Code on Welfare

Most European country's have a fairly good weflare system (Ireland included), where you get enough to live.

The cost to develope software (by yourself) is your time & the cost of the computer (if you dont already have one).

So (theoreticaly) you could go on welfare & use your free time (your unemployed now) to develope software.

Which you could sell later or use to get you a job (impress them with your code).

So if your European (& have a good welfare system) why dont you try it?

Dam phone company!!!

Why can't anything in this country be done quickly. I'm trying to get broadband, we have a telephone line into our house but it's inactive. Tried to sign up with SmartTelecome, a few weeks after I applied I called them to see what's up.

They "rejected" the application because the address I gave them was different to what Eircom had (Eircom was our previous telephone company). I went & got an old telephone bill & gave them the address, which was exactly the same as what I gave them before.

So they told me it would be 10 day's from then.

WHY 10 DAYS!!! And if I didn't call them how long would they have waited before telling me it wasn't coming?

Job worries

Oh man, gotta look for a job, what if I can't find one.
What if I graduate & then become a bum?

(Anyone can get a job, the trouble is getting a job I like)

Getting in the way

Hate having distractions from programming but it can'tbe helped. I have to start studying for the xmass exams & start applying for jobs.

I applied to the fas overseas graduate program, who get you placement in foreign companys (China for me) but I havent heard back from them.

Anyone fancy offering a talented, bright, motivated & soon to be desperate hacker a job (outside Ireland)?

CRUD's ready!

I have been just sooo busy lately, working on my final year project I hit a major milestone today. CRUD (a web application server written in Ruby) is now usable.

It's going to make building my webappliation soo quick & simple, still need to iron out a few things but ive already started trying to get some of my classmates to use it.

I recon it's around 5-20 times faster to build with than tomcat.

Being early

Two big projects were due in by today. One a distributed program & another a 2 & 1/2 thousand word essay. The funny thing is i got them both in earlier this week. I don't normaly don't do this but it really has it benefits.

For example the calm feeling as I watch 1/2 my classmates scramble to print out their projects around the same time. Only to find problem after problem (no ink, no paper, mysteriously not working).

I think I'll try this "early" thing more often.

Going deaf

I appear to be losing my hearing in my right ear. Listening to my iPod the sound on the right is MUCH lower than on the left, and I'm having trouble understanding what people are saying.

If the price is right

Well it didn't work, I sold a total or 4 sandwiches, 3 before the concert & 1 after. We (my wife & I) have abandoned the direct to market selling of sandwiches.

And looking over what happend I have to ask myself why didn't it work?
Was it the product?

On this one I don't think so, the sandwiches looked good & had a much higher level of quality than what's in the shops.

Was it the place?

Again no, there was a hotdog stand there selling hotdogs & burgers for 5Euro. Many of the people coming out were pretty hungry.

I think there were 2 problems, one was the fact that I was selling them from a basket, people didn't seem to like that very much (actually they did, many of them laughed). And the other thing was the price.

We were charging 2Euro for the large & 1.50 for the regular sizes, which is great value compared to 3.50 or 4Euro in the shops.

But that's the problem, Ireland is a high costs economy & everyone expects things to be exspensive. If not then they don't buy it.

Let me rephrase that, Irish people WANT things to be more expensive, which is why everything is, in a high cost economy price(lower) is not a competitive advantage.

note1) Not all Irish people, only those who are financially secure; the other kind just make they're own sandwiches.

note2) We had high margins on those sandwiches & all our stuff was bought from Tesco's, just imagine the margines on those sandwiches in the shops.