MySpace.com
|

rss
|
iniciar sesión

miércoles, mayo 06, 2009

The impact of the virus in Mexico

Categoría: Noticias y política

Since a lot of press and a lot of newsprint has been used talking about the new mutation of flu here in Mexico (and in the US), I would like to share how this virus has changed things here in Mexico.

There has been a lot of concern. A week ago, since I was getting over a cold, my boss told me to take two days off because he didn't want anyone who was sick in the office. When I returned Wednesday, there was a requirement on paper to wear those surgical masks people have been wearing in Mexico. As it turns out, only about a third of the people in the office were actually wearing the masks.

Because of the sickness, offices were closed Monday and Tuesday this week. It was quite nice for me, because it let me spend two more days with Marina.

All movie theaters were closed, much to Marina annoyance. She wants to see the new X-Man movie, and I want to see the new Star Trek movie, but this will not be possible until theaters open again.

Going to the stores has been affected by the virus. When we went to the Mexican version of a farmer's market over the weekend, stores were open and selling things. Supermarkets are also open and conducting business normally, with the only change being cashiers more commonly wearing masks. However, when we went to this upper-class shopping mall on Tuesday, most of the stores were closed.

My theory is that most middle-class and lower-class people don't care that much about the virus, but upper class people are more prone to fear and more easily cared by it.

- Sam

11:44

1 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

1 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

martes, mayo 05, 2009

Advantages of being an ESL teacher

Categoría: Metas, planes, esperanzas

One advantage of being an ESL teacher is that there's a lot more free time; unless one is a summer school teacher, there is no need to work summers. One also gets spring break and a two-week or three-week Christmas break. Even if one teaches in the summer, there is a break after classes end in the spring and classes begin in the summer, and another break after classes end in the summer and fall begins.

If I could get a nice ESL job in the Bay Area, I could have enough money to rent an apartment in Hacienda Business park and have lots of free time there.

Just a thought as I decide what to do with my career.

- Sam

14:07

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

domingo, mayo 03, 2009

Interesting New York Times article

Categoría: Empleos, trabajos, carreras

Here is an interesting New York times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/jobs/26vocational.html
Summary: A lot of people are going back to school and getting 9-to-12 month certifications so they can rejoin the job market.

09:38

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

sábado, mayo 02, 2009

Reflections on the tech industry

Categoría: Empleos, trabajos, carreras

Back in the mid-1990s, a number of my friends and I worked in the tech industry. Today, only one of us is still working in the tech industry.

One friend had a good job for a 3D virtual reality company then worked for a major silicon valley software maker. Last time I saw him, four years ago, he was on SSI disability and had to move out of where he was living because he couldn't pay the rent, and was living at a friend's place under construction.

Another friend had a good job with me then worked for this same major silicon valley software maker. Today, he hasn't worked for nearly two years and is living with his family.

Another friend had a good job at a copy shop on a major university campus. He then worked for a fairly large maker of video games. When that job ended, he was never able to get work in the tech industry again.

Yet another friend who had better than a 4.0 in high school went to a major university but was not able to graduate there. He worked various odd jobs, including the occasional skilled job using electronics. He's currently living on a boat and doing the occasional manual labor gig.

One co-worker, after being laid off from a company that died when the dot-com bubble burst, started working for a city's government, where she was still working last time I talked to her about four years ago.

Another co-worker has just been laid off from a tech company about two months ago and is pretty scared about how and when he'll get work again right now.

Someone else who I worked with is no longer in the tech industry because he did well enough to retire fairly young.

My one friend still working in the tech industry is on a contract that ends this month. He doesn't know whether he will be able to extend this contract, or if he'll have to find other work.

Some of my old bosses (middle management) seem to be doing better. Managing people is managing people, and isn't as vulnerable to the whims of the ever-changing buzzwords HR people insist you have experience in or they'll throw out your resume.

So, yeah, I feel like a has-been in the tech industry, but pretty much everyone I know who I worked with in the 1990s is either a has-been or is on the edge of becoming a has-been. Note to self: If you want a tech job that doesn't evaporate, become middle management.

Right now, I'm trying to decide whether I should go back to school, get my TESL, and become an English-as-a-second-language teacher, or whether I should try to make a go at returning to the tech industry. Looking at where all my non-management friends are, ESL looks rather appealing right now.

16:17

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

miércoles, abril 29, 2009

Man, this economy is bad

Categoría: Metas, planes, esperanzas

Back in the late 1990s, during the peak of the dot-com boom, when I announced availability on dice.com, my phone would be ringing off of the hook; I would get a dozen calls a day from various recruiters with various job proposals.

Things have certainly changed since then. About two days ago, I put my resume up on monster.com to get a sense of what the job market in the US is like. This morning, I put up my resume on dice.com.

The silence was deafening. I did not get one single email in reply expressing interest in my resume. Not a contact. Nothing. Just logging in to dice.com, only one person has even viewed my resume since I put it up this morning.

It looks like the only computer jobs out there are either dream lists (things like start-ups expecting someone with very senior-level experience in to give up a perfectly stable job and take chances with a startup, or clueless HR managers expecting to find something that doesn't exist like "20 years of Java"), or jobs filled by knowing a friend of a friend with a job available.

This is going to be a long job search. My goal is to let at least one person or potential employer see my resume every day and to not give up

In the meantime, it looks like I'm going to be in Mexico for a while longer. I may as well enjoy it. At least the afternoons are free, the girls here are beautiful (see my profile photo), and there is a beautiful park right across the street from my house.

- Sam

18:04

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

martes, abril 28, 2009

How the flu epidemic is going here in Mexico

Categoría: Viajes y lugares

Last week was not a good week to get sick in Mexico.

Over a week ago, I started having a fairly nasty cold. It was bad enough I actually canceled an English class so I could recover from the cold a little. Well, while I was recovering from this cold, in Mexico city people started dying of the flu. A disease with the exact same symptoms as the cold I have been fighting last week and early this week. So far, 150 people have died and people are getting, well, really concerned.

People are dying in Mexico city and the flu is all over the world, including in the United States and in Spain. So, just in case you've been under a rock and haven't been paying any attention to the news, this is all over the news, both in the US and here in Mexico.

Monday morning, I went to work. My boss observed I had a bit of a cough, so told me to go home and come back for a couple of days until I got better.

On the way home, I had to go by the store to get some credit for my cell phone; the cashiers were wearing a mask looking like a surgical mask while I did this.

Today, I stayed home (boss' orders) but went outside to drop off my laundry at the local laundromat. There were not nearly as many people on street as there normally are, and about a third of the people I saw on the street were wearing masks.

I got an email at work saying they were giving out these masks and that all employees must wear them at work.

When I went to the local park to take a walk, there were not that many people in the park and one lady asked if the park was even open.

While there are less people on the street, stores and parks are still open and it's still possible to take care of things like getting clothing washed. Where my girlfriend lives, even closer to Mexico City, it's like a ghost town. She says all of the Movie Theaters are closed and a lot of business are closed also, with hardly anyone on the street. She's been sitting at home all day and is getting a bit stir crazy, actually.

So, yes, this virus is worrying a lot of people in Mexico right now, but the general feeling I get is that people don't think this will become an epidemic killing a lot of people, but it's a lot better safe than sorry.

20:16

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

domingo, abril 19, 2009

A farewell to Deathmatch

You know, there is a certain sadness I feel whenever I declare a given open source project of mine dead.

Yesterday, I made the final release of ObHack (my modifications to a random map generator for the 15-year old original Doom games and Heretic, a Doom knockoff from the same era).  I've stopped working on this project because I realize today I'm no longer the 20-something kid playing deathmatch.

This is sad for me is because I'm saying goodbye to a time in my life.  I didn't have a computer when during the heyday of the original Doom but I remember geeks at the college I was going to at the time getting really excited about Doom and what a great game it was.  I also remember seeing Doom as a demo on computers at stores selling video games.

It was a time when a computer cost a great deal more than it does today; I wasn't able to get a computer running until the spring of 1995 and, by the time I had a computer good enough to play Doom, I had installed Linux and wasn't using Windows.

When Quake came out in early 1996, there was a Linux version and I played it some, but never finished even the first episode.

I didn't become really interested in first person shooters until 1997, when I spent a lot of time hanging out with my buddy Troy, who enjoyed playing Heretic and Quake deathmatch.  It was a lot of fun playing him and Deathmatch was what finally turned me on to first person shooter games.

BY 1998, my then-roommate and I both had computers and we would deathmatch in Quake 2 almost every night.  I was hooked to first person shooters; with the social aspect, they became enjoyable and fun games.

Well, I changed roommates so stopped deatchmatching at home, my buddy Troy's girlfriend became his wife and he no longer had time to deathmatch, so my interest in first person shooters waned again.  Yeah, there is net-play, but the point of a social game, IMHO, is to be in the same room as the buddy you're playing.

The last time I deatchmatched with a buddy was back in 2006 when Victor still lived in San Diego, when we deatchmatch this free FPS called Nexuiz which is an open-source professional-quality game like Doom and Quake.  It was a lot of fun, but Victor soon got sick of me beating him all of the time and he never got in to those games the way Troy and my old buddy did.

The nice thing about Nexuiz is that it is possible to deatchmatch against the bots, but the truth is that it just isn't the same, and something that gets old far more quickly than deathmatching your buddies on a LAN.

Random map generators for these games was able to sustain my interest in these games a little longer, but fighting monsters in a random map was never the same as hanging out with my buddies and deathmatching over a LAN.

So, a time of my life is passing on.  Troy is too busy feeding three mouths (his wife and two kids) to have time to deathmatch with his buddies; Victor has moved to Georgia and my days of deatchmatching with buddies are now gone.  It was a lot of fun, but I'm getting older and, while I will still play the occasional random Doom map when I'm bored, it's no longer a part of my life the way it once was.

09:37

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

jueves, enero 29, 2009

Unfriending people

Categoría: Noticias y política

The New York Times has an interesting article on removing people from your friends list (OK, it's for Facebook, which I use less than MySpace, but still).  It talks about how rude it is to or not to remove people from your friends' list.

I don't think it's rude myself.  About every six months or so, I go through my friends list and remove people who I can't remember or who I haven't had active contact with for a while.  I don't even get a free Whopper for it (in case you can't read the linked article: For a while Burger King would give people a free Whopper for eliminating 10 people from their Facebook friends' list, as long as the friend in question was notified that they were eliminated).

Why is this?  Well, in life most people who I meet and bump in to are people who soon drift out of my life.  There are very few of these people who are worth being friends with again.  I can count on the fingers of one hand the friends in my life who both were my friends in the 1990s who I have had some kind of active contact with in 2009.

There is only one single non-family member I can think of in my life today who was in my life in both the 1980s and 1990s. With Facebook, I have bumped in to a number of old High School friends; however not any of them was anyone who I had any kind of meaningful contact with in the 1990s. This one person, who I lost contact with after high school, is someone who I reestablished contact with in the 1990s because he was technology-savvy enough to find me on the internet in the days when the web was new, social networking sites did not exist yet, and Usenet was the most popular part of the internet.

One thing I like about the internet is that I can find people again who I have lost contact with over the years.  There are people who I haven't found online who I wish I could find again; notably my best friend in third grade who was a tomboy.

I remember talking to a lady back in 1987.  She told me the story of seeing the picture of an old lost friend on a photo promoting an event, and finding out how to contact the person again.  She was really delighted to find this person again and talk to him, catching up on what happened in his life.

Today, as likely as not, I can find old friends with a simple search on MySpace or Facebook.  There are people in my past who are delighted to have me back in my life.  Others who aren't.  It's a real eye-opener to find some girl online who I have fond memories of from years back and have her not want to have anything to do with me.  Then again, it's really nice to know where some of my old high school buddies are.

In life we meet thousands of people every day, but only a handful are people who we develop any kind of deep connection with and stay with.  That's just how life is.  It's only in the movies and on television that the same handful of people keep and active friendship with each other for years on end--I'm thinking of Star Trek where the same handful of people stay on the spaceship serving together far longer than any team like this in the military would stay together like that, or Gone With the Wind where the heroine stays in contact with all of her teenage friends throughout the entire movie.

The internet makes it possible to have the people we have connection with today be ones we choose to stay in contact with.  It would be nice if packs of people could stay together the way they did in the movies.  But life, sadly, isn't like that.

Update: Ironic I posted this today.  There are now two people who I knew in the 1980s who I am in active contact with today.  An old high school buddy who I was last in contact with in 1993, just before I got online for the first time, just got added to my Facebook friends' list today.

17:04

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

martes, enero 20, 2009

Proud to be an American

Categoría: Noticias y política

Today is a day I never thought I would see: The first day in history that a black person is president of the United States.

I am very proud to be an American today.  With a Democrat at the helm, may America become a nation that is respected and liked by the international community again.  May America no longer be associated with brutish invasions of sovereign nations motivated by Republican short-sighted greed.

May America be a land where people care about hard work and making the nation a better place one person at a time, instead of a nation overrun by prejudice, bigotry, and insensitivity.

I think today will start a new era in America,where the average hard-working person has opportunities to have a better, more prosperous life.

01:00

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

miércoles, enero 14, 2009

A couple of interesting conservatives

Categoría: Noticias y política

A couple of conservatives who I think are worth reading.  One is a link sent to me by my buddy Leo:

http://www.exile.ru/print.php?ARTICLE_ID=7847&IBLOCK_ID=35

Another is the science fiction author John Ringo:

http://www.johnringo.com

And, of course, Jerry Pournelle, another science fiction author (notable for being very conservative, but opposing the Iraq war from the get go):

http://www.jerrypournelle.com

19:50

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

Publicaciones más antiguas
|
Publicaciones más nuevas

Sam

Sam Trenholme

Última actualización: 16/02/2010

Enviar mensaje
Mensaje instantáneo
Enviar por correo electrónico a un amigo
Suscribirse

Sexo: Male

Estado: Casado

Firma: Escorpión

Ciudad: Puebla

Estado: Puebla

País: MX

Fecha de inscripción: 07/07/2005

Archivo de blogs

[Más antiguos

Más recientes]

Ene
Feb
Mar
Abr
Mayo
Jun
Jul
Ago
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dic
/
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
/
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2033
2034
2035
2036
2037
2038
2039
2040
2041
2042
2043
2044
2045
2046
2047
2048
2049
2050
2051
2052
2053
2054
2055
2056
2057
2058
2059
2060
2061
2062
2063
2064
2065
2066
2067
2068
2069
2070
2071
2072
2073
2074
2075
2076
2077
2078
2079
2080
2081
2082
2083
2084
2085
2086
2087
2088
2089
2090
2091
2092
2093
2094
2095
2096
2097
2098
2099

>

Vínculos patrocinados

Domino Anti Spam

Domino Spam Blocker Server Based - Free Trial
www.maysoft.com

Acerca de nosotros |
Preguntas frecuentes |
Términos |
Política de privacidad |
Consejos de seguridad |
Informe sobre contenido inapropiado |
Publicitar |
MySpace International ▼

©2003-2010 MySpace.com. Todos los derechos reservados.

Cerrar

Las Américas

Argentina

Brasil

Canadá

Canadá (Français)

América Latina (Español)

México

United States (English)

United States (Latino)

Asia y Oceanía

Australia

Chino (tradicional)

India

Japón

Nueva Zelanda

Europa

Austria

Bélgica (Nederlands)

Bélgica (Français)

Dinamarca

Finlandia

Francia

Alemania

Irlanda

Italia

Países Bajos

Noruega

Portugal

Polonia

Rusia

España

Suecia

Suiza (Deutsch)

Suiza (Français)

Suiza (Italiano)

Turquía

Reino Unido