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Training for a new job at a major telco

Sigg3 (mailto:me@sigg3.net) — 2012-01-27T23:36:59

I'm getting a job again, since the meager state stipend and student loan just won't cut it. Instead of returning to the old job, where I am always very welcome, I decided it was time for something new. Allthewhile reading up on modern German History and Literature as well as Syntax, of course.

I was thinking about herding sheep or categorizing ancient norse poetry index cards, but it so happened that my resumé ended in the hands of an IT consultant firm, who immediately gave me a call. I am now in training for one of the greatest telcos in the country. They've got a massive glass building just outside the city, where I am surrounded by the 4000 other zombies on the way to work. It reminded me of the factory scene in Joe versus The Volcano. Or perhaps more fitting, something with a little more office over it:

Something new and exciting is very refreshing, even though I am sort of over-qualified and under-paid. But it helps reviving some old people skills, that I didn't need when I locked the door behind me at my last office. This is a modern open office setting, with a lot of like-minded, be'glassed nerds with wallpapers from sci-fi series and cheeky hentai-wannabe anime. Nerds in all ages, sizes and genders! Gotta love it!

Last training session we had to setup a mobile broadband (3G) connection on a random OS (Win XP/Vista/7 and Mac OSX). PIECE OF CAKE!11! I must have exclaimed non-verbally, because my socially superior peers sent some annoyed glances at "the old wolf in the puppy pen". (And yes, I am one of the two Elders!)

I took out the little plastic cover from the USB device and popped in the SIM.

WHOOPS!!

I admit I blushed. The plastic cover had a little slot in it, into which one was to slide the SIM card. While I, on the other hand, being so cocksure about it, had put the SIM card directly into the electronics. Where it remained fastened and out of reach. The instructor was just going through how it was important to study the details in front of us, and how (haha) often regular users resort to all sorts of physical violence to make the pieces fit.

At the back of the room I was banging the USB device at the table to get the SIM out.

"Oh, sorry. Is it too loud?"

Then the instructor casually remarked that each device cost 1800 NOK to replace (circa $300 USD).

"Oh, sorry. Bang a little lighter?"

FINALLY! getting ready to resort to the old let's poke a knife in there and see what happens routine, it somehow came loosr and within reach of my finger nail. I put it in the right way as fast I could, kept my head down and ran through the tests.

Apart from the sweat I worked up right then, we've been treated with silk gloves. They even pay our lunch throughout our training, whatever we like, veggie chicken burger or true to life Italian Pizza. That's multi-billion dollar evil corporations for ya, kid! So most of it has been a walk in the park.

Except for the job interviews. Plural.

I must tell you, I have had the same steady job for about 7 years -- which is actually very long in IT where you'll usually go somewhere better paid every 3-4 years. But I had a great time at my last job, it was very nice socially and I had a comfortable existence. Except it was just too much of it, and not exciting enough to keep me there, yet too much responsibility to stay at a smaller position. After all, I am supposed to be studying Philosophy at the University, so this 20% position will do great for me!

But I digress.

The long term employment has given me a lot of great recommendations from some brilliant people, but extended the period since I last had a job interview. Now, if you're in the sysadmin line of work, your social skills are not top priority (even though they help a lot). However, in support and the kind of uneducated work that I do, you must learn to talk with people because their problems are usually what you're paid to solve. So to land this kind of job, you would have to not only point and tell about how social you are, you must show it. It's just like acting, or role playing. That's the road to staying patient and helpful. You'll be screaming on the inside.

Anyway, aside from the repeat questions (What's your 5 best qualities? What is an IP address? How much is Pi squared? Can I have a slice of Pi? Where did she touch you? Can you show us on the dummy? How to display your current IP address?) they asked me what, if anything, I would like to improve about myself.

*Crickets chirping*

- Errrr.... Change?
- Yes, Sigg3. Name 5 of your worst qualities?
- Five?
- Uh huh.

*Crickets playing cricket*

After the awkward silence died out, I had firmly established my complete and utterly unquestioned belief in myself. Which may or may not go well together with the concept of social antennas. But what the heck. Have you seen my resumé?

I got the assignment, and so did 3 other really cool people, and these days we're training as a team every available hour. In my last job I had flexible hours, but didn't know coming in to the office whether it would be a 10-12 hour shift or just three and a half hour day. This job is 100% punctuality because we're on the clock, and they don't tolerate late-comers at all. So, I've taken good care to be there on time so far. Time will tell if I can keep it up. But then, that's what we all did in the days before the cellphone. I'm starting to sound like an old-timer, already.

Speaking of appointments, I gotta get up early in the morning. I'll be attending work from 10 am and if all goes well, celebrate reaching another Saturday alive, with my pal Freddy when Lady C is partying with her friends. If you can think of five things to change about me, you or the world, feel free to leave them in the comments! You only have 30 seconds to think though. Have a nice weekend!

US Congress takes down the Internet

Sigg3 (mailto:me@sigg3.net) — 2012-01-18T23:16:04

.... but we're not dead yet!

The U.S. Congress is currently considering the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), that are among the two most anti-global and anti-social law proposals to appear before congress since the Patriot Act (which was the end of one of our civilization's greatest principles - Habeas Corpus). If passed, the laws will grant powers to the US Government that only the US Government perceive themselves to have, thinking about "the Internet kill-switch", however the side-effects to the practical realities of the way the Internet is run will pose a threat to its statelessness, as well as pave way for enlarging corporate control over Internet content. Read more here on Wikipedia: Stop Online Piracy Act and Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act.

Other sites, such as Wired.com, reddit and Mozilla followed Wikipedia's example today. As did Google, 4chan, Vimeo, flickr, Miro, MineCraft, PostSecret, and many others, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation!

The Acts' names are misleading, even if you are an adherer to the notion of "intellectual property", these laws will introduce Government censorship that invariably and inevitably hurts the common man's interests and favor those few at the top, the large corporations, and those that'd rather see an Internet akin to cable television.

Michael Park leaves blogging behind

Sigg3 (mailto:me@sigg3.net) — 2012-01-10T23:34:12

Michael Park's domain is expiring in about 2 weeks, but he has decided to not renew the domain. I am sad to see such a long term online friend disappear from "the neighbourhood" -- Michael has been dear help to Sigg3.net since 2003 or so -- but I also understand the reasons why he wants to shut it down.

Good luck to you, my friend, all the best!
Thank you for your friendly advice and regular comments on my blog. Please stop by in the future!

Proprietary ATI driver on OpenSUSE 12.1 64-bit system

Sigg3 (mailto:me@sigg3.net) — 2012-01-09T19:27:27

Here's the quick and dirty way to get the proprietary ATI 'fglrx' driver up and running on OpenSUSE 12.1 64-bit and 32-bit systems. Why blog about this when there must be hundreds of great wikis out there to cover the issue? None of them worked 100%. Here's a way that works:

Download latest driver from AMD/ATI driver page
Open Yast2 and install: kernel-devel,kernel-desktop-devel,Gcc,Gcc c++,Make
Reboot, and add this to the GRUB startup options: radeon.modeset=0 blacklist=radeon 3
When you boot into console, become root and run: # mkinitrd
Afterwards, cd to download directory and run installer: # sh ati-driver-installer-*.run
Select default options all the way, then: # aticonfig --initial
And last: # /sbin/shutdown -r now

Please note the GRUB boot options that blacklist the open source radeon driver. Without these parameters the driver would install but I would have fuzzy graphics and no way to change screen resolutions and so on. I added these instructions to the unofficial AMD wiki: wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/SUSE/openSUSE. Also note that AMD's display driver no longer require kernel sources if kernel headers are present (hence the kernel-devel packages).

Please note that in time there will be made an RPM one-click install available for the new ATI drivers on the OpenSUSE wiki, but since I want to play some graphical games I need the latest and greatest. Also note that OpenSUSE policy dictates that the 'radeonhd' driver is phased out in favour of plain 'radeon' open source driver and 'vesa'. If I wasn't supposed to be gaming, I'd stay with the defaults.

Happy New Year!

Sigg3 (mailto:me@sigg3.net) — 2011-12-31T18:14:00

We've just popped a bottle of Champagne in our hotel room and will soon be leaving for a six-course all inclusive evening at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Blue Mosque, Haga Sophia and the Bosporus strait towards Asia.

Thanks for 2011. It was quite eventful, detailed report to follow. But now: belly dancers and kebap! We welcome 2012! Have a happy new year!

Going Where East meets West

Sigg3 (mailto:me@sigg3.net) — 2011-12-28T18:55:03

Bollicks to this, I'm off to Istanbul!

That's right, folks. If you're going to celebrate New Year's Eve, you might as well celebrate it in the Ottoman Empire. Or the remnants thereof. That's why me and Lady C are traveling economy class to Constantinople tomorrow at noon! There's free wifi at the hotel, no viruses, surveillance ++! so if I can remember it, I will up some images to the blog, or my sigg3.net flickr page!

Right now I have a lot of packing to do, so I gotta go! Cheers!

Merry Yuletide!

Sigg3 (mailto:me@sigg3.net) — 2011-12-24T18:25:24

While the video was made by the atheist organization TheThinkingAtheist.org, and focuses on the American Christmas celebration, I think it has quite a lot of interesting historical facts:

With this freshly in mind, I can go eat at the Winter Fest with the good conscience only a warm-hearted non-believer can. Have a Happy Yuletide and Frohe Weihnachten!

Split video files using ffmpeg

Sigg3 (mailto:me@sigg3.net) — 2011-12-21T01:14:24

I've been working with large video files lately, files that are too large for regular storage media. I've come to learn how much better ffmpeg is at these jobs than the graphical tools. Mainly because the graphical ones draw more resources and require more fiddling about, in total taking more time than a short command. Here's the only command you'll need to create new files from one source video:

$ ffmpeg -i INPUT -vcodec copy -acodec copy -ss START OF VIDEO -t DURATION OUTPUT

So, let's say I have bigvid.mpeg that's 50 minutes and want to split it in files that are 30 minutes and then another with the next 15 minutes, discarding the last 5; respectively small1.mpeg and small2.mpeg.
Here are the two commands to deliver what we want:

$ ffmpeg -i bigvid.mpeg -vcodec copy -acodec copy -ss 00:00:00 -t 00:30:00 small1.mpeg

and then

$ ffmpeg -i bigvid.mpeg -vcodec copy -acodec copy -ss 00:30:00 -t 00:15:00 small2.mpeg

As you can see the start of video operand is relative to the input file (source video), while the duration or -t parameter is not. The -vcodec and -acodec options aren't strictly necessary, ffmpeg's default output codec should match the input.

ffmpeg and audio delays
However, I have experienced that videos created without codec specification will have audio delays or audio that is not synchronized to the video stream. Specifying both the audio and video codecs as exact copies using -vcodec copy and -acodec copy as in the examples will give you less headaches. That's all!

CONGRATULATIONS A & T!

Sigg3 (mailto:me@sigg3.net) — 2011-12-08T20:51:27

Just before I forget, congratulations are in order for Lady C, Vixen and me, but more importantly to their brother A and his girlfriend T who gave birth to a baby boy today! Yes, you can call me Uncle Sigg3.

Happy Birthday [untitled] !

I've been dusting off my vast historical knowledge in order to rightly name the child, still untitled or it, if you want to be personal. I think my late reading of Prussian kings can be of great help, especially if they allow descriptive names; such as "the wise" or "the crooknosed" granted that he sports such characteristics, of course. "The gifted" is vague enough to fit anything. Use "the plump" if you want to have something that fits the baby right now. Or "the pink", perhaps.

Preferably, you should call the kid something you like. Not as in "something you like" but as instantiated by something you like. Take Guiness for instance. I think it's a great name. Just consider: "Here, have a Guinness, Guinness!" Got a nice ring to it. And it's not going to get your kid into any trouble either, like Marijuana or Doobie most certainly will. Just a tip. Cheers!

German Exams: 2 down 1 to go!

Sigg3 (mailto:me@sigg3.net) — 2011-12-08T20:31:27

I've done it! The two worst class room exams this year have been idled through and delivered. The first one, Tysk 1101, was 9 o'clock Monday, and I had looked up all the nearby cafés around campus to find out when they opened in order to secure a cup of coffee. I found a good spot staring into the backs of the American Lit section, with my back against the rest of the library. Then I started farting.

Around an hour into the four hour ordeal I couldn't take it anymore and asked to have someone follow me to the restroom. I don't know how they do it in other countries, but in Norway you are allowed to take breaks and walk outside, as long as an exam warden follows every step you take -- sometimes even checking the WC stalls.

And if you ever notice a lack of retired people in your immediate vicinity, you can bet there's an exam going on somewhere. The very temporary (4 hour) positions are mostly filled with retired people. Solemn, long-nosed men and knitting grandmothers. But I digress!

I had remained calm during the morning, which is important in order to rightly comprehend the tasks in front of you. If you panic, you'll certainly overlook something important (such as a negation at the end of the sentence -- always funny). But you can be too calm as well.

I was like: Remain calm. Just be calm.
'I am calm' I thought. 'Caaaaallmmm.. Soo veryyy caaaaaalmmmmzzzz... zzz.. zzz.. zzz-*! naCHTUNG!' One of the retired wardens walked over and slapped my across the face. "Shush!" People who lived through the war knows how to use violence for peaceful purposes. If you're good, they'll reward you with candy.

We got a text about Martin Luther (the Reformist, not the King) and how they had done archeological excavations in what has been established as his childhood home. The point of the article was two-fold; 1) his father was very rich -- contrary to popular beliefs in Germany, and 2) they may have found the Toilet on which his Turmerlebnis unfold itself.. don't ask. I really enjoyed the read, and answered the comprehension questions, in Norwegian, as best I could.

"DO NOT WRITE A NOVEL", the lady had said at the last session of the course.

That's exactly what I did. I even wrote in my own Norwegian interpretation of the questions I then answered, totaling some 8 pages! What's worse is that I completely lost track of time, so that after the 4 reading comprehension tasks I still had some 8-10 tasks of very time consuming grammatical analysis to do!

Needless to say, I just barely made it in time. Then I headed home, knowing I had to read for the next exam, Tysk 1100, which was today. German Syntax 1.

Let me just add in here that all of the courses I take this fall have a recommended prior education of High School German, sporting at least a C. I didn't have German in High School at all. Zippo. Zilch. I had French. It's Latin based, not even Germanic. But I mostly played Quake II: CTF II instead.

In order to stay on a positive note, let's just say I have been setup for quite a lot of Eureka! moments this fall.. Especially since the first exam ended, and I have learned how many errors I did, which could have easily been avoided. I went from being satisfied to questioning my very academic existence in a few pages.

But I can't give up either. With a little luck my classmates, of which many come straight from High School, panicked and really screwed up. If the statistics work in my favour, I can still avoid having to do it over again. If not, then I'll just have to do it. The bar for a Master in Philosophy's set to C, but I'd like it to linger around B if I can. Right now, I feel that I'll need a lot of luck to avoid an E!

Enough of the alphabet soup!

The exam today didn't start until half past two in the afternoon, so I had plenty of time to not be nervous. As usual, I remained calm. Almost too calm. In fact, I overslept, and didn't get to read through the pages I had planned to, and instead barely made it to the library just before the exam started with only 5 minutes to spare!

This reminds me of gym classes in my childhood when we were counting our pulse strokes after anaerobic training, and they could't find my pulse because I was so calm. For the rest of the year I just wrote 'In a coma' in the report book to skip gym class, and the Physed teacher couldn't argue against the science. The following year, alas, he had changed batteries in the pulse-meters.. but I digress.

Today we had German Syntax and despite my calm prior to the exam, I was rather stressed out when we finally started. Who knows what sort of misunderstandings I have conjured up along the way?

First we had to recognize 5 Genitive cases in a text about electric cars' success in Norway. I have been so focused on the Accusative and Dative cases (direct and indirect objects, mainly) in my German training, so it was really hard to turn my brain around to notice ownership- or description-like appositions. But I managed to find all 5! At least that's what I think..
I actually nailed the last one on account of Mark Twain's «Wegen des Regens» below. Talk about basing my education on happy happenstance!

Then we had some verbs that had to be located and shown in the Infinitive, as well as a translation of a text from Norwegian to German, also about electric cars, sporting a lot of Modus Conjunctive (indirect speech).

As usual, my non-existing vocabulary made this pretty hard. But I at least delivered something that meant something going in the same general direction as it was supposed to be. It really bothers me that I know historical words such as Sword, Horse carriage and the like, but not Airport or Pollution.

I see now that I missed on the latter. I didn't know what pollution was, so I just used a German sounding of the Norwegian 'forurensning', that is, die Verureinung. The correct word is die Verunreinigung. Bad luck.

The last task, however, was complete hell.

As I wrote about earlier, our German Syntax professor is quite the geek, and he had stated that he "wanted to make things interesting". So today as the final task we were given a foul text written by some Norwegian girl living in Germany, who could not for the life of her form a German sentence. She wrote Norwegian in German, had bad punctuation, and sometimes just blurted out nonsensical statements. The task read: "In the (genuine) text below, there is one type of mistake that is occurring more often than (all) the others. What type of word are we talking about and what kind of error(s)? Could we give this/these type of error/s a nickname?"

Pure evil.

I have no idea what kind of statistics the professor is going for here, but he's setting himself up for a lot of misunderstandings and -- let's not trivialize people's feelings -- angry retorts.

I based my comprehension of the task that he used the word -flexion, which rules out verbs (conjugation), and focused on the Flexive (plural endings) of Adjectives and Nouns, but I have no idea whether this is right or not. Time will tell. In the meantime, I can only look forward to learning more German, so that I more easily can identify all the errors I put on record as of 6:30 pm today. Cheers!