Phasor Burn

Running Viruses under Wine on Linux is apparently harder than it should be. Silly virus writers….

Why does this sound familiar? I’m losing sight of my desk surface yet again, the corner pc desk with the house related stuff is still buried, and the basement … haven’t hardly touched any of it in terms of organization or clean up since moving in three years ago.

Time to suck it up and take the pain/drudgery of sorting thru things into file/recycle/toss. Office first, basement second.

Why do pimps aka recruiters need to interview you first before submitting you to the end-company? I’ve had quite a number that were happy to talk to me on the phone and discuss my resume etc and yet still insist on my coming down to their office for a prep interview before they would submit me for any of their open gigs.

This has no real purpose that I can discern, aside from the possibility that they want to know that I can dress myself, do not smell, have shaved, and am not otherwise drooling on myself uncontrollably. I guess some of that is important . . . the social aspects of working with other people and all that.

Then again, I have dealt with some real winners that looked all purty and spoke all politically correct but couldn’t take decisive action or do a bit of practical hands-on work if their life depended on it. I’d put up with more than a bit of BO on a cow-orker if they had a mondo clue factor and were able to make the business systems and related processes turn on a dime and accomplish the goals pdq, rfn, etc.

I’ve been on the job market for a little while now.

December was basically a write-off for pounding the virtual pavement as most companies were scurrying to finish up projects before their staff went on leave for the holiday season. January is starting to look better though, from a searching perspective.

Today I was cold-called by two different head hunting agencies. Neither of which gave me warm fuzzies.

Head Hunter: Hi, this is mumble from FooAgency. I saw your resume on Dice. Are you available for work?
Me: Yes . . .

HH: Good… How much dot Net do you have?
Me: Uhmm, None?

HH: Oh. Well do you know anybody with dot Net experience that I could talk to?
Me: Err, no. I don’t hang out with that sort of ilk.

HH: So, what is it that you do?

(Didn’t this guy read my Resume at all?
Me: UNIX. Solaris. Systems Administration. That sort of thing.

HH: Oh. Ok. I’ll call you if I have any of that . . . *click*

Yeah, you do that . . .

Come to think of it, I have never had a good lead from my resume being on Dice. Nothing but bozo’s seem to call me from Dice related postings, so down the resume comes from Dice.

Monster.CA and Workopolis.CA will suffice for now.

Head Hunter #2: Hi, this is mumble burble from FUBarAgency.
Me: Yes?

HH#2: Could you put your resume up on the internet for us?

What the . . . ?
Me: Uh, it already is. In a few different places . . .

HH#2: Oh. Ok, thank you . . . *click*

Puzzled, scratching my head. Thought they would at least ask for a url?

That second head hunter experience continues. I google around and find their main web site, click thru to their Canadian site, and proceed to upload my resume directly to their systems. Can’t hurt to try doing this, I thought.

Their system takes the pdf, scrapes strings out of it, and fills in a bunch of fields on an html form with that info. Of couse it all parsed wrong. I started to fix it all and then I realized that getting the info into the fields was all optional, there weren’t any mandatory fields to be seen.

OK. Wipe wipe wipe wipe.

They can just have the raw pdf that I uploaded then.

What else is there here that I can fill out though, that would help them send only the appropriate opportunities my way? Ah, yes location etc. Uhmmm… waitasec. There’s downtown, east, west, north, and south. A bit more digging reveals that they think the entire Canadian universe is Toronto.

Fine. I don’t want to waste any more time with these guys then . . . goofballs.