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23.05.13
Posted in Blogroll, News, Random Thoughts, Tech at 12:10 pm by Liv 
OK, this is not the same as my other previous posts about idiotic recruitment, as in fact the exploratory email I have received from the recruiter was relatively well-targeted — minus the fact that I’m actually in USA nowadays not UK, but they obviously have a copy of my resume/CV from a while back so can’t blame them for trying out really. The reason though I wanted to bring this up is not to frame the recruiter, but to actually stop all banks and financial institutions from trying to get me a job in that area — I will be pushing this particular post through all sorts of media channels and as such I hope they finally get the message. (Need I suggest that you share this on your Twitter and whatever other social media you use? 
)
You might know that I have written before on this blog about why as a developer I don’t want to work for a bank — the original post is here by the way — however, I appreciate that my blog is rather small so possible that it didn’t get in front of (all) recruiters at the time… which really explains this email recently. Hopefully this will stop after this post 
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08.03.13
Posted in Blogroll, Random Thoughts, Tech at 9:44 pm by Liv
If you work in IT, you have probably by now have seen the famous video on YouTube labelled “What most schools don’t teach” — where Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and a few other prominent figures are talking about how easy it is to program, and how only 10% of the USA schools teach programming. It goes on more to bombard the viewer with some scary figures about how 1,000,000 jobs or more will go unfilled because there are not enough coders — I’m guessing as a motivational message to inspire people (kids?) to start programming.
The thing is, watching the video, I cannot but cringe at the hypocrisy employed in making this video! If the purpose of this message is to increase education efforts (at school level or individually) in the programming sector, then I’d say it probably does it job — in a very lame way, but it sort of does. If however this is intended to be a call to arms for “everyone” to start programming and either change their jobs to a programming job or if they are at the beginning of their career, to set their career path to be in programming, then I’d say the message is a hypocritical one. Even worse, it is setting up the targeted audience for a harsh comedown!
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16.01.13
Posted in Blogroll, Product Ideas, Random Thoughts at 2:40 pm by Liv
It won’t come as a surprise to those of you who know me that I am terrible in the morning — however, for those of you who don’t, it’s worth stating this upfront, so you can gather the context this idea came to me better. I am definitely terrible in the morning, whether it’s because of my tendency to stay up late or because my biological clock is still set for Europe. Or maybe because I am not a morning person — which is I guess a nice way of saying I’m lazy in the morning 
That means that typically in the morning I’m not in a chatty mood, I’m in a rush and pretty much expect that any service that I decide to employ to be rather fast too. And invariably every morning I need my coffee — so I find myself invariably in a Starbucks queue waiting to order my coffee and get the hell out of there as soon as I can so I can drink it and (attempt to) wake up. And this is where the problem starts!
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15.01.13
Posted in Blogroll, Random Thoughts, Rugby at 5:06 pm by Liv
I wrote a while back about the rugby team principle and recently I stumbled on YouTube on this clip — which more than exemplifies what I was trying to convey. Please bear with the crappy quality of it!
It depicts the last few minutes of Harlequins against Stade Français in the European cup — The Quins start with one point down, so any kind of score will win them the game (remember a drop goal is 3 points, a penalty kick is 3 points, try is 5 points). The trouble is they only have 1 minute and about 30 seconds to do this and the ball is with Stade Français! Again, remember that in rugby the clock doesn’t stop like in NFL and once the 80 minutes have been reached the first infringement ends the game — be it forward pass, knock-ons (which means dropping the ball forward), foul play or the ball going into touch; obviously all the oposition has to do once the 80 minutes are reaches is to kick the ball into touch — game over and well done Stade Français!
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Posted in Blogroll, Product Ideas, Random Thoughts, Romania at 2:38 pm by Liv
This one is for you, Visa (though MasterCard and Amex listen up too!). Here’s the deal: I have Visa debit and credit cards for both UK and USA. I have bank accounts in UK and USA so I can transfer money when needed from one to another. With all of that in mind, you’d think that would be easy right to say buy some flowers for my sister, who is in Romania? Or order some presents for my friends in Germany? D’oh, no can do!
It turns out that most online shops take cards issued in the country they operate in — mainly for fraud prevention reasons and the fact that their bank doesn’t protect against fraud if they accept foreign cards. As such, regardless of the card I’m using, since I can’t produce a billing address in the same country as the florist for the example mentioned above, I’m stuck!
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