Month: March 2016

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The Precious!

Apple march event invitation 800home thumb800

Apple is making new product announcements today!

Bright shiny more powerful machines. Whoo hooo!

I’ll be taking time off from the incessant job search to see what new covetable things Apple will release on the world.

Comey fbi

I was thinking, in one of my more insane moments, that Apple could offer two versions of IOS and let the public decide the outcome of Apple’s fight with the FBI. One version would be secured as the OS is today, and the GovIOS version would be one where the government held the encryption keys

If the majority of the people installed GovIOS then Apple could focus their security research on GovIOS and move on. Somehow, I think that people who installed GovIOS would be in the infinitesimal minority. 

I’d also love to see James Comey’s face when the press asked if he’d installed GovIOS on his personal iPhone.

IPhone lineup

Apple is supposed to be releasing a new iPhone and a new tablet today.

The new phone is rumored to be about the same size as the iPhone5s. But it’s supposed to have features of the iPhone 6s. I’m hoping that Apple manages to just put the iPhone 6s into the iPhone 5s size. 

Some of the rumors have suggested that Apple is going to cheapen the smaller phone by limiting options. I of course, ask why? I genuinely like the size of my iPhone5s. it fits in my hand and my pocket comfortably.  If I could have the memory, NFC (for Apple Pay), improved cellular radio, WiFi and camera of the iPhone 6s in the 5s size, I’d pay for it. I’m not sure I’d pay the $849 Apple is charging for the iPhone 6s (Because of the screen size differences) but I could see myself really weighing the options. Maybe $749 for 128GB in a phone the size of the iPhone5s?

Nonetheless, I’m curious about the new iPhone and depending on the price / features and the outcome of the pending legislation in California regarding encrypted phones and the outcome of the FBI v. Apple case, I may wait for the iPhone 7s or buy an iPhone SE or have to go with a 6s.

If the Idiots in Sacramento have their way, no encrypted cellphone will be sold in California after Jan 1, 2017.  I swear, if lawmakers keep on fooling around, Apple will relocate to Ireland.  At the same time, the idiots will manage to kill the retail cellular market in the state.

I’m sure that Nevada and Arizona will appreciate the boon to tourism and business. I can see weekend planning sounding like, “Oh, lets take a quick run up to Las Vegas for the weekend while we’re there we can buy new phones!”

IPad lineup

I’m interested in the new iPad as well. I’ve got an iPad Mini that I really like. But it’s getting tired, I’ve been intrigued by the iPad Air for its size and weight. So I’m curious about the update to the iPad line. I could get very excited about an iPad Mini that included features from the iPad Pro. The pencil for example? But depending on size and weight, the new iPad might tempt me long before Apple rolls a Mini with “Pro” features.

I don’t have the cash for any of this. But planning to update my machines is an expression of hope / faith that I will find a new job and I’ll have the cash in the future.

Misty Forest

The alternative is to hike into a forest with my tent, and go off-grid in a seriously old school way. I’m a very out of practice hunter, an OK angler, and tend to do ok without people.

Oddly enough, that has some appeal. 

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Still here

Another one of those dry spells.

Everything I’ve written has been a steaming pile of poo.

Rather than bore you with the details…

This guy has more brain power than I do at the moment.

Homer brain

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It’s Called Free Speech Dumbasses!

Constitution

Which I should add is technically what you’re engaging in when you protest by marching, and holding up signs expressing your opinions.

This is part of what the First Amendment is about, and is one of the most cherished rights we have in America.

Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

ChicagoRiot

However, once your start throwing punches, vandalizing property, tossing bricks, burning down buildings, or stealing cases of tampons because that’s all that was left to take from the CVS… Well you’re no longer engaging in free speech; now you’ve just become a bunch of thugs, and thieves.

They used to teach this stuff in school. It was called Civics.  I remember having Civics classes off and on throughout Elementary, Junior High, and High School.

Glencoe Civics Today Textbook

Of course, for the most part… I ATTENDED school and learned enough about the workings of our government to be able to operate in society. (Stuff like stop when the cops tell you to, don’t steal, vandalize, rape, or otherwise harm others, be polite and let others have their say, 

Apparently, that educational effort was lost on the crowds rioting in Chicago, or the idiot young adults on college campuses today.

I digress.

If Donald Trump wants to speak, he has every right to do so. Just like you. The same goes for Ben Shapiro, or Milo Yiannopoulos events on college campuses. 

If you get tossed out of an event where other people (equal in their rights to you, by the way,) have PAID or chosen to hear the speaker, then I see that as perfectly fine too.

If you’re going to disrupt an event that others are interested in attending, you special snowflake, are the aggressor, not the crowd. You had the option not to attend a rally, or speaking event, and you chose to attend and be disruptive. You also had the opportunity to leave if / when you found the topic of discussion offensive.

Trump

Here ends your lesson on Free Speech and the first Amendment.

Perhaps tomorrow we’ll move on to freedom of religion, and how Islam, must be equal to Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, or every other religion, or the choice by some people to not believe in a higher power.

I know it’s hard for some people to understand, but no religion or belief system is to be treated as superior to another here in America. I promise, I’ll use small words.

 

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This is in no way a complaint

Email icon1

And I’m really trying not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but has anyone else noticed a significant slowdown of SPAM in their email?

I mean really noticeable!

Whereas, in recent months my email had been inundated with all kinds of crap, now, quite suddenly, it’s eerily quiet. 

Again, not complaining, just fascinated and curious about what’s happening.

It’s been so slow that I actually wondered if my email was broken. 

I could understand one account being quiet, I’m trying to phase out accounts that I don’t use anymore. But this is a marked reduction in junkmail across several accounts. 

I was hoping that my stellar programming of junk filters had been responsible. Then I checked the servers and found that, alas, my junk filters were as inefficient as always, and there was nothing being caught by the built in server filters either.

For a moment I was excited though.

angryemail

Could it be that people aren’t falling for the scams in the junkmail anymore, so the spammers aren’t sending email?

Nah, unlikely there are way too many morons out there.

As PT Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute”.

I just had a dark thought. Suppose the SPAM / Phishing emails are slowing because they’re no longer necessary?

What if due to the breaches at the OPM, IRS, and various Health care companies the SPAMMERS have all the information that they need? 

That would truly suck. 

I’m hoping it’s just that I’ve gotten lucky and various ISPs handling my email have installed some killer filters.

I’m not holding my breath… I think I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

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The peril of incessant resume editing

Job Search Magnify

Placement agents will often ask that you make “minor” alterations to your resume for presentation to a client, “Don’t say Oracle, say SQL,” and inevitably there’s a time constraint giving you the impression that you’re not going to be submitted for a particular position if you don’t make their suggested changes instantly.

Evaluate these requests carefully, especially if you’re applying to multiple positions through multiple resources.  On the one hand, the suggestions may yield a stronger resume. On the other hand, the suggestions may be the placement agent picking nits, due to their personal biases.

Job Search Apps

After four solid years of looking for permanent employment, I can’t honestly tell you if making changes under the gun will land you a job, it sure hasn’t in my case.

What I can tell you, is that making changes on the fly can introduce some of the darndest typos in your resume.

In various attempts to comply with placement services “requests” I’ve found myself editing my 900-word resume on my phone, sitting in a parking lot, in my car. “This is an immediate opening; I can’t submit your resume without these changes…“

“Planned” and “Planed” look an awful lot alike on a phone’s screen. Spellcheck isn’t going to catch the difference either. Punctuation? Ha!  Worse yet, you make the edits then rush headlong into another interview, forgetting you made them.

If you’re using a cloud service your edits are propagated to all your devices and any errors, introduced may linger in your resume for quite some time. Who re-reads every single word of their resume each time they send it out? You “know” you’ve worked hard on getting it just right and you don’t recall making any changes…

JobSearchSite Cartoon

So you merrily select “Upload” on whatever job placement site you’re using and move on to the next flagged position.

Wanted: detail oriented person for high paying position…

Yep, they’re going to really believe how detail oriented you are because you planed the project, cutting costs by 20%. While shaving costs, may in fact be a good thing, you probably meant you planned the project.

I recently noticed that I’d at some point, (fairly recently, I hope,) made exactly that mistake. I did it literally on the first line describing my former duties. I even think I know when I did it.

I was having to reword several descriptions because the placement guy wanted a bit more “punch”. I was distracted, sitting in a coffee shop, doing the edits on my iPad between interviews, and probably accepted the first suggested word choice. I know better!

Nonetheless, I finished the edits, and emailed the update to the placement agent. The agent, in my humble opinion should not only have caught the error, but told me about it and corrected the word prior to sending my resume to his client.

Guess what? He didn’t notice the problem at all.

Which brings me back to the original point.

Minor edits being demanded by placement agencies may land you in more trouble than simply allowing your resume to stand on its own merit.

I’ve been considering placing my resume under source code control for a while. Maybe today is the day! I’ll put my resumes under Git, just like all my other code projects. It’s easy and allows me to compare changes and even roll changes back. 

Sounds like a winner.