Richy’s Random Ramblings

$this->hasFlavr() ? $nom->nom('nom') : $want->doNot()

Source: QDB

Yep, it’s official - I’m now 29 years old and just working through the first few hours of my thirtieth year of this incarnation and no, I won’t tell you which bank I bank with (hello UFies! ).

I didn’t do too badly - got a few cards, got some money (which will come in very useful at the moment: with becoming a contractor just at the time the PHP contract market appears to have dried up means I’m pushing my overdraft to it’s limits!) and my other half treated me to see Superhero Movie (reasonably ok - but Leslie “Airplane!/Naked Gun” Nielsen had a smallish part, Brent “Data” Spiner had a smaller one, Robert “Airplane!” Hays had an even smaller one, and Craig “US Red Dwarf Lister” Bierko, Dan “Homer Simpson” Castellaneta and Pamela “Baywatch” Anderson had even smaller parts: if they all had larger parts and said more then two sentences each it might have been a bit better, but it wasn’t a too bad Superman spoof except for the OTT Stephen Hawkin bit which had parts in bad taste and the necrophillia and beasility references which us think made it warrant a higher than 12a rating) and then to a carvery meal at the Toby Carvery at the Foxhunter Roundabout in Enderby (despite her not liking carverys).

Not a too bad day overall then despite the extra aging!

Román Cortés has produced two CSS ASCII images of Homer Simpson and a certain George W. Bush Jr. The snag, well for the George Bush image there’s 31.82kB of source code, but the Homer one is a bit more compact at 16kB.

Roman first created these images by hand, but he’s now written a Windows program which converts JPEG images to CSS “images”.

Allegedly, there’s an animated Homer CSS page as well, but that server’s been Slashdotted for now…

As I’m in the process of leaving full time permanent employment to become an outcast (also known as an IT Contractor), I thought I’d jot down important information/costs/stages as blog entries for anybody else thinking of taking the giant leap into the unknown in the future.

I’ll say from this point, this “series” (of unknown length), will be based on own personal experience and as I’m writing this (and as I’ll write more posts), I won’t know if these experiences lead to positive outcomes making me millions and billions of pounds (mwahaha!) or if they are brain-dumbing stupid decisions which lead to me becoming homeless. Nothing in these posts (or in this blog generally) is intended to act as legal and/or financial advice of any sort. It’s your responsibility to do your own research and take responsibility for your own actions - if in doubt, consult an accountant or solicitor who you are paying for to act for you and provide you with advice!

Were you aware that some of the largest IT recruitment companies such as Computer Futures, Huxley Associates, Progressive (all three of which have recently received my CV and details of my contracting abilities: and if you are interested, let me know!) and Pathway (and 8 others) are all part of the same company SThree? I’ve suspected it for a while, but only now just thought I’ll spend the few minutes looking into it.

It appears Sthree also operate The IT Job Board.com and is the same company that found two strangers enjoying “relations” on one of their desks at Christmas!

It’s amazing what you can turn up with a quick search - and if their CV submission systems didn’t have the same placeholder text for the “contractor opt out” section, I might not have looked as much as I did.

Through UK Plc , I’ve just setup my very own Limited Company. After nearly 11 years of “slightly trading” and being partially self-employed, I am now a director of Beebware Ltd which is a private limited registered company under the Companies Act 1985 in England and Wales.

I will soon start to offer PHP, Perl, PostgreSQL, and MySQL web development services - along with cPanel/Linux/Apache server administration services through Beebware Ltd (once the site has been redesigned): but if you’ve got anything that needs doing soon, please feel free to contact me!

Whilst searching for something slightly related, I found (via the almighty power of Google - bow down in its presence!), I found I_Am_Xenon’s 60 Things I Am Not Allowed To Do At Work including such gems as:

6. ‘That’s what you think,’ is not a suitable tactic when attempting to de-escalate an angry customer.

7. I am not permitted to answer calls in any language except English.

8. Especially not one that I just made up.

9. No one wants to know why I brought duct tape to work.

15. When the managers foul up, they are not honor-bound to commit seppuku (Japanese ritual suicide, a la ‘The Last Samurai’), and I should not insist that they do so.

16. The security checkpoint is not a storm trooper roadblock, therefore it is inappropriate to perform ‘Jedi mind tricks’ on them.

18. It is not right to play into the paranoid fantasies of customers that their wireless phone is being ‘tapped’.

21. Customers are not required to answer a ’skill testing question’ before I assist them.

24. Quoting Dr Seuss should be kept to a bare minimum when assisting customers.

25. Same with ‘Full Metal Jacket’.

26. Combinations of 24 and 25 are just way out.

27. There are no rewards points awarded for bargaining customers into signing away their immortal souls, and I should not negotiate towards this goal.

31. When a customer is so impressed with my knowledge and abilities that they offer to hire me away from my current job, the correct answer is not, “Can you get me a work visa?”

43. “International Talk Like a Pirate Day” is not to be celebrated on the production floor.

44. Even if it only LOOKS like a live grenade, I can’t use it as a paperweight.

49. Not allowed to invent my own sarcastically upbeat or off-the-wall theme days. (Especially not a “Clothing-Optional Day”.)

50. Our call center does not have a mascot. If it did, it would not be a weasel, tapeworm, malarial parasite, Portuguese man-of-war, slime mold, or dung beetle.

52. When they insist that I ‘express empathy’ towards the customer in circumstances of misfortune, they don’t mean while processing payments. (ie “I would like to pay my bill.” “I’m so sorry to hear that.”)

Those are the ones that got the largest laughs from me!

From Central Oregon Web Professionals’ Usergroup via Jake is rapping web design and search engine optimisation hints.

Whilst on the subject, my other half is taking enquiries for her Binary Ink web design service: so you don’t need to worry about rapping design hints!

You may have heard the news that “outspoken atheist” Richard Dawkins (he who is married to “Romana) will appear in the new season of Dr.Who.

That sparked a quite funny joke over at Slashdot:

Dr Who: Richard, what are you doing with that fish, duct tape and four lizard legs?
Dawkins: What, you think evolution *just happened*?

I’m sure Les will enjoy it!

I was just poking around eBay earlier and I came across mention of “eBayExpress” and thought it’ll be interesting to sign up. So I tried to - but hit a load of debug information.

Interesting stuff: eBay Express appears to run in PHP (as can be confirmed in the URL), but it runs on Microsoft SQL Server (as can be evidenced by the MS SQL/mssql mentions in the error messages) and they use the “sa” (super administrator) account to login to the MS SQL server: a big no no in any security aware programmer’s book. They also have the web server running on the same server as the database server (as evidenced by the “Unable to connect to server: localhost” section) and they keep everything in nice distinct files. They also have warnings turned on on their server.

Interesting stuff (for a techy like me!).

[added]

Steps to replicate:
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