The Day They Unearth Us

The day they unearth us
truth will be known
our graves were never dug
but raised up around our heads
and over
by that which we threw
away

It was only semi-conscious
for we saw we were sinking
so we tossed
shoveled
threw
in handfuls
and heapfuls
bits of self-
soul

survival by
sacrifice

Our perceptions
no doubt were noble,
but missing logic
all the same

What we alleviated
our beings of
slowly died and became
more of the mire
and muck
that held us down

Entombed in self-inflicted irony
drowned in self-sacrifice
done in by the best of our intentions
we will be unearthed

Where's the magic?

I'm a car guy, so I'm going to use a car reference to get my point across...

Ford is posting major losses this year and I can't figure out why. Ford of Australia has a line of cars that remind me somewhat of the last generation BWM 5 series and, from what I've read, kicks some serious ass when optioned up properly. When asked if this line of cars was coming to the U.S., a Ford rep responded along the lines of "No, we have a different plan for the U.S. market."

WTF?!?!? A different plan?? The rest of the world got a brand new Ford Focus a few years ago, but they didn't update the one here... I mean, wasn't the U.S. the birthplace of Ford? Can't we get the cool cars?

And the thing is, I don't even like Fords all that much... the problem is the we, THE United States of America, have our automakers attaching themselves to foreign automakers just keep themselves alive. We, THE United States of America, can't produce a car that I'd feel comfortable buying and knowing I'd get 10 years out of it before a major component needed replacement.

How is this possible? We were the mighty empire. We were the world standard. Democracy, world class culture & high technology all in one package.

And now many countries resent us. We have had a major terrorist attack on our own soil. Our own companies ship jobs overseas.... and not just menial jobs, but high-level customer support jobs and programming jobs and print/media work (to name a few). We portray ourselves on television and internet worldwide with our "reality tv shows" (don't get me started) and our seeming inability to lose weight so we have 9800 new diets, products and programs every year. Our major manufacturing industries can't compete with the rest of the world. We can't keep ourselves out of debt. And... AND.... people camping out for the Playstation 3 release were wounded in a DRIVE-BY SHOOTING!! Can you imagine?!?! Was this in the Bronx or in Compton? Heck no, friends... it was in Lexington, Kentucky. KENTUCKY!!

(sigh)

This bothers me, really. I know I'm part of all this... of that I'm not ignorant. But there are days that we all, nationally, need to unplug. No internet, no cable/satellite tv... maybe just a radio... and everyone just gets together and does something... builds a community basketball court or has a community basketball game... Has a town carnival! Cleans-up and restores a vacant lot in their downtown. Feeds the homeless. Maybe everyone should have a pot luck dinner with the neighbors.

A lot of people don't even know their neighbors... as if that's too much of an inconvenience! How can we be a strong nation, a nation that can stand up and be #1 if can't be bothered to say "Hi!" to the people who live 20 feet from us?!

Love your family, support your friends, be a positive part of your community, put your heart into what you do... and then you will be contributing to America being United. Because right now, my friends, we're not. We squabble and squander our time, money and resources over the most ridiculous, petty B.S. I've ever seen. And because of that, we are falling behind.

"Oh, the Asians are actually smarter than us. They test better on IQ tests," someone once said to me. Frankly, I think that's a big load of festering dog crap. Maybe they do score better on those tests, but is that an excuse for us to lay down and put up with being #2 and #3? WTF does that have to do with anything anyway? In high school I scored a little above average on my SAT (1140) and pretty damn high (32) on my ACT. Tests aren't consistent, so what's the point? I still have been the boss of people who have scored higher than me on the SAT. I excel at my job while they get canned for "meditating" at their desk with their eyes closed.... please...

We have lost our motivation, folks. We are not leading the pack because we forgot how to. We've lost site of what's important. We ARE waiting for everything to come to us because we're the most powerful nation on Earth.

Um, does anyone here remember "The Fall of Roman Empire" or, in fact, does anyone remember more recently (historically speaking) when most of the European nations were imperialistic powers? Now we refer to those countries as "quain" or "cultured" and as great places to take package tours.

I don't want to be part of a package tour. I want to be part of the greatest nation on Earth.

Why is that so hard? I mean we did it once... with fewer people, less techology and less communciational ability... we became #1.

Where's the magic, folks? Where's the passion? Where's the drive? Where's our pride? Do we have to have something else catastrophic happen to get everyone in gear??

Damn...

Job Fairs

It is a unique thing to be an employer at a job fair... it's where everyone goes to look for a job. It's where you see the best and the worst the job market has to offer. I stand for four hours, shaking hands, listening to people and explaining what our company does and what the position they're interested in entails. When I leaves, my voice is shot from talking over all the ambient noise in the room and my feet and back have had enough. By the time the last person comes at the end of hour four, I have to sit down, even if I feel rude doing so.

For me here in Central Florida, I get a ton of people with "Customer Service" experience (which helps me not a bit), people looking to jump ship from Disney because there's no real $$ there and nowhere to move up, or former Real Estate agents who have found themselves hard up since the housing market flattened out (Hello?? No one who lives and works here in Florida could afford those prices - did anyone really think the market would remain like that?).

These are all good people, and in my heart I'd hire them all if I didn't work for a company that only has just under 50 employees. However some people just need to think about what they're saying to me: Don't tell me that you're the salesperson I'm looking for if you are a) wearing glasses from 1984 with those fabric glasses straps/holders than cover the entire length of the arm of your glasses, b) aren't professionally dressed, c) spend more time interrogating me about the salary/commission structure than you do selling me on how good you are or d) have little to no bottom teeth and the ones you do have are tarnished by tobacco. I can't send you out to multi-million hotel properties or to Corporate America to convince them to spend $10,000 to $500,000 on their special events and parties!! It's a jungle out there and damn if most of the people who approach me about their sales experience look less like hunters and more like prey.

Nevertheless, these are usually an interesting four hours of my life where I learn a lot about other companies, other types of jobs and what else is out there in the world that I do not want to do for a living....

Read your Resume!!!!!

A while ago, I had stopped paying attention to articles on how to properly present your resume. After all, who doesn’t know by now how to properly present themselves a potential employer? I think they taught us resume writing in 8th grade, for the love of Peanut Butter….

But sadly the world keeps spinning and more and more people do the strangest things. Here’s my list of the interesting things so far:

1- Your resume should start with your name, not your address and phone number followed by your name. I will not hire based upon what street you live on or if I find an amusing symmetry or repetitive pattern to the digits in your phone number.
2- Don’t list your elementary school and middle school on your resume. Please, for the love of all that is good, do not do it. You might as well write “I’M CLUELESS” in big red print on the top of your resume. Seriously.
3- If you’re going to list your job responsibilities/experiences in a narrative form instead of bullet form, please make sure that all the narratives are written in the same format and use a past tense if they’re not your current job. Your job that ended in 1998 should not start with “For the last four years I have been responsible…”
4- If you are going to list your job responsibilities in a bullet point format for each job, then PLEASE don’t use NUMBERS! Use bullet points, dashes or stars. Do not do not do not do not number them. And if you do number them, then please use the same numbering system for each of the subsequent jobs. Don’t switch up your formatting by making the first job have bold numbers and then the second job have non-bold numbers and the third job have dashes. You’re pretty much wasting your efforts if you send a resume like that.
5- Please, Please, Please realize that the person reading your resume has about 5-10 seconds to look at it. If you send a resume via e-mail, include something that resembles a cover letter. If a company is advertising for one position, assume that they might have another job opening also and that the hiring manager or HR person should not have to read your entire resume to figure out which position you’re looking for. Personally, if I have to write you back or call you to figure out which position you’re applying for, I’m going to be particularly disinclined to do so. You’re supposed to be selling me on you, not making me hunt you down.
6- Figure that major misspellings in your resume will count you out for the big positions at most companies. Not knowing the difference between “then” and “than” or “duel” and “dual” pretty much tells the readers that a) You didn’t pay attention in English class or b) you didn’t have anyone else proofread your resume. While I do enjoy a good laugh, a good laugh from a grammatical error will not get you an interview.
7- Do not try to use HTML formatting on a resume that you send in the body of an e-mail. Impressed as I might be that you might have a basic grasp of HTML coding, I also have HTML knowledge too and I know that not every E-mail client and web-based e-mail reader interprets HTML the same way. Web-based e-mail clients add their own code to the body of the e-mail so that it displays on the web. This can and will wreak havoc on your formatting. Just send your resume in Microsoft Word format (and if you can’t afford Microsoft Word, just use Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/) to save your resume in Word format. Even better, PDF your resume. Those are always so nice because their formatting never changes.

I can’t stress it enough: Hiring Managers and HR staff have to look at several thousand resumes a year. You need to look neat and professional or you may not get anything more than a passing glance.

I’m going to keep republishing this blog every time I get a real winner…

Hemmingway's Hurricane

With Hurricane season now in full swing, I took some time to do some reading on Florida history since, well, I've lived here for 5 years now. What I came across is wonderful book called Hemmingway's Hurricane by Phil Scott. While, truthfully, Ernest Hemingway did indeed make statements about the horrible mistakes made by the administrators of the work camps in the Keys that lead to the death of over 250 WWI veterans, the book really focuses on the testimonies of those veterans that survived the great 1935 storm. If you like history, or natural disasters, this is a book for you.

For those of you who've never lived through a hurricane, all I can say is that they are unpredictable. If any of you watched the 2004 Hurricane Charley, you will remember that Charley's unpredicted turn along the coast of Florida shifted its course from hitting Tampa to coming on shore at Port Charlotte. This ran Charley right through my area (Orlando metro) and left myself and my wife less than 2 hours to pack up the pets and head to safer ground before the winds made it too bad to drive.

The veterans in 1935 were lead by people who assumed that a forecast of a hurricane heading west meant that it couldn't possible turn north - which it did suddenly on September 2, 1935 and was on top of the work camps in less 8 hours, with the flooding beginning within 6 hours of the sudden turn. Today, modern equipment would have seen that turn. In 1935, the weather officials in Jacksonville relied upon reports from ships and islands to triangulate storm positions. Being that it was Labor Day weekend, most of the weather stations in the area were closed. No one saw the turn until it was way too late.

Why do I tell this story? Because I sit here watching Tropical Storm Ernesto's 5 day track forecast knowing full well that it's always the ones that they don't initialy predict to hit you that do. Maybe that's a metaphor for life, or just a piece of advice for everyone living in a state the borders the Gulf of Mexico.

Wouldn't you like to be a hacker too?

I want to be a hacker.

Why? Because I want to have that much free time in my life!! How are these people supporting themselves, wandering around the 'net hackin' into stuff? Hmmm.... I need to find that gravy train....

I can't believe...

I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted, but yet I just worked the last 3 weeks without a day off (no, not even Thanksgiving).

And my reward for all this? An afternoon off from work (now that the big project is done) so that I can go to the doctor to get rid of this nagging cough... so now I have Amoxicillin. Is it always in 875mg horse pills like this?

This isn't interesting... it's just an update... Peace out...