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Dumbshit online Job placement agencies…

Searching for a job as I’ve chronicled isn’t easy. 

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I’m finding that it’s being made all the more difficult because of shitty headhunters.

This too I’ve written about in the past.

A new twist, One that has me completely baffled is this…

I’ve received email from a company called CyberCoders. (I refer to them as CyberSpammers… lest I digress), recently they’ve started sending me emails full of links from OTHER headhunter sites.

WTF?

So how does THAT work? If I apply to the position on the OTHER site does CyberSpammers try to horn in on the referral fee? Do both agencies fight over the fees and do I once again get left out in the cold?

Who the hell can tell?

 This simply reconfirms my opinion of head hunters and agencies. I’m going to do my level best to avoid them. 

I’m going to go back to the old fashioned method of job searching.

I’ll be buying a Newspaper, and using the referrals of friends thank you very much. 

I’m really looking for something that doesn’t require me to drive 70+ miles to and from work, if I’m doing that I might as well move.

 

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A New Neighbor

Yes, I am getting new neighbors… They’re moving in a little at a time and seem to be very nice people. they’re a small family unit with a 3 year old boy. 

The little boy is surprisingly verbal and very well behaved.

I’m thinking that these people will be very much better than the previous folks.

Yesterday I spent most of the day puttering around in the yard. 

I had a long list of minor nuisance items to do.

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I planted two new blackberry bushes, tried a seed experiment with some grass in the front yard, weed whacked, and repaired the sprinkler system. 

The Sprinkler system was the long pole item. It was one of those situations where every time I got one problem corrected another problem popped up in the next valve down the line. After disassembling and reassembling 4 out of the 5 valves I managed to concentrate all the evil in one valve which thankfully is on a disused zone. 

At some point I will bring that zone online so I’ll have to replace the valve… but for now well I’m watering what needs watering and I’ve got some time to shop around for the best price.

While I was working on the valve assembly enjoying the “fun” of Spring chores. I suddenly had the hair on the back of my neck stand up. At first I couldn’t figure out what caused that rather primitive reaction and was ready to chalk it up to a chilly breeze then I heard the sound clearly.

What had set off the alert in the more primitive portion of my brain was the distinct sound of snake scales in dry brush. For those of you who may have heard this sound you know what I”m talking about. For those of you who’ve never heard it… the best way I can describe the sound is this;

Close your eyes and imagine the sound of dry leaves rustling on an Autumn day. Now imagine that sound as having just the faintest of rhythmic sound to it and now imagine that sound having a very definite directional quality to it. It’s either coming toward you or moving away from you.

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That should get you in the ball park, if the hair on the back of your neck stood up you’ve managed to activate your defense mechanism regarding snakes.

I’m pretty mellow about snakes. They’re a fact of life around here and as the Bushmen of the Kalahari say “You just have to watch out for the sharp end”

However in this case the snake was not clearly visible and I was thinking about the 3 year old boy that I’d heard playing next door. 

Having been raised in the South Eastern United States I grew up with four poisonous snakes in my environment: Rattlesnakes, Copperheads, Water Moccasins, and Coral Snakes.  

I have seen all varieties in my travels and only felt it absolutely necessary to kill one snake ever. That was a rattlesnake,  he & I couldn’t come to an arrangement about going our separate ways. I was sorry about it but I was the Apex Predator in town and he wasn’t respecting that fact.

Not being able to clearly see this snake I called over to the new neighbors and asked where the little boy was. Someone called back that he was inside and I called back not to panic but a snake was heading their way. 

At this point I was sincerely hoping that we didn’t have screaming panic. 

I was pleasantly surprised when the little boys mom called back in a calm voice “Where? Can you tell what kind?” I called back that I couldn’t clearly see it and where it was coming through the lilacs.

When I joined her on her side of the lilacs we both watched the snake make his appearance. She said, “Oh that looks a bit like a rattlesnake doesn’t it?” Again she’s calm and cool and I’m thinking,  “Great she’s my kind of people.”

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Then we see the snakes tail and there’s no rattle. We watch the snake as he goes about his business and I explain that I’ve seen a couple of kinds of snakes around our local area and that the previous owner of the house & I had a live and let live attitude, besides they help with the rodent population. The new neighbor smiled and said she was good with that approach.

Then she asked about the varieties I’d seen. I told her we have a California King and now our new friend. We also have two types of rattlesnakes here, one is the Pacific Rattlesnake and the other is the Mojave Green Rattlesnake. Both are pretty reclusive and given the opportunity to retreat… They will! Other than those two guys, I don’t think we have anything else dangerous. The Neighbor smiled and told me that things at this end of town are a lot more interesting than where they’d been living. She was looking forward to it.

Yeah, definitely my kind of people!

I managed to snap a few bad pictures of our new reptilian neighbor. I hope that he finds the hunting good in the neighborhood.

I think I managed to ID him. He’s a Pacific Gopher Snake.  I consider him a welcome addition to the neighborhood.

Lately, we’ve not had as many Coyotes or birds of prey around,  as a result we’re noticing a lot more rodents. Perhaps between our new Gopher Snake and the old California King Snake, we wont have to worry about poisoning to thin the rodent population we’ll just have fat snakes.

Spring rolls along the temps are mild and I frequently forget to put sunscreen on. Today is an inside day, I got a bit of a sunburn yesterday and I’m sporting a solid Red Neck. So much for my being incognito! 

 

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I’m sure I’m going straight to hell…

Sometimes I can’t help myself.

Tonight as the Godson was leaving for a camping trip with a couple of buddies I thought a practical joke was in order. After all 19 – 22 year olds have to have some reason to swear at each other don’t they?

One of his buddies, I’ve met and in addition to him being just a hell of a nice young man & proud Marine, he seems like the type that could take a joke.

SO my evil mind bubbling, boiling, and churning comes up with this plan.

I say “Lets put a condom that appears used in the sleeping bag he’s rented for the trip. “

My godson is laughing so hard he can’t even speak.

While he’s recovering I head to my bedroom, grabbing a condom and a bottle of Spunk Lube…

I unroll the condom then squirt a bit of lube in the condom. I hold it up and think “What the Hell?”. I say to the godson; “lets make it a big’un” and hit the condom with a completely unrealistic amount of the lube. While I’m squeezing the stuff down to the end of the condom. My godson is holding his sides laughing.

I fold the thing over and stuff it into a plastic sandwich bag. As I hand it to him I tell him to make sure that he slides it into his buddys sleeping bag so that the cold sticky thing is going to come into contact with a bare foot, leg, or the small of the back.

At this point the godson is laughing so hard he’s red in the face. I can tell he’s imagining the look on his friends face when this whole thing goes down.

I’m sure that I’m going straight to hell….

 

—- UPDATE —-

The young man that we were pranking… Didn’t even blink… He’d read my previous post and knew that it was a joke. DAMN!!!! Obviously I’m getting a wider audience on this blog than I thought, not that I’m complaining…

So the moral of the story is… If you want to prank someone with Spunk make sure they haven’t read about it or aren’t already using it.

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Been a fast – slow week….

It’s been one of those weeks where the days fly by but I don’t feel like I’ve gotten anything accomplished.

On the plus side, I’ve gotten all the FexEx, UPS, & USPS shipments that I was expecting.

So now i’m good to go for the next shooting competition. I’m looking forward to it.

One of the other shipments was the new Apple TV 1080P I really like the machine a lot. There are a couple minor warts on it…

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Apple TV

On the Plus side, I like the new AirPlay feature. Even though I’m not using Lion I can realize some of the benefits.

The Netflix interface is one hell of a lot nicer than the Netflix interface in my DVD player. With the player, I have to answer 3 questions and wait for it to figure out that the network cable plugged into the back of the machine is live and that the network is really there and that netflix is really there… On & on.

With the Apple TV, selecting Netflix just displays a menu and you’re off & running. It’s very nice.

The only real annoyance I have with the Apple TV is at least in part, not apples fault. The problem is this; If you’re on a DSL connection trying to stream HD content from the Apple Cloud is really slow.

For example, It’s not at all uncommon for me to see wait times of 2 hours before the movie I want to watch is going to be playable.

If Verizon in their infinite mercy would put FIOS in the town, or if one of the cable companies would supply internet up here, this would probably not be an issue.  I’m still trying to figure out what kind of idol and religious ceremonies or animal sacrifices are necessary to get decent service out of Verizon. If anyone has suggestions leave them in the comments. 

Of course in Cuppertino where EVERYONE has access to blazing fast internet, it isn’t an issue.  I’m sure that the Apple Engineers or Apple Software Quality Assurance never saw any problems and probably never even considered the issue.

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However In the REAL world…  High speed internet DOES not exist everywhere.

Thats the part of the problem that is NOT Apples fault.

The part of the problem that is Apples fault is this;

If I have content that I’ve purchased, stored  on a Network attached storage device like Apples Time Capsule or another network hard drive from another manufacturer I can’t directly access that content with the Apple TV.

Yep, I can’t access that data that I own the rights to play unless I have a computer running iTunes turned on and pointed at the network storage device. (In this situation, computer can be an Apple Computer, iPhone, or iPad, or PC running iTunes).

So even if I have told my computer to download the video and stored it on my local network which my AppleTV has access to… I can’t just tell the Apple TV to play the movie. I have to leave my computer or some secondary device running…

My Xbox 360 doesn’t have a problem doing this… but It can’t play the Apple video data because of the damn DRM.

SO… Hey Apple! You’re not being very green! Why do I have to have a device that I’m not USING… turned on so that I can use another of your devices that I am using?

In point of fact… in this arrangement I might as well just plug my computer into my TV and use IT to watch the movies, and shows that I’ve rented, or purchased, and I can stream Netflix too.

After all… The HDMI connection works either way.

This little bug a boo is Seriously annoying to me. In fact, I consider it to be a MAJOR flaw in an otherwise very slick machine.

The Apple TV is a network device, it has full internet capability and it is obviously capable of checking the DRM status of any file it is asked to play. You can watch it do the check when you try to access a film or show from the cloud. So it shouldn’t be any big deal for the Apple Software engineers to add the feature.

I like the Apple TV enough that I’m not going to return it. When it’s out of warranty I’m going to hack the hell out of the bitch! Especially if Apple hasn’t figured out that Access to NAS devices is critical to the success of the device if they’re planning to capture the video market. I’m absolutely sure that some really smart folks are working on a modification even as I type this…

But First… I’m going to write a nice letter to Apple and explain why I think it would be best for them to add the function.

Given Apples attitude toward such suggestions I’m absolutely sure that they will promptly ignore and then lock the Apple TV up even further. But I can dream right?

Cloud Storage

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Having a slow internet connection from a single source in my town is one of the reasons that I’m not terribly interested in internet cloud storage that everyone and their brother is all excited about. iCloud, Amazon Cloud, dropbox, whatever…

For small files… sure it would probably work ok. For big files…. Like movies, music, or for large encrypted files… cloud storage is next to useless to me. Actually, cloud storage is beyond useless because I don’t have the patience or desire to wait for uploads or downloads.

It’s cheaper for me to throw another NAS device on my network than pay the yearly fees for increased storage that I may or may not be able to access depending on the vagaries of my internet provider.

This is why I have 5 TB of local network attached drive storage, and an additional 5 TB of portable USB dives.

I’m also not really sure that I want my stuff stored on the internet. We’ve already seen that banks and even the government can’t protect our personal data. Why should I think that cloud storage is going to be any different?

Maybe I’m being un-necessarily paranoid, but honestly there is stuff on my computer… well lets just say I don’t think I’d want it broadcast across the world wide web…

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Hey Religious Right… It’s all or nothing!

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First of all Let me say a few things right up front:

1) I rarely agree with Dan Savage

2) I often disagree with Joe of Joe.my.god

3) I’m not particularly religious

4) I rarely find enough compelling writing in Slate to continue reading more than a paragraph or two.

So you’ll understand that I took my blood pressure and temperature when I found myself reading an entire Slate article, agreeing with Dan Savage AND Joe about religion. I also checked to make sure that none of my neighbors had been raptured. Since I haven’t seen any Zombies walking around I’m going to assume that the zombie apocalypse hasn’t happened.

There’s been a lot of talk about Dan Savage lately. Frankly I hadn’t really paid any attention.

Hey he’s an activist, public speaker, television personality, blogger, sex advice columnist and makes a HELL of  a lot more money per year than I do.

Then Joe.my.god posts an excerpt from a Slate article saying that the author “nailed the Savage Flap”

I read the excerpt and thought “yeah” I agree with that so I went to the full article on Slate.

I  have to say the author makes some really good points. In the article Dan Savage is quoted as pointing out that Christians and Jews for that matter choose to ignore parts of the Bible that they no longer agree with.

Minor things.. .

Don’t eat shellfish

Don’t eat pork

Don’t work on the sabbath.

Stone an adulterer

It’s OK to keep slaves

Don’t mix linen and wool clothing items.

Savage goes on to say in his colorfully irreverent way that If Christians can ignore these things, they can just as easily learn to ignore the proscriptions against homosexuality.

I have to agree with him.

The Christian Right can’t pick and choose which rules it’s going to obey while at the same time condemning people with those same rules… That’s called hypocrisy.

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Hypocrisy on the part of the established religion of the time is one of the reasons Christ got put on the cross. Even the Roman governor found the whole matter distasteful. We know this because he literally washed his hands of it.

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Believe me Pilate would never have put the question to the crowd if he was convinced in the slightest of Christs guilt.

The Romans would have marched Christ and all the other criminals right out to Golgotha and that would have been the end of the story and another false “Prophet”. Rome wasn’t known for dealing lightly with it’s prefectures & they were especially heavy handed in the case of troublemakers or rebels.

The hypocrisy I speak of is not that of the crowd who freed the murderer instead of Christ. The Hypocrisy was on the part of the Pharisees who had become rich and powerful and invested in the Roman occupation. For them, it wasn’t about worshiping their God anymore it was about maintaining the status quo and good relations with Rome.

No I have no intention of deifying either Dan Savage or Joe. They’re both far from saints and certainly can’t walk on water even in their very best heels. I simply point out that Dan Savage is right.

If the Christian right wants to really demonstrate it’s commitment to fundamentalist, literal intrepretation of the Bible… They have to take all of it.

So NOM, Focus on the Family, and all you other hypocrites shut the hell up until you’re ready to have some good old stonings of adulterers. Oh and you can start with a number of your leaders. You know who they are, they made impassioned public pleas for forgiveness when they got caught cheating on their spouses.

Impassioned plea or not… Biblical law is the Biblical law. We know you’re sorry… but the law says you must be stoned to death.

Hummm Starts to sound a LOT like the Taliban doesn’t it?

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