SwimFinsSF

HRC at the HRC

This is well worth a listen. While she does hedge around a few things (which isn’t surprising) MAN does she say the right thing on a LOT of stuff. Ending Don’t ask Don’t Tell, Addoption, DP Benefits. All I can say is I REALLY hope this nation can look beyond gender and race to pick the right person for the job in 2008

He Returns

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Originally uploaded by lauraespence.

So I get this call yesterday afternoon from Kevin… asking me whether we had a copy of some magazine (V I think).. Call was from his US cell phone… He hadn’t used that cell phone in a few months (since the phone bill of doom… don’t ask..).. Anyway… Odd…

So I’m driving home from work late after feeding the troops and try to give him a call… Call the phone in Guatemala… won’t connect … Odd but not super surprising (I think there are 3 lines into guatemala from the US and they’re frequently busy)…. So I try his US phone for kicks.. rings… US ring tone…. (Not the ‘Beeep’ but rather the ‘Brrrriinnngggg’ tone)… Hmmm… Thats VERY odd… but no answer

Maybe.. no… Maybe… Is he back in the US… Lets try text message… Hmm.. No answer… Fishey… Maybe he’s home… So I step on it…

Get home… lights are the way I left them… house is dark… Hiding?

*sigh*… nope.. not home… Sad… Must be overly paranoid… Sit on the couch and watch Law and Order…

Phone Rings… Kevin’s phone.. Kevin’s US phone… “Where are you?”… “You’ll never guess”… “In San Francisco?”… “I’m in a cab 10 minutes from home – how’d you know”… “I’m clever that way”…

hehe…

So he’s home.. 2 days early… Place was a mess (I was expecting to have 2 nights to tidy up)… But still… Nice… So he’s around till next thursday… hehehe.. Yay

SNL Ya gotta see

Not saying anything more.. you have to watch this… cracked me up

A wet weekend

Originally uploaded by SwimFinsSF.

Another good (though wet) weekend. Friday night I went with Tom and Garrett to meet some friends of theirs for a German night.. I met Tom at Garrett’s for glass of wine before heading over to Walzwerk and then off to see ‘Das Leben Der Anderen‘ (The Lives of Others). Was a very fun night and I got to practice my german – could almost make it through the movie without using the subtitles (much).

Saturday was boring… Work.. Errands… TV… Rain… thats it

Then sunday I got up early to head down to Año Nuevo State park to check out the elephant seals. This was for one of Randy and Rick’s photo walks and it was a lot of fun.. The weather was awful (rainy and cold) but that actually turned out to be OK cuz the seals liked it and seemed to be more active than the last time I went.. The only down side was I wasn’t as inclined to bop around and find fun angles and stuff for pictures cuz I was focusing on keeping my gear dry… but still very fun… The pictures are here if ya wanna peek… After that a bunch of us went to a diner along the coast for food.. Was a fun sunday..

Thats it – no good stories to tell but a good time..

The return…

So looks like my man is coming home briefly for a visit before he heads off on the next leg of his journy.. His last day at the spanish school is today then he goes to Antigua for a week to take more classes.. Then he flys home to San Francisco before jetting off to Buenos Aires… Turns out it was cheaper for him to just fly back to San Francisco then fly from here to BA than it would be to fly from Guatemala City to Buenos Aires and the flights would have connected back through Houston or Miami anyway.. Too Funny..

So Kevin will be here from 3/2 to 3/8… Just in time to do the punch list on the house.. Our poor contractor – he doesn’t know what he’s in for.. Tee hee hee… 😉

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..