Saturday, February 16, 2013

Frayed...... No more!

I posted a short time ago that I had re-entered the job market thanks to the company that I work for eliminating my position.  To recap, they notified us (my entire group) back in October 2012.  I was given my notice and a termination date in mid January that would terminate my employment in April.

I have to admit that prior to the bombshell they called an announcement, I had been looking around at jobs and had been on a couple of interviews over several months prior.  It was only a casual looking as I was employed.  Once we received the news that casual looking turned to an all out assault into the job market to find my next job.

It took a little while, but I am quite proud to announce that I FOUND A JOB!!!!!!  I was beginning to get in the mindset that I wasn't good enough and wouldn't find anything, but I have to say the two interviews that I went on felt really good.  The company is amazing and still in start-up mode, so its in the process of growing and expanding.

I have 4 days of work left and I will be done with the employer who apparently didn't want us around any more (maybe some day I will expand on that vague idea).  The good news is that I am employed, joining an amazing company and plan on getting my head right into the job.


On a side note, I found out something about the way my current employer is going about their 'moving of positions', that is really just disgusting and underhanded.  From what I found out, if you terminate or lay off a certain number of employees, it must be reported to the Federal Government and counted among the unemployment statistics.  The media then get hold of the news your doing layoffs and that can really worry people and even effect your stock price in some cases.

So what is my current company doing?  They are doing the terminations / position moves in small groups that fly juuuuuust under the Federal radar.  Thus, they can move the jobs and terminate the positions (knowing most won't relocate) and they don't have to report it.  They are actually working to shut down the site where we are, so the fact that they are doing it in small chunks and nobody will be none the wiser that all those people were laid off and the site closed, is just wrong if you ask me.

I just hope that in the long run, the choices they are making as far as staffing to replace many years of talent and experience, come back to bite them in the a$$!  The look at the numbers and don't give a crud about the people and their experience.  It goes to show that in large corporate America, nobody is safe, no matter what.

Sunday, February 03, 2013

Thoughts on Pinguy Linux

Ever since Ubuntu has completely switched to its Unity desktop (which I have to say I am not at all pleased with), I have been looking around at some different distributions.  Some have been ok, some have been quickly removed from my system (mostly for lacking any thought by the person who put it together).

Today I discovered a link to Pinguy Linux while going through the headlines on Hacker News.  A quick read of the description peaked my curiosity, so I downloaded a copy via their Torrent link.  I have to say that it was nice to see my download hit 3.4 Mb / second as the download finished in a matter of minutes.  I then created a virtual machine and installed the distribution into it.

The installation went pretty quickly and I was up and running in only a matter of about 10 minutes.  First impressions are quite important when you are trying to make a difference and this one did not blow me away.

After everything started up, I noticed that there is a dock on the left side of the screen containing folders.  Maybe its me just being picky, but I didn't want it there.  The unfortunate thing is that I couldn't figure out how to get rid of it.  For me, this was strike one. The system status app that auto runs is actually nice, keeping the user informed of processes, ram used, disk space, etc.

The next strike came when I started going through the Applications menu.  While there were plenty of apps for multimedia and such, there weren't any development type apps. I know its not a requirement for everyone, but nothing?  That wasn't the strike though.... it was when I scanned down to the wine applications menu, scanned over a couple of levels to find that Microsoft's Notepad had been installed by default.  Really?  Notepad?  I am on a Linux system that has plenty of editors available to it.  Why on Earth would I want an inferior product like Notepad?  (I say inferior, mind you, as a sign of its lacking any features, not as a slam to Micro$oft).

As I was browsing around, I noticed that the background kept changing.  They had pre-setup a rotating desktop background that cycled through pre-installed pictures. Why?  That takes up system resources that could be used for greater good.  And, when your running in a virtual machine as I am, you haven't allocated a ton of ram to begin with.  So, for me that was strike three.

All in all, if your on a fixed system, not in a Virtual Machine environment and you don't mind some of the quirks and "features" I have described (and your a multimedia geek), then maybe this is for you.  For me though, I am removing it and moving on to the next one.   The closest I have found for a distribution to switch to is Linux Mint.  We shall see though..... we shall see.
 
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