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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Month: June 2006

  • All platforms, eh?

    Craigslist, usually a treasure trove of job postings, is almost a dry well this week. One of the very few recent entries in the main category I check even turned out to be, let’s say, miscategorized. (“Work from home! Type things for us!” Er, no.)

    And then we have what might have looked to be an interesting job opportunity…

    Part of the technical support team for a state-wide data communications network connecting WAN to LANs.

    Been there, done that. It’s a contract gig, but if that’s what it takes to put food on the table…

    The team is responsible for network security, disaster and recovery, video, voice and data communications, protocols, software and hardware products and peripherals…

    Neat. Sounds like a well-rounded JOAT kind of gig. Just what I’m looking for!

    …that run on all platforms including Mainframe,…

    You don’t capitalize that, sir. It’s not a proper name, it’s a generic noun. So what type of platform is it? Inquiring minds jobseekers want to know.

    …Microsoft Exchange,…

    This is correctly named in the posting, but whether it’s a “platform” is a flamewar discussion best left to people with more idle time than myself.

    …Microsoft Windows XP…

    Also correctly named, this is only a “platform” at the desktop level. Consider this not so much a boneheaded selection but more as a part of the pattern to be revealed.

    …and Microsoft Server 2000.

    Aha! I now know their definition of “platform.” It’s “anything with an M at the start of its name.” Problem is, they named this wrong. It’s Windows 2000 Server.

    Here’s the thing. If you’re advertising “all platforms,” you might want to include concrete examples of platforms that don’t originate in Redmond, Washington. No UNIX or variants and derivatives are listed, no Mac, nothing but the mysterious “Mainframe”…

    Duties: […] Configure client software, i.e. ODBC drivers, Outlook and Exchange e-mail access, protocols, adapters, and TN3270 host emulation.

    …which I suspect is an IBM AS/400 (great merciful heavens, why not just say so?) based on that TN3270 emulation notation. This makes me wonder why they’re not using 5250 instead, though.

    Of course I’ll never know, because…

    This position requires a valid driver’s license. Travel throughout the state may be required.

    In this instance, I think it’s for the best. Don’t you?

  • Look out, Weird Al.

    For the record I’d like to state that I have not recently listened to the song in question. Hell, I don’t own the CD nor do I have it on MP3 anywhere. And yet, while pondering a certain inevitable chore for the day, this is what just ran through my mind:

    “Iiiiiii’m out of duds, so I’d better get this laundry started!”

    Sorry, Pink.

  • Feed me, Google.

    For a good long while now, I’ve used Feed on Feeds as my aggregator of choice. It requires a bit of setup on the webserver end, but I like tinkering around with my webserver. All went well up until the point we were forced to move to a new server, and then another problem cropped up with one of the software upgrades to said new server.

    I didn’t notice the latest problem until this evening. It’s the first time I’ve logged into the server itself in quite some time. (To make note of the glorious uptime we’ve finally achieved would be to invite disaster, so I won’t.) Looking in my home directory, I was horrified to see thousands of files named “update-quiet.php.XXXX” where the X’s are numbers anywhere from 1 to 2800. You see, I was forced to switch from using ‘/usr/bin/GET’ to using ‘wget’ for running the FoF updates, and the ‘wget’ utility pretty much insists on creating a local file. Ugh. (There’s now an entry in my crontab to clear those files periodically, but still. Ugh.)

    FoF has given me other problems over the months, and since there’s not been an update to the software in ages, I pondered alternatives. “Hmm,” I thought, “what about that Google feed reader they were making noise about a while back?” When they first announced it, I tried uploading my exported feed list to it only to get a response equivalent to, “Huh?”

    So imagine my surprise when I went to look at “my” Google Reader page and found that it’s been quietly pulling down entries for… well, however long it’s been since I gave it my OPML file in the first place. (Memory isn’t my strong suit.) I had to go through and clean out some feeds for sites I don’t read anymore, and add in a few new ones, but other than that… it’s alive and kicking, and surprisingly slick.

    For the foreseeable future, then, I’m going to let Google be my web-based aggregator. If it does at least a good of a job as FoF and without the headaches, I’ll make the switch permanent. If anyone else wants to give it a whirl but lacks a Gmail invite (are there any of you left without one?) just let me know.

    Epilogue: The very moment I tried to post this entry, the server crashed. See what I mean about mentioning that month of uptime? Argh. I suspect the only way to stop the crashes is to double the RAM again… but that’s another $20 per month that I can’t afford right now. Shoot me now?

  • Memory Meme

    I got this one from Mari and agreed to pass it on, so here goes. Please note that if I don’t know you in the slightest fashion, you probably shouldn’t bother commenting…

    If you comment I’ll do the following:

    1. I’ll respond with something random I like about you.
    2. I’ll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
    3. I’ll name something we should do together.
    4. I’ll say something that only makes sense to you and me (or just me).
    5. I’ll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
    6. I’ll leave you a quote that is somehow appropriate to you (or, I will include an icon just for YOU in my reply).
    7. I’ll ask you something that I’ve always wondered about you.
    8. If I do this for you, you must might like to post this on your journal so you can do the same for other people.

    There, Jerry Mari. Happy?

    *evil grin*

  • Why Spelling Counts

    Issue 7 of the City of Heroes (and Villains) game came out today, so I’ve rolled a Thugs Mastermind named Carmine Santiago. (He’s dressed mostly in red, and his biographical data reads, “Where in the world IS he…?” This is all Geoffrey’s fault. Heh.) As I was rolling through the Tutorial Zone, I noticed a fellow neophyte villain sporting what seemed like an odd name…

    Me: Zion’s Furry, eh? Is that “Furry” or “Fury”?
    Zion’s Furry: Furry.
    Me: So Zion has you dressing up in animal costumes? Interesting.
    Zion’s Furry: [Disconnecting in 29… 28… 27… 26…]
    Me: *snicker*

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take my new thug-wrangler for a spin…

  • Money laundering, what?

    I should’ve known better than to get my hopes up at the “job offer” email I received yesterday.

    We have found your resume at www.monster.com.

    Sigh. Apparently the only people who’ve done so up to this point are weasels.

    And We would like to suggest you a position at our company – the Transfer Manager.

    And I would like to suggest that you jump off a cliff, or possibly go play in traffic.

    The task of the Transfer Manager is to process payments between our clients and our company via checks, bank wire transfers,Money Orders.

    Oh, this doesn’t sound even remotely suspicious, does it? This is the sentence that set off the rest of my mental alarms. You’re hiring a bunch of people (you say there are 5 positions open) to perform transactions? Aren’t there, you know, professional and secure financial services and what-not for this kind of thing? What’s wrong with using those? And what sort of people are willing to do business with you in this fashion? Do I not even want to know?

    Maybe I’m just paranoid. It’s possible that I’m reading too much into this. Maybe.

    The job is related to remote Internet operations.

    I’m not entirely certain that this sentence even parses.

    Every payment order will be accompanied with detailed instructions.

    I should hope so.

    It’s a commission based position. You will get about 8% of each processed payment.

    I shudder to think what your markup is, then, if you can afford to shrug off that much of a given payment.

    There’s more, but I won’t bore my readership. Suffice to say that it’s a “work at home” position that will supposedly grant me “financial independence” and “high self-esteem” even though “prior customer service experience is a good benefit, but not a must.”

    Don’t call me, folks. I’ll call forget you.

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