Category: General

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Okay, I’m liking the new resume revision.

I’ll give this another whirl. 

The suggestions the Grok AI made do improve the way the resume reads. In fact, it’s much better than that “Hack” I paid to rework my resume.

These changes are clear and make sense. It’s not just a bunch of BS keywords strung together. I’ve begun work on several of the suggested certifications. Oddly, the courses themselves come easily. Perhaps because they’re kind of intuitive and align with the way I’ve always done these sort of things. I can see the years of experience that I have, playing into grasping the materials presented for the certifications themselves.

The latest version of TestRail is 1000 times better than the version I worked with years ago. Jira, likewise makes a lot more sense than it used to. I’m amused in a way because these certifications are just a way for someone to make money.

I always fought against paying for someone to certify that I knew stuff. I remember being able to outright buy a Microsoft or Netware certification.

Back in the day, everyone did it, then put the little logo on their resumes. In the end the certifications were so devalued lots of employers stopped caring, and the fad died off. 

These days some of these certifications have become a necessary evil. As long as the cost for training and certification doesn’t get out of hand, having these listed on my resume and actually brushing up on my knowledge isn’t a bad thing.

It’s also possible that going through the course work will help to reintegrate me into the current terms and methodologies. That might make me more hire-able and more easily blend into extant corporate cultures.

I don’t know if that’s true but it’s relatively cheap to find out.

Ideally, what I want is a simple testing job, I don’t need a ton of money coming in. I’d be really happy if I could work remotely 100% of the time. I don’t want to have to sit on the freeway, and should I move, it wouldn’t necessarily mean changing jobs.

As I was working on the resume, it occurred to me that I might need to get a fast external drive for my computer.

I did a quick investigation of some of the testing tools and software. I’d need to build a dedicated test rig, these tools put crap deep into the OS, and some of the changes may not be easy to reverse.

It would be nice to have a bootable external device to keep work stuff on, that never touched my core personal system.

Fortunately, those kinds of devices are pretty cheap and my computer is dang fast. But that’s a purchase that wouldn’t come until I had job in hand, and perhaps the company would provide a machine on their dime. If they don’t, I could have a device delivered in a day.

I’m oddly optimistic. I haven’t liked my resume for the past several years. But I was stuck and couldn’t see how to improve it.

It’s interesting that a dispassionate AI could give me clarity.

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Apple has a new Pride Watchband. Ughh!

It’s well renown that Apple has always been a company that embraced the LGB community. There’s a reason, that back in the day, going into a gay bar was almost like going into an iPhone store display.

Over the years, I’ve looked with amusement and occasional interest at the Apple “Pride” Wallpapers. When the Apple Watch became available, I took interest in  their watch faces and matching bands. I think I may own one of their so called “Pride” bands.

That being said, there were very few of these bands that I liked.

If the photos do it justice, this year’s offering is abysmal. It really looks like someone just “Phoned it in.” There’s no grace, charm, or elegance.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Apple claims it was based on whatever vomitious iteration of the so called “Pride Flag” is in vogue now. 

Gay flag 2662347892.I’ve come to see the current banner of the LGBTQIA+xyz not as a “Pride Flag” but as a “Shame” flag.

A flag with which, I want no association, and feel no kinship. Today’s flag represents the commandeering of an entire community and the bastardization of what was once something that brightened the fronts of establishments.

The old flag was a simple rainbow, bright happy colors that made folks smile because they echoed the beauty of an actual rainbow. Some religious fundamentalists (primarily those who hated gay people for existing at all,) were offended, but generally, folks could look at a rainbow flag and smile despite their personal beliefs.

The flag of today appears as conflicted as the LGBTQIA+xyz community it represents. There is one mathematical view that the new flag accurately represents the TQIA+xyz agenda. If you look at the black stripe as the mathematical symbol “Greater Than” what you see is

TQIA+xyz > LGB

With each additional group that is added on the left side of the black stripe, more of the original rainbow representing the LGB part of the community is occluded.

3edef965 b1a6 4ecd 8407 99ca1ae8cf52 shutterstock 1106302064 15481563.Fully 1/3 of the rainbow is now occupied by the TQIA+xyz representation. If this progression continues, the rainbow itself will be gone entirely in another few years.

I can’t help but see this when I look as today’s so-called “Pride” flag. I see it as a warning, a “We’re coming for you,” message.

Even the color palette is discordant. Pastels overlaid on primary colors simply don’t look right.

In that, perhaps the new “Pride” flag is honest in its representation of the TQIA+xyz agenda, and what is being done to the community at large. What’s left of the old community, that is.

The other problem with the new flag is how nationalistic it appears. It reminds me of flags which in the past have symbolized oppression. There’s perhaps some truth to that as well, given the manner in which more conservative LGB folks are treated by the vocal “Inclusive” TQIA+xyz elements these days.

MFFP4ref AV1.I’d have hated to be the poor schmuck that was called upon to design Apple’s new watchband and wallpapers. 

Going into it they had to know that if they applied real artistic values, the design would be rejected. Had they used the flag’s color palette to make something interesting and beautiful, they’d probably have been accused of not “Properly” representing all the groups equally.

So I suppose they had no choice but to “Phone it in”. Their design constraints probably demanded equal volume of colors and thereby equal representation.

What they came up with, just looks too “busy” and very distracting.

I am grateful to Apple for trying. I’m also grateful for the reminder that June “Pride” will soon be upon us. For me this means that If I want to have dinner & drinks with any LGB friends in Palm Springs, I’d better do it soon. Otherwise we’ll be into July with the blistering heat pounding down on us. As more moderate, bordering on conservative gay men, we’re tolerated. But during Pride Month in Palm Springs it’s simply not a pleasant place to be.

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First yard work of the season.

Yes, it’s spring, and has been for a while, but up here, one day it’s freezing, the next you’re in shorts.

I typically leave the plants alone, even those we think of as weeds during this time of the year. My run of thumb is, “If it blooms, I’ll leave it so the bees have something to eat.”

The down side is that next season, there might be more weeds. The up side is that I’ve found a lot more native plants in this area have some of the nicest little blooms. Many are short lived, but they’re really neat. The bees like them, and that makes me smile.

It’s no skin off my nose to leave things be, until after the blooms are done. This year because of the wild variations in temp the normal Spring progression has been very weird.

For example, the mountain lilac is in full bloom and fragrant but there are definitely not the normal number of bees. Normally there would be a constant hum within the lilacs but not this year. I think the cold snaps may have harmed some of the local bee colonies. 

Then there’s the other possibility. Someone in the neighborhood poisoned the hell out of their yard which killed off the colonies. I hope the latter isn’t true but it’s an unfortunate likelihood.

Nonetheless, I’ll continue to provide a safe place where there are no pesticides.

That being said, yesterday, I was outside with the weed whacker and cut down the taller native plants whose flowering cycle was done. Most of the work was in the back yard. There are some plants that get tall and provide cover for snakes.

That is a problem because the dog has the run of the back yard and the last thing I need, is him scaring or harassing a rattlesnake. The dog is fast and agile, but I don’t know if he’d be able to avoid the strike much less understand the danger. Sometimes, he’s not the brightest bulb in the pack.

Case in point, here’s a picture of a poor snake we encountered on our walk a couple of days ago. This snake is in “Stick Mode”, because Jesse came round a corner on the trail and completely missed that it was there. Jesse never broke stride and walked right over the poor thing. Exposed like it was, the snake decided to be a “stick”.  This guy was maybe 2 feet long and isn’t poisonous but could just as easily been a rattler.

Today, my arms are rubber, and my shoulders, chest and back are a bit sore.

I could use a massage!

I have a love / hate relationship with the yard work, I mostly enjoy doing it but as I’m getting older, it takes more out of me and longer to fully recover.

I did the yard stuff after our usual walk. So I got my steps in, and was outside for a few hours. It wasn’t until after I came in that I remembered I’d been outside without my hat. On the plus side I remembered to put my gloves and eye protection on before I started working in the yard.

Often the first few times I work outside in the Spring, I’ll forget gloves or eye protection and only remember after something has been kicked up in my face, or I look down and notice I’m dripping blood from a cut on my hand or something. 

This time, I just ended up with a bunch of plant debris in my hair and down my shirt.

When I was done in the front yard. I was just about to go inside and let the breeze carry the clippings away. (There wasn’t much to speak of.) Then I remembered the neighbor across the street who loses his mind if anyone uses a leaf blower in their yard.

I still had 25% charge in the battery. So, for the sake of being a bastard, I pulled the battery from the weed whacker & put it in the leaf blower. That gave me 30 satisfying minutes of driveway and step cleaning, with the neighbor screaming about this not being a parking lot and how it disturbs his sleep, and the usual staccato of obscenities.

I was vaguely aware of his complaints, but I couldn’t quite hear him over the music I was listening to via my AirPods. 

The two huskies across the street had been quiet throughout my working in the yard. They watched quietly and didn’t make a peep even while I began running the leaf blower. When the idiot started shouting and complaining from behind his screen door. They trotted over to their fence facing him, and began to howl as only two huskies can do.

When the battery on the blower died, I went inside for a nice glass of tea.

The huskies continued howling in his general direction for another 5 minutes or so. I must remember to take them some treats!

Have a lovely Sunday.

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Rep. Shri Thanedar just learned a lesson… As did PBS and NPR.

The hard way!

I almost feel sorry for him.

His impeachment paperwork met with a significant backlash and guess what?

His fellow signatories bailed on him.

Democrats being Democrats!

More fairly, it’s Politicians, being Politicians.

He may actually think that he’s justified, (who knows, he might be,) but he just found out that he’s nothing but a pawn. They had him float impeachment to see how it would play in the court of public opinion, and when the wind changed, they tossed him aside like he was nothing.

I’d say it’s 50/50 that he survives his next election.

He was obscure before the impeachment paperwork. After this, he’ll return to obscurity. Without allies or usefulness he’s toast.

Politics is tough.

What concerns me, is that now that he’s popped his head up with this impeachment stuff, suddenly there’s dirt on him in some corners of the media.

The Republican and Democrat parties are both full of politicians. You can count on politicians to be scum 98% of the time. So suddenly “Finding” that Thanedar left lab animals to starve in a lab he owned suggests to me that either this is a bogus story, or that there’s more to it. (He may have owned the lab, but did he run it?)

More worrisome is why now? Surely, someone had dirt on him for a while. How is this just coming to light, and why is the timing so convenient?

No matter what you think about Trump, or his administration. We should all be watching this stuff like a hawk. Otherwise we run the risk of replacing one shitty way of governing with another.

I have mixed feelings about Trump’s EO to cut funding for NPR and PBS. I don’t listen to either of them precisely because I find them to be so biased & liberal all they do is piss me off.

Even Jerry, who was very liberal, gave up on them. He subscribed to PBS for a year or two so that he could catch concerts, symphonies, and a couple of musical history shows. He’d turn them off the minute there was something “News” related.

For me, I used to listen to NPR sometimes while I was driving to work. Sometime in the Obama administration, NPR began to sound like propaganda, especially when there was anything controversial about the Obama Presidency.

I was looking toward them for balance, what I heard, was minimization of the issue and chronic blaming of Republicans for raising the issue. Hence my feeling they were nothing more than a propaganda outlet. In many regards, they sounded as radically left, as Patriot XM is to the right, (I also, as a rule, don’t listen to them).

I suppose I was looking for reasoned, balanced analysis of both sides of current issues. I wonder why we can’t seem to have that these days. 

When you get to it, all radio is public. As is all network television. So that begs the question for me, “Why does NPR get public funding?”

If NPR presented both sides of every issue in a thoughtful and well researched way… In other words if they didn’t view issues through the lens of political party at all, and reported just the facts, then discussed the pros and cons of a policy dispassionately, I’d be very in favor of funding them.

I’ve recently noticed that I really tune out if hosts and guests on any show start talking over each other, or raising their voices. This is particularly true if the hosts are women. There’s some indefinable point where two or more women talking over each other and raising voices to be heard, just sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard. (Not that young people really know what that actually means these days.)

I’d like to see a show with a format that took an issue like Tariffs, then explained what they are, why they exist, how they work, why some countries have them, and others don’t.

Then I’d like to see/hear a dispassionate pro/con debate. Neither side of the debate should have to “Win”, but they should be able to defend their position with logic and fact.

I’d listen to two hours of that because I’d learn something.

That’s what I think of about tax dollars funding something like NPR or PBS. They should be educational and informative, without attempting to sway the listener in any particular direction. It should be the listener’s responsibility to make up their own mind about the information presented.

That’s the up side, the optimal outcome.

Further, I think when that balance and education is lost, we shouldn’t be paying for it.

That brings to mind another thought. 

Perhaps it would be better for NPR and PBS to be completely decoupled from government funding so that they never fear government control. Obviously, if these organizations receive tax dollars, then can we really say they’re unbiased in their reporting? Might the apparent extreme left lean, be the inevitable outcome of funding sources?

How can you have unbiased reporting when you know if you offend someone on “The Hill”, it could affect your budget next year?

I sincerely hope that Trump cutting NPR / PBS funding & The sudden “Dirt” on Thanedar aren’t about retribution or revenge from the White House.

I’m a pretty vengeful person, I’m petty, and easily annoyed. I don’t want that in government from either party. 

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There are times when my brain runs in the strangest ways

As I’ve chronicled, I’ve been looking for a job, in my field for a long time.

I read job postings daily. 

This morning, before dawn I was having coffee reading job postings as I do every morning. I apply to those positions for which I’m qualified and comfortable my skills would be well suited.

Recently, I’ve seen a trend where the job posting is clearly misleading.

The most obvious is;

“Fully Remote” then further into the posting the requirement is that you live in the city the company is in. Further down the long list of requirements is that the company wants the employee to be in the office some number of days per week. 

That’s not a fully remote job, that’s what companies are calling a hybrid position.

It’s the old “bait and switch” and honestly probably creates an overwhelming response of resumes and applicants that the HR department has to filter.

A variation is where while filling out the preprogrammed application the prospective employee is asked if they’re willing to relocate, and what the relocation time frame is.

In other words they might consider you if you’re planning to move to their location on your own dime.

Again, this is a hybrid position at best, more likely, it’s a position in an office.

I’ve also been seeing a growing number of positions where the position title or description is completely different from the actual responsibilities delineated other down the page.

For example;

“Manual Testing position“

Then further down, “Must create automated testing using (Program de jour) from user stories.”

Then there are the endless typos or AI generated nonsense sentences  describing the work to be done, followed by a list of every possible buzzword that’s ever been used in technology.

This made me wonder if I’m the only person who finds HR departments nearly useless.

So I did a web search simply asking, “Is any employee happy with their HR department?”

The results were interesting in that, most of the articles returned were talking about working in an HR department, instead of if employees liked or were happy with HR.

It reminded me of the results you’d get during COVID if the question you asked was about alternative treatments.

Rephrasing the question didn’t significantly improve the returned results. There was a peppering of >10 year old articles about dissatisfaction with HR but nothing current.

One Forbes article (from 12 years ago) flatly stated, “Employees will ask for assistance from anyone but their HR department.”

I began wondering if the results were because the search algorithm was overwhelmed by negative articles and decided that it would “Improve” the world by masking reality.

There are people who seem to believe that sweeping the issues under the carpet is better than presenting the truth. The theory goes something like, “We shouldn’t reinforce the negative because that will compound the issue and cause more people to pile on to the beleaguered party.“

You see similar results if you specifically look for images of black folks trashing or looting stores or fast food places. What you get is results of anyone but black folks engaging in these activities.

I know this because on the one hand “X” sometimes presents incident after incident, literally showing black folks fighting each other in Walmarts, Targets, or McDonalds.

But when I try to search for the actual incident to find out what the specifics were, why this happened, or who provoked who, there are few, if any results.

This leads me to wonder, is what I’m seeing on “X” some kind of AI hoax, or is the algorithm suppressing reports of the events?

I suspect the latter.

What this suggests to me is that truth may be entirely subjective. This is not because true is variable, but because either people can’t handle the truth, don’t want the truth, or the powers that be choose to obfuscate or shape the truth for their own ends.

3 days ago, entering “Senator Van Hollen” brought up article, after article, about his “Brave” fight to bring a ‘mistakenly deported’ man home from El Salvador.

Now that same search parameter displays Senator Van Hollen’s record in the senate and his biography. Adding “El Salvador” to the search and articles are presented about the Senator’s trip to El Salvador and that he’s defending “Due Process”.

It changed shortly after revelations that Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a standing deportation order, restraining orders against him, from his wife, and that El Salvador counts Garcia among the membership of MS13.

Senator Van Hollen has egg on his face, the public opinion polls regarding the Democrat party and its leadership dropped over the good Senator’s publicity stunt.

Taxpayers are not thrilled that the Senator used their money to demand that we waste more taxpayer money to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States, put him before a judge (spending more taxpayer money) only to have a hearing that will in all likelihood result in Garcia being deported again, (spending yet more taxpayer money).

We could have that hearing in absentia, or via zoom and then decide if Garcia should be returned to the US or remain in his home country.

The good Senator, with the help of the Media is trying to reframe the “Truth” in order to shore up both the Senator’s polling numbers and those of the Democrat party.

There are a few diehard media outlets like MSNBC that still maintain Kilmar Abrego Garcia was “mistakenly deported”. That’s just because their hatred for Trump is so strong that even in the face of a standing deportation order, they must paint the Trump administration as sitting at the right hand of Satan.

I find all of this amusing. It exemplifies the old quote; “This is how civilization dies, not with a bang… but with a whimper.”

When all data sources are tainted, facts are obfuscated, people are divided or polarized by falsehoods and misrepresentation, when truth is entirely subjective… Civilization as we’ve known it, is circling the drain.

The weakness of old age and infirmity means that a younger more aggressive and probably more authoritarian civilization will sweep in to fill the vacuum. 

We have historical examples. Rome, Greece, The Ottoman Empire, and Egypt, all stand as sign posts.

Issac Asimov’s Foundation touched on these themes. Even though it is science fiction, The opening chapters ring true.

Hari Seldon, through the mathematics of Psychohistory told an Empire that it was doomed. Seldon said there was nothing that could stop the fall, but there were actions that could be taken to shorten the darkness between the fall of the current civilization and the rise of the next. 

In the twilight of the Empire, truth was subjective, people believed what was most comfortable or that which gave them purpose or comfort.

I’m amused because no matter where I look, I see evidence suggesting that history, or the fantasy of Foundation is playing out real time.

The “Empire” known as western civilization is falling. As in Asimov’s tale, it’s rotting from within.

Life is imitating art.

So perhaps it’s time to start thinking about creating the First Foundation. Perhaps it’s time to start preserving all that we’ve learned, and locking it away to protect it from the fall so that when our species is ready to reach for the stars again, science, philosophy, medicine, and a dispassionate record of history can guide our descendants forward quickly, instead of spending 1 or 2 thousand years in barbarism.

This line of crazy thinking has led me to wondering if our ancestors addressed this particular problem and how they attempted to solve it. Is there really a library of knowledge under the left paw of the Sphinx?

How would I solve the problem? Stone monuments attract attention. Various religious groups today will destroy monuments they perceive as antithetical to their beliefs. Our own people remove statues they find heretical.

How would I preserve knowledge? Books and libraries are subject to burning. Stone is more durable, but limited from a spacial perspective. A technological solution could work, but is inherently delicate and prone to malfunctions, power issues, or damage. 

Maybe I’ve found a project to fill the rest of my days.

My coffee cup and pot are now empty. Time to get on with the day.

And this is how I get sidetracked all too often.

Have a great day.