Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

Misguided vs. Wrong

Random Thoughts

Note: The following post has nothing to do with any particular issue. Its just something I thought of and wanted to put out there.

I am rarely ever wrong.

Now, before you get all upset and fire off a ten page missive about how I am wrong, read on…

If you were to want to borrow my car, and I hand you the keys and tell you “It’s the first white car on the third row.” If you now go and try use my keys to open the door of the second red car on the first row, you are wrong. I gave you the facts, you forgot them or ignored them, you are wrong, and now you are setting off the alarm on someone else’s car. If, however, I were to tell you it was the second red car on the first row when it is really the first white car on the third, when you go to the red car, you are not wrong, you are misguided.

When I get into discussions with people, when I write long blogs here, I do so from the vantage point of everything that I know, every fact that I have… if I am misguided, I expect and appreciate when people show me how I am mistaken, clarify something I don’t understand, or show me the right path. I tend to try to treat others the same way… I try not to slam people when they state things I don’t agree with, I’d much rather get into why we disagree and see if I can learn something from them or teach something to them.

So… if you read anything on this site that you feel is not correct, please, feel free to show me where I have gone awry. I may disagree at first (because obviously I am under the impression that what I know to be true is true), but I’m pretty much always amenable to changing my mind if I can be convinced.

On the other hand, if all you are going to do is say “You’re wrong!” or some other definitive yet unexplanitory statement, don’t bother. If you can’t be bothered to show me where I am misguided, I would rather not be bothered by you at all.

Forewarned is Forearmed

Random Thoughts

Be careful what you read today
Be careful what you believe
The truth is out to lunch all day
And lies have a reprieve

They may tell you what you want to hear
They may make you want to scream
Do not do anything rash today
Though important it may seem

Double check your sources
And remember to keep your cool
Because you would not want to be
The one who is the fool

The Grapevine

Random Thoughts

In the last five or so years, I have, despite being employed, always kept my resume updated at a number of job sites. I even occasionally call recruiters I have worked with to get a feel for the marketplace. Most times I am not really looking for a job, but I want to keep my eyes and ears open just in case that opportunity of a lifetime comes by.

The drawback to this is that at least once a week I waste five to ten minutes of my life talking to a recruiter, most of whom really stink at their job. They call, ask if I’m looking for work and then say “We have some really great opportunities that I think you might be a perfect fit for, just email me your resume and I’ll get back to you.” Most of them never get back to me, not even to just say “Hey, got your resume, but it looks like we don’t have anything for you, sorry.” This is why I say they stink.

The recruiters that I stay in touch with are the ones who know how to handle a job candidate. They didn’t just ask for my resume, they asked about my jobs, my work. They took notes, often making recommendations for how I might punch up my resume to get me what I’m looking for. When it comes to sending me on an interview, the good recruiters give me a run down of the company, the people I’ll be talking to, and what I can expect. The bad ones never do that, they just set up the time and say “Call me after so I know how it goes.”

This is where I come to the reason I titled this post “The Grapevine”.

Have you ever played that game as a kid? Where you line up and the person at one end is whispered a couple sentences that convey information, then each person in turn whispers the sentences to the next person in line, and at the end the last person says the sentences out loud and it is compared to the original sentences. Often times its hilarious how much the original content can change as each person relayed what they felt was the most important parts. This, in essence, is often what happened in job recruiting.

A company needs to fill a position, but they don’t feel they have the time to personally sift through applicants and only want to interview the most qualified, so they hire an agency to do the leg work. The company gives a description of the position to the recruiting company contact, who is often times not a recruiter themselves. This person then enters the job requirements into their system, and this is where, I feel, the first errors begin to creep in. The job description will get altered just a little bit to fit the recruiting companies standards, emphasizing key words and phrases, trimming to fit, elaborating out of thin air.

Meanwhile, on the other end, I, the job hunter, builds a resume, trying to outline my skills. I then go to a job website, where I’m forced to break down my resume into key words and phrases for searching. Some times breaking down the resume completely distorts the information.

Now enters the recruiter who searches the job site using the key words from the job description looking for matches. He reads the resume and the requirements and tries to decide if the two marry up well.

The result: 9 out of 10 interviews I go to usually ends up in disaster. Sure, the key words of my resume matched up with the key words of the job description, but the realities of both are completely different. I say I’m a .NET/C# programmer for web applications, the job is looking for someone with .NET/C# experience but for desktop applications and really they don’t use the .NET platform, just the C# language to support old C++ DLLs and COM Interop, but I’m here because my resume and their job description were both boiled down to simply .NET/C# and looked like a perfect match!

There is nothing quite like the feeling of spending ten minutes shooting the shit with someone, getting a feel for the person and liking them, only to start the technical interview and realize that your skillset and their needs are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

And the recruiters always ask “Are you working with any other recruiters?” Yes. Of course I am. With results like these, how can I afford not to?

The Reviews Are In

Random Thoughts

I love to browse Amazon.com. Every since they improved the hell out of their wish lists and organizer functions, I love looking at the recommended products for both myself and for the people whom I’ve registered gift giving occasions for. (If you haven’t taken advantage of the gift lists and organizer features of Amazon, I suggest you do.) Its kinda neat to see what gets recommended to me and why it got recommended. Is it from stuff on my wish list? Is it from stuff I own? I’ve even been recommended things because of stuff I’ve rated low… it didn’t come out and say it, but basically it was showing me an item because I’d rated “opposite” items with only one star.

Once I’ve found an item that is intriguing to me, I then find myself browsing the reviews of the items. Sometimes you come across some real comedy gems in there, like the now long deleted review of the xbox 360 where it overheated setting the house on fire and killed his family but he gave it a 5 star rating because up to that point the games were really fun. But mostly, I spent my time actually reading the bad reviews of items.

Frankly, I could not care less about the opinions of someone who thinks that the product is the best thing since sliced bread, because… well… a gushing “my god this is awesome!!!!!1!1!!!!!” review just doesn’t help. So instead I sort the reviews from lowest to highest rated, and start reading in the gutter. The negative reviews are so much more helpful. Firstly, its easier to spot a negative nutjob than to spot a crazy product lover. “I bought this book and it had pages!! You mean I have to read it myself?!?!” Second, once you’ve decided the reviewer isn’t a nutjob, you can focus in on what exactly they didn’t like and decide if you also will not like it, which is often more beneficial than trying to align your tastes with someone’s positive review, mostly because people who love something tend to be willing to overlook flaws… flaws which to you might be very important.

Anyway, those are my random thoughts of the day…

Caught in a Pornado!

Random Thoughts

This makes me laugh.

Honestly, who doesn’t believe that could actually happen? Over the years (and because I’m a programmer of web pages myself) I have gotten pretty good at spotting fake links and stopping myself from getting taken to sites I don’t want to go to, but I see it happen to other folks all the time.

Oh well… I hope she doesn’t go to jail if it really wasn’t her fault. Definitely though, cases like these need to spend a little more time investigating the computer. They have computer forensics for a reason.

1,000 Paper Cranes

Random Thoughts

A friend of mine is making 1,000 paper cranes.

If you followed that link, you’ll see a story about a young girl with leukemia who is told of a legend whereby if a person folds a thousand paper cranes their wish will come true. According to the story of the girl, she originally was going to wish to be well, but when she got to the end she wished for world peace instead. She was buries with a wreath of a thousand paper cranes.

In all of my searching, though, I cannot find reference of the original legend itself, only mentions of people being told the legend.

I suppose the point, as my friend says, is that if you see it through, making the thousand cranes, during which you really can’t think of anything other than the wish you will make, by the end you’ll really know what your heart desires. In the girl’s case, being a victim of the atomic bomb herself, she (I assume) realized that she wanted less to get better herself and wanted more that the world would have peace and never see another atomic bomb drop.

I’ve been wondering what I would wish for if I decided to undertake the folding of a thousand cranes. I have no idea…

My friend has been keeping track of his progress on his blog.

Tagged for Five

Random Thoughts

It appears that I’ve been tagged with the latest of internet fads (some people like to call them memes, but whatever). So, I’m supposed to tell you five things that you might not know about me… damn, I’ve been putting crap on the internet since June of 1998, I think I might be out of stuff to tell… but here goes and forgive me if any of this is a repeat:

  1. After failing 5 out of 9 classes in three quarters at Southern Tech (now Southern Polytechnic), I was invited to leave. I could blame it on the girl. I could blame it on me leaving the girl after she broke my heart. I could blame it on my deciding to take a full time job. I could blame it on the lure of the student center in winter, the 25 cent cups of hot chocolate and the endless loops of Article 99 and other movies. But the truth is, despite having graduated High School with less than a 2.5 GPA, I actually took and passed 2 AP Exams which allowed me to skip several college classes and the ones I took (2 of the 4 classes I passed) first quarter where, for me, repeats of stuff I had to learn for the AP Exams. So I barely went to class and still got A’s. I thought to myself, “This college stuff is easy!” and I continued not going to class because… I didn’t want to go. So yes, my grades were actually 4 A’s (first quarter), 3 F’s (second quarter) and 2 F’s (third quarter). It was at this point my parents stopped paying for school, I was invited to transfer to another (easier) college and finally learned what my parents had known since I started pulling C’s in 8th grade: My grades weren’t bad because I was stupid, my grades were bad because I was lazy. I stopped being lazy and started making the A’s and B’s I should have been getting all along. Some lessons have a price, this one cost me 4 years of tuition out of my own pocket.
  2. I ask people to remind me of things so I will remember them without being reminded. Its really funny because if I try to remember important stuff on my own, I forget. But, if I tell someone, “Hey, remind me later to…” I never forget and don’t need the reminding. So, I’ve taken up the habit of asking people to remind me of anything I want to remember. It used to drive my wife insane until she learned to ignore anything I asked her to remind me of.
  3. My nose has not stopped bleeding since I was 11 years old. And I’m 32 now. I remember the first time it happened. We lived in Pennsylvania at the time, and we were outside clearing the snow off the drive way. I thought my nose was running, but the look on my mother’s face is something I’ll never forget. I actually thought she was looking at something behind me, and I turned around, slipped, and fell into the snow. When I got up, there was a big patch of red snow where I had fallen. There was blood down the front of my face and jacket. Most days it just bleeds a little and is held back with some light sniffling (over 21 years I’ve probably said the phrase “No, I don’t have a cold”, umm, eleventy billion times), other days I have to stuff my nose with a tissue or cotton to help it back up and clot and scab. I’ve had four different doctors look at the problem, which has resulted in two failed attempts to cauterize the inside of my sinuses and my complete and utter loss of faith in the phrase “Just relax, this will only hurt a little bit.” I have been told that I could have surgery, something similar to that which they do for people with a deviated septum or a small skin transplant, but not only do they not guarantee it would solve the problem, I have yet to have an insurance carrier willing to cover it either claiming it is a pre-existing condition or that its elective cosmetic surgery. All in all, the skin inside my nose is thin, and changes in humidity and/or temperature (you know, stuff like turning on the heater in my car or entering an air conditioned building) can cause it to crack and split. On the bright side, I have been instructed not to donate blood since if I were to have a serious nose bleed immediately after getting blood taken there could be serious problems (like passing out and death and stuff).
  4. I keep a list of all the people I’ve promised things to should I ever win the lottery. And before you start asking, I only make promises to people who ask for reasonable stuff that I think they could really benefit from.
  5. I wear both an engagement ring and a wedding ring. When I first met a girl I thought I might marry (see item 1 on this list), I came up with this wacky idea. That relationship didn’t work out. Neither did any of them for the next nine years, then I asked my then girlfriend (now wife) to marry me and explained the idea, which she loved, and we did it (sort of). Now, let me explain… Marriage, to me, has always been about two things, love and the relationship. The wedding ring, traditionally a gold ring, is a symbol of love. Gold doesn’t fade, it doesn’t tarnish, just like love. If you have ever loved someone, you will always love them, they may change and you may not love the person they become, but you will always love the person you fell in love with. Love doesn’t fade, it doesn’t tarnish. The engagement ring, to me, is a symbol of the relationship. This ring is silver. Silver, you see, if left alone, if not cared for, will tarnish, turn ugly. You have to tend to silver, polish it, work with it. Just like a relationship. You have to care for your marriage, you have to talk and work things out. The silver engagement ring is a symbol of our willingness to commit to that work. Commitment and Love, Silver and Gold. Only, it turns out the girl I asked to marry me is allergic to Nickel, which is used in about 99.99999% of gold alloys, so we went with Titanium instead, because it too does not tarnish with the added bonus that if I’m ever on a deep sea mining rig that is flooding, I can use the ring to stop a pressure door from closing. To that end, my wife and I have matching silver engagement bands (right ring finger) and matching titanium wedding rings (left ring finger).

And there you have it… now I’m supposed to tag five people, and I’m going to be mean and introduce this fad (meme) to MySpace. Kevin, Kelly, A.J., T.D., and Jason… Suck it!

The Shopping Season

Random Thoughts

Now that the holiday shopping season is pretty much over, I wanted to take a moment and share what it is that I like and don’t like about it.

One thing is fairly consistant among people I talk to is that noone seems to like going to the mall, or near the mall, or even getting on the roads at all from Thanksgiving to January 2nd. Most of this, I find kind of funny. First off, the traffic… yeah, people are stupid, but with some good Christmas tunes (or other music if you are one of those sicko people who hates Christmas songs), a watchful eye, and a zen “I’ll get there when I get there” attitude, traffic is nothing to worry about. Just always give yourself plenty of time, and know that if you are late the simple excuse of “Traffic!” is enough for just about anybody. Then there is parking… my legs ain’t broke, ’nuff said. Well, almost. Look, seriously, most of us out there are perfectly capable of walking, just don’t go shopping on rainy days and you’ll be fine. Nothing tickles me more than watching people drive around the mall looking for the perfect parking spot for an hour when they could have parked at the end, and be halfway done with shopping by now! I am literally filled with glee when I see the vultures circling the aisles. The next thing is the crowds. Now, I completely get why most people don’t like crowds… mainly it is because crowds are pushy and they get in the way. The solution here is just to not be in a rush youself.

That whole not being in a rush thing is at the center of enjoying the holiday shopping season. Number one, don’t wait until the last minute to buy high demand gifts. If you were one of those people clammoring to buy a Wii or PS3 on December 24th… you are an idiot. You should either have bought it sooner, or come up with another plan. If I ever have kids, they are going to love me or hate me, because I simply will not put up with that crazy shopper crap. If I can’t lay my hands on a high demand gift early, they’ll be getting a letter from Santa, an IOU and a substitute gift. Christmas in February! There is just no point in killing yourself for a gift. That said, this season, I had a chance to lay hands on both a Wii and a PS3, but not dying for either, I passed them on to the next person in line. I can wait (for a better bundle deal). I’m not perfect though. I mentioned previously that I was pretty sure I hit a home run in the gift giving department this year (and I did), and part of that was an in demand gift… a Nintendo DS Lite, the pink one. I didn’t act soon enough and so the pink one slid through my fingers. I had a choice to make… get another gift, or get a non-pink one. I went with the non-pink one, because the DS itself was really the gift, the pink color was just a bonus. But that was only half the home run.

See, the DS was one of those “only if” items. I had a budget, and the DS was only on the purchase list if I could manage the other gifts with enough room in the budget left for the DS. This leads to the other side of shopping, the best side: deals.

The wife, for whom the DS was for, also wanted some power tools. Now, under normal circumstances I could have only gotten two, maybe three, tools for the budget, but it was Christmas which meant package deals. ACE Hardware happened to be running one, it was a really nice 6 piece cordless toolset for about $50-60 off the regular package price. I shopped around for other deals, but ACE was the best deal, and decent quality stuff (not top of the line, because top of the line does not go on sale, ever, because it doesn’t need to, its top of the line). None of the ACEs I went to had it, and I tried to order it online, but they weren’t giving the same deal as the in-store, so I kept searching. Finally, I found one, just one, the last one. Yay! But the box was all damaged, so I asked to talk to the manager and asked him if the item had been returned. Yep, it had been. Well, I didn’t want to buy something that was broken, so I wanted to know why it had been returned. He went to pull the customer service report to see the reason stated for return, but couldn’t find it, and I didn’t want to buy it if it was potentially broken, and he didn’t want to sell it to me if there was a possibility of return since he didn’t have any more and wasn’t going to get any more… so, he gave it to me for another $40 off, a total of about $100 off the normal list price. I bought it, took it home and tested all the parts and they all worked! Yay! That left enough room in the budget for the DS and a game.

The wife managed a similar kind of deal when she got for me the Complete Calvin and Hobbes. I know the suggested retail is $150, and Amazon sells it usually for $99… but I know she got it for $68. You can’t always get these kinds of deals just filling virtual carts online.

But back to the rush… see, the most important reason to not be in a rush, is that when you do go out to the stores and malls, you are filled with the warm feeling knowing that you are not one of those crazy people who are surrounding you. I actually like to hit the mall once or twice when my shopping is done (or nearly done) just so I can sit back and watch the people. I’ve always been a people watcher, and the holidays brings out the best and worst in people. It makes for fantastic people watching.

Welcome to 2007

Random Thoughts

So, how did you ring in the New Year?

Me? I went to my brother’s house because he and his wife were having a party. I was introduced to Dead Rising, which, honestly, was just plain mean since I don’t own an Xbox 360… now I’m going to have to go buy one. And I got to witness the Wii in person… now I’m going to have to go buy one of those too. There was food and drink, and there was karaoke. All I have to say is… I rock. We watched Dick Clark count in the last seconds of 2006, and mostly we were, as always, amazed by his recovery and saddened by the fact that he’s now a huge buzzkill for festivities.

Now that it is 2007, what does that mean?

Well, it used to mean putting the wrong date on my checks for a couple months, but I’ve switched over to electronic billing for everything but my garbage collection, and I only have to pay them every three months. As with every year, despite my loathing for New Year’s Resolutions, I’m still making a couple… mostly the same ones I always make. But I figure, if I have almost a dozen friends and family who have decided to quit smoking, I think I can manage working out three times a week and eating a little less crap.

Also in 2007… I think I’m almost done with PC games. Frankly, the alure of MMOs is finally wearing off. New games just don’t appeal to me much. WoW has been fun, and I still might pick up the expansion to play around, but most games on the horizon my computer can’t play (I’m in the Vanguard beta, or rather, I got accepted but I haven’t been able to log in and actually create a character), and rather than paying two thousand plus dollars to upgrade my and my wife’s machines, I think I’ll just invest that same money into a Wii, a 360 and an HD projection TV. And hey, bonus, the new TV makes watching movies and television shows better too. The list of non-MMO PC exclusive games has practically vanished, and with the consoles you never have to worry about compatibility issues.

I’m still interested in MMOs as a theory and design, but nothing out there for the next year is really gripping me. Largely it looks like the same old grind, and if I’m going to play in a fantasy world, I’d rather be sitting around a table with a half dozen friends these days instead of staring at my monitor pushing buttons for rewards.

It looks like 2007 is also going to bring a flood of superhero books to the market. I’m guessing the successes of Hollywood and both Marvel and DC’s initial forays into paperback books have paid off enough that it seems like a new book is coming out from somebody each week. Though, the landscape is still lacking in original material. Its all book adaptations of existing characters from the comic books. Perhaps in 2007 I’ll work toward changing that and actually finish a writing project or two.

And on the business front… lets just say that aught seven is looking pretty good.

Finally, we come to the end of my ramblings and musing, and I welcome you, heartily, to two thousand seven.

Enjoy!

Another Year Over

Random Thoughts

2006 draws to an end tonight, and I’ll be celebrating with family and friends, as I hope you all are.

So, looking back, what did this year bring me?

The best thing of the year for me is easy… I bought a house. Sure, I saddled myself with a mortgage that I’ll likely be paying for 30 years, but owning a home is just… cool. I have a big back yard and I really look forward to working in it and on it in the coming years. The dog likes the yard too. The house is big… really big. I used to live in a 2 bedroom, 3 floor townhome apartment, and this place puts that thing to shame. Oddly enough, its also cheaper to maintain. My electric, gas and water bills have gone down despite the fact that I have more stuff, a larger place to cool and heat, and a yard to water. Its weird and awesome.

The worst thing of the year… that’s alot tougher. Overall, this has been a pretty good year, but in the end I’d say the worst thing has been having to watch my wife choose between leaving a job that was almost literally killing her and her best friend. Its a huge horrible mess that I won’t go into detail on, but lets just say it was bad. Hopefully next year will bring some healing here.

That’s me… what about you folks? You, if you are reading this, let me know… what was your best and/or worst thing about 2006?

I could go into a long post about events in the world, but mostly the year was pretty sad… this, however, I find disgusting. Please, don’t buy those.