obstinate.org

UPDATE! CertFirst posts fake comments on this blog claiming to be real customers!!! http://obstinate.org/journal/certfirst-and-saifirst-another-frontal-attack-by-sonia-soni/

As you may have read prior here. I attended a training seminar hosted by Certfirst / SaiFirst – a company that among other things, trains in PostgreSQL. I posted a full, and accurate review of the course prior on my site, which can be located here:

http://obstinate.org/computing/full-review-of-postgresql-certfirst-training-course/
http://obstinate.org/technology/certfirst-postgresql-training-course-avoid-at-all-costs/

The company I was working for was in negotiations with Certfirst in order to organize a refund. Certfirst located my original posting and demanded that what I had said was libelous and insisted on me removing my posting of my personal opinion, on my personal website, in order for them to agree to a refund on a failure to deliver services.

Certfirst and the company I was working for agreed, and asked me politely to take down my posting. In the effort of avoiding drama. I did such that.

However, I no longer work at said company and I am no longer obligated to keep my opinions off of the internets. As such – let this be a reminder to avoid the usage of Certfirst in any engagement at all costs. They failed to deliver on expectations set. So again, avoid doing business with them at all costs!

What are your motives? Are they pure? How would one even know? One thing that I have always tried to do with my life is to do the right thing, whatever that is. Sure, I have made mistakes – lots of them. I take solace in the fact that I think I have done my fellow humans well by always doing the right thing with the information I have had at the time. I am not one to take revenge or to execute furious retribution, despite the fact that I may have good reason.

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People make excuses. It is natural, and something that I think is a part of the human condition. One cannot help that some part or another of anything is inadequate. It is just the tendency of people to be unable to accept it, and such come up with a string of items that somehow explain these inadequacies. The problem is that invariably it almost never makes up for it. In fact, some people crank out excuses with such vigor that they are hurled into everything that they do or interact with as if they have the self image that they can do no wrong.

She was so nice, the sex was great, always had a great time, it was fantastic… except she had a beard.
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Here’s the deal, I don’t understand people.  Over the past few months the world has been riddled with examples of people demonstrating total savagery. Austie and I had over and over again realized that the vast majority of humanity has this overwhelming urge to totally screw over everyone else.

The first example of this that I can remember making the conclusion about was the story about the giant oil tanker that was stolen by Somali Pirates a few months back. Now, the piracy itself is pretty ruthless – but it has a very clear goal. The dudes want some sweet moola, and uncle rico ain’t giving it up without a fight, hence the kidnapping of uncle rico’s sweet crude. What really interested me about the piracy was the fact that the Muslim community in Mogadishu decided to attack the pirates. One would think that the reason that they would risk thier lives would be so they could get in on some of the sweet crude. That way they could sell it to the white man and buy his 13 wifes and 4 children a few bowls of rice.

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So yesterday when driving around for no particular reason (I will get to that soon). I was listening to the radio and an ad comes on that says something to the effect of “Life is too short, have an affair”. At first I thought this was a joke, this kind of blatent discard of ethics could not be displayed on public radio. I forgot about it as I burninated the countryside all over OC. 

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Know what I hate? I hate it when a vendor advertises a price which appears like it might be quite low, but then charges you all sorts of surpluses and fee’s. A great example is a restaurant that REQUIRES gratuity, what’s up with that? Why don’t they just charge more for the food so they can pay their server’s a reasonable wage? Why do they need to trick me with low prices just to charge me later anyways?

Another thing is offices that have no public parking, and im not talking about downtown high rises where space is a serious issue. Here in west LA there is a plethora of buildings that are not stressed for space but charge for parking anyways. Why? because they can. It dawned upon me the other day when I was cleaning out my car and I had like 15 parking receipts. People should just charge the price all-inclusive without tricking people.

I had heard awhile back that in the mid-west some local politician passed an ordinance requiring movie theaters to advertise the actual time that the movie was started, instead of the industry standard of advertising the time that the 30 minutes of commercials start. This is a step in the right direction, kudos.

I recently went to a party with people I mostly didn’t know. I started talking with this guy who was working on his thesis at Cal Tech. He was a computer science major and specialized in optics. He worked on grants that funded his work on the DARPA grand challenge.

So this dude is talking this party up on his work, how the funding process works and the type of work they do. The kind of work he was doing, was very un-spectacular to say the least. The types of things he was working on was very ‘middle of the road’ in terms of complexity. Furthermore – he went on to boast that all he had to do to get this big funding was to get ‘a few papers published’ so that he could report something back to the government grant comitee a the end of the year.  I was disgusted.  I left the party.

This sort of attitude would never cut it in the corporate world – where results are what pay the bills.  Must be nice to live in a world where you are judged on just ’showing up’ – reminds me when I was 8.

I have to wonder if the government pays into these sort of research programs with no hope of any sort of meaningful return? This reminds me of a grand parents that pays their kid to do chores around the house – it’s sort of an excuse to give them money, because in the long run you know that they will have some sort of benefit from it.