I suppose I should write something here... but it doesn't seem to be worthwhile

Many people, especially those with more common names, are used to the idea that there's someone out there with the same name as them.

I'm not. For a long time[1] I was the only person called Dominic I'd ever met. Don't get me wrong, I'd heard of others in books, seen them on TV - I wasn't in ignorance of their (hypothetical) existence. My surname (Thoreau) is even worse. In my home town, *everyone* with my surname is a relative [2] - pick a name, phone it, and ask for who you want. You'll get through to the person you require - 2 or 3 calls total.

Then today I followed a link on Dave Winer's Scripting News [3] site - something about google [4] as an internet mapping tool. I followed the link to the site. After some playing around, I jumped off to google to search on my own name [5]. For once a new link arrived - a review of a book from Amazon, by a Dominic Thoreau in Zagreb, Croatia.

Still not sure about this - I feel it's all very dubious.....

[1] In practice this only ended this year
[2] To the best of my knowledge, there are't any Thoreau's elsewhere in NZ.
[3] www.scripting.com - lots of stuff that is far too interesting and I don't have time to deal with properly - see my abortive blogs scattered around the internet
[4] You *know* this : Google, www.google.com , the best and most relevant search engine on the web
[5] Egotistical I know - but google ranks by some nice criteria, and what you end up with is interesting - more of what other's think is important, than any random order... [6]
[6] And if you actually ran this, yes, those systematic entomology papers are me....

Okay, so I went out and bought this new PC. I built it myself from parts, so it was about 25% below standard retail. Nevertheless, I'd like to register the following complaints.

• Why doesn't Linux support the embedded NIC on my motherboard?
• Why does the PC reboot spontaneously occasionally, mostly after running a perl script that opened a lot of socket connections (say 300 or so) to the internet for downloading stuff?
• Why does my (GBP£2.00) mouse malfunction to the point of non-usability if it's in direct sunlight?
• Exactly how does SUSE Linux Pro need 7 CDs anyway?
• Why won't CmdrTaco let me see the exact number of my Karma anymore?
• Why do people moderate my posts down as over-rated just for someone else to moderate them back up again?

... And now we have actually running hardware of our very own! Cool eh?

(note: this is science because I like the piccie - it seems to fit)

The results from Mensa came and went. Qualified, joined, went to (2 so far) meetings. I cannot possibly reccommend it enough. If you think you can, shoot for it. Don't even bother thinking about it.

Interestingly enough there were two celebrity premiers in town last night - Star Wars (all the big stars except Euan and Natalie) and We will Rock You - the Ben Elton musical using Queen music. Naturally I was skulking around the edges of the Queen thing - although this was because I was going to play games with Mensa.

Well the Mensa test seemed to be OK - should get results soon. Money is tight - but then when hasn't it been.

I'm supposed to be going on Adrian's stag night tomorrow - not sure if I can be bothered yet...

The important test is next week (26th February).
Mensa baby. Smart types. Yummy.

And while I'm thinking about it, go and play with the Hollywood Stock Exchange at www.hsx.com. I've got a Music Portfolio of HSX$50Mill, HSX$9Mill in movies - not bad for a HSX$2 initial stake.....

I've been permanently employed by Elonex.

Given, a salary of 11,500GBP (basic) isn't that hot, but it's an improvement on where I had been...

There was a comment today from Rupesh - something about another in-house interview coming up.

Details for this are really sketchy - looks slightly more interesting than the last one though. I'm fairly sure the real problem at the moment is that no one there actually understands my core job....

The whole place is farce really - today we sent Leonard, one of the floor supervisors, on a 30 minute quest for paint brushes (which we'd then use to paint security paint that one of our clients need). Much better than the edge of a cable-tie we use currently, but watching the beauraucracy try to cope with a new idea was just fascinating....

Oh well, I suppose I should get used to this really....

I've just talked my self out of yet another job. I'm not convinced I really wanted it though, although I suppose I shouldn't be so picky.

I mean, how bad can being a telephone support person be? (feel free not to answer that....)

Hmm... I might use this as a replacement on my other weblog (see http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~dthoreau/ while it's still there), which has long-since demised once I left NZ.

Brief summary: I was once a perl developer in Auckland, New Zealand. Now I work as a computer assembler in London, England. Despite this, I'd like to code again. Job offers or more infomation needed? email me: montyworm@yahoo.com.

For the record, the coding work before was in Oracle SQL and Oracle's embedded perl variant. CGIs, crons and stuff. Unix (SunOS). Linux workstations. Text file processing. All the standard I'm a corporate programmer stuff.