Automated Human Relations strikes killing blow - Match to HR

If you haven't read Human relations dept. strikes first blood. Point to HR, please read it now.

Back? Cool. I reformatted my resume/cover letter, submitted it to the automated HR program, set up a skills list, etcetera, and etcetera. Let's just say that it took a while. Quite a while. I invested a goodly amount of time in applying for the job. 32 seconds after finalizing the on-line application I get an email with this in it:

Thank you for your interest in career opportunities with Koch and its
affiliated companies. Your answers to our initial qualifying
questions associated with the job to which you applied indicate that
your background and/or experience do not meet the minimum
requirements for this role. Blah blah.

That's several hours I'll never get back. At least I have the experience and the decent resume now. (Is that what losers say? "At least I got to run the race!")

Oh well, I was looking forward to fencing a little more with the all powerful HR.

Bike spot

Inspirational bike posters.



thanks for the pic guys.

Human relations dept. strikes first blood. Point to HR

I finally re-engineered my resume. I reset my paradigms and shifted the focus of my efforts towards correct formatting, tuning the content towards the specific position I'm applying for, doing away with all acronyms and technical jargon, and generally making the product easy to read. It looked pretty good too. I even had a nice cover letter and everything.

Then I checked out the HR site at John Zink, (that's the firm I'm applying at,) and golly gee I'm glad I did. Here's the hidden rule that you have to look for, I wonder how many more there are?

Resume formatting tips

• Use only Helvetica, Arial or Times Roman Fonts
• Use 10, 12 or 14 point size fonts
• Make sure the entire document is left justified
• Set margins for approximately 65 characters
• Use spaces or dashes to emphasize text
• No bullets
• No Graphics, including Wing Dings or special characters

So now it's off to refont, rejustify, debullet, remargin, deunderline, debold, and rewrite.


Bugger.

Bitte ein Bit

On the way home today I stopped to get some beer. Normally I'll get a slab of Pabst, but I didn't want to drive all the way across town to the store that has it cheap, so I went to the liquor store nearest my work. Low and behold! Their price for Pabst was about the same as for Bitburger. This is the German equivalent of Budweiser, which is to say that it is the number one selling beer in Germany and not to say that it's crap. So I came home with a case. The last case. Now it is helping me keep writing my resume even though I know that no one wants to write a resume almost as much as no one wants to read one. So I'm trying to write a resume that someone wants to read; boy it ain't working. I get bored reading my resume. It's all Blah blah did this, and blah blah did that, worked on this antiquated system that you've never heard of and probably couldn't spell if all the letters jumped into your alphabet soup in the correct order, and by the bye I'm really good at this, great at that, and if you hire me I'll triple your productivity, cure your dog's mange, and make you appear is if Mother Theresa was your protege. What I really want to say is, " Yeah, this is what I've done 'till now, and I really don't wish to do it anymore. I'm a pretty good joe with a great work ethic if I like what I'm doing, but If your stupid job bores me you may as well push a rope uphill because you'll get more out of that than out of me - challenge me, let me run, allow me my whims and you'll never be disappointed." But seriously, Mr. or Mrs., (or even Ms.,) Human Relations probably doesn't have the sense of humour to let that one go into the 'look at' pile. So I guess I'm going to play the damn game a little more, put my money on red or black when I really know that 00 could hit, and join the lice infested, ought to be eaten by the cat or at least chased by the dog, rat race.

But I'm not bitte.

Post Script:
If any one knows a professional resume writer, please put a tyre iron in their head; they're just perpetuating this whole damn thing.

How much can you download?

I have had some issues lately with my internet provider, (hughesnet - satellite.) Mainly that it goes out often. I normally associate these outages with the weather, but upon arriving home today, I found, or rather did NOT find, the internet. I ran my usual tests, and called Ramjam Fulla at tech support, (if you don't know, don't ask.) He reckoned that I'd exceeded my alloted download capabilities, i.e. downloaded too much stuff. Now, I've downloaded music, and streaming radio before, but I've never downloaded too much stuff. So I says to myself, "self, who's been downloading stuff on your connection?." And I answers myself, "not you, you've been at work. Not Dawn, she's in Alaska. Who's been here?..........Zachary has been here." So thanks to the Goldilocks deduction theory Zach now owes me and extra $10 per month for downloading crap.


by the by, Zach got a job, (and actually turned up for it,) and passed his, (written,) driving test. Next thing you know, he'll be paying the rent he owes us.




now if I can just get the damn dogs to get jobs..................

Electric bike

I'm picking up one of these soon. It's an electric hub motor laced up to a bicycle wheel. You take the current front wheel off the bike, and replace it with the electric one, put a rack on the back of the bike to hold the batteries, a throttle on the handlebars and a controller on the front and you're ready to go. You can pedal or not, up to you. We're starting to sell them at the shop I work at, and I thought it would be a good idea to have a demo. I also thought it'd be nice to bike into work, (12 miles,) and save a little money on gas. Ok, I just want it, but I can rationalize it anyway I want to.

The manufacturer says it'll go 20+mph and should have a range of 14 miles at full throttle. We'll see how it works next week. I'll keep you all up to date.

Creepy cat story

Interesting article here, basically, Oscar the cat lives in a hospice. He visits the patients, but only sits on people that are in the last 4 or so hours of life. Creepy, I hope my cats don't read this.

Resume writing

Well, it is resume time again. I'm searching for a new job, (Not that I don't like my old one, but the money's just not there,) and I have found my resume to be, in kind words, laughable. I imagine HR folks emailing it around with the daily joke. Not that I mind bringing a little humour into peoples lives, but I'd rather have a well paying job. So now I'm paying the price of not keeping my resume up-to-date. As always, I started out with a mediocre product that was 1-1/2 pages long, very readable, concise, and clear. I now have an unfinished manuscript that confuses and mocks the reader, leading him in circles and wearing him out with sentences such as,

"Experienced with: airborne radar and computer systems; mission systems forms and reports; electronic principles, including integrated and transistor circuits; pulsing techniques, shift registers, counters, buffers, logic gates, and flip flops; solid state devices, principles of radio frequency (RF), phase shifting devices, RF transmitters and receivers as applied to airborne warning and control systems; capabilities, limitations, operations, and functions of electronic test equipment; binary, octal, and hexadecimal numbering systems; basic computer programming techniques; interpreting technical orders, wiring diagrams, logic diagrams, wire lists, and processed data lists; digital data processing; general purpose computers and interface unit; software diagnostic routines; and maintaining nuclear hardness as it applies to airborne computer, data display, radar, IFF, and ancillary systems

That little beauty confuses me, and I did it! (Although I did steal it from a job description.) So I know what I'm doing for the next week or so.

Wish me luck in my endeavors: drafting, quality checking, spell checking, paragraphing; cutting and pasting letters, whole words, sentences, and paragraphs; formatting, re-writing, and re-formatting; organizing into chronological, technical, educational, goal oriented, task oriented, and objective based formats; file saving, forgetting to file save, document recovery; cursing, drinking, and banging head into laptop when frustrated.

Morgan inspired three wheeler

Here's something that old car buffs and bikers can appreciate:
http://cycle-car.com/

Man oh man, what a nice ride. Harley powered (No, I don't know why.) three wheeled sports car. 1000lbs. classified as a motorcycle in most states, hand built in Seattle, (and it doesn't have a rain top.)

According to the Pete Larson (company owner) it sneaks up and eats Porsches on the twisties and is, apparently, so much fun to drive that Ferrari owners say, "that's fun to drive."

and its only $30,000.00 (minus the motor.) Lets see, add 10K for a killer aftermarket motor and we're up to $40K. Now that's a lot of money, and you could get a BMW 3 series for the same price. But they don't hand build many BMWs for that kind of cash, and no-one is going to look at a BMW 3 series and say, "Damn that's Cool."

Go check out the site. I insist

First post

Ok, I'll keep this short and to the point: This blog is not a political venue, a poetry competition, or a place for me to delve into my deepest emotions. It is merely a easy way for those who know me, (and, I suppose, those who don't,) to keep in touch with my daily happenings.

It's Sunday morning, I'm out on the back patio enjoying the morning and thinking of the things I have to do today. I suppose I'm actually putting off the things I have to do, but it's Sunday so that's okay. Sooner or later I'm going to get dressed and start weed-eating the yard. But right now that can wait - there's still coffee in the pot.

On an interesting note, I have a paraplegic frog living in my pond. One of my dogs decided that he was a frog-catcher and brought a big assed frog into the house the other night. I thought it was dead, but it turned out to only be half dead, (the lower half.) Now he's recovering in the Iris. We'll see if he makes it. It's only been two days, but he ain't dead yet. I'll keep you posted.

Ciao