Ultra-Simplified Job Application Responses

Under 'Education' put 'enough'.

Under 'Experience' put 'sufficient'.

Under 'References' put "Google my name, jackass. See if anything turns up that puts you off."

Under 'Career Goal' put "Keep myself in smokes and beer."

That ought to get you in like Flint.

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Satan or... Fun With Footnotes6

[With apologies to David Foster Wallace⁷.]






















Some years ago, I dreamt that I was face-to-face with Satan; the sort of Satan portrayed in the picture above¹. I woke up screaming.


Just this week, I dreamt again of an encounter with Satan, but this time it was a pretty calm encounter. Satan looked quite ordinary -- a dark-haired guy in a dark suit². His eyes had no pupils, but aside from that he wasn't scary looking at all. He might have been a banker, or a school administrator or a CBC Radio programming executive.

Satan can appear in many guises, no doubt. He could as easily show up on your front porch as a Girl Guide selling cookies. In my experience so far though, there's no mistaking him. When you're face-to-face with Satan, you know it.

And by the way, if and when you do meet up with Satan, tell him to fuck off. He has exactly as much power over you as you choose to give to him.

- - -

1. This 'Satan' actually strikes me as a bit lame. He lacks the upper body mass that I'd expect Satan to have for flinging souls³ into the fires. It was the best I could find.

2. Again, not a great picture⁴. The guy in the suit ought to be older. I trust you get the idea anyway.

3. Come to think of it, souls have no weight or mass to them do they? So Satan wouldn't really need a weight lifter's physique to fling the things, would he now.⁵

4. Not a great picture, but print it out in 'fast draft' mode on an inkjet printer that's a bit low on ink and the eyes turn out satanic.

5. Punctuation dilemma: Should there be a question mark there or not? 'Would he now' is a phrase that exists in territory somewhere between an assertion and a question.

6. Have I nothing better to do than waste my time with this futile nonsense?

7. A David Foster Wallace piece.

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Disturbing Disappearance

An internet buddy in Kentucky who I had valued the acquaintance of is gone -- utterly gone. There are vestiges of him here and there, but his blog is no more.

His name is Dave Eriqat. I hope he's safe and well.

People ought not to just disappear like that.

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End of Day

My mind, such as it is, is a blank.

There are worse things for a mind to be.

A mind can be a slate on which is written 'war'; or 'domination'; or 'profit'.

There are worse things for a mind to be than a blank.

Johnny Cash -- Rusty Cage

Can old guys rock or what?



Yeehah!

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The Fundamentals

a A b B c C d D e E f F g G h H i I j J k K l L m M n N o O p P q Q r R s S t T u U v V w W x X y Y z Z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

- - -

There they all are -- sixty-two characters. Those and the means of their manipulation are the basis of everything useful I ever learned in school or elsewhere. What gets built with those characters falls into one of two categories:

1) Useful, honest information with which to make life on this earth better for all.

2) Bullshit.

Bullshit's winning.

Who's behind that?

Starts with 'B'? Rhymes with 'tankers'?

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Multiple-Choice

I was pondering the above illustration that I had used as an introduction to my previous post, and the question occurred to me, "Is that a fit use for a human hand and intellect, and a pencil and a sheet of paper?"

I don't think so.

Fuck 'education'. It's a cheesy, sleazy fucking racket is what it is.

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PDI+

It's PDI+ season again at the printer repair outfit where I work. About a year ago, I passed the witless multiple-choice exam and got it behind me. Two of my eminently capable colleagues weren't so fortunate, and they have to resit the exam. (For the whole back-story to this, see this blog page.)

A new development has been the appearance of an outfit known as "Killtest" that supplies a huge set of genuine sample questions with answers, so candidates can 'study' what they'll be 'tested' on. (This is surely an example of fleas on fleas.)

My contempt for all this has migrated from merely enormous to boundless. This is rot. This is rubbish. This is unbecoming to a race of 'intelligent' creatures. It all needs to be run through an industrial shredder and buried in a very deep hole in some very solid rock. I'll try to elaborate here on what makes me so contemptuous of it all.

The whole 'train/test/certify' paradigm is a worthless charade. The training material is shallow stuff with about the density of hydrogen -- it's a mile wide and a millimetre deep. The multiple-choice exam format is not a test of useful knowledge, unless you consider disconnected scatterings of trivia to be 'knowledge'.

'Studying' for a multiple-choice examination is to 'learning' what dumpster-diving is to food shopping and preparation. Study for multiple-choice examinations amounts to accumulation of factoids -- that's all.

The whole notion of 'training' presupposes that people are resistant to learning -- that they must have learning forced upon them, much like a puppy's nose might be rubbed in its own shit as it's housebroken. That is vile nonsense.

So do I have anything constructive to offer? I knew I'd be asked that, and I've come prepared.

Let's begin with what I, as a technician, am obliged to bring to the job. I'm obliged to be literate and numerate, and to be knowledgeable about the fundamentals of the technologies employed by printers. I should be able, for example, to use a digital voltmeter to confirm the operation of a photo-sensor, or an ohmmeter to confirm an open thermistor. Many technicians are not conversant with such rudiments, and PDI+ does not address them. I find that bizarre. I could help with such things on my printers blog, but there is absolutely no one who'll pay me a cent to do that.

I am not obliged to have been born knowing how to gracefully dismantle any machine ever made, or to be able to intuit the meaning of any error code. Those things are the obligation of the manufacturers to document, and they do an appallingly poor job of it -- all of them, across the board.

What passes for service documentation in the printer service field is utter tripe. Access procedures are often overly illustrated, to the detriment of clarity, oddly enough. Simple procedures that in fact consist of nothing more than removing a few fasteners are made to appear complicated. Error code listings are riddled with either unhelpful 'information', or outright misinformation. Parts breakdown drawings verge on incomprehensibility. (HP's are the worst.) It's all a blight on the industry. The manufacturers have the resources to clean up that act; I don't, and it's not my job. But the failure of the manufacturers to do their job makes what is my job far more difficult than it need be. Again, I could help with that on my printers blog, but there is absolutely no one who'll pay me a cent to do that.

I could go on here, but I've had about enough of this topic, and I have better things to do. As far as I'm concerned, PDI+ Certification isn't worth the powder to blow it to hell. It's a store-bought credential proclaiming one's fitness to function in a service industry that's a shambles and a disgrace.

Best of luck with your exams guys, and give my regards to CompTIA.

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Poison

I did something last evening that I haven't done in years -- watched some American TV. It was some true crime reconstruction thing, complete with pharmaceutical commercials.

What must it do to people who watch hours of such stuff every week of their lives?

The scariest parts were the possible side-effects of the pharmaceuticals. The female psycho who was the subject of the show had nothing on the meds.

Stay away from that stuff! It's all poison. (And that goes for the programming, too.)

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