Anton's blog

The picture above is the constant cause of slagging at work and just happens to be the Google image search result for the word “farmer”.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to go on the 12 Pubs of Christmas pub crawl this year, due to other commitments. This is very unfortunate and I am very saddened by this fact. I was saddened even more when a co-worker shared this invitation that he received from his previous place of employment. This is the 12 Pubs of Christmas for the Actuarial department at another insurance company:

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If you are ever at a loss as to what to give me for birthday/Christmas/any other occasion, here is NPR’s Top 100 Sci-Fi and Fantasy books, that I would love to have, with a (hopefully) current status of whether I read them or not:

Contrary to what the tech journalists and pundits are saying, Google Buzz is not dead. The hosts of This Week in Google, Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvis, started saying this merely a few months after it was borne. Initial privacy faux pas aside, Google Buzz is not as social as Facebook and yet more verbose than Twitter – something that appeals to some people, myself included. Google Buzz simply found its niche among the real people, not the tech journalists and meterosocials.

Here is my use case and I am pretty content with it:

I have about 25 friends who share or comments on Google Buzz. The primary source is their Google Readers with an occasional direct post in Buzz. We get a modest amount of discussion on each post before it disappears into oblivion. The posts that I find interesting and potentially worth revisiting in the future are starred.

Here is the use case of most of the tech journalist/pundit crowd, that was so quick to proclaim it a failure:

Tech journalists add each other to their Buzz friends and in turn everyone invites Robert Scoble (the Scobleizer). This results in the Scoble effect with comment and sharing overload at which time everyone calls it too noisy and polluted and leaves with only those who really appreciate the tool remain behind.

So what I would love to see now is the integration of Google Buzz with Google+ so that I can have seamless reading experience in one source.

Thank you,

Anton

1. Ice cream sales from a bike* – first job in Canada!
2. Grocery store clerk – first job that consistently paid.
3. Gas station in Newmarket – just for fun, had to drive an hour outside of the city to work for 5 hours and make $50.
4. Packing polyurethane foam into bundles* – it is pretty much rock bottom when you have to wear a respirator at work.
5. Intercon Security* – first decently paying job AND I got to wear a clip-on tie!
6. Condominium concierge* – a real tie this time!
7. Research analyst at Pollara – first office job where I got to use some of my brains rather than solely relying on my good looks.

* – jobs that really make me appreciate where I currently am in my career/life.

P.S. Forgot to include #5.5 – assembling polystyrene insulation panels for pouring concrete.

Imagine the following scenario: you open a savings account, use it for a few years and then withdraw most of the money, leaving a small balance behind. Then you forget about this account and move to a different address/city/country. The bank now has no way of contacting you and returning your money so it just sits there, earning pennies in interest.

These funds are not limited to banks and can be anything from a refund from GAP to unclaimed matured insurance policies. Different countries have different regulations when it comes to handling this leftover forgotten funds.

I have been dealing with this recently.  Italy has regulation that mandates the Italian insurance companies to pay these forgotten funds to the Government Social Fund (read charity) if the funds have not been claimed for two years after product maturity. These are known as “sleeping policies”. The United States have a similar process, called The Escheatment Process.

There are sites that help you identify whether you are owed money by any institution in your country. Have a look at these links:

http://www.missingmoney.com/ in the States or http://www.cuar.ca/ in Canada. I am sure there are similar organisations for the rest of the world.

Bottom line – don’t complain that you are broke if you left breadcrumbs of your cash all over the place!

So we are expecting Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to arrive in Dublin tomorrow, 16 May 2011. Then on 23 May 2011 we will be visited by President Obama.

As a result of this, the Gardai (local police) have sealed all the manhole covers around Dublin with silicone and some paint in order to prevent rogue assassins from emerging from the underground. These measures are also serving the dual purpose of keeping the sewer alligators at bay:

That’s right, I finally did it! I finally remade my childish self-made-nickname.com into a full vanity presence on the web! Say hello to antonkobelev.com – THE definitive resource of all things me on the web!

Now, if you are reading this post and think that this is sooo pretentious and self-centred, do check out the homepage antonkobelev.com! What do you think now!

Anyway, enough smart-assedness. The real reason why I renamed the site is because I want people to find me here if they Google me for some reason. I want the homepage to be my virtual resume on the web. Think what you may!

I am also finally giving up with the self-hosted photo album search and will host all my pictures on PicasaWeb. 20GB is only $5/year now!!! I plan to eventually upload all my photo albums from 2001 on to there!

Do you think I finally lost the plot? Do you think I need to go to false-celebrity rehab? Do you have any tips? Do you? Let me know!!!

Thanks for putting up with me!

Anton

One more review: http://t.co/4DcIcCD via @52podcasts

One more podcast review – http://t.co/jAEYkj6 via @52podcasts