Another interview

Yesterday was a busy day for me. I was to have an interview with a company regarding a short term contract. The interview went really well. The hiring manager said that he is not sure if he is going to hire anyone at all, but needed to see what skills the available candidates had to offer. I will know more about this opportunity later next week.

One bad thing about this job, if I get it, is that the company is located far from where we live. I would have to spend an hour on the train, and then walk for another 15-20 minutes to get to the office. At least I will never have to walk in blizzard conditions. :-)

Another thing that happened yesterday was that I got a call from the company that interviewed me last week. They want to meet with me on Monday because their CEO is unavailable this week. I get a sense that they want to hire me but may have a different position in mind. It will be interesting to see what they propose. I will keep you posted!

Haxored!

My web site has been haxored (h4x0r3d or hacked)! Not my blog, but my personal web site. I only noticed it recently, even though it looks like the site was breached in August.

Luckily, nothing was destroyed. Whoever did it, only planned to use my site as a host for infecting other unsuspecting users. They put a ton of infected files in one of the publicly accessible directories on my site. Then they submitted that address to the Yahoo search engine to get people to click on the infected files.

As I have been preoccupied with other more important things over the last few months, I did not even think of checking my site for intruders. I am renting space on a shared web server, and there is so much misconfigured software that crackers exploit the bugs in software to dump their infected files on unsuspecting users. I was able to pinpoint the exact time they gained access to my site, but could not figure out which way they came in.

I have now cleaned up my site, removing most of the old and unused files, just so I can detect another intrusion more easily. I have also setup automated tasks to run in the background and check for ANY new files that are created. If a new file gets created on my server, I will know about it. That's the beauty of computers. If something is a repetitive task, just automate it and get an email sent to you if something out of the ordinary happens.

As for my personal computer, I have two antivirus programs running and a firewall that notifies me of every new program execution. Kind of slows down the whole computing process, but prevents the baddies from getting onto my computer. A word of advice, update your virus definitions and put up those firewalls because the internet is one infested environment.

A walk, and then some

Several days ago I noticed an advertisement for an event to be taking place this Sunday in Sydney. Seven Bridges Walk is what it was called, and just like it said, it consisted of walking around Sydney Harbour and going over seven different bridges. The walk was to cover 25 km and you could do it between 8 am and 5:30pm this Sunday.

I saw this as a great opportunity to see more of Sydney, while taking part in an organized event. Carla decided to partake as well, but as she is studying for the finals, she could commit to only doing a part of the course. One problem that I anticipated for the walk was the rain that was forecast to start in the morning and go on throughout the day.

We started the walk early to get in as much walking as possible before the rain started. We walked the Harbour Bridge and the Pyrmont Bridge together, and then Carla had to head home. The weather was still nice and dry at this time, making the walk a really fun activity.

When Carla left, I continued towards the ANZAC bridge, which is one of the newest bridges in the area. For more on the history of the seven bridges, go to here. Just as I was getting off the ANZAC bridge, the rain started coming down hard. 'Oh great,' I thought to myself, but continued as I was committed to covering all seven bridges.

I braved the sun, the wind and the rain, and was able to cover all seven bridges. If you take a look at the map of the course, you can tell that there is a LONG walk after the Fig Tree Bridge until the Harbour Bridge. By the time I got off the Fig Tree Bridge, I was wet, sore and hungry, and to top it all, could feel several blisters, making it REALLY difficult to walk.

I hobbled up and down the hilly terrain of Sydney's northern suburbs, stepping into a water puddles on several occasions as it was getting hard to find dry land, even on dry land! I stumbled on the Wollstoncroft train station, which was conveniently located on the route that I was trying to complete. I could not resist the temptation of the train choo-chooing me back home. By this point, I had been walking for 5 hours, and had covered over 20 km. I had been walking in the rain for the last three hours. It was time to go home.

The walk had been a great experience. I would love to do it again, preferably on a day with clear skies and 0% chance of rain.

Sleep will do you good!

That interview I had yesterday really wiped me out. I slept 10 hours last night! I woke up refreshed and relaxed. Then I went for a workout and for the first time in my life was able to do 35 push-ups in a row. May not be a big thing for a lot of people, but it is my personal best. I seemed to have more energy as there was nothing to fret over. It is interesting how these little/big things have an influence on our performance at home and at work.

The weather has finally improved from the 'cold' spell that we've been having for the last couple of weeks. September was supper warm, with temperatures reaching into 30s, but since the beginning of October temperatures have been hovering around 20 C. Now we're back to nice 26 C and I hope it stays that way.

I'm off to watch Gray's Anatomy. Can't wait to see what happened this week!

Interview

I just came back from an interview with a small high-tech startup here in Sydney. They seem to be working on a really cool product and are just starting out. The whole team is made up of four people including the CEO, so they are TINY! This is exactly the environment that I am looking for.

I would love to get on with a firm that is just starting out. The challenges during the early stage are very different than what you would experience in a big company. You have to be creative, resourceful and be able to make magic happen!

The company is still interviewing other candidates, but I think that my meeting with them went pretty well. I have not done a technical interview in a LONG time, so a few questions did trip me up. The good thing is that they don't expect you to know everything. As long as you know where to look and how to look it up, that is sometimes enough.

I fared much better on the behavioral part of the interview. I've had to practice the answers to standard questions so many times for all the jobs that I had applied while working for the government. Well, I should hear something from the company by the end of next week. Wish me luck!

Time for a walk

Yesterday was a beautiful day (like we don't get enough of those here) so I decided to go for walk across the Harbour Bridge. It is one of the main sites that you would see when you visit the Sydney Harbour.

The Harbour Bridge is a host to the world famous New Year's fireworks show. Check out the last fireworks show at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7UbL4nfeJE

I took a few pictures during my stroll across the bridge. You can see the pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com.au/ivanonthemove/2009HarbourBridge?authkey=Gv1sRgCPb5s9n3rMXNxAE

Finally, getting more for less!

The introduction of competition in Australian overseas data cables has improved pricing of Internet services in Australia. Costs are going down and these savings are being passed to consumers, most notably ME!

Early this August, I found out that Australia was getting a new undersea optical cable that connects Australia to Guam (and from there to USA and Asia). Before this cable was introduced, there were only two companies providing overseas connections, and the prices reflected this duopoly environment. Introduction of the third competitor has already pushed the prices of an overseas connection down by 30%.

My interned provider (Internode) had announced that they will be offering larger quotas as soon as the new cable is light up. The official start for the new plans was October 8th, which means that as soon as my new monthly billing cycle starts, I will be eligible for the new quota. I have already chosen the new plan that I am switching to. Take a look at the picture below!

10GB more for $5 less a month?! Sure, I'll take that!!!! Ahhhh, I love competition. 40GB was just not cutting it, so 50GB might do the trick. Another good thing about Internode is that they don't count uploads. Since I am backing up my pics and docs to an online server (JungleDisk), it really helps that I don't have to pay for uploads.

Unlike in North America and Europe, where you primarily pay for the speed, in Australia you pay for the size of your monthly quota. You get the same speed as others, but pay differently based on your download profile. As such, I get a 20Mbps download link, and a 1.5 Mbps upload link. FAST! It is amazing to see downloads come at blazing 1.5MB/sec (the server can't give it to me faster even though my connection can take it). Crazy, I tell ya! The trouble is that even though the prices for Internet access have come down, they are still pretty high, as witnessed by the picture above. Oh well, I think my 50GB should last me through the month. If not, I can pay $15 for extra 10GB. At least there is that option.

Australian immigration changes

Australia is a place where laws and policies are updated frequently. No policy changes more frequently than the immigration policy. With the latest update, only people with specific and select experience can hope to get a permanent residence in Australia.

Carla and I have been following Australian immigration policy for the last couple of years. It is truly surprising to see how often they tweak this policy. So far this year, there have been three major changes to the immigration policy, with at least one more change to come this year.

First, the number of immigrants that Australia accepts was cut by 20%. Then, the immigration department cut a number of positions off the list of eligible professions for immigration purposes. Two weeks ago, a priority queuing system was introduced to help eliminate the large number of immigration applications. Later this year, more professions are supposed to be cut from the eligibility list and the English language requirement is about to be made tougher.

The recently introduced priority queuing system makes it pretty much impossible to immigrate to Australia without a profession that is not on the Australian Critical Skills List (CSL). Majority of the professions on the CSL are medical professionals, engineers, teachers, accountants and computer professionals. Everyone else not on the list, don't bother applying because your application will be processed in three years or so.

That means that I need twelve months of recent (within the last 24 months) experience in a CSL profession to be able to apply for permanent residence. I need to get this experience before Carla's student visa runs out in three years. No pressure! :-)

Looking at startups

I visited a local startup company yesterday and had a great meeting with the management. They are currently hiring so we will see what happens.

I have been looking for hi-tech startups in Sydney and have not had much luck. Then, I find a posting on the local job site advertising an FPGA engineer position at a small local startup. I googled them, found very little information on the company and decided to go visit them before I send in my resume.

It took a bit of searching to find their physical location but find them I did! I met the hiring manager early in the morning and we ended up chatting for over half an hour. Not bad for coming unannounced. I met the CEO, too. He was sitting in a cubicle next to the manager, so I got a chance to talk to him for a while.

The company looks very promising. They are small, but that is the best time to be getting into a venture like this. Sounds very exciting!

Buying contact lenses

We realized that Carla had only a few sets of contacts left, so we started looking into buying contacts in Sydney. The contacts are really expensive here, at least if you try to buy them from an optometrist. Sydney does not have a Costco store where, like in Canada, we can buy contacts at a great discount.

The only way we could buy contacts seemed to be through an optometrist. It has been over two years since Carla's last eye exam, so she needed to go for an eye exam. To get an eye exam and a prescription for contact lenses costs about AUD$120. And for what? For an optometrist to give us the same prescription that we had received last year. No thank you. Our eyes have not been changing for a while now, so paying $120 was out of the question.

After a quick search, I found about 10 websites selling contacts online in Australia. Then, I removed the expensive websites and was left with 8 websites. Following that, I removed websites requiring a proof of current valid prescriptions and was left with three websites. Not bad at all. I then picked the least expensive website (including shipping) and ordered the contacts. Five days later, we have our contacts and have not had to spend any money on the eye exam. How good is that!

We will go get an eye exam in a year or so, but the plan is to by then have health coverage that will cover eye exams. Until then, online ordering it is. By the way, we got the lenses for 50% off from what we would have paid at the optometrist's!