mh-z web-log

You’re taught in kindergarten to hold scissors with the handle pointing forwards and the blades pointing back towards you. But what happens if you’re in a hurry and accidentally run into a wall? You’ll just end up stabbing yourself in a manner reminiscent of a thankfully antiquated form of ritual suicide. Personally speaking, since based on past experience I’m much more likely to run into a wall than to run into someone else, it would seem that in order to objectively minimize loss of life I ought to hold my scissors or sharp knives pointing forwards as I run about, especially when there aren’t any people in the vicinity. They really ought to teach kids a more nuanced set of rules in this regard. I.e., if you //must// run with scissors (e.g., due to a paper snowflake emergency), here’s how to do it as safely as possible.

When I have kids some day, I’m going to be //such// a great parent!

My personal philosophy is, if I’m going to get somewhere by car, I’d rather be the one driving it.

It’s nice, then, that my passengers always thank me for driving, which is something I would have wanted to do anyway.

Is it my ears adapting or do they not depressurize planes as much these days?

Big-name comics (anecdotally based on a sample size of two) generally don’t seem to be as funny as no-name comics. I was at a show last night where Sarah Silverman (whom I wasn’t all that familiar with) and Drew Carey made appearances, and neither had the same energy as the rest of the folks in their bits. Perhaps because we’re used to the big-names’ styles, from seeing them on television, and we don’t experience as much unexpectedness from them, as in, “I wonder what this person will say next!” to make us laugh when they utter something completely random and inane, compared with the characteristic utterance we would stereotypically expect. At least, that (non-unexpectedness) was the case with Carey, but Silverman on the other hand, being pretty unknown to me at least, was nonetheless just inherently not all that funny. Random, yes, and perhaps funny in an intellectual sense (or maybe not), but definitely not in the laugh-out-loud sort of way.

I don’t remember the names of any of the interstitial comedians/comediennes who //were// clever/funny.

KF: How late did you end up staying Sat. night? That place was too loud.

MH: Saturday night we were there until the place closed and they kicked us out. So my “secret” (not really, because I’m always eager to share/commiserate with people if they seem interested, because I don’t know how folks in general can go to clubs/bars/concerts with music/etc. frequently and not have major hearing loss given the volume at which stuff is usually played) is that I (almost) always use earplugs. If you get these particular cheap green foam ones from Sav-On or Rite-Aid, you can cut or bite (which is harder) off the tips, and then they don’t stick out of your ears and look silly. Easy to put in and take out. You (KF) didn’t even notice I had them. Works just as well. Everything becomes nice and quiet (although in somewhat of a muffled sense), and you still feel the bass as before, if that’s your thing. And you (KF) complain even though the inherent (earplug-less) volume of sound in this club seemed (to me at least) to not be nearly as loud as many places I’ve been to, which puts things in a minor bit of perspective. I should carry around extras because you’re far from the first friend who’s complained about things being too loud — see, it’s not that we’re crotchety old people complaining about the volume of the movie (“back when I whuz a boy… our movies were //silent//!”), it’s that I intensely dislike the sensation of ringing in my ears the next day, of things sounding weird and muffled; sounds like the jangling of keys, or running water, or even regular old music don’t sound quite right; what’s disconcerting (no pun intended) is knowing that although eventually hearing will return to //close// to normal, it’ll never quite be 100% normal… maybe 99.9% of what it was before, at best, but given that I enjoy listening to (normal volume) music, why accumulate that hearing loss, little by little, every time I go out to a place like this, when I can have the best of both worlds and enjoy the other aspects of typically loud venues, but in my own, quiet(er) world? End of rant.

I was woken up one morning by what sounded like a lawn mower, or rather, a tree chipper right outside my window. Turns out it was my neighbor either parking or unparking his new Lamborghini, and apparently the parking spot is tight enough and the car wide enough that it takes him fully ten minutes to maneuver the thing in or out. Either that, or he’s new to the whole stick shift business and is being extra careful so as not to engage the clutch too quickly and stall while simultaneously crashing into the wall of the next building. He alternately parks a huge Jeep Wrangler in the same spot which today I noticed says “Unlimited Edition” below the model name on its side, as if that’s something to be extra proud of. If cars (and art prints, and other things, like, oh… //money//) generally advertise and pride themselves on their being “limited edition”, why would you want, on the other hand, to proclaim that you’re “unlimited”? As in, “nope, I’m just your average vehicle, they’ll make as many copies of me as they can sell, and then some, nothing special here, move along now!”. I guess this fits the statement:

: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. If you haven’t got it, flaunt it anyway.

Which is like the old videogame saw:

: If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn’t move, shoot it anyway.

And I now segue into talking about how I am not going to segue into talking about videogames, or the Segway, or anything clever like that. Or not.

I’d like some gold bricks, unlimited edition.

But that would devalue the gold and make it worthless, so no.

Here’s [[Resume Criticism|an old post I wrote about resumes]] back in March of 2005, which was interesting to read again, because basically my advice hasn’t changed. Maybe I’m a tiny bit less idealistic, or… maybe not, because I’m still mostly pretty idealistic about things like this. I’ve looked at a couple friends’ resumes lately and found them to be rife with minor grammatical errors, poor style and inconsistent use of punctuation, not to mention guilty of having canned/basic layouts and designs with typical fonts and even worse, inconsistent line spacing/indentation. Maybe I exaggerate just a little to make this point, but for the most part all that was there.

The guy whose resume I’ve just looked at and regarding which had sent a long list of comments said, “Three people from big companies with experience already proofread my resume and yet you still managed to find errors. You have a very good eye then.”

Not especially, because the people looking at resumes for hiring I would imagine already notice this stuff (unless it’s just me), and either they weren’t the actual resume-reader people (i.e., he showed his resume to the wrong people), or else they didn’t want to bother pointing out a long list of basic mistakes, or else resume-reader people notice things more subconsciously than I do. But this guy was complaining that he’s been having trouble landing a job, which is evidence that //something// isn’t working right, and I’m putting two and two together and thinking that it //could possibly help// in general based on observations of situations like this to polish one’s resume to grammatic perfection and aesthetically pleasing stylistic shine.

I did get a lot of exercise, walking around the massive Convention Center. But this was a sales event, and we all know from the volume of commercials in every single medium just how much car companies advertise, and of course they’re not going to miss an event like this nor shy away from blatantly marketing their vehicles to consumers. So although I felt like I was just in a giant showroom at a giant car dealership which carried every major make of auto, and although uncharacteristically there were no pushy salesmen hovering about and attacking, the labels and the atmosphere made this just one big magazine ad brought to life, which I mean in a negative sense — not that car ads are particularly annoying or obtrusive, they’re just pretty useless as far as I’m concerned, and we live in a sea of them. I did get to see a Tesla Roadster (see [[Tesla Motors]]), but it was just sitting there, sitting pretty, as were all the cars. What the event sorely needed were more things //interactive//. Sure, I could get into many of the cars, but so what? There was one small driving simulation (triple-head monitors hooked up to a computer), but nothing that fancy or interesting. Certainly nothing anybody would wait in line for. So I’m not really sure, after all this, what exactly the point was. But it was an interesting experience.

Why you should always have health insurance coverage: A friend of mine moved from one job to another and didn’t get around to mailing in a check for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBRA_(insurance) COBRA] (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, although what that has to do with health insurance, I don’t know (sounds like a manufactured acronym, or “manufacronym”, as it were)) insurance form. This allows you to simply pay directly (whatever your previous employer had been paying) to keep the same health insurance you had while at work until some other form of insurance kicks in.

He broke his arm snowboarding, and needed surgery to set and pin the bones. The hospital bill was around $25,000, and he has to pay that out of his own pocket. He can pay the bill over a period of time (several years), but that’s still a sizable chunk of money.

Admittedly, there was a period in between jobs (when I left my job-before-last and went off on my own, actually) that I also did not continue under COBRA and was uninsured for a period, though I made it through just fine (before signing up for a Blue Cross PPO plan at about $60 per month), and there’s no decent safety net, otherwise, for what can end up costing far more than you can afford.

What’s odd: He says COBRA was around $300 a month. That’s strange, considering the cost of my simple Blue Cross plan. (Correct me if I’m mis-remembering the exact figure, but I do know the difference was very large.) Why is it so much? Isn’t this a government program to encourage and facilitate people moving between jobs keeping medical insurance at all times?

Any sort of aerobic exercise machine which has a heart-rate monitor (those metal handles you grip), at any gym, and this happens consistently on every piece of equipment I’ve used as far back as I can recall, is incapable of measuring my heart rate 95% of the time.

What happens is that I’ll grip the metal handles and “HR” will flash on the display for about 30 seconds, and either:

1. The display will go blank.
2. “HR” will continue to flash indefinitely.
3. The display will track my pulse at around half of what it actually is.

I’m not sure what this means; those heart rate monitors can’t be that unreliable. Maybe it’s a conspiracy. Maybe I’m just ”abnormal”.

Here’s what I think about resumes and about applying for jobs. My opinion may be somewhat speculative, because I was lucky enough to never be a frequent resume-submitter and so I can’t tell you how much of a response my resume, in particular, garnered. Nor did I spend as great a deal of time sprucing it up as I would now, given the opinions I’ve formed of late. But I’ve been on the other side of the table a couple times, reviewing resumes for a position, and I base what I say on that.

The bulk of this entry is based on an e-mail I wrote to a friend, who asked me to critique her resume. I wasn’t too impressed, and simply began stating what was on my mind. She called it a harsh criticism, but I say, good! Hopefully this was constructive, but in any case that should be a push to make things better.

I’m also going to revise this at a later point and write a longer article. As you’ll see, I have some strong opinions on this here topic.

Hi ______. I’m going to ramble a bit about resumes in general and then tell you what I think about yours. In general:

Here’s what I think. First of all, design is very important. In a sea of resumes which look all the same, something that stands out because it’s well designed and looks different yet still elegant would get people’s attention. At least, it would get mine. I’ve seen many resumes that look like yours, and I find myself looking for little things which no one really ought to care about, but in the absence of other points to make decisions based on (because like I said, most resumes have almost the same content as far as my knowledge is concerned) that’s what draws my eye. I look for:

1. Grammatical correctness: consistent and correct use of tenses and punctuation.
2. Appearance: fonts, font sizes, and so on.
3. Amount of content. Number of job history positions and my overall impression of the skill involved in each one.
   
   Contrary to what many might think, when you say //less// about each position you’ve held it often conveys more. If you bullet-point a bunch of rather menial tasks you did at each position, it says that you consider these menial skills important and not just incidental. The less you say about each position, the more intelligent and ambitious you seem, because you aren’t concerned with the basics. For example, of course everyone knows Word and Excel, so there’s no point in stating that. But can you “develop complex reports” in Excel? (Even that doesn’t say too much, though.) Can you build PivotTables? (Aha, specifics — now we’re talking.) Do you know how to use array functions and edit (not just record) macros? To repeat, everyone knows how to use Excel but I want to know if you’ve figured out how to use the more advanced features it provides.
   
   …It’s the tone rather than the concise description of a position you held, because why would I care, with regards to the position I’m hiring you for, //exactly// what you did? You’re going to be doing something at least slightly and possibly considerably different now, so why do the specifics of your past positions matter?

Basically, were I looking to fill a position, I would be looking for someone intelligent, adaptable, and pleasant to work with.

This may be just me, but I’m big on grammar and consider good communication skills and writing skills important and therefore indicators of education level and intelligence (again, in the absence of other indicators). So, I find that I judge others based on grammar usage in their resumes. Typos aren’t excusable, because you have plenty of time to put this particular document together and proofread it repeatedly and have others proofread it, ad infinitum. It should be representative of the best you can achieve given all the time in the world, or at least nearly so.

Places to which you apply get a sea of resumes looking all alike. Don’t underestimate how little yours will stand out, and how easy it is for someone reviewing it to put it on the “discard” pile for the pettiest of reasons. They have to.

All that said, here’s what I say about yours. Little points, but were I scanning through resumes for a position, I would consider each one somewhat important and each one would add to my overall impression:

1. You need something between your phone number and e-mail address.
2. The whole top row is shifted too far to the right.
3. You have some sentences ending in periods and some not.
4. The dates after the entries in the “education” section are not a range, so they seem to mean something different from the dates below in the same column, for which there is a range. That’s a little inconsistent.
5. The Tahoma font does not have a “natural” italic version. Windows creates a “fake” italic version by slanting the letters. This looks bad. Verdana is the same thing as Tahoma with more spacing between the letters, and it does have a real italic version.
6. You need to list more skills than just Word, Excel, STATA, and the other two acronyms. (I don’t know what those are.) STATA is good as are the other two, but like I said a couple times, everyone knows Word and Excel (and Powerpoint). What else are you good at? I think you read a lot, maybe there’s a way to incorporate a mention of that. You’re outgoing, easy to work with, and have somewhat of a “tell it like it is” personality. Those are much harder points to incorporate, though, but if you find a way to subtly show them I think that’s worth a lot.

To sum this up: When I, as an employer, have a stack of fifty resumes to look through to fill one position, I look for excuses to eliminate each resume. A small mistake, inconsistency, or typo can be such an excuse. I have no choice but to eliminate resumes for the pettiest of reasons. On the other hand, something unique and interesting about a resume can lead me to put it in a pile of its own. Normally it’s hard to be unique and interesting, but one way to achieve that in a paper document is through the use of elegant and professional design. Colors would be especially helpful in this regard, and I don’t care what is traditionally done. Color printers are ubiquitous, and if black and white is the tradition, I will give you all the more credit for being willing to throw away that dogma.

Here is an article I found a while back which I almost entirely agree with. The author is looking for a programmer, but his points are just as valid when applied to any field: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ResumeRead.html Joel on Software on Resumes].