This has to be the best job description I’ve ever seen, courtesy of OpenCola. Some highlights:

It seems like a pretty cool product, and darned if it doesn’t sound like they’d be fun to work with. As usual though, they’re looking for someone with a bit more experience than I’ve got right now. Oh well, they’re in Canada anyway.

Sevenplace is really cool new tech news/articles/forums site run by some friends of mine. They’ve got quite a nice setup over there, and they’ve even got a knowledge base (currently small, but growing). Its all coded by them too I’m pretty sure. Seems like its got great potential to be a really useful site.

A small piece of good news today; I found out that I can keep working at the computer centers through the break between spring and summer quarters. That’s a week longer than I thought I could, which gives me just that much longer to find a job before being thrust out into the cold heartless world of unemployment. So yeah, its not much but its something. I’m sure that will be all the time I need to find a job. Right.

Ok see, this is just too much. Geekdom’s quest to caffeinate every single imaginable consumer product has just crossed that fine line between harmless amusing eccentricity and crazed obsession.

South campus is gone. Really really gone. Like “big-hole-full-of-rubble” kind of gone. Its so strange to see so many buildings I saw everyday when I lived on campus just gone. I guess it’s been gone for a few weeks now, but it didn’t really strike me until tonight when I was driving down Chittenden and realized I could see all the way down High street to 9th where previously there had been blocks of closed down bars and stores. Score one for Campus Partners. I don’t really know how I feel about that. I certainly don’t miss the old bars and buildings. They were ugly and run down, even before Campus Partners bought them out and shut them down. Still, they were the ugly and run down buildings that made up the OSU campus that I knew. I’m not really too thrilled with the idea of them being replaced by a Barnes & Noble and 17 more Starbucks. What I’d like to see is a bunch of cool, unique, distinctive local businesses, but I’ve got a feeling that the kind of money being spent on the renovation will make the cost of renting too prohibitive. Whatever. As long as there’s an Abercrombie & Fitch. Or two.

Answer these using the lyrics of just ONE band/artist (from Kimmee)

Band/artist: Modest Mouse

****************

1. Are you male or female?
“Got a phone call from the Lord sayin’ ‘Hey boy get a sweater. Right now!'”

2. Describe yourself?
“I’ve said what I said and you know what I mean
But I can’t still focus on anything”

3. How do they feel about you?
“Well, you were the dull sound of sharp math”

4. How do you feel about yourself?
“And I claim I’m not excited with my life any more
So I blame this town, this job, these friends
The truth is it’s myself
And I’m trying to understand myself
and pinpoint where I am
By the time I get things figured out
I’ve changed the whole damn plan
I’ve changed my mind so much I cant even trust it
My mind changed me so much I cant even trust myself”

5. Describe your (ex-) girlfriend/boyfriend?
“I wanna remember to remember to forget you forgot me”
“Broke up, and I’m relieved somehow
It’s the end of the discussions that just go round and round”

6. What would you rather be doing?
“Gonna hit you on the face gonna punch you in your glasses. Oh no!”

7. Describe where you live?
“There’s a lot going on underneath
There’s roots there’s pipes, there’s drainage leaks
You’re on, you’re wrong, Ohio”

8. Describe how you love?
“just the smell of the summer can make me fall in love”

9. Share a few words of wisdom?
“Everyone’s afraid of their own life
If you could be anything you want
I bet you’d be disappointed, am I right?”

Pitchfork hit the nail on the head with their review of Maladroit today by pointing out the eerie similarites between the new Star Wars movies and the new Weezer albums, both plagued by unrealistic expectations of slavish fans and both failing to live up to those expectations. Granted, I haven’t heard the album yet so I might not agree entirely with their assessment, but I just thought the Star Wars/Weezer comparison was pretty interesting. You know, for geeks and stuff.

I finally bought Mirah’s “Advisory Committee” today, and it turned out to be as good as I expected. Really, really good. This is definitely going to be one of my favorite albums of the year.

Robocode (and for that matter, the entire Alphaworks site) is just incredibly cool. It doesn’t get any better than coding the brains for super death robots and then setting them loose on each other in an arena. Programming contests involving battling robots have been around forever, but this raises the bar by adding a nice GUI and built in compiler to make basic robot creation as straightforward as possible. Oh yeah, and its in Java too, another bonus. I don’t know if I should admit this, but last night I kept dreaming about targeting algorithms that I could use. I woke up trying to figure out the necessary trig. That’s pretty bad, I know but this is just so much fun. Tobin and I have formed Team w00t and are issuing a challenge to anyone who wants to try to take us on. Come on, it’ll be fun.

Hot Property brought the rock to Columbus last night, and I finally was able to experience the magic of their live performance. They certainly know how to put on a good show, and the choreographed dance numbers didn’t hurt either. I think you’d be hard pressed to find any other presidential candidates that can shake it like that (though I’ve heard that Ralph Nader can get his freak on like you wouldn’t believe). There was a brief tense moment when Chet hugged The Arm, but I guess The Arm must have been feeling mellow that night because no one got hurt. I finally got a copy of their excellent new cd, “On the Other Side of the River of Excess“, which is every bit as good as the live show, but just without the dancing. Rancid Yak Butter Tea Party (featuring Mike from frantic.org and Brian from debugged.org) followed Hot Property, playing a special live set since their bass player had recently broken his hand. Instead of their regular songs they played a selection of classic Megaman tunes. Megaman + horns + theremin + rock – tinny 8 bit sound = Aw, yeah! I think I’ll definitely have to plan on seeing one of their regular shows as well.

My job search still hasn’t come up with anything promising yet, which is getting pretty discouraging. No matter what I do, I just can’t seem to get anyone interested in me. I don’t get it. I state very clearly up front that I’d be willing to kill for money if the job requires it, and yet no one ever gets back to me after I send them my resume. Its starting to look like I won’t find a job before the Student Computer Centers kick me out. How soon is that? Let’s take a look. Hmmm, it just seems to keep going down. That’s no good. I’m not out of hope yet, even though it seems I’ve checked just about everywhere I can think of. I’ve just recently applied with

TekSystems and Manpower, which might end up placing me with some temporary contract work. It would certainly be better than not having a job and I would still be getting experience, even if it might not be necessarily in the areas I’m interested in.