Success!

[selenay]

Half an hour of swearing at stubborn battery terminals, getting very dusty (must vacuum this weekend), borrowing pliers and listening to Queen at high volume and my UPS is now purring away happily :-) I am feeling very proud of myself at the moment. Had a worrying moment when it looked like the UPS wouldn't release the original battery, but the pliers turned out to be very useful for that technical skill of "yank really hard" and it's all finished. Mother was even impressed to see that I had my own Philips head screwdriver.

Well, d'uh. I also have a complete set of allen keys. I'm a geek and an archer.

Just remembered that I've forgotten to set up a new string for my bow. D'oh! Will have to use the old string tonight and hope that it doesn't continue unravelling. Silly me :-)

Had another agency call out of the blue - this seems to be the week for it. He's sending me some job notes ("We don't get job specs in this business") and I'm going to call him tomorrow. It's definitely not the perfect job and I'm not convinced about it. Apparently the company wants an IT person to act as the buffer/liason between the different sections of their development teams (technical writers, testers, developers, Q&A) and it 'might' develop into a development role if that seems to be where my strengths are. I'm going to take a look at what the guy can produce, research the company a little, but I'm not sure. Does this sound like one of those wishy-washy jobs where I'll spend the next five years being told that I 'might' be able to move into development next year? The recruiter sounded a little concerned about my freelance work ("You're not still doing it, right?") and I didn't get the best vibe from him. Hmm.

Guess I should get back to learning about garbage collection in PHP and let things fall as they will.

Comments

[riverfox.livejournal.com]

yay for you! I so need a UPS so I'm envious. :)

And that job note... "you're not still doing it right?" is enough for me to pass them on up. As long as you gain experience, it shouldn't matter where or how. Plus that "might develop into" is too vague a promise, jeez.

[selenay]

*sigh* Yeah. You picked up on the most worrying aspects. I called this afternoon and told the guy thanks, but no thanks. I didn't tell him about my concerns regarding the freelance stuff, but I did explain that I wanted to get into development and I didn't feel there was any guarantee that this job would get me there. He seemed OK about it, although there was no (empty) promise to call me if anything more suitable came up.

*shrug* I can't be massively picky, but I'm not going to do something that might prevent me from getting my career somewhere I want to go. I had visions of finally quitting in a couple of years when the promised development role never materialise only to find that I couldn't get a job elsewhere because I'd spent so long in a role like that.

I've got three applications in the works for roles that I think I'm more suited to and that I have some hope of getting somewhere with, so turning this one down won't kill my chances. I hope.

I so need a UPS so I'm envious. :)

*g* It was a Christmas present from Father years ago - he thinks up the best geek presents :-) So far, it's saved my data during power cuts countless times and I hate being without it for long. The power has flickered here several times this afternoon - I think we're building up for some thunderstorms. I'd be really angry if those flickers had lost the stuff that I was working on.

[riverfox.livejournal.com]

although there was no (empty) promise to call me if anything more suitable came up.

Oh I *really* hate it when they condescend like that. You just wanna smack 'em.

::crossing fingers and lighting candles for the job roles:: :-)))

As for t-storms and back-UPS. ::sighs:: So the reason to get a backup ps. Shut down my computer today because we had a hell of a cracker explode right over us. Damn storm chose to transmit its energy right as it passed over my house and holy shit. Haven't heard that loud a crack of thunder in a very long time. Waited till it was at least ten miles away before I turned the pc back on. Jeeeez. Glad you got yours though. Losing data is horrifying.

[selenay]

::crossing fingers and lighting candles for the job roles:: :-)))

Thanks :-) There will be a job out there that someone needs me for. I just have to keep telling myself that :-)

Losing data is horrifying.

Ooh, yeah. I've put 'external hard drive' down at the top of my list of stuff to save for. At the moment the only way of backing up my PC is either to use two hundred CDs or use the DVD writer on father's computer, which takes forever because everything has to be transfered across our network before being written. It means that I'm a little, um, behind in my regular backups. If I could just dump everything into an external hard drive every week, I'd feel a little better. After all, it isn't just my data on here anymore - the backups for the website that I'm contracted to run is here, too. Scary.

[riverfox.livejournal.com]

I've an external back-up but I haven't hoooked it back up since my computer was upgraded slightly. Power issues. yuk. But a couple of blank discs will help just to back up my website, graphics, and fic. Will have to do that as soon as my arm allows. ::sighs::

[selenay]

Yeah, I should really just get into the habit of doing backups of vital stuff (websites, the database project, CV) onto a CD. My store of graphics, photoes and downloaded music vids is too ridiculous to send to CD, particularly since I started capping stuff, but I should really make sure that the vital things are backed up.