I had a nightmare again last night. It’s often something with Pennywise the clown from the 1990 version of IT, which I did watch in my youth. I still remember one time (might’ve even written about it) in another dream like when he came out of one of those Norwegian fish gratins, the type you put in the micro wave oven; the mashed potatoes and the sause and fish and all that became Pennywise’s grotesque clown face and I woke up. This time I don’t remember anything specific unfortunately, just that I had a nightmare with Pennywise in it again.
It’s a damn feeling the waking up in the middle of the night, too scared to move and too scared to go back to sleep. Mmm
speaking of which, there is one type of food which I find very sad. It’s the whole grain spaghetti: you take something good and remove all which makes you happy about it except the shape, and make it into something I would’ve enjoyed if I were a horse.
I think life is tough enough already in a world like this.
I’ve been stomach sick it wasn’t (only) the black bile then, but the yellow one too. In either case, I believe the medieval doctor might’ve recommended bloodletting.
But now it’s all good.
I’m having this week off to spend time with the family.
The hen:
The hen was so beautiful: the feathers were of a gray like tone which in sort of like a gradient to a beige like yellow. Just incredibly beautiful. Her wonderful little cute chicken face, though, was her greatest aspect I think. She had dark eyes which looked old and tired, a beautiful pink comb and a beak which was gray at the base and yellow at the tip which gave her a really stern expression.
Hens do have the resting bitch face which makes them look awesome.
She was old and slow, first one to roost, didn’t lay no eggs and had a mild and gentle temperament. She always included the new chickens and hatchlings in her daily activities. At one point she and a few young turkeys had formed their own clique and went about their business in the sun. Mostly that includes laying in the sun or looking for food or sand bathing and stuff like that.
There’s another little hen it’s the feisty one with a very big personality and a white beak. Her last night the gray one rested her little head on her white friend (Chickaleta) and I knew something was up.
And when she died she weight nothing, like a balloon with feathers on it, but I used to feel her warmth and the beating of her heart but now she is cold and the heart doesn’t beat no more.
She’s buried in the compost heap.
That’s the obituary.
Today my favourite hen died of age.
It’s been a dark time and today I was freezing even though I piled firewood on there in the fire place and sat right in front of it. and even though I ate a lot I felt like there was a hole in me I could not fill. And even though the sun shone today on me I was inside freezing. And even though it wasn’t so cold I was freezing inside.
It’s the humours having yet another imbalance. too much of the black bile. That’s the scientific explanation.
Or the moon batteries are depleted
but I’ll push through, for I am an iron golem and a fitness robot.
Hey isn’t it strange that they expect you to do and carry out code tests like homework? when looking for the IT job? I’ve done a variety, like there was this one day they had this Ubuntu machine and I had to figure out what was wrong with it.
It’s the same always when interviewing for Linux sys adm jobs, the task is always without exception to figure out why the disk is full even though it shouldn’t and it’s always either a) there are no inodes left (df -i), or b) a (big) file has been deleted, but the file handle is open cause there’s a process running which is using it still (lsof). Either they’ll want you to recover the file thru /proc/$pid/fd or else typically kill the process and thus free the space it used. Or c) the 5% (or whatever) root user allocation, which I dont remember off the top of my head how to fix. Theres a tune2fs flag or some shit like that.
Also sometimes a complimentary quiz about esoteric commands which you never actually encounter normally or at least I haven’t, like to do chattr -i if a root cannot remove a file, to remove the immutable property, or something.
for dev work its more like an IQ test soduko sudoku mind puzzle that you do on a screen and all around you are some smug looking hipster type guys who look at the screen with a bored expressions on their faces and make you self conscious because indeed they are judging you and watching you type and spiral into a type of soft lockup. Or they just want to see you JOIN two tables which also is hard under those circumstances.
If there are homeworks for dev work, its the knapsack problem or something.
I’ve never done a homework during school and it is fucked up to be doing it now as an adult so by default I would always typically decline such jobs, but alas the times have changed and you cannot feed your family on principles and pride.
This reminds me of a poster I found in an old punk LP which was like a big black white newspaper and which had this text on it: “don’t eat your soul to fill your belly” and I’m thinking about it now that it’s such a snarky remark. Even though I thought it was cool when I was young.
Hello I’m resurrecting my own contracting firm again. It’s a done decision. Is because I am more of a hired gunman / mercenary archetype than a serf. It’s the trade off between safety vs independence (and money), (which is a false comparison because safety is a mere illusion). It’s because I wish to be more of a wolf than a dog on a leash. Or I could be a wild dog or a hyena. Or a regular unleashed dog.
Anyhow I’ve started creating my CV. It’s an activity I hate all aspects of. First I started doing it using some .docx or google doc template and copy pasting snippets from various sources like older CV:s, often thereby destroying the formatting. That process annoys and even angers me. However I found this RenderCV project on Github, and I’ve asked ChatGPT to embellish my Linkedin profile, so I’m feeding that text to the YAML source and yes it’s taking shape. I don’t like writing the CV text because it feels like four pages of bragging. The thing is; how can I convince the potential clients that I’m humble when I hand in four pages of bragging? Normally I would let my high quality top notch work do the talking on my behalf, and meanwhile I would be truthful about that there are things in all aspects of my life I could improve.
Anyhow
Some people claim detailed really thick CVs are best, others recommend a terse, max 1 page. I’ll make both variants and use my gut feeling about which one send to which client. Maybe a custom tailored one for someone. Like catfishing.
The second preparation, and this it’s important, is to be ready for multiple rejections and failures and to not get disheartened. It’s easy to think your only as good as your last achievement or lack thereof, or just because those who are interviewing you might be condescending, or you make a stupid code test code, or you say something inappropriate or whatever, that you aren’t cut out or something, but that’s not true.
Indeed.
Ok and thirdly, where I failed last time, is to be cool.
Hey the world is a crazy place I’m inspired to write about it. I got a sense of impending doom. Everything could be swept away like a rug pulled out from underneath and what is down below? Do you know what’s down there? Hell.
The fact is that there’s so much could go wrong, did you see fifth element when this dude Zorg chokes on that cherry? That could be the end. It doesn’t have to be a war or anything.
How to cope with that? Memento Mori? I wish to have lived a life I could look back upon with pride. I will try to walk the narrow path.
Some days though, it’s enough of a struggle to just get out of bed, right? Some days feel insurmountable, and yet here I sit on the train again, feeling good about myself?!
It’s not black out there.
The sky looks like the snow again.
Another thing: I really like the switch statement in Java and others. Specifically without the default case and with Enums. This way you will have to cover all values explicitly and if the Enum is extended with new values, the compiler will force you to add them!! That’s pretty n neat life hack!
Hey I’m on the train again. It’s striking how it isn’t black outside like last time but rather a grayish white tone with the snow blanketed ground seems to merge with the sky and there are trees. And I saw a little red house just now.
Fucken car it won’t let me climatize. It’s to spare the batteries it claimes. Whenever it’s like today -20c, it won’t warm up the car. It is a fuck. It’s to get to the train station.
I should’ve eaten a sandwich but I’ve only drank coffee so far today.
There are many crisises right now it feels like. I don’t want to write about them here and now however. Because when thinking about them it (the brain) won’t let me think straight.
I may have a brittle mind sometimes, which is fault tolerant like an OpenVMS cluster, but which has the data loss problem nonetheless.
There’s been a warm winter day with a big yellow sun today, and therefore I went out for a little bit.
Last night I dreamt we were driving some truck which had to be mended with a screw driver. It was maybe a tow truck or something, and then it jumped to another dream: It was cold and dark and we were some sort of bums lying on the ground. It was the type of concrete floor, not asphalt. There might have been puddles and the type of dirt found in parking garages. We were dirty also, and naked and were spooning under a wet and dirty blanket for warmth. The blanket was thick and light blue and made of polyester. Just as the dream was about to take an erotic twist, the dog woke me.
The situation is that since the small dog now has learned to jump out of the bed at night he will poo and pee on the carpet and/or floor and then jump back up. Because he is a puppy. To thwart him we did remove the thing which is a type of furniture put at the foot side of the bed which the dogs can use as an intermediary step up and down between floor and bed. Anyway we moved it so that he’d wake us instead so we can let him do the shit outside. That works🥂. The problem is now that the slightly bigger dog can get down from the bed anyway, but she can’t get back up again. So she stays by the foot of the bed barking until we let her back up. Don’t know what she has in mind to do in the middle of the night. No clue what goes on in her little dog head sometimes but I do love her nonetheless.
I’ve got feelings and they are very mixed it’s that feeling of a tornado or a swirl like a vortex and it’s inside but the cool thing is that seen from the outside, I look ice cold.
Stone cold.
I downloaded the Civ VII for my wife. She plays a lot of civ. I used to I would play and beat it at deity on a large map on Civ V and Civ VI (the huge one unfortunately is slow between turns end game), and that’s possible only because the AI is so bad at waging war. For me at least. I’m not an expert I do not focus on every detail and I hate micro management end game with espionage; it’s barely tolerable. It’s enough to keep an eye on the other Civ’s yields and try to be above that. Also that from the point in time where it’s clear I’ll win to the point I do win is excruciating with sabotaged rockets and shit. Just a chore. And also irksome idiot AI dialogues.
Nevertheless it’s a great game series. maybe best ones ever made according to me.
speaking of which, it’s fascinating to see how spineless the corporate America is, isn’t it? everyone all companies flew the LBGTI++ flag and would strive for gender equality and inclusive programs etc., but as soon as they get a new president over there, all of that is forgotten. It would be funny if it wasn’t so utterly depressing.
I’ve got a strong spine and a big heart and a vortex inside.