Το φιτρί αγόρι (colourful life)

Today is my first day in a small internet travel agency in Greece. I left my job in a big ISP saving the world and some manager’s arses. Small company, quiet environment, small PC, and everything is done with windows and Microsoft tools.

Visual Studio, as always, impressed me with new tools that help a lot. But as always too, I could see the the not so good way it has to organize the code. Even I got scared when I saw the code for the automatic templates generated for asp web pages. Nothing is perfect.

Also I started to suffer the first windows problmes. In this case “I couldn’t open a .chm file”. So if you see in your windows a message like the one in the pic when you open a .chm file. Just modiy or create the following registry keys:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x\HHRestrictions]
“MaxAllowedZone”=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x\ItssRestrictions]
“MaxAllowedZone”=dword:00000001

All credits for this go to Ken.

So I hope I found a good place to work, and not another ISP chaos place.

It’s the first hour of the Saturday and I’m still awake listening to the rain beating on the floor of my alley.

It’s late but I’m still finishing some “job” tasks. This happens when you go commando in programming (but with underwear), and if everything goes well you´ll only make another 4 extra hours, but if something fails you´ll be doomed. A 7 instead of a four made me to stay until now connected (The good and the bad of the Virtual Private Networks).

As always I leave my Blog a bit abandoned. Some times it’s because the lack of free time, but other times it’s because I’m lazy. Not in the mood these days to do much.

I’m still in Athens and still working for that marvellous company who helps me to pay the bills every month. The good of working in a big IT company is that:

• You learn how to move between multiple manager levels.
• You can play the hot potato game with the problems. There is always someone to forward the email.
• You improve your skills in how to solve problems quickly.
• Your definition of dirty coding changes.
• Yeah, it’s my first job here, so it’s experience for my résumé.
• I have in the office 2×20″ screens, making a total resolution of 3200×1200 pixel.
• You save the company with your skills.

The bad:

• You learn how it feels to arrive home at 2:30am after all the day working.
• You receive hot potatoes and you run out of addresses to forward them to.
• You improve your skills to solve problems quickly and in a dirty way.
• You forget about good coding.
• You realize that your résumé needs the experience, not you.
• It tooks 3 months to get a computer.
• After you saved the company. You don’t see a part of the profit.

About friends and life. From time to time I meet the “International Pizza” to go for ouzo and food. The “International Pizza” is a mix of greeks and foreigners who meet to have good time

As objectives to accomplish:

• To learn Greek. C’mon! One year here and I cannot speak it. It’s not so difficult.
• To go to the gym. And also add an excuse to escape from the office.
• To continue some personal projects/ideas. Not only talk about them when going for beers.

And from here send greetings to:

• Sascha, Panos and the International Pizza.
• Kat, her mac, and her 1001 stories. Life is long but I guess she lived twice or three times more experiences than anyone.
• Nazgul2, from Palencia but working and living in another two different places.
• Graci, and his amazing adventures in Belgium.
• Alberto, and his never ending PhD problems.
• Seattle and Andoni, or the two guys who got the job they were waiting for.
• And you, who are reading this.

Note: Believe me if I tell you that I pressed the publish button like 5 times, and 5 times the post appeared in the front page. Then I leave, check the next day and It’s not there. Grrrrr.

The image speaks by itself. 3 o’clock and 6 people in our floor. Using the snow as an excuse, almost nobody came to the office today.

The good of this massive absence is that the office is quiet. No phones ringing, no people speaking loud or interrupting your work. Only the noise of CPU fans and some people teetering their fingers on the keyboard.

Enjoy your snow day off