How did I never hear of this company until now?

I want to work for them:

(Yes, I know it's fake but I just started watching the series on Netflix and I am laughing my butt off)

Attention Seattle Geekazoids

Yes you.

If you are in Seattle and are a fan of George RR Martins “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, he will be appearing at Townhall Seattle on July 29th to promote his new book “A Dance with Dragons”

The War of the Five Kings in Westeros seems to be winding down. In the North, self-declared King Stannis Baratheon has installed himself at the Wall and vowed to win the support of the northmen to continue his struggle to claim the Iron Throne from the supposed children of his dead brother Robert Baratheon, actually offspring of incest between Robert's wife Cersei Lannister and her twin brother, Jaime the Kingslayer; this is complicated by the fact that the Lannisters have installed the traitorous House Bolton as Lords Paramount of the North, and much of the west coast is under occupation by the Ironborn. On the Wall itself, Eddard Stark's bastard son Jon Snow has been elected the 998th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, but the young man has enemies both in the Watch and beyond the Wall, where the armies of Mance Rayder are amassing for an assault.

Meanwhile, the dwarf Tyrion Lannister has been wrongfully condemned to death for the murder of his young nephew, King Joffrey Baratheon, and has fled by ship across the narrow sea to Pentos, but not before murdering his hated father Tywin. In the far east, Daenerys Targaryen—sole heir to the deposed ruling family, the Targaryens—has conquered the city of Meereen, and rules it to hone her skills of leadership before she moves on to take back Westeros. But, her presence is now known from the Iron Islands, Dorne and Oldtown to the Free Cities. There are now emissaries on their way to find Daenerys and use her cause for their own ends.

source

Personally $35.00 is probably a little much for me, even if it does come with a copy of the book.  Besides I’m not sure I wasn’t to encourage him.  This series is starting to get Jordanesque in it’s scope.  I started to lose interest in book 3, and the last one just about completely killed it off.  Lets get a little action flowing and finish this series up.

Ewww…

More than I ever wanted to know about the reproductive cycle of the giant pacific octopus.

Here is a question that has been bothering me for awhile

I am mostly unemployed at the moment, catching a few contracts here and there but nothing permanent right now.  This has placed me in the situation of dealing with quite a few different placement agencies and I have noticed that over the past couple years the workforce has become increasingly Indian.  To the point that I would say 80% plus of the contacts I have are with an individual of Indian origin.  And I am not just talking phone contacts either I am talking in-country, go to the office, and sign paperwork contacts.  This leads to my question -

How are these guys getting visas? 

My understanding is that work visas are supposed to be restricted to individuals with specialized skills or for jobs in which there is a shortage of qualified American workers.

Am I seriously supposed to believe there is a shortage of Americans who are qualified to screen resumes, set-up interviews and fill out INS / IRS paperwork?  I have a hard time accepting that.

Maybe my understanding of the applicable immigration law is faulty.  I am not a lawyer so that is extremely possible, but I have seen the H1B wave at an unnamed large tech company in the technical areas and no if it is moving into the soft skills that’s a little disturbing.

One of these days I will learn to just shut my mouth

Update: OK, this was just a bunch of self pitying crap so it's deleted.

Seattle is actually kind of peaceful at 0530

Steampunk Sucks Redux

A few days ago I linked to my friends rant about the Steampunk genre. I disagreed with him about his general assessment of Steampunk and gave a few examples to counter his argument. "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Set in a future where the worst predictions about both global warming (yeah, yeah, yeah just go with it) and oil shortages have come true this book is the best piece of Science Fiction writing I have read in a long time. I say that in relation to the style, I haven't finished the story yet, and I may hate the way it ends, but as far as pure writing goes this guy has it nailed.

The only real discrepancy I have noted (other than the issue people will have with the idea of global warming forcing wholesale societal changes) is that the book is set in Thailand and I haven't come across any Thai Tr***y Ho***rs (don't want to trip the filters at work :-) but longtime AoS readers and viewers of Hangover II know what I am talking about) in the storyline yet. I don't know if I can suspend quite that much disbelief.

RIP…

I believe my iPod is dead.  It just won’t hold a charge.  I don’t know what I am going to do now.  I had all my audiobooks, school stuff, music, movies etc. on the stupid thing.  I am without stimulation throughout the day now.  Granted it was an 80GB 5th gen but it was all I needed. 

I may go weep.

Want to improve job growth - Fire Ken Salazar!!!

It's a new week and the Obama administration has aimed it's laser like focus on jobs creation... again. The same old proposals are being trotted out, according to Marketplace, cut red tape and $300,000,000,000 in additional stimulus spending.

I am not an economist, in fact according to some AoS co-bloggers I am a sub-literate, mouth-breathing, cretin, but I know what we need to do in order to kickstart the economy. We have to bring the price of gas down below $3.00 / gallon. The ways to do that are increased off-shore drilling and exploration, oils shale exploitation in the Rocky Mountain region, and Coal to Gas or Coal to Diesel conversion.

Get energy costs under control (which were the instigating cause of the 2008 crash) and businesses will have some cash available for expansion. Until that happens the economy is going to stop and start as energy prices fluctuate.

Ever heard of Stuxnet?

Driving into work this morning and listening to NPR when a piece about "cyberwar" came on. I was amazed to hear the President's chief adviser on cybersecurity say that there is no such thing as cyberwarfare.

What???

Was he not paying attention when Russia attempted to shut down Georgia's infrastructure prior to invading. That was a cyber attack. Or a more recent example - Stuxnet. That is nothing but a weaponized computer virus.

Sometimes life just hands you perfect examples of the Peter principle.

Dental Visit

For the past week / week and a half I have thought I might have a cavity. Whenever I ate it felt like something was stuck in my tooth and I had this kind of deep ache that would last until I brushed my teeth or used some mouthwash.

Not life-threatening but annoying.

Saw the dentist this morning and it turns out it wasn't a cavity at all. I had a popcorn husk that had gotten stuck down under the tooth and was causing inflammation. He dug it out with some giant torture implement and I was done. Entire visit took about 10 minutes and all they charged me for was the X-Ray. ($25)

I am so stinking happy. My tooth doesn't hurt and I didn't get raped over the price. You can't ask for more.

Posted from Ubuntu laptop

So, a couple weeks ago I posted a review that wasn't very complimentary of Ubuntu 11.04 - I haven't really changed my mind, but I recovered a laptop from a to be destroyed pile and I needed an OS. I tried Windows 7 first (benefits of a student MSDN license) but it just crapped out on me. Not surprising, this is a 2005 era laptop. I then had a choice of Ubuntu or using one of my 3 XP licenses. I decided on Ubuntu, let's face it it isn't a Microsoft world anymore. So far I am pleasantly surprised. Unlike the installation I discussed before my laptop is working like a dream. I am still testing things out but for everyday use this would be more than adequate as is. Configuring it for work might be a little problematic but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

WGU Week 10

Just plugging away on my tow newest classes - ABV1 (Windows 7) and LUT1 (Language and Communication – Presentation).  I am not as thrilled with the LabSim tools for Windows 7 as I was for the previous classes, but I will survive.  At the moment I am just going through the lessons and reading the MS Press book for Exam 70-680.  I am not worried about scores.  Once I start doing the labs in the MS Press book I will go back and take the section quizes in LabSim for real.

Update: Talked to my mentor for our weekly call. Told her I was having some issues with ideas for the Presentation class. She opened up some more resources for me. This class is really going to suck. As near as I can tell they are not really serious about learning to do an effective business presentation. It's all about checkboxes. I also discussed the issues I am having with LabSim. She assures me it gets better. I hope so - I thought the A+ labsims were great. Obviously they weren't exactly like working on a real computer but for things like configuring networks settings and such they were excellent.

Microsoft unveils Windows 8

Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live division, revealed Windows new "modern" look during the All Things D conference.

It draws heavily on the design of the Windows Phone 7 software, with the primary screen filled with large square tiles that are clicked or tapped to launch frequently used applications.

I like the idea, not sure about the execution.

source

I don't know why but I want one...

h/t