SwimFinsSF

Ellen DeGeneres Discusses The Recent Tragic Death

Couldn’t say it better myself…

Tags: ellen, gltb

This weekend

Quick weekend update.. Was a good one, despite the CRAPPY weather. Our buddy Ray from Calgary came down to visit on Thursday and stayed until last night. Had a rather mellow time – at least as compared to his trip down for Folsom a few years back which was crazy as you might expect – but still nice. Kevin took him to SFMOMA friday while I worked and then that night we went out for dinner and drinks with some friends.. Saturday was VERY chill (it was stormy) – TV time and out to Blowfish for sushi. Sunday we went out to Chrissy Field to run nina and then drove around the city.

Like I said – mellow but still pretty nice..

Tags: friends, weekend

Audi and a disposable society…

What ever happened to cars that were made to last. Its becoming more and more clear that these days even car companies that I would have considered reputable (Audi, Mercedes, etc.) are conducting business in a way that encourages people to replace their cars regularly.

Case in point. Our Audi just fell out of warrantee. While it was in warrantee they covered EVERYTHING. Oil changes.. repairs.. tune-ups… the works. I got lulled into a false sense of security thinking that these guys were great and the car was a great car. But now that I’m out of warrantee its a completely different story. All SORTS of problems are starting to come up and every one of them seems to require very expensive repairs. Most recently the check engine light came on (again) and when I took it in (to a repair shop that wasn’t at the dealer) they asked me how often I changed the oil. Turns out that the oil changes they were doing under warrantee weren’t frequent enough and now the engine is showing signs of the damage that results… I was furious…

What’s worse is a friend of mine was considering buying his Audi that was just falling out of lease and was asking around for advice.. He is basically hearing the same thing from everyone he’s talked to (and I had heard it from another friend myself). I don’t know if its unique to audi but it clearly isn’t unique to my car..

Anyway.. I suppose its not entirely surprising.. The car makers need to sell cars to make money so why not make cars with a self destruct so they can sell you another one.. It just pisses me off – like the world needs big landfills full of cars that are less than 10 years old… its nuts…

Sorry… Just ranting

Tags: audi, auto, service

Resume Writing 101

I spent the morning today reviewing resumes for summer intern candidates and all I can say is oh my LORD. They need to teach resume writing classes. I have never seen so many BAD RESUMES in my LIFE. I know these are all engineering resumes so expecting impecable presentation may be a bit much to expect. But at LEAST try to keep in mind your audience. I had to weed through hundreds of resumes and I can probably count on one hand the ones that stood out to me as good enough to catch my eye and deserve a call. Its really rediculous… In case you’re curious what my resume writing lecture would cover here’s my take:

• Objectives – They’re STUPID. Unless you’re giving your resume to someone very specific and you’ve tailored the objective to the job you’re applying for its a waste. The only ones that were useful were the ‘Seeking and Internship for Summer 2007′. The rest for just silly. “I want to work in a dynamic team environment where I can solve world peace and create great yadda yadda yadda’.. PLEASE. I laughed out loud
• Legibility – We’re not talking serious professional page layout but you’ve GOT to keep in mind that the people who are reviewing these are wading through literally hundreds of resumes and if I have to dig to find the good stuff I’m not going to bother. Clear section titles. Well formatted entries. Bullet Points.. All very good things
• Relevance – Keep an eye on the job you’re trying to get. Relevant Job Experience, Skills, Relevant Education, etc. are the first thing I look for – show me. Other things such as languages, community service, etc. are really great and I definitely favor people with both however if I can’t find the job skills then the rest doesn’t matter. I’d love to hire international peopple who work to end world hunger in their free time but we’re lookign for software engineers so you have to show ya can do that or it doesn’t matter. Same deal with work experience bussing tables or as a resident advisor – all admirable to be sure but only second to relevant skills. I passed over a bunch of resumes of people who looked cool and interesting cuz I couldn’t tell if they knew what a compiler or C++ was. Sad.
• Direction – You should work to tell a story or direction with your resume. What are you interested in professionally and where do you want to go with your life. The number of resumes that I saw that were Acronym soup with no clear indication of what ineterests them other than making a salary boggled my mind. If you’re intersted in Web technologies thats GREAT – but if you’ve got XSLT, XML, CSS, etc on your resume just to fill out a list of required acronyms I don’t care… What do you enjoy DOING? The ones that really excited me were the ones where they were clearly picking jobs and personal projects related to things they clearly personally enjoyed – some were totally geeky shit but I don’t care as long as they were clearly pasionate about the geeky shit! 🙂

I could keep going but you get the idea… Clear and to the point and I’ll spend time looking for more. I know this isn’t the strong suit of engineers but PLEASE – if you want a job then spend time on presenting yourself well.

Uggg… My head hurts..

A few movies worth seeing….

Killed some time with movies over the past few days and figured I’d pass along:

Pan’s Labyrinth – Saw this one with Drew and Adrian on Thursday night. Its a REALLY well done movie in Spanish about a little girl’s fantasy world that she uses to get her through a really horrible childhood after in post war spain.. The cinematography is gorgeous, the characters are facinating, and the story was great – a really interesting adult take on a child’s fantasy world…

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days – This movie is about the last days of Sophie Scholl (duh) who was part of a group of students during nazi Germany who opposed Hitler and the National Socialists. The Movie starts with their last leaflet distribution and arrests and follows her through her jailing, ‘trial’ (not much of a trial), and execution. The movie was really well done and thought provoking. I found it particularly interesting the charges against them including ‘demoralizing the troops’ (sound familiar to anyone? Hmmmm)… Very worth seeing.

Something worth checking out

A co-worker of mine made this video and I had to share… Music is cool but I love the composition of the video to boot… Very cool..