I have been accepting resumes for a while now trying to find developers for a client of mine.

I will be updating this article from time to time with new stuff.

DO have someone proofread your resume, cover letter, and email body.  Espically if you are not a native english speaker.  If you want your resume to go directly into the trash, then please, write your email with lots of grammer and spelling problems.

DON'T write in your cover letter that, while you don't have the skills/experience they are looking for, you DO have the skills/experience that really matters.  You have just managed to tell the person reading your resume that a) you don't have the skills they need, b) you think you are smarter than the person who came up with the needed skills/experience, and c) you are probably not easy to get along with.  All in the first sentence of your cover letter: BRAVO!

DON'T send a 9 page resume including every project you have ever worked on and details about said project.  I remember when I was told that resumes should be 1 page long (2 at the most) and I thought how wrong that was.  "My resme will be so awesome, 2 pages can't contain it!"  I realized very quickly how wrong I was.  I don't need to know the specifics of some project you worked on for 3 months back in 2002, and I don't need to know a list of every programming langauge, technique, or technology that you have ever touched. 

DO supply a cover letter, or at least turn your email into your cover letter.  It will get you bonus points.

DON'T include a stupid signature on your emails.  I actually received a resume that was signed like this:

--
If fishes could talk they'd ask for legs

Ok I guess that is somewhat funny in a Jack Handy kinda way, but it really doesn't belong on an job application email.

DON'T list "Internet Connection Technologies" that you have experience with.  I swear I got a resume with this as the 2nd heading (after education).  It listed "AOL Dial Up, AOL High Speed DSL, SBC DSL".  Before you start thinking, ok well maybe these were projects they worked on, you know, like working on the team to create AOL's dial up service... no this was not what they meant, it was clear from the rest of the resume.

DON'T just make up stuff if you don't know the answer to a question.  This isn't the ACT: there are penalities for guessing (it makes you look really stupid).  Now clearly there is a difference between making an educated guess (or talking in generalities instead of specifics) and trying to totally pull something out of thin air.  I recently interviewed a candidate who said he didn't have any project experience using AJAX but was aware of AJAX technologies.  So I asked him, can you explain how AJAX works?  I wasn't expecting much, just something about using client side script to make calls to the server w/o reloading the entire page.  Instead the answer we got back was "It's like JAVA running on top of Microsoft."  Up until that point I hadn't decided if this guy was qualified, and had he simply said "No, I am sorry I am not that familiar with AJAX" I probably would have still been considering him, but his terrible attempt at an answer removed all doubt that he was not qualified.

A good friend of mine and a guy I hit with all the time played at Rutgers.  Now it looks like they are going to cancel the program.

A website has been created to raise some money to help their program.

http://saverutgerstennis.org/

Which is worse?

The fact that I spend so much time working at Borders, that when they hire a new barista I notice, or the fact that I spend so much time working at Borders that the new barista notices that I used to have a beard.

Bret Martin and Katie Kniss

Bret Martin and Katie Kniss are getting married

I am going to see if I can get a googlewhack on Bret Martin and Katie Kniss, linking to this page.  Technically a googlewhack is 2 words that are in the dictionary, but I am expanding on this to include names.

Putting their names in some H1 and H2 tags at the top here should help with the Googlebot.




Actually, Katie is probably getting the raw end of this deal, she is going to have to put up with Bret for years to come. 

Same goes for Kathleen.  Sometimes I wonder if knew what she was getting herself into.  . 

The wedding is this summer in St. Louis, and I hear they are spending their honeymoon in Peoria.  Well not just Peoria... East Peoria. 

Update: Well I got my home page number 1 on the major 3 search engines:
Google
Yahoo
MSN

But they are only indexing my homepage right now, not the actual article link (Bret Martin and Katie Kniss).

I tried wearing a new pair of shoes yesterday (big mistake) and on my walk to the train I got a giant blister on my left foot.

Damn it hurts!

So today I decided to drive to avoid the walk to/from the train station, and something terrible happened.  I actually ended up looking for "the mix" on my car radio.  I am ashamed.

Kathleen has been putting it on every morning, and my usual stations were not doing anything intersting.  The Score had Mike North saying something racist, 720 and 780 were on commerical, 850 was some terrible show I have never heard before, and ESPN was talking about golf.

Lucky for me the mix quickly went to commerical, so I was able to come to my senses.

I heard this clip again today called "The Planet Is Fine".

Carlin is doing a show in New York, and he says he like exciting news. He wants to see bodies flying, smoke and fire, concrete falling from the sky, thousands of people in the streets trying not to get hit by falling concrete, stuff like that. Its crazy. It really sounds like he is talking about 9/11. I can't find a transcript.

I am not sure what to get...

But I have an idea.

I did it.

I finally bought a new car. (Well, a new used car.)

I got a 2003 G35 Coupe: 280hp, 0-60 in 5.5, DVD Navigation, Leather, Dual Climate Control, Vehicle Dynamic Control, ABS, Traction Control, Tiptronic Transmission, 18" Wheels w/ Performance Sports Suspension, Bose Audio w/ 6 CD in dash changer, Aero package, and a bunch of other junk.

It is fun.

Here are some pics:
Pic 1
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Pic 8

This page is a great tool for calculating all kinds of stuff for loans and mortgages.

It is really robust, and with all my recent mortgage, and now car loan stuff, it has been really handy.

I didn't need to link to it before because it was number 2 on google for "Mortgage Calculator, but for some reason it has fallen to page 2 of their rankings.

I'm on a car related posting binge here.

LeaseTrader.com hooks up people who are looking to get out of their lease with people that want to pickup that lease, without the downpayment. :)

CarsDirect.com offers to sell you a car online, and they have up front, not haggle pricing. Nice.

Here is a page that contains a calculator to help pick if you should buy or lease a car.

I need to get a new car....

• Camry
• TSX
• Altima
• Eclipse
• Mazda 6
• G35
• Sonata
• Accord
• TL
• CL
• Maxima
• Saturn L
• Impreza WRX
• Camry Solara

Ha. I wish.

Looking more like 5:30 or 6am. At what point do you just say "fuck it" and go to work early the next day instead of going to bed?

I am totally going to crash tomorrow. I really hope my client doesn't want me to stay there all day. I will be so tired.

Every build that I make with FlashMX is taking like 10 minutes (or more). I know I'm making a big swf, but this is frickin stupid.

I'm writing this as I wait.... just so I can check some changes I made 15 minutes ago.... progress bar is moving........ohhhhhhhh......maybe.......finally!!!

I'm so tired... trying to finish up a project for http://www.jmmenvironmental.com.

I am so tired. I need more sleep.

"Overall, recorded music sales are down 31 percent since mid-2000, when the Napster online file-sharing phenomenon was in full bloom", said RIAA President Cary Sherman.

No crap? So you are saying that when Napster was going full speed, you sales were 44.9% higher??? (Side note, if you think 44.9 should be "31", then you are idiot too, and need to take a math class) So basically what the RIAA is saying, is that from the time that they started suing everyone and everything involved with P2P, sales of CDs have FALLEN 31%??? But... this is BECAUSE of the P2P networks?!?!?!?

Let's think this one through....

year = 2000, P2P Programs = on everyones computer, record sales = really good

year = 2003, P2P users/companies being sued, record sales = shit

Someone with a brain please help out those fools.

Anyone with any foresight knows the CD is on it's way out. It is an OLD and JUNKY piece of technology. The RIAA might think that they can stop technology, but they are fools to think this. The problem is that the future of music doesn't involve "music labels". All you need is a server and some bandwidth and you can sell your album to everyone on earth.

I was saying this months ago, before anything with this movie came out.

It seemed so clear to me.

Take two "superstars" that can't act, and that people really *don't* like, put them in a movie together, and then force feed the public daily reports about their love affair and pending marriage. It was clear from day 1 that this movie was doomed.

The people have spoken, the Internet Movie Database currently lists Gigli as THE WORST MOVIE IN THE HISTORY OF FILMS.

I told everyone that I could that the movie "Gigli" was going to suck like crazy, and NO ONE was going to go see it. This was even before any previews for the movie were available.

Was I right?

'I was shocked," says "Good Morning America'''s Joel Siegel.

"It's horrible," moans Roger Friedman of Foxnews.com. "The worst movie ever made."

Slide 33 Invest In Yourself.

For a while I have been giving Kathleen crap (in a joking way of course) about making bad coffee. Well I have been working from home the last 2 days, and I havn't been pleased with the coffee that I have been making either.

I have been using a variety of 3 different kinds of coffee, 1 of which I used to use all the time in college, and always liked it. So I don't think its the coffee grinds.

I don't think that it could be the coffee machine. We have a pretty good one, and I don't think that the machine could actually alter the taste of the coffee.

So that means it's either the water, the water/coffee grinds ratio, or the cream. Have to experiment more...

Spam - Oh How I Hate Thee

The RIAA Sucks More Than Anything

As payment for "making" Kathleen "see" (sleep through would be more accurate) the new Matrix movie, I told her I would let her pick out a movie at Blockbuster that she wanted to see.

Her selection was Far From Heaven. As this movie received an 88/100 at MetaCritic I figured it would be ok. Also, Ebert gave it a 100 (4 stars), and I have come to find that my taste in movies usually is very closly related to Eberts. What I mean is, if most critics hate a movie, but he really likes it, I usually end up liking it too, and vice versa.

So much for that. This is going to be the worst movie I will see this year, I am sure. It was SOOOO boring, I was trying to escape during the movie as Kathleen would dose off, but she kept waking up to catch me. I guess from an artistic point of view, or if viewed as a piece on the culture of racism and homophobia, it was really good, with it's weird camera angles, and it's black/gay hating characters. But in terms of watching the movie, it couldn't have been worse. I didn't care about any of the characters at all, and I thought the acting by Moore, who was nominated for Best Actress I believe, was terrible. Her character was so fake. How hard is it to act fake? Whatever.

Maybe "real" movie critics would say I'm an idiot, but if you want to see a movie that will make you wish you hadn't, this is the one.

My wife is having everyone from her side of the family over today for a little party. <sarcasm>Should be lots of fun.</sarcasm>

I don't really like having people over. I always hated it when my parents would have over company and we would have to clean up the whole house. Really my mom was one that was doing the majority of the work, but we would have spend a good chunk of time doing something boring.

Tonight I'm heading out to see the Foo Fighters somewhere downtown with my brothers. I havn't heard any of their new songs, but I really like their older stuff. I only saw them once before, at ISU, only a short drive from Bradley. They were pretty good, but the concert was kinda crappy because of the venue.

Sometime in the near future I will find something that I will actually want to post that won't be a "Misc" entry. But for now, that's all I got.