again.

Yesterday my family took me to Knott’s Berry Farm and it was awesome!
I had never been before on a crazy ride like that; the craziest thing I had been on, is the “Titan” in Selva Magica.

As you may imagine they sell the video of the ride, it was expensive though (~$15 USD), but I bought it because I wanted to have a memory besides of the pictures.

Here’s the video and please comment!

Freedom!

A long time has passed since I got free from that company, and now I feel happy!

My last day working was on July 3rd and that same day my vacations started.

It’s time to relax; one week before going back I will start looking for a job.

Corona

Training the guy on India: Day 3

Monday, day 3 of training; 4 days left to quit.

Today we started the training, as usual, at 7:30am more or less. I asked him again about his IDs and, as I thought, they were not ready. So we did it in the same way as before, through chat. We finished with the session and we got disconnected from Netmeeting.

Twenty minutes later my phone was ringing, I looked at the Caller ID and it was him. I picked up the phone and after the greetings he asked me if I could grant access to a different ID that it was not his; I said no (c’mon my position is “Security Help Desk”, I cant allow that xD). I told Nambi “if I do that, it’s going to be a Security violation” (and the Bank is very picky about it), so he said “I call you back”.

A few minutes later, I received a call from my manager and he was asking me to join to a phone conference with Nambi’s manager, Nambi, him and I. In this conference I was asked to share my IDs and passwords with Nambi, so he can see how the applications look like and get some step-by-step training.

The step-by-step training was beggining when suddenly Nambi’s manager contacted me, telling me that the idea of share my ID was not correct and therefore to drop it.

The funny thing about all this is that I’m not going to provide this training anymore, for all those things that happend in day 1 and day 2. Instead, training will be taught by my colleague in the U.S.: Rod (he was really mad when he found it out).

Let’s see what happens in the next 4 days…

My Desktop

My Desktop, originally uploaded by Mr. Figgs.

Today I cleaned the computer’s room, so I decided to take a photo of it.
Here it is!

Cisco Networking Academy NetRiders

Cisco Networking Academy NetRiders

I just got a reminder email about my Cisco Networking Academy NetRiders competition.

But, What’s Cisco Networking Academy NetRiders?
In Cisco words: “Cisco Networking Academy NetRiders is a great opportunity to showcase your skills and gain visibility among talent recruiters in the growing ICT and networking field.”

I will go to bed right now because my competition starts in 10 hours.

Good night!

More info: http://www.cisco.com/web/LA/netacad/netriders/EN/index.html

Training the guy on India: Day 2

Well the day 2 of training has come and as I thought with more problems.

Yesterday was a very frustrating day after being send a lot of emails to the manager of the trainee with very specific requests to get the Screen sharing feature, just to receive answers like: “Follow the document attached”. At the end this guy sent an email to somebody else asking to help me out (like we say in spanish: “Paso la bolita”.)

Today morning Nambi called me and the first thing I asked him was: “Do you know if your manager found out how to share the screens?”. As usual he said something, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I said “OK” and he told me something like “bbbbbb ip address netmeeting”, so I asked, “Are you telling me your IP Address?” and he answered “Yeah”.

“OK, May I Have your IP Address again please?” – I said
“wo, fah, sn, dot, bb, bb, bb, dot, bb, bb, bb, dot, bb, bb, bb” – He said (At least that’s what I heard)
“Could you repeat that please? – I asked
Well, the thing is he had to repeat me his ip address until i got the frigging number!

We started the netmeeting session and I only explained him the Session #2 (2 of 5) through the chat. I didn’t have the chance to show him the whole process and how to process the requests.

Please don’t blame me if he doesn’t learn in a good way.

The next session will be on Monday, I hope that Nambi has everything up and running by that day.