SwimFinsSF

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..

Happy Presidents day..

DSC01311

Originally uploaded by lauraespence.

No good stories to tell today – weekend was pretty low key.. Nothing friday night, a massage on Saturday, Notes on a Scandal Saturday night with BB (That movie is REALLY GOOD.. Seriously!), helped Scott move Sunday, then Eagle on Sunday afternoon. And now I’m off to Cupertino to work on Presidents day.. How wrong is that?

Kevin’s new friend Laura sent me this picture yesterday though – ain’t my man lookin all studly and shit? :):)

Happy Monday! 🙂

Do your homework

*sigh*… After quite a few hours of poking around and trying to figure out why I can’t get my Mac or Windoze in Bootcamp to talk to my new spiffy Series 3 TiVo I FINALLY figured it out… Seems the new Series 3 TiVos don’t support TiVoToGo so I can’t pull programs off of it… Grrr… Wish I’d read the forums before spending all of this time debugging (or, frankly before I’d bought it)… Its a pretty big drag that the latest greatest TiVo doesn’t support some of the coolest features and it didn’t really occur to me that it wouldn’t.. According to the TiVo forums its in process and should be coming soon but that was some time ago.. Ah well – this one is still much cooler than my old tivo which didn’t do any of this stuff so I guess I shouldn’t bitch.. But still a drag..

*sigh*…