In Soviet Russia, garbage bins cannot go on strike

God is great.

Last time I was in europe on a schengen visa I could not enter Switzerland. Infact on a night train from Munich to Rome I was a bit worried that the train may cross through Switzerland and I would have a tough time explaining why I didn’t have a legal Swiss visa at passport control. The train did not enter Switzerland and all was good.

Switzerland had been procrastinating for too long if I may say so.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7778022.stm. BBC reports that because of Schengen rules, Switzerland now has to actively police it’s border with Lichtenstein – and that sucks.

But hey – more power to the Swiss – and now would  Romania and Bulgaria get join already please and can someone get the Poles, Hungarians and Czech to say “yes” please

If python3 build fails with the following error

gcc   -o python.exe \
Modules/python.o \
libpython3.0.a -ldl
make: *** [sharedmods] Error 1

try setting your shell’s locale ($LANG, $LC_CTYPE) to a more sensible value than UTF-8.

I set the locale to ‘C’ while building. You may also need to set the locale to ‘C’ when running python. It would make more sense if you set locale to your actual correct locale if ‘C’ locale causes problems for you.

http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2008/12/10/8-ways-to-recession-proof-your-programming-career/

lists 8 ways of saving your job during this recession. I would specifically like to point your attention at

#1 - Volunteer to lead a big project.

So your company has lots of leaderless big projects lying around waiting for volunteers. If you are not already leading a big project or are not a significantly crucial member of one – are you sure you will be handed a “big project” because you asked for it ? Maybe – but I would say, maybe not.

#5 – Become a popular blogger, Author, Speaker, Podcaster, etc…

Why not become a tele-evangelist ? They makes lot of money and have absolute job guarantee – well atleast till the second coming.

Becoming a blogger is easy. Author, Speaker are tougher – but how the heck does one become “Popular”. Now this is a secret sauce I should have tasted in school.

#6 – Become a trainer

I don’t know – this may actually work out. But think about this for a minute. The recession is here – companies want to fire non-crucial personal. The idea is that only folks who bring in $’s retain their jobs. Exactly whom will you be training if all the folks needing training are out on the street ? Why would training be a “crucial” portion of business that is struggling to bring in money ?

#7 – Write technical articles

Same retort as for #5

#8 – Work for a “Recession-Proof” Company

But google doesn’t want to hire me and I don’t want to work for Wal-Mart. Yeah I get the idea – “try to work for a recession proof” company” – problem is that recession proof companies tend to hire the best available folks and the recession naturally brings the best engineers running to these companies looking for a stable job. During a recession there will be fierce competition for jobs percieved as “stable”. Also, if you are bright enough to be hired by a “recession-proof” company – you are likely good enough to be not fired from wherever it is that you are working.

#4 Moonlight & #3 Start a MicroISV

Now these 2 looks like good ideas and are definitely worth trying – the only problem is that succeeding at both require you to be rather good and as we know being “good” is tough and is generally a pain in the backside. Also really “good” people would not be too much worried about “job safety” anyway.