Thursday may 6th, I had been alone at home with the cat for nearly a week, programming on a website without a clear deadline...

within 26 hours from first phonecall to 'you're hired'

Dear diary,

Wellwellwell... the consistent updating of my blog isn't working. I guess I'll always keep the habit of "first finishing a few things, and blogging afterwards", but things never really get finished

I did do more work done than before, from the end of january to the end of april. Or at least the first part of that period I've been constantly busy -- if you count 'compulsively reading newspapers and other internet sites' as 'being busy', that is

Eindelijk, eindelijk, na meer dan 12 maanden brieven schrijven en gedoe met incassobureaus en mijn huurster... heb ik de huur van mijn appartement (in de periode oktober 2008 - maart 2009!) die Rots-Vast Amsterdam Zuid voor me geïnd heeft, op mijn rekening gekregen.

Waarom moet Rots-Vast deaud? Niet zozeer omdat ze geen enkele toegevoegde waarde hebben, maar vooral omdat ze systematisch liegen. De wereld is beter af zonder ze. Ik had het al eerder genoemd, maar hier is het volledige verhaal.

I've had both another experience with stupid dishonest recruiters and with being rejected because of my 'internet reputation'. The first isn't so significant (I just laugh about these people)... but the second is. This was the first time I have been rejected face-to-face during an interview with a steady employer, because of their fear of damage to their image. (As opposed to a recruiter or company ditching me for a contract job.)

The dishonest recruiter

So...

In case anyone was wondering: yes, I'm still alive...

Last time I said (though it was in Dutch) that I had two and a half website assignment still lying around, and really had to get to work fast. Well: it took two months to get one and a half site finished.

Ofcourse, in this manner I will never make a full income for myself. It's my own fault; I'm just distracted too quickly when I'm contantly working alone at home.

Zo!

In het 'dagboekbericht over oktober' schreef ik dat ik wel een paar veelbelovende sollicitatiegesprekken achter de rug had (en zelfs een contract getekend had), maar dat er uiteindelijk niets uit was gekomen, behalve een klein opdrachtje van mijn 'half-vaste werkgever'...

Nou, inmiddels is dat behoorlijk veranderd!

I almost turned git user, for the first time. Drat. I do have a GitHub account, so I'm +1 on the l33tness scale, but I haven't used it yet The bug I found two weeks ago (when my life got really busy) is fixed now. So I'll wait until it's necessary.

On the web servers I administer, I'm using AWStats for web statistics. I switched from 'geoipfree' to the 'geoip' plugin (using Perl's Geo::IP library) in 2007 because the country database for the Geo::IPFree library was too heavily outdated. And therefore giving too many 'Unkown Country' results in statistics.

Note: this is not a tutorial on what XDebug is and how it exactly works, or an install howto. If you want that, then please read this post on box.net. This post is more like a 'declaration of awesomeness'. I just wanted to blog about it - and I think this things needs more 'advertising'. Maybe this illustration will give someone who's googling for 'vim' and 'xdebug' a still better idea what this is about.

My story:

I have my own 'ShortURL service' now!

But, very much in the Roderik spirit, when investigating this one task, I discovered that it could be done better if I tackled another task first. But I wanted that other thing done right, so I had to do another thing at the same time. Etc.