A Jobsite Indeed, And A Tale O' Woe O' Taleo

Haven't posted or been on Facebook a lot of late, but for good reason. I've found a new job board that's a considerable improvement over Craigslist, Careerbuilder,  Monster and the various specialty boards I use.

It's called Indeed.com and it has a LOT more listings that are relevant to my skill set (or anyone's really). It basically aggregates the listings on other sites and (here's why it's so good) pulls up listings on company sites too.

Company site listings are extremely tedious to find and pull up, you have to go to each company and search their listings, and some companies won't let you do that unless you register with them first, a time consuming process especially if what you discover is that there are no listings that match your skills/experience.

So I've been spending a lot more time applying for jobs that match my skills/experience nowadays, a very good thing.

It's also been time consuming because companies are increasing using a job application vetting service offered by taleo.net, a notoriously difficult and time-consuming piece of software that will set you way back in terms of time whenever you run across it.

Now I know what some of you are thinking, being an experienced mind reader and all. I'm unemployed, I am looking for a job, what better thing do I have to do than fill out job applications, however long, difficult and, well, pointless they may be? Well, I hear you, I DO fill out the taleo.net forms. But just because I am unemployed, it does not mean my brain has stopped working, and I'm perfectly able to see a wasteful and inefficient job application form when I see it.

For example, one taleo.net job I applied for recently had about eight sections. ONE of those sections was a 38-question multiple choice form detailing various kinds of job issues and asking for how I would handle them. The form said it generally took 60 minutes to fill out the section, but they'd give me 90 minutes. Well, I filled it out, took 30 minutes, it was fairly easy for me because figuring out which answer was the right one is old hat to anyone who's every worked in a managerial position.

But still ... 30 minutes for one section of a form that was actually useless, because ANYBODY with the basic language skills to do the job would be able to figure out the right answers ... kind of a waste for the company. Yeah, you probably screened out the people who lack the patience to fill out a long form like that, or the skills, but once again ... people who have editing and writing skills/experience tend to have those skills in spades. I doubt the form did any significant weeding out for the company.

And that's on top of filling out a job history form going back ... well, a long way back! After uploading a copy of my resume ... which is of course where I got the information to fill out the job form from. Just sayin' ...

(No I won't say which company it was or what job it was ... I might get the job, I don't want this post coming back to bite me in the posterior!)

So anyway, I highly recommend Indeed.com for anyone searching for a job, and as for taleo.net ... sucks, but you gotta do it if you're serious about looking for work.

And here's a link to others' complaintsabout taleo.net just so you know I'm not alone here. One guy actually thinks companies might be using taleo.net to scare away applicants from applying for jobs they're advertising that are bogus. (i.e., jobs where they intend to promote from within but are forced for legal or other reasons to advertise anyway. Hey, we all know it happens.) I wouldn't go THAT far ... I have a rule never to ascribe to malign intent that which could be the product of simple stupidity and ignorance.

I Voted Defensively Today

Yeah, 'cause if I was a Michigan voter I voted WAAAAAAY at the wrong polling station.

There were several seats open on the Roswell City Council in today's election, also a referendum on liquor sales on Sunday and a continuation of a 1 cent SPLOST which were mostly for educational purposes that were spelled out in detail on the ballot.

I voted yes on both referenda: I have no problem with liquor sales on Sunday. I don't drink, but I don't care if others drink on Sunday or not. I'm sorry for you if you're an alcoholic, but the solution is not to force everyone ELSE not to drink. I voted for the SPLOST because I generally approve of educational spending. An educated citizenry is a good thing, and Roswell public schools are highly rated, which means we are getting good value for our money.

I checked around on the web for information on the candidates for city council, what I found was not happy-making. The non-incumbent candidates were all beating their chests and trying to out-conservative one another:

Candidate 1: "We need to spend less on government! Lower taxes, less intrusion on our lives!"

Candidate 2: "You freaking liberal, we need to spend less on government and FIRE city workers who are not essential!"

Candidate 3: "FIRE the city workers? You BLEEDING HEART LIBERAL! We need to JAIL them!"

Candidate 4: "You crazy socialist bastard you! Who will pay to keep all those city workers jailed? We need to KILL THEM ALL with knives and then make a big pyramid of their skulls on the city hall lawn to remind the SURVIVING city workers that they need to work hard and efficiently!"

Well, perhaps I exaggerate here. Just a little. But since the candidates were all but calling the incumbents tax and spend liberals, I am not exaggerating as much as you might think. Roswell is not left of center by any means.

My other issue was, everyone was predicting a very small turnout in this election, and elections like that are where crackpot stealth candidates tend to sneak into office, propelled by a relatively small cadre of voters. I didn't want to wake up tomorrow and read about a new Roswell city ordinance that requires all Roswell citizens to not only own a gun, but to carry it in their hands at head level at all times.

So not having seen any giant tentacles or other manifestations of Cthulhu taking over Roswell, I just voted for the incumbents. If all the candidates have is general conservative chest-beating, they can go fish elsewhere for votes.

Season of the Brains!

Ginkgo nuts ... or tiny brains seeking to take over the world?

It's late fall here in Roswell, and of course that means it's the Season of the Tiny Brains. Every year our yard fills up with these because we have a ginkgo tree planted there. It's an interesting tree, a living fossil tree that has a much more primitive leaf structure than other trees.

It's nuts are gray green and plump on the tree but they hit the ground, become dessicated, and turn gray, making it look like the ground is covered by tiny human brains. Unfortunately, they still have a pulpy interior, and even MORE unfortunately, they evolved at a time before the existence of bees. So instead of trying to attract bees with the sweet smells that advertise the existence of pollen and nectar and so forth, they try to attact an insect that was around before bees: flies.

And so they smell like the sort of thing that attracts flies. My wife thought I was stepping in dog poop a lot before we figured it out. (She gets to park in the garage, I have to park in tiny-brains-that-smell-like-dog-poop central. There is no justice!)

Giant Land Crabs Of the Pacific

Dinner out for a coconut crab. Image source: Cracked.com (I think.)

The picture above has not been Photoshopped or retouched. It's a coconut crab, the largest terrestrial invertebrate on Earth, and it poses an important question to me: Why are we releasing damn PYTHONS in the wild and not THESE things? They are large, slow-moving and DELICIOUS, so much so that they've been rendered extinct anyplace there's a significant human population, which fortunately for them, is not yet EVERY island in the Pacific.

Unfortunately for them, they are also considered an aphrodisiac by some Asians, which as we all know is a death knell for any species in Asia and even some outside Asia. (Georgia black bears have been threatened by poaching because Asians valued their gall bladders for some damn stupid reason.) So far land crabs are not on the endangered species list, but they've been looked at hard for inclusion.

My solution: raise them here in the US. They eat garbage and have no natural predators other than humans so not exactly a hard animal to raise, and they need a moist environment, which is most of the Southeastern coast. In the wild they've been found as much as four miles inland (they will actually drown if left in sea water for more than a day, but they have to return to the sea to breed).

Maybe we need to set up a few giant land crab farms here in Georgia and show those Asians how it's done! I mean, pythons are a tough customer to meet in the wild, but giant land crabs anyone can defeat, if they have enough drawn butter on hand.

Why I Agree With The OWS Folks

Source: Think Progress

The last time income distribution was so sharply skewed in the U.S. was the Gilded Age of the 1890s, a time when robber barons carved up all the land and resources in the US for themselves. As income for average Americans has stagnated over the last few decades, rising by 3 or 4 percent at most, wealth for the top 1 percent rose by a staggering 275%. And things are only going to get worse, on the path we're on, because the conservative Supreme Court majority's Citizens United decision means that there is unlimited influence for wealth in politics.

Unfortunately, just voting Democratic instead of Republican won't do the trick nowadays. The financial industry has bought the Democratic Party wholesale (the Republicans, of course, have always been safely tucked in their pockets). All politicians need money to run modern political campaigns now that campaign finance spending limitations are a thing of history. The finance industry is where all the money is concentrated. So that's where they go. And what do you know, there are strings attached to money when it comes in half a million dollar increments. Imagine that!

So, taking to the streets and expressing some real public outrage may be about all that's left. The political system appears to be at a choke point. It can't even stop the financial abuses (i.e., CDOs and similar financial instruments) that led to the last economic collapse. Let's hope the Occupy Wall Street folks can give the American political system the Heimlich maneuver it so desperately needs.

The Pythons Are Coming!

"What do you suppose would happen if I blew on this end?"

As we all know, or SHOULD know, the Florida swamps and woods are rapidly filling with giant Burmese pythons whose sole desire is to get as far north as they can possibly go and eat any womenfolk they find along the way. The 16 foot Burmese python shown here courtesy of Yahoo News just ate a 76-pound deer, and given that it's a large but not record-setting python, that means some humans, especially human women, are on the menu, so to speak.

Now comes the REALLY bad news. Like most folks, I had always kinda assumed that the warm, swampy environs of Florida and maybe the entire Gulf Coast would be the limit of the pythons' reach. Turns out I was wrong. According to the Yahoo News article, the pythons can survive as far north as Washington, D.C. (seems their native habitat extends as far as the foothills of the Himalayas). And as we all know, Washington, D.C. is well to the north of ALL of Georgia!

And as if THAT weren't bad enough, the pythons are mating with man-eating African rock pythons ALSO turned loose in the Florida swamps by incredibly stupid pet owners. (Sorry, but anyone who buys a Burmese python or an African rock python and then is "surprised" to discover that it grows into a huge, dangerous animal is an idiot, and should be tossed into the swamps along with their pets. Pet store owners that sell them ... same fate. C'mon, they're just enablers.) The result of the cross-mating .. giant, aggressive snakes! All over Georgia!

Pleasant dreams!

Why Cats Look At You That Way

Don't even THINK about messing with this keyboard, human!

I've noticed that our cat Mike has a habit of looking at his human servants as if we were completely fricking insane As if lobsters were crawling out of our ears and dancing jigs. A reasonable enough thing to do, I suppose, but how does he KNOW? I've thought about it a bit, and I've come up with a theory.

Whenever any of us eat anything, Mike has to know what it is. He'll walk right over to you and carefully sniff it. We are eating it, so it must be meat, right? But all to frequently, it is not meat. It is popcorn or bread or a cookie, or a vegetable of some kind. He sniffs whatever we drink to see if it's edible as well. It never is, but he has to know.

Being a carnivore, I'm sure that the smells Mike smells tells him pretty much the same thing that the smell of cardboard, wooden planks, paper or plastic forks tells us: "This is inedible. Eating it will do you no good whatever. Do not bite!"

But Mike, being a cat, has no idea about carnivores and omnivores, symbiotic bacteria in digestive systems and whatnot. He only knows that his humans, although they regularly eat good, wholesome meat (giving far too little of it to him) also eat things that are clearly inedible.

And of course, there's your insanity. We chew on things that are clearly not meant to be eaten, and eat it, and show every sign of enjoying eating it. We are clearly crazy. Case closed!