Interesting Web Finds

I am heartily enjoying a bowl of Weetabix as I type this. It's good, but disappointingly not as good as the "real" thing :-(

... and trying not to breathe in ash. There's been a dozen wildfires all over the So Cal region this weekend, some are contained, others are still blazing and spreading. Someone keeps Google Maps nicely updated with not only the location of the fires, but details, such as acreage burned, number of people evacuated, etc... Here's a snapshot of where the numerous fires are. If you click on the image, it will take you straight to the Google Maps site with the detailed info. As you can see, there's no actual fire near Santa Barbara, but the winds kicked up the ash from the Zaca fire (which burned for 2 months this summer and ended up being one of the largest fires in So Cal history-- consuming over 240K acres) and brought it down to Santa Barbara-- thank goodness it coincided with cleaning day anyway ;-)



In other news, yesterday's online jobhunt on Monster and CareerBuilder yielded an interesting position: a web developer job at an adult entertainment company!

Here's the full job description:
Mid-Level Programmer job

And in case that link expires or whatever, I took a screenshot of the actual job description itself, here's a thumbnail version (clicking on it will yield the full-size picture):



Good salary (more than I made at Amgen!), good location, interesting sounding job (even if it wasn't in the adult entertainment industry), and hey-- free access to porn! ;-) What do you think-- should I apply? ;-)

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/321695305)

Weetabix

I am a very happy shopper at the moment because I just returned from Trader Joe's with our usual cache of food staples and snacks. Usually not a blog-worthy event, but today's purchases included this:



You're probably wondering what the big deal is. Cereal-- nothing unusual. And you'd be right... save for the fact that we don't normally get this decidedly British/Australian food here in the US. The closest equivalent would probably be shredded wheat, but that's nowhere near the texture, consistency and flavor of Weetabix.

When my uncle came here for my grandmother's funeral last month, he brought a few packages of Weetabix along. No surprise-- he is from Hong Kong. I'd enjoy eating it as a midnight snack-- mixed with milk and honey and maybe some sliced bananas. Delicious! I only regretted finishing the last box and knowing I wouldn't ever get to eat it again for a long time, if at all. So you can imagine how I jumped for joy when I discovered the above-pictured box in the cereal aisle of TJ's. Even better-- it was very reasonably priced, and much cheaper than most branded (and far unhealthier) cereals. My mouth is watering at a much-anticipated midnight snack tonight and breakfast tomorrow :-9

(and yes, you know it's a slow day for blogging when all Helly can write about and take pictures of is a box of cereal amongst her grocery store purchases!)

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/321491956)

Foreign Employers?

The job hunt continues, slowly but surely. Crashed a couple of career fairs on campus Tuesday and Wednesday that provided a few good leads. While in my Gmail and emailing various prospective employers, I glanced at the side, where the ads are. Those of you who use Gmail know that the ads are based on the content of your emails. In fact, Lisa and I tried testing it out by filling our emails with words like "dildo" to see if any adult-toy-related ads would come up. I can't remember if we had any success or not.

Anyway-- it was no surprise that the majority of the ads on the right-hand side of my Gmail today consisted of employment/recruitment-related websites. All except for a curious one that wasn't even written in English. I thought maybe it was a foreign employment agency or something, but when I clicked it, I ended up on a travel website that specialized in travel to/from India. Yeah... as if someone who's looking for a job will be able to afford overseas travel :-P

I took a screenshot so you can see for yourself. How do you suppose that ended up in there?



(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/320592402)

I Hate Windows Vista

A couple months ago I blogged an anti-Internet Explorer rant. Today the rant continues-- not just about a web browser, but an entire operating system: Windows Vista. I was merrily typing away at an email and paused to watch some TV, allowing the computer to sit idle for a little while. The screensaver kicked on, and I turned back to the computer, moving the mouse to kill the screensaver and get back to what I was doing. Before my very eyes, my browser window (with my half-finished email) disappeared, as did every other application-- and the entire system shut DOWN! Fortunately I had an automatically-saved draft of my email and hadn't been working on anything else I could've potentially lost.

Still... who needs the blue screen of death when you can just watch your computer shutting down in an orderly fashion, without any prompting from you!?

The interface is tacky, too, I find. I guess it's designed to be "user-friendlier" but the only thing I like is the fact that you can right-click on your desktop and bring up ALL your preferences, not just display options. First thing I did when I set up my account was to revert back to the "Windows Classic" interface. And even then it's laced with Vista-specific foibles. It is still basically ugly and kludgy and hard to manage.

And then... my favorite email client, Outlook Express, which comes built into Windows, was repackaged as "Windows Mail". Okay, not a big deal, as the functionality and interface was basically the same. Until I tried doing simple things like watching a video on YouTube, and discovering it was extremely choppy. I thought it was a lossy internet connection so I downloaded the Flash Video file and tried to view it offline. Made no difference. So I pulled up the task manager to figure out what was going on, and what do you suppose I saw, hogging up an unconscionable amount of CPU power and memory? That's right-- Windows Mail. How can a program as basic as an email client consume that many resources!?!? Oh and speaking of memory-- let's not forget that just to install Vista itself requires an inordinate amount of "minimum" memory and hard disk space. Windows seems to get more and more bloated with each new version it rolls out!

So, in a nutshell-- I am no fan of Windows Vista. Crappy interface, terrible memory hog, unexpected shut-downs... yeah... as soon as we have time I'm gonna revert this thing back to good ol' XP.

Meantime... back to my email. My apologies to the recipient for the even further delays...

Frustrating Day

What a day! And am I glad it's finally over. Started off with a trip back down to Thousand Oaks for a one-on-one appointment with a consultant from the career services agency that Amgen had contracted with to help us get back on our feet. My appointment had been scheduled for 1pm, but when I arrived, not only was my name not on the appointment sheet, but they were running behind. WAY behind. I waited in the kitchen and helped myself to some snacks and drinks while I waited, figuring I'd be seen within a half hour. If only!

An hour went by. And then another(!) before I was finally seen-- by none other than the woman who scheduled my appointment last week herself!

The meeting itself was brief and, in a nutshell, a colossal waste of time. The only reason I was remotely interested in meeting with a consultant privately was because I was interested in making a career change and wanted to hear about some ways to go about it. Instead, I got resume-building advice (I showed her a draft copy of my resume)-- which is always useful, but not what I was looking for at the moment. I also got the age-old "consult our website" adage, and lots of encouragement to attend their workshops designed to prepare us for the upcoming job fair in November. All well and good, but again, not something I drove 60 miles and waited 2 hours to hear.

I fielded a couple of calls on my cell phone afterward, and while I did, I took a look around the room-- it was basically full of individual cubicles, each outfitted with a computer and phone. I later learned that they were for the ex-Amgen-employees to use in their job hunting. And then I took a closer look at the computers, for the style of case, monitor and keyboard caught my eye and looked very familiar-- they were exactly like the HP/Compaqs used universally throughout Amgen. What do you think the closer look yielded? None other than property stickers emblazoned with the Amgen logo! I had to chuckle at the notion that perhaps this was where the computers of the laid-off employees ended up (joking, of course!) ;-)

And now, to kick up my feet, sip a hot cup of steaming tea, and relax for the night!

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/319427789)

Brief Update

I'd sent email to several of you whose email addresses I had handy at the time (I set all recipients to blind copy, so if we've emailed recently and you didn't get it, check your Junk folder). For those I couldn't immediately contact, you may have heard the news secondhand: last week the mass layoffs at my company took effect, and I was amongst those to receive the axe. Some of you may have heard about the looming layoffs in the news this past several weeks. It has been a tense couple of months since the initial announcements, but now that the dust has settled, it's a relief to know who's leaving and who's staying, and be able to move forward.

Anyway, I got the news on Wednesday morning and spent much of the day packing up, cleaning up the work I'd been doing up till then, and backing up my personal files off my computer. I intended to come back on Thursday and finish up. To my (and everyone else's) utter surprise, when I arrived in the morning, my computer and telephone were gone! Apparently there was much miscommunication and confusion surrounding who was staying until Friday and who was leaving immediately, so it seems that they just swiped EVERYONE's computers. They even took the computer of one guy who DIDN'T get laid off! Fortunately I'd already taken care of everything important I wanted to on my computer, so all I had to do was get phone numbers of a few colleagues I had intended to email, from another co-worker.

This coming week(s) brings a lot of miscellany-- making sure I turn in the proper paperwork for my severance package, and meeting with the career consultants that have contracted with Amgen to provide free services for all of us who got laid off. There is a job fair specifically for us in November. In the meantime, I'm busy re-tooling my resume and continuing the job search.

Before I left on Thursday, I said good-bye to the manager who had hired me at the onset over 2 years ago. He asked if I saw this as a new opportunity or devastating news. Frankly, I see it as more of the former than the latter. Hopefully this gives me a chance to pursue another career besides IT/IS. Maybe I'll be able to find something where my love of spreadsheets, organization and attention to detail will come in handy ;-)

Yesterday was a busy day, continuing the apartment search. Now that my job location is variable, it increases the number of possibilities for places to live. So now we're a little more flexible in not only where we want to relocate, but also when we can actually move in. And hey-- I got plenty of packing boxes (for a small cubicle, I sure had amassed a lot of stuff and took SIX boxes to cart it all away!) that will come in handy when it comes time to move! No shortage of silver linings in this cloud :-D

Back to the job hunt and resume-rewriting I go. Wish me luck!

p.s. I still owe a few of you emails. I haven't forgotten them, and will get to them as soon as I am able, I promise! Meanwhile, thanks for the emails of love and support :-)

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/319031227)

All you've got... and then some!

I HAD to screenshot this after uploading some photos. Anyone see what's fascinating with this picture?



And all this time I've been rebelling and pointing out the physical impossibility of the feat whenever over-enthusiastic leaders demanded we give 110%! Guess this is their way of thumbing their noses right back at me!

Silly Names

Swiped from Scot. Haven't done one of these in ages, and this was too silly and funny to pass up.

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car),
Goopy Galant (he was a goldfish!)

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie),
Black Cherry Chewy Chocolate Chip (that's 4 Cs!)

3. YOUR "FLY GUY" NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name?)
H Kwe

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Orange Frog (sounds poisonous)

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you grew up),
Belly Sylmar (going with Jenna's assertion of my middle name)

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first),
Hel Kw (Ooops-- did it wrong. Correction: Kwe He)

7. SUPERHERO NAME: ("The" + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink),
The Purple Root Beer
(or if we're going alcholic: The Purple White Russian)

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
Cecil Allan (I don't actually know my own grandfathers' names, so I used Allan's grandfathers)

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother's & father's middle names )
Marie Raymond (again, my parents don't have middle names either, so I used my in-laws')

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher's last name, a major city that starts with the same letter),
Needham New York

12. SPY NAME: (your favorite season/holiday, flower).
Summer Daffodil (that sounds way too lame to be a spy name-- it sounds like the name of a tree-hugger!)

13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you're wearing right now + "ie" or "y")
Strawberry Jeansy

14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)
Toast Sycamore (I don't really have a favorite tree, I just picked a neat-sounding one. I think my "spy name" from 12 makes a better hippie name!!)

Math proofs and the versatile iPhone

... to continue on with the random musings I posted earlier today, here's a couple random funnies.

You've no doubt seen the "mathematical" proofs that Women are Evil or that Money is the Root of all Evil, right? Well, now I present to you proof that studying will get you nowhere in life except failure:




And, in reference to the iPhone video that I mentioned to Scot in the comments section of the previous blog entry: this is the video I was talking about. The iPhone has so many capabilities that all you really need is one or two extra little features and voila! It's an iEverything!

iPhone

Add to My Profile | More Videos

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/317279882)

Random Musings

Saw this license plate the other day: FOTOLDY -- it made me think of Lucia :-)

This bumper sticker on another car made me laugh:
"Laughter is the best medicine. And your face is curing the world"

Allan will finish school and start a new job in January. The fact that I am writing this today in the future tense implies that it will be January 2008. His offer letter, however, mistakenly said January 2007. Looks like he's been missing nearly a whole year of work! ;-)

Apartment-hunting continues. We are in love with the townhome-style apartments of a newer complex not too far from where I work-- with the den and garage on one floor, living room and kitchen above that, and bedrooms and bathrooms at the top. Sure, it might be a bit of a pain to have to lug the vacuum cleaner up and down 3 flights of stairs every week, but it's worth it to be able to compartmentalize the different aspects of our lives like that. AND it'll be great not to have neighbors either above or below us (or worse yet-- both above AND below!).

I have learned that I obtained the majority of my education in modern pop culture and music through The Simpsons. I've lost count of how many times I've heard a song on the radio and exclaimed: "I heard (a spoof of) that on the Simpsons! I had no idea it was a REAL song!" So, I guess Bart and Homer and clan have some redeeming and educational value after all :-P

My son is quite the budding photographer. Allan recently got a new phone-- a Motorola RIZR, one of those really sleek and gorgeous slider phones. Todd enjoys playing with the 2MP camera feature of it and snapping pictures. Maybe we'll get him one of those toy digital cameras that are real cameras yet sturdy enough to survive the grubby hands of an active toddler.

I seem to have run out of random musings that have been brewing all week. So I'll end this post with a simple wish:

Happy Columbus Day!

(originally posted at:  http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/317178058)

Ode to Rocky

The infamous stuffed dog is sitting at my desk, watching me solemnly as I type this. I thought it would be fun to chronicle how Rocky came to be a part of my life and how, despite merely being a plush animal, he's probably seen more adventures and places than most real dogs, and even some human beings!

I got him when Allan and I were in Minneapolis, Minnesota in December 2003. On a starving-student budget, we figured it would be a great, quirky place to visit on our honeymoon. You might be thinking: "Minnesota? In the dead of winter!?" but our lapse of judgment in making that decision is another story entirely :-P Anyway, we were in the Camp Snoopy store at the Mall of America when I came across the stuffed dog with the collar and leash. Yup, the stuffed Rottweiler, a product of Fiesta Toy's line of "Good Dogs" looked woefully trapped in the red leash:

You see, for a long time I'd been on the lookout for the perfect stuffed dog. Most fall into one of 2 categories: 1) They look realistic but aren't cute. Or 2) They are cute but don't resemble real dogs. I had a hard time finding that perfect blend of realism and cuteness. Until I chanced upon the Rottweiler in the Camp Snoopy store. He was the only one left, and I hurriedly snapped him up. First thing I did when I got him home? Cut off that suffocating collar and leash!

Anyway, Rocky looked real enough that he's fooled people into thinking that he's a real dog. When I first got him, I'd do a double-take whenever I walked into the room where I left him, thinking there was a puppy sitting on the bed. My mom had the same reaction when she saw him. The nurse who came to check on me after Todd was born, was startled at the sight of what she thought was a real dog-- inside the hospital! And just recently, while I was carrying Rocky under my arm while entering the building for work in the morning, a co-worker spied him and asked if it was my dog. Thinking she knew it was just a plush dog, I replied, "yes". She then took a closer look and realized, "Oh, it's a toy!"

Rocky has been everywhere. As mentioned above, I took him to the delivery room with me when Todd was born. He helped me get through the childbirth process by giving me something to focus my attention on. He has accompanied me to Germany, the UK, and Canada. Starting off in Minnesota, he's since traveled to California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada. He's probably seen more airports and airplane cabins than Allan. He has spent days lazily lounging on the bed, and days watching over the other creatures in my office (remember the day he played police dog after Wallace fell over?)

One of my favorite Rocky stories takes place at a rest stop in the UK, where we parked next to a car with a couple of dogs resting in the back seat. The window was cracked open slightly and just for fun, I made Rocky bark at them. The dogs went absolutely ballistic, lunging for the crack in the window and sounding like they wanted to tear Rocky to shreds! Here's a shot of their reaction:

I've become so attached to the little stuffed critter that not only does he get carted around everywhere I go, but I've taken numerous pictures of him (most of which make it into my blog), written this entire dedication to him, and even given him a profile on Facebook (via the Dogbook app):

http://apps.facebook.com/dogbook/pet.php?id=374770

Arf, arf! :-D

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/315682425)