currently 11:08pm Friday 5th September, 2008 (NYC, New York)
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April 2004 archives
The following are all the entries published for the month of April 2004. disappointment
Friday 30 April, 2004 at 4:02PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (9) I didn't mention it earlier because I didn't want to jinx it, but one of the jobs I've been interviewing for was with Chubb Institute as an Admissions Rep, based in central Manhattan. The job sounded great with good benefits and a reasonably good salary, and I'm sure I would have loved it and excelled at it - it involved much of the type of work I've been doing for years which I have always performed well above expectation. I felt a really good vibe about the place when I went in for an interview a couple of weeks ago, and the interview itself which lasted about an hour seemed really positive, although the person who was supposed to interview me couldn't make it so I was interviewed by a guy called Shawn instead. As I said, it felt like a really good interview and Shawn (or Sean?) was a good guy, we seemed to 'click' well, so I was pretty confident I'd make it to the final cut, but I found out about 15 minutes ago that I didn't. I should be used to knock backs because it's so hard to find a good job here in NYC, but this job in particular really would've been perfect (in a mutually beneficial way of course), plus I would've been able to study at the same time which is what I want to do (Chubb Institute is basically a university which runs a multitude of recognized courses). Enjoying the work I'm doing is really important to me and makes me perform that much better, so I guess that's why I'm so disappointed about not getting further with this one. Tara (who was originally meant to interview me) gave me the unfortunate news but added they will probably be hiring again in the next month or so, but experience here in NYC had led me to realize I should not hold my breath in expectation. Damn, I was so looking forward to this one. Serves me right for getting my hopes up I guess.
In other news, the other weasel just purchased a shiny new digital camera. It's a Canon PowerShot A-80 and it's pretty damn kewl. It took me a few hours to get the software to install on her PC - after a lot of pissing about it turned out the problem was with admin rights on the install shield. Doh. Even though I was logged in as admin, it turned out that somewhere along the line the admin privileges for the administrator had somehow been turned off when it came to some rarely used processes dealing with install shield. Anyway the other weasel was very happy when I managed to get it all fixed up, but unfortunately I had to uninstall the .NET visual studio in the process which we don't have the original disks for anymore, so that kinda sucked. Anyway the picture of the lamp I took as soon as we opened the box and turned the thing on so it's the very first picture ever taken with the camera. Thought I'd post it for posterity or something. Kewl lamp huh? It's actually a tall standing lamp, not a little bedside or table lamp in case you were wondering. Ok that's all the news for now, I'm off to stick my bottom lip out and mope around for a bit. a nice day in nyc
Tuesday 20 April, 2004 at 11:18AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (3)
We headed out last weekend (Sunday) to Manhattan and spent most of the day sifting around Greenwich Village with our friend Alt (da Fish). We had a 2 o'clock lunch at a cafe followed by some time spent at nearby Washington Square Park where we sat down and chatted and attempted to get the squirrels to come to us (a couple did, until they saw we had no food and then they lost interest). It was nice there; all the trees have new leaves and blossoms are opening up and it was all very 'springtime in NYC' if ya know what I mean, that little period of time between the late winter's cold with dirty snow and slush on the streets and the summer's suffocating heat and smells that resemble something like fried goats, where to get some fresh air you need to open a window and stick your head inside a building. Heh ok it's Douglas Adams but there ya go. After chillin' at the park for a while, there was a bit of shopping (clothes) and then back to the cafe for coffee and desert (they do an awesome carrot cake and just as awesome tiramisu). We then headed off to Angelika Film Center (still in the Village) which usually shows all the 'artsy' non-mainstream non-commercial type films. At Altie's urging we saw a movie titled 'Good bye, Lenin!' by Wolfgang Becker, and I have to thank Alt for that, it was a really good movie. The dialogue was in German with English subtitles and tells the story of an East German mother living in Berlin in 1989 in the era of socialism. She has a heart attack and falls into a coma for 8 months after seeing her son in a protest march for freedom and democracy (she's a pretty gung-ho supporter of socialism). While she is in a coma the socialist regime crumbles, the Berlin wall falls, and coca-cola advertising runs rampant. When she comes out of the coma the doctor tells her son and daughter that their mother cannot handle any stress or shocks, so they (mainly the son) decide to take her home and pretend that the old regime is still in place. It's really funny as well as giving a good glimpse at life in socialist East Germany before the wall fell. If you get a chance to see this film, definitely do it, it's really worthwhile viewing. If you need more convincing, it's won a pile of European film awards along with nominations in the Academy and Golden Globe awards for best foreign language film. It was a good day in NYC. Ok that's about it for now. I have other things to tell but I'll keep this entry just as it is. job scams and the deterioration of society
Monday 12 April, 2004 at 9:05PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (17) Pretty intense title, but I'm pissed off. I wrote a big post about a job scam I discovered that's operating on a national basis where people are getting ripped off every day by these assholes. I spent hours checking it out and I traced the apparent owner, and their address turned out to be right here in Brooklyn! I found multiple sites with writings from other people who had been ripped off by these people in the past but didn't know what to do about it (fortunately I realised what it was before getting sucked into it myself). I was in the process of notifying Fox5 Problem Solvers who investigate this type of thing and get people busted for it (and televise it so everybody knows who the assholes are and what their business does, which no doubt allows a lot of people to file lawsuits against the scammers). Before I hit send, I called the other Weasel over to check it out. She went nuts at me and said I should not get involved or post about it or do anything about it because these people could try and sue me for slander (although they wouldn't have a leg to stand on, but the legal costs of defending myself would be huge regardless), or worse yet, it could get physical. I don't know who these people are, they could be 'connected', and they are only like 10 minutes drive away (which is a major coincidence) so I guess it's possible, but that didn't cross my mind. I saw a wrong and I wanted to right it, it's just a basic innate instinct to me. Against my own desire to see justice, I capitulated, but I'm not happy about it. Me doing nothing about it (when I know I could) goes against everything I believe in. I'm basically betraying myself and it sucks. I think the only reason assholes like these people exist is because others are too scared to speak up, and the more that happens, the worse this sort of crap will get and the more powerful assholes like these will become. I'm disgusted by the 'it's none of my business' attitude here in NYC, but that's just how things work here. You just mind your own business, it's somebody elses problem. If you do try and do something, chances are good it will end up costing you because of the ridiculous 'sue everyone' mindset here. I saw a photo ages ago of a couple of gang type guys beating the shit out of some innocent civilian guy in broad daylight in the middle of Central Park just to get his wallet. There were dozens of people sitting around watching while they ate their nice little lunches while on a break from their safe little office jobs. None of them did a fucking thing. Not a one. I guess this isn't just here though. When I was back in NZ I was sitting outside my work on a break. I worked on the main street in the central city where I lived. I looked around and saw a guy about the same age as me who had fallen out of his wheelchair while trying to tie his shoe. He was paralyzed from the waist down. He was laying on his stomache on the sidewalk struggling to pull himself along the ground towards his wheelchair. A few people looked at him and kept walking. Most studiously ignored that he was even there. I couldn't believe it. I went over and lifted him up and put him in his wheelchair and tied his shoe and made sure he was ok, but fuck was I angry at all the people who just walked past. I wanted to run after them and scream at them "what the fuck is wrong with you!". But I didn't. No wonder there's so much strife going on on this planet. There's no honour, there's no compassion - hardly anybody gives a shit about anything but themselves, or if they do, they sure hide it well. That's just how it is? Pfft. If this is paradise, I'll take the bag. End of rant. the haka
Sunday 4 April, 2004 at 11:25AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0) Corzr mentioned the All Black Haka in a comment on the previous post (the All Blacks is the name of the New Zealand rugby team for anyone who honestly didn't know) so I'll post a couple of clips of the Haka (it's a Maori war dance basically). The first clip is hosted by allblacks.com and is a pretty staunch rendition of the Haka performed by the New Zealand Sevens team after winning the Wellington leg of the IRB World Series. Here's one I had on my PC. Not sure where I got it from but it's the All Blacks doing the official Haka all put together into one seamless clip but made up of outtakes from a bunch of different games spanning a number of years. It's pretty good actually, if you can handle the 6MB size.
By the way, this last link above is an .avi file. If you want to use this clip embedded on your own website, right click the link and 'save target as..' then you can host it on your own domain rather than eat my bandwidth. Thanks. i'm a hobbit
Saturday 3 April, 2004 at 11:14AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (2) Hey there. April Fools has been and gone. The MUD I play on regularly (slothmud.org) did a complete player base wipe for April Fools and left it like that for the entire day which made a lot of people freak out not knowing if it was for real or not. Pretty damn funny in a disturbing kind of way. Here's a quiz from bluepyramid.org for you (thanks to Impz for the link). Turns out I'm a Hobbit. I think it should have been Weasel but they didn't have a book about weasels, so they took the next smallest fuzziest thing they could find:
The second time I did the quiz I ended up with Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: ..OK, kind of contradictory profiles, but who cares. Tomorrow we have a wedding to attend which should be groovy. Sounds like it's going to be a big one. Congrats Lenny and Regina for the big day! |
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Hey. We've had some nice weather recently with temperatures yesterday hitting mid 80's°F (which is getting up to around 30°C). The crap that accumulated in the pool over winter was cleaned out yesterday as well, which is always a good sign that summer is on the way.
You're The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien