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A look at my recent postings shows that I have somebody trolling my posts. I feel pretty special that somebody would blow all their mod points modding every post of mine they could as Redundant. :P

Note to troll: Karma is still excellent, but keep trying. :P

Whoo, I really hate this fucking country. Let's see, recession that lasts longer than most and with an administration that's not nearly as caring as most (extend unemployment benefits, pshaw right, why do that, let's let people go into debt!). Now that the recession is supposedly over and the economy is making a rebound, let's continue to allow corporations to off-shore high technology jobs overseas to India and elsewhere. What a great plan, this way now that the economy has started to try and reverse course we can have zero jobs to go with it!

I'd leave this country and go elsewhere, but my general impression is that all countries suffer from the same problem-- government. It's always good when a few people who are "elected" are given powers over millions (and paid quite nicely to boot!). Of course these elections are participated in by less than half of the population (especially true in the United States), but hey, why put laws in to halt elections if a majority of the population appears to be displeased enough to not even vote. Let's elect whoever gets the majority anyways, afterall, 50% of 40% is better than nothing right?

I think I wish I'd been born in another 400-500 years. I can't imagine it getting any worse that far ahead.

Well, after over a year of looking for a job, I'm convinced this economy is in the toilet. I've since moved back to my hometown which is significantly cheaper to live in than Seattle was (rent is half of what it was in Seattle, with some utilities even being paid for that Seattle wasn't covering (which basically means everything), and cost of living is generally lower (read: everything at the grocery store is 15-30% cheaper than identical stores in Seattle)). I'll give tech jobs a chance when it looks like things have turned around.. in the mean time, let the resume rotting continue!

(Additional note-- I looked for jobs *everywhere* in this country explicitly stating that I was willing to relocate, so my location was irrelevant. Plus, if going by the job boards was any indicator, Seattle still had a good share of tech job openings, just a lot less like everywhere else.)

...just does not want to pick back up here in Seattle. The number of new jobs listed each weeks seems to grow smaller, while the talking heads on TV tell me it's all going to be improving "soon".

Somehow I don't believe them.

The upside so far is that I was recently informed that I'm eligible for an additional 3 months of unemployment compensation-- so at least I won't be trying to size up an alley to call home, but I'd still rather be back at work doing *something*. I keep fresh working on hobby projects and what not, but I feel as though my skills aren't getting any better just idling away waiting for some job to manifest itself.

Bleh.

I've been fiddling with a copy of Microsoft Visual C# .NET Standard I bought at the local Best Buy for $99, and so far I really enjoy the language structure as well as the new .NET Framework. From my info, you can tell I'm usually a Delphi/Pascal whore, but I can say without a doubt that I wouldn't mind delving into this as a line of work. =)

It also helps that one of the pioneers of Borland Pascal 7 was on the team Microsoft had to design the C# language, so a lot of the constructs appear to be similar in some ways, but more like C and C++ in others (which, I like C/C++, so this is another plus-- it gives you the language format of C/C++ but the ease of use of VB/Delphi). Exciting times, these.