[plug] Long winded, self congratulatory ramble.

[Chris Caston]

Congratulations Mike,

*lifts beer glass*

Your very lucky to find a place where you can use MySQL and OO.o instead
of MS SQL (or Access) and MS Office.

May there be more jobs of your kind.

regards,

Chris

On Mon, 2003-10-06 at 19:27, J Michael Gilks wrote:
> 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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> plug at plug.linux.org.au
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-- 
Chris Caston

Manager and Technician

Aptitude Technology
ABN: 51614966828

ph: 9478 1530
mobile: 0422978315
http://www.aptitudetech.com.au

-Start a new business, change your life. Start an Open Source business,
change your world.

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