For a long time dogs have always been regarded as “man’s best friend”, I’ve never really understood why.

Due to various complications, my cat has been taken back to the old house, and it’s with this that I have come to understand why that is said.

When I was 9 years old I bought my cat, Barney, with my own £15. I went to a house where the owners had a litter of kittens, and chose that cat. I wonder what happened to his brothers and sisters, and his Mother and Father too. Through ten years, Barney has never betrayed my trust or let me down, like humans have the tendancy to do. We’ve never had an argument, or fallen out. Through ten years, if ever I needed a hug, he was there, and always enjoyed the attention. At times he could sense my emotions; he knew if I was happy or sad, and would often come over to me to play, or to cheer me up. Okay, so Barney is a cat, not a dog, and even though I can go and see him whenever I like, I now feel that I understand why people refer to dogs as “man’s best friend”.

This week is starting to get interesting.

On Tuesday the 8th I had a call from an agency about a web developer position at a company called Toucan Design. I said that I was interested, and 30 minutes later, they had hooked me up with an interview for Tuesday 15th. I attended the interview, and was told that I was one of five or six other interviewees, and that the agency would get back to me to see if I had made it to the final two.

I got an e-mail today saying that I have been selected as one of the final two, and that they would like me to come in next Tuesday from 2-5 to work with the team on a small project, and see how I get on. Whether or not the other interviewee will be there, I don’t know. It could be a little awkward.

However, I have also been in contact with another agency, who has put my CV forward for a similar web developer position at Organic Development. I told the agent, who has been a complete star through this, that I have been asked to go in for a second interview at Toucan Design, and that the first one went well. He spoke to the manager of Organic Development, who is very keen to meet me, and I have an interview pencilled in for Wednesday. The manager is apparently quite worried that I’m going to take the position with Toucan Design, if it’s offered to me, and is therefore attempting to clear his schedule. The agent started trying to persuade me to wait it out and see if Organic Development will take me on, but I told him that I’d go for the position that became available more immediately.

So, from the point of me applying for two completely different IT Technician roles, hearing nothing about them, but having the agencies that I applied for them through contact me about web developer roles, and now fight over me, it’s all quite fun.

The interview on Tuesday went well, and I hope that Toucan Design do offer me the job, but I’m also keen to see what is going on at Organic Development. Next week should be exciting. Hopefully, one way or another, I’ll end up with a job.

It has all been rather quiet around here recently, which is a shame. I had the dying hope that some of you readers would actually backtrack through some of my posts (well, as many as you could until I fix the archive pages) and leave me some comments, but alas not. Oh well.

Today the Virgin Media idiots came over and sorted the internet connection, TV and phone line, and I have to say, this 20Mb connection is disgusting. People like me shouldn’t be let loose with 2.2MB/s download speeds; the consequences could be dire. It took a little while to set up the cheap Netgear cable router they sent, but me, being the genius I am, hacked the shit out of it and got it to work.

During my time offline everything felt somewhat incomplete. Even though lots of people came together, and we went from having a house with practically nothing, to a house with furniture and electronics from all over the place, the lack of internet connection made me feel like I had to find the last piece of the puzzle before I could frame it and put it on my wall. Needless to say I spent the 3 weeks offline leeching WiFi (out of my own freewill, not because of the landlord’s suggestion), but regardless of how much I changed router settings, the signal strength was terrible. The new house is brilliant though, and I really like the location.

I have a new desk, which is much nicer than my old desk, though still not quite big enough for my liking, but unfortunately my chair is a little too low, so it really hurts to type on it, and look at the monitor. Actually, aiding typing pain is the fact I have a nice grey, cheap keyboard, because my beautiful Enermax Aurora finally died. For the first time ever, I threw a full cup of tea all over my desk, and that was the end of it. Pressing B also caused a V and a 6 to appear somewhere on the screen, which became very annoying when I restarted my PC.

“Hey dude, could I borrow a keyboard off of you. I’ve managed to spill a cup of tea on mine and it no longer works.”
“Sure, but on-screen keyboard for the win!”
“Yeah, I’d use it, but I can’t login to Windows, because I can’t type my password in to the login box.”
“There’s a keyboard shortcut”
“…”

Is it just me that notices the fundamental flaw in having a keyboard shortcut for the on-screen keyboard?

Now that I have an internet connection I want to get a white board so I can have a to-do list. Ones on the computer just never seem to work for me. I have plenty of things to be getting on with, and plenty of things I’d like to do. I’m going to have to use the fantastic WordPress function that enables you to post BACK IN TIME to update my “Album of the Week” posts.

Anyway, I best head off to bed, as I have a fun day searching through 20,000 files ahead of me. I reinstalled Windows today and forgot to backup a folder on my C: drive, and therefore undeleted it from the disk format, which recovered lots and lots of deleted files, none of which have proper filenames. Joys!