The car change thread is all accademic.

Elder wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.individual.net:

Sorry to hear that Carl. Chin up and all that.

What area are you in, and what do you generally 'do'?

Don't worry mate. Will have to go to the dole next week to restart the claim for a month (have already rang them).

Then I will start the hunt again. I know I have one to start, but that doesn't mean it will be the only offer I get. And if I need to be out of work for a month, I might as well see if I can get a better or as good offer somewhere else.

I signed the contract based on the offer letter with the start date. As he can't give me his suggested date, he can't hold me to agreeing to the contract.

I've never known any food to be as expensive as the processed s*it found in any supermarket. Get yourself to a few local farms and buy nice meat, and cheap veg from a farmers market or something. Cheap, much tastier and generally better for you.

Also, another fing I've noticed, if I cook my food properly, with full fat real live butter and stuff instead of any of this healthy s*it, I eat less and stay not-hungry for longer.

Bah, it's a conspiracy, all this process food. I tells ya.

Web development, Perl/PHP/Mysql, basic Photoshop. In the Northwest Manchester/Liverpool/"Ooop North on the right side of the pennines" type area.

I do buy fresh. And I tend to buy small farm stuff from local shops where I can. And it doesn't cost much different, you just need to be prepared to move arround for it. It means a lot of walking or driving to get everything. But it does taste better.

I take it you're scanning all the usual job sites?

If it were me, I'd do shelf stacking or whatever until January, if nothing IT wise turned up in the next week.

I was until about a month ago when I got the offer, and then 2 weeks to=20 get it in writing and then two weeks for the start date. Now this.

Had thought about it. Although I might see if the job centre have=20 anything going for about =A315-17k, where you can sit at an office desk,=20 shuffle some papers, transfer a few phonecalls to dead ends, and tell=20 people what they should be doing, but when asked if you have done any=20 requested tasks, pretend not to have been told about them, with internet=20 access.

General office admin in other words.

--=20 Carl Robson Audio stream:

I was until about a month ago when I got the offer, and then 2 weeks to get it in writing and then two weeks for the start date. Now this.

Had thought about it. Although I might see if the job centre have anything going for about £15-17k, where you can sit at an office desk, shuffle some papers, transfer a few phonecalls to dead ends, and tell people what they should be doing, but when asked if you have done any requested tasks, pretend not to have been told about them, with internet access.

General office admin in other words.

You have looked on the usual jobserve and theitjobboard.com I take it...? There seems to be loads on there..

Mike

I think you must mean the left side of the Pennines and you can't mean the correct side 'coss that's over 'ere :-)

There are loads. I've tried them (for the developer roles) but a lot want people with MS technologies (SQL server/.NET/Visual Basic etc). I have experience in the open source world.

Haven't looked for general roles recently, because I actually thought I had a new job, but as stated, from Verbal offer to written offer, to start date has taken a month. Now it is going to take another month to get started, if it does. From tomorrow, unless I can't even get basic office admin work, I nolonger work in IT. Unfortunatley, like most IT people, I can barely type properly, and can't touch or speed type to save my life, so I come across as a retarded gibbon using his feet in agency tests. And my spreadsheet skills are basic and minimal as I would just code everything in SQL and get the answer from a query using the database instead of spreadsheet.

SQL rocks.

Open Source is a strange thing though - would look at getting into a job even if it's a bit below you that gains some real world skills - SAP / Oracle / Microsoft etc.

That's where you'll fall down. I'm a senior manager for an external support contractor. We have hundreds of clients and the majority of them use Microsoft SQL server. PHP and MySQL is a really nice thing to play with. I have developed many a stupid, pointless, database driven website using it. Mainly because it's easy, free, and well documented.

The real word uses MS-SQL and ASP / ASP.NET for commerce applications. Get an old(ish) PC, stick an 'evaluation' copy of Windows Server and MS SQL Server 2000/05 on it. Familiarise yourself with the Enterprise Manager and you'll find all your MySQL skills transfer with relative ease. You can then stick that down on your CV as "2 years MS-SQL experience".

Unfortunately Microsoft certifications are stupidly expensive to achieve, but if you can get a MCDBA then you should have a good few cards to play in the job scene.

Problem is, with 10 years in the business, that is all I have had access to. Oyster were exclusively Unix for the server side. Netservices where a Microsoft partner, which meant they used to use an NT web server, Access for DBs and Exchange for mail. Then the company got some new blood in, me included. Who all knew a little or a lot about various Unix type systems (the hardware manager demanded Unix skills because he as sick of "idiots" applying for NT administrator jobs when he had done uni education and MS education and was highly skill on MS and Unix) so the company moved to unix based server for web and mail(for customers) and Exchange for the office. It then found it could charge silly money for using free tools.

Never worked for an MS house that actually really used MS extensively beyonf the desktop, unless the customer specifically asked for it.

I think my biggest problem is, I'm an english lit graduate with just on the job training. I learned while working, what I needed to work while learning. I have no formal IS/IT qualifications or training. 10 years ago you could get away with that and I spent nearly 6 years at one firm. It is gettig harder, most people want a 3 multimedia or Sysadmin degree to make the tea.

Thing is, over here (this side of the pennines) they seem to want 2=20 years experience of Oracle or MSSQL or something equally expensive to=20 have just to pay =A315k a year. To get much more you should ideally be sun= =20 certified, but another years experience and then suddenly they are=20 offering =A345k and a company villa.

--=20 Carl Robson Audio stream: