Today is somewhat an end to an era for me… Today I quit my current position. For some it might be “so what?”. But for me this was the end of a close to 4 years of “real job”… I`m not going to rant and rave about how “boring” my job was or how it sucked… It`s just not what I wanted… And it took me 4 years to realize that… 😛

I`m starting my new position in… mmm… 14 hours… 😛 It will still be the same field “computer security” but the area of expertise now has changed from server security to network security. And also my new office will be at the opposite side of the corridor. Still same building, same floor, same company, but totally different team and department.

I wish I could have taken some time off since for almost 2 years I didn`t have a “real” vacation. (Except the one month of leave that I took for my military service last year 😛 )

Other than that I`m somewhat excited that now i`ll work more with free software on the network security field Also I will have to learn quite a lot. 

Near future is only visible for 3 months starting August 2006… I have a contract with my employer until the end of October… After that if we both like each other, I will be working there for some time more. Else… There is a great chance that I will go back home for good!

All the best! 

Gözünüzden kaçmasın diye buraya da not alayım dedim. Oktay Ekşi`nin bugünkü yazısından:

…

Milli Eğitim Bakanı Hüseyin Çelik bilindiği gibi tüm eğitim kurumlarını medreseleştirme hayaliyle çırpınıyor. Nitekim şu anda eğitim sistemimizde görev yapan Fizik öğretmenlerinin sayısı 7637; Felsefe öğretmenleri 5099; Coğrafya öğretmenleri 6656; Bilgisayar öğretmenleri 6999 olmasına karşın Din Kültürü ve Ahlak Bilgisi öğretmenlerinin sayısı 13.328’dir.

Demek
ki bakanlığımız fizik dersi, kimya dersi boş geçebilir ama din bilgisi
dersi (pratikte din dersi) boş geçmesin diye uğraşıyor.

Yukarıdaki rakamlar sizi sıkmadıysa bir de Hüseyin Çelik’in bakan olduğu tarihten bu yana yapılan öğretmen tayinlerine bakalım:

Son üç yılda okullara toplam 335 Biyoloji; 290 Felsefe; 193 Fizik; 203 Elektrik; 98 Kimya; 2074 Matematik; 761 Müzik öğretmeni tayin edilmiş.

Peki aynı dönemde tayin edilen Din Kültürü ve Ahlak Bilgisi öğretmeni sayısı nedir derseniz söyleyelim:

Tam 5563!

Yakın tarihlerde yapılan 600 kadar tayinle rakam 6000’in üstüne çıkıyor.

…

ROCKEEEET! YEAAAHH!!!

I went to Def Leppard and Journey concert two weeks ago on Nissan Pavilion. I`m gonna talk about Nissan Pavilion later… Actually I should maybe talk now… Fuck Nissan Pavilion… It`s a nightmare to go there in a car. We missed the Journey because of a single lane road that takes you to Nissan Pavilion. Oh, you and 60000 other people who are going to the same concert! There is absolutely no improvement since the day Nissan Pavilion opened there.

Anyway Def Leppard was awesome! All the retro songs they performed were amazing and also the songs from their new album YEAH! are not bad at all! The set was very balanced between old and new songs. Here are the songs that they played.

Let It Go
Let`s Get Rocked
Promises
Foolin`
Hysteria
No Matter What
20th Century Boy
Sav Solo led into Rock On
Rocket
Photograph
Armageddon It
Animal
Rock of Ages
— Encore —

Love Bites
Sugar

When concert ended, we wanted to get some beer while waiting 60000 people to leave the area again on a single lane road. But beer is not sold in this country after the concerts unless it`s a bar… I went to a rock concert and I couldn`t drink beer. This is 21st century`s USA Now you might wonder why we didn`t buy beer during the concert… Same problem… you are trying to buy beer with 60000 people from five beer stands… Well, rock concert in USA can kiss my ass… It`s also not permitted to drink alcohol while you are waiting in the parking lot, even if you brought yours… BTW we waited 3 hours in the parking lot… Fuck Nissan Pavilion!

So this will be my last concert in Nissan Pavilion, and definitely not the last Def Leppard concert Pour some sugar on me baby! 

Don`t forget to ride to work on this and every July 19th! Cause it`s ride to work day!

This year I was not planning ahead for going to Waterfest 12. But since my good friend Haris was visiting me and he`s a car freak like me, we decided to make a New York trip + Waterfest Sunday events. 

Saturday NYC was a good one. We chilled in Central Park, ate a lot of hotdogs (me 5…), spent good time with Oktay. 

Sunday I was thinking to be there around 11 AM but there was a lot of traffic and we wasted at least a good 1 hour sitting in the boiling car. So we got there around midday, close to 1 pm.

Most of the things were over. And I was expecting that. But the test drive event was not closed yet! Test drives are cool! They had a little autocross field where you could drive the hell outta a new Rabbit, an EOS(!) (or this link), or a Jetta GLI. I was waiting for EOS for the longest time and never expecting that I could see one of them coming to US.

So I decided to test drive the EOS. It is a very nice cute convertible car. It performed much better than I expected. The one that I drove was a tiptronic. The acceleration was mild, but nothing like my GTI. Handling was awesome. What ever I did to spin the car, it failed! As soon as you hear the tires screeching the car takes over and slows you down to a safe speed for turning.

I also had some problems with acceleration after the hard cornerings, which I assume that it was caused by the “safe”computer. On two occasions The car came to a almost full halt, almost like an engine shutoff! Another downside for the car was the super ultra hyper robotic roof. With 20+ secs opening and closing time, and also soooo many moving parts and a whole trunk opening to swallow the top… I think it is more prone to fail than conventional top cars… More mechanical parts, more problems

After the test drove we watched a bit the end of the drag races. We walked around the vendor booths and show cars. Since it was sooo freakin`hot we decided to leave around 4-5 PM since everything was almost over anyway.

Overall WF was nice as usual, next time I`m definitely going there without a woman and a little earlier to watch the drag races  

These screen captures tell it all I guess… When I`m watching a soccer game, I WANT TO SEE WTF IS GOING ON ON THE FIELD! NOT THE GODDAMN STATISTICS!

I understand that american culture on sports is ALL about statistics like how many times a goddamn player got kicked on the balls for this season, but these are for static games like american football, baseball, etc… where the players play for 20 seconds and stop for 2 mins… Soccer is not like this. It is dynamic… Here are some screenshots.

Now look at this image below, first line: we already know that ESPN is airing this game LIVE, so we don`t need to see it that big; if the spectator doesn`t know that this is the 2006 FIFA WORLD CUP Semifinal, (s)he has serious issues… So WE DO NOT NEED THAT GODDAMN FIRST LINE! This line is cutting the players` face everytime there was a closeup…

Second line: ESPN is airing this show, How do I know it? BECAUSE IT IS WRITTEN EVERYWHERE! Look at the SouthEast of the screen? What does it say? E S P N! So we don`t need another ESPN on the second line. Ok, we need the flags, teams, scores, and minutes, of course the sponsor too… But I think you can write them with smaller fonts, so that we can actually see the field… (transparency???)

Oh also… Here, the player is about to hit a statistic window…

The statistics box just spat the ball out… (Thanks for reminding me who scored what… IN A HUGE NON TRANSPARENT BOX!)

And last but not least: How everything could have been better… for a comparison…