Wednesday, 17 December 2003

Job unsure (again)

Ya, it looks like my job might be up in the air again because of the new freeze on federal spending. I just hope that the project that I am is under the 5 M $ cut off wire. This will really make Christmas not as much fun if I don't know if I have a job again. And my contact is on vacation till like the 28th of December. Maybe it was all in the plans before the cut was announced, so maybe it's okay. Maybe.

On another note, today Lord of the Rings - Return of the King opens today. Yay! I've been trying to avoid reading about it, and I didn't even buy the sound track yet. I want it to be "just the movie" experience, no songs in my head before I get in there, no reviews in my head, just a blank slate. I figure that I can do that for exams, so how hard should a movie be? ;-)

One thing that has annoyed me is a website that I wanted to check out. It's Teitur.com. I really like his music, but the site is all pop-ups, flash, and badly done at that. Some times I just want to smack people who make pages like that upside the head. Sheesh. Why can't you just pass the user html? It look me a while to figure out that I had to allow pop-ups to see anything. That didn't make me happy. Ah well. At least he has great music. (and LotR's is today!!!! ;-) )
Listening to: Teitur - Rough Around the Edges


6 comments:

  1. Don't knock the flash. Flash is really important for web media but I think that it hasn't been used properly yet. Once I get my site done, we'll see if I have used it properly...I have another one of my concepts that I'm working on...

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  2. Yeah, without Flash we wouldn't have endofworld.swf!! "Damn, that is a sweet earth!" you might say.

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  3. The following was posted on usenet:
    "Well big surprise, they have a hiring freeze.
    Since most provincial government jobs are hiring internally that
    pretty much kills the IT market in government areas.
    Seems like most government external jobs are going to "Friends"
    anyhow. There is a lot of consulting work for people doing
    feasibility studies, but IT people need not apply even though
    most of those ventures are IT related. You have to have
    Business Degrees, Social Services, Medical, Accounting etc etc
    but apparently IT consultants be dammed.
    Most of the Federal job posting are now going to extreme lengths
    to discriminate anyhow. You must now live in a certain confined
    area, be bilingual, have degrees at Masters level, be on EI before
    they will hire you, plus a "MUST HAVE" list of ridiculous skill
    qualifications.
    Most provinces are advertising jobs (false advertising from what I
    have found out) where only internal government employees are
    permitted to apply. Only when no internal applicants meet the
    "requirmements" will they look outside.
    I am just wondering if other people are finding the same thing
    that I am for RFP interviews. Seems that unless you represent
    a large company then dont bother applying on a government
    contract. Even though you design develop and deploy the
    software (aka ready to go as soon as the RFP is accepted) and
    sell it for 10% the cost, the work is still going to large
    corporate companies.
    Wonder if Paul Martin will do anything about that level of waste.
    Ha....doubt it."

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  4. Another post:
    "These ridiculous requirements for civil service type jobs indicates that
    they are wired!!! Wired in this sense means that they know the name of the
    successfull candidate. They have to be posted to look fair to the rest of
    us so that it looks like we have a chance. No chance. That's the way it
    was done at my last outfit, post the job, call the successful applicant and
    tell him to apply, accept the applicant and bingo."

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  5. I have heard of other things like that. Where they pick someone, and then either write the requirements for the job to exactly match what their choice person has, or "helps" the person along other ways.
    I had for my one of my adm classes a person who owned their own company come in and tell us his problem and how he wanted to fix it. Well, he also got into how he got gov't contracts for doing web dev. (pretty much his whole business). And yes, it was all shaddy and mostly under the table. And he was telling a class of people this! After a while people see this as the only way in government to hire people that actually have the skills and who will work.
    This isn't an issue in the private sector because there isn't such a focus on being "fair". It's more about just getting the work done.
    But that's not my problem. I "have" the job already. They want to hire me. Now I just don't know if they will be allowed. :-|

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  6. As for flash:
    "Flash is the devil!"

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