I spoke to a company in London today; a kind of “first take” on the whole job-hunting thing, for me and the company both I think. They asked some just-barely technical questions, and whilst I answered most with ease, I was feeling nervous and my mind went blank for others (specifically on JDBC, but if you care about that you should probably be reading the other site instead). At the very least I can call it practice — the person I spoke to was non-technical, so I couldn’t ask about the things that are really important to me: open source, GNU/Linux, vi vs. emacs, Gnome vs. KDE. The usual stuff you ask in interviews.
If they aren’t too scared off by my complete incompetence at answering straightforward questions then perhaps I’ll get a call by Friday.
I’ve also asked my manager to speak to her Greater Evils about getting a transfer to London within the bank. Since I’m slated to move departments and they’ve already hired my replacement, you wouldn’t think it would be much of a stretch. Of course, I want to keep looking because who knows? Maybe the salary somewhere else will be just that much better!
Tonight we played Uno, I’ve tried a beer called “Single Malt” (it’s made with the same malt as is usually used for whiskey) and I’m scanning some of our hundreds and hundreds of photos into the computer. The photos are strictly Dee’s project; I’m ostensibly scanning them in just to play with the Linux drivers (Xsane and HPLIP for printing and scanning). It works great! It is a HP Photosmart C4180 all-in-one jobby: printer, scanner, copier. It worked instantly under Ubuntu (Windows of course needs drivers for everything — oh, poor Windows!) and the software (HPLIP) is good, showing how much color is left and providing various other tweaks.
It is now getting quite late but I’m unable to sleep for some reason. I may be breaking out the headphones and putting on something relaxing soon I think — perhaps some binaural beats?