[plug] Long winded, self congratulatory ramble.

[J Michael Gilks]

I finally got a real job and want to share with the world.
Persistence and adaptability do pay.
For the last 2 years I have been looking for work in the IT industry, the last 
year subsisting on minimum wage because I had to have a job and it almost 
paid the bills.
Any way, a few months ago I dropped a resume to a geophysical company on the 
off chance that they might have something in the future. 2 weeks ago they 
phoned me at work to say they were looking for a programmer person and could 
I come for an interview. Of course I said Yeah!!.
At the interview they asked had I used Perl, python and GTK. I had to admit I 
hadn't used python at all, I resisted Perl because Perl people are cultist 
who will rewrite the Linux kernel in Perl if allowed enough rope, and was 
checking out QT in opposition to GTK for the cross compiling possibilities 
and the nice database connection stuff. They, of course, said that the next 
month would be spent looking for candidates who had the relevant experience 
and they would let me know. I replied "That's good, will give me time to 
learn Perl."
I did start learning Perl and converting my shell and awk scripts at work to 
Perl. I was amazed at the increase in speed and flexibility. In fact one 
script I wrote ran so fast I didn't bother checking the output because "I 
knew it must be broken and just exited, doing nothing." After an hour looking 
for problems and not finding them I actually checked the output directory. 
There in all it's glory was all the results I had been aiming for. I decided 
on the spot that maybe this Perl stuff wasn't so bad after all.
Anyway, over the weekend I sent a couple of sample scripts to the interviewer 
to say that I hadn't been wasting my time and here were some samples of my 
work for his perusal.
He starts at 9, by 9:30 he was on  the phone to me at work asking me to come 
and see him for a follow up interview. When I got there he offered me an 
actual job. It involves mainly writing scripts to monitor jobs and reformat 
files, with a major dose integrating MySQL to OpenOffice.org.
Basically everything I like to do, with some extra programming and languages 
thrown in for free.
So, for everybody else struggling out there, persistence and adaptability do 
pay. Keep on learning and if you show keen, eventually it will be worthwhile.

May possibly have had a couple of beers to celebrate and have reread the 
massage. All this sharing and Perl, I have become a SNAG Perl zealot. Does 
this mean everybody will avoid me from now on.

Anyway this is the best news I have had in a long time.
To everyone else struggling out there, hang in. Miracles do happen.(There's 
that SNAG bit again.)God I hate myself.

Love
Mike.
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