Actually, in this case it’s more like “karma”, since the misfortune is a direct result of the sufferer’s ineptitude.
The job whose phone interview prompted this post of mine is apparently still unfilled. I’ve been noticing the precise same ad whose e-mail in response prompted that ill-fated phone screen ever since that day, and that was back in May.
I wonder if they’re one of those managers whining to the business press about a “shortage of qualified applicants.” Wouldn’t surprise me.
That said, perhaps I should apply again. It’s been six months; perhaps the manager whose stupid interviewing technique caused me to be rejected has been dismissed or demoted.
In fact, I think I will: It’s a no loss situation so far as I am concerned. If the incompetent manager is still there, my résumé will be immediately circular filed (which is fine by me; I wouldn’t want to work for her). If not, I’ll have a second chance, one that might involve working for someone with at least half a clue.
Update: Well, that was a waste of time. Never have I seen a more incompetently designed Web interface than the one for that company’s job board. First, they use both their own site and one of those third-party sites (not Taleo, thankfully) to handle their applications. Their own site refers you to the third-party one, which in turn says to use their own site. If you try and get your application through by using the third-party site, you find that two of the web forms are broken, and the program that scans your résumé is also broken (and thanks to one of the broken web forms, you can’t work around the broken résumé scanner). To heck with them; incompetence obviously pervades their organization. More than likely, they’re still in business mainly because of this principle.
One thing my recent trip to New Mexico allowed me to appreciate anew is how the air is scented with the fragrance of conifers in the Pacific Northwest. Some, like the western red cedar, are fragrant enough and distinctive enough that they can be olfactorily appreciated from several hundred feet downwind.
It’s one thing I enjoyed when first moving to this ecoregion from a desert climate. Like most such phenomena, one fairly quickly loses the ability to perceive it if one continuously lives amongst the sensation. Spending a week in a dry, dusty place was enough to “reset” my nose so that I can perceive it anew, at least for a brief time.
Even when it rains in the desert, much of the odor I can perceive in the moist air is one of wet dust. Even amongst the delightful fragrance of sage, it is there, reminding me that this respite from the dryness and dustiness is but a brief departure from the normal scheme of things. It is an underlying veiled threat that removes much of the pleasure I would otherwise receive from such weather.
There is no such threat in the moist air of the beginning rainy season here. The pervading fragrance, even in many quite urban areas, is the woodsy and coniferous one of a lush land that nourishes my senses instead of assaulting them.
Not always. If they see something they believe suspicious while zapping you with X-rays, the TSA will grope you anyhow. It happened to my sister a few days ago.
I opted for the groping on my recent trip, because I don’t believe them when they say the waves emitted from the machines are harmless. Powerful organizations like governments and corporations have persistently claimed such about various kinds of radiation, only to be definitively proven wrong later.
Apropos this entry, there is a reason that the ruling elite has lost the ideological flexibility needed to prevent their rule from being jeopardized by a crisis of their own creating: it’s all a matter of timing.
Those old enough to remember the Great Depression are now also old enough and few enough to be mostly irrelevant in the halls of power. Contrarily, those old enough to remember the fall of the USSR and its satellites (which the elite spun as a vindication of capitalist orthodoxy and a repudiation of anything critical of it) are numerous and at about their apex of power in those same halls.
So it’s a tremendous opportunity for those of us who are opposed to the current order. The only question is: can and will we take advantage of it?
By tonight, I’ll be sleeping in my own bed again and once more have regular Internet access.
Sleeping in my own bed soundly and not being kept awake by overly dry and dusty air, that is. I’ve been in New Mexico visiting my parents, and while that state is definitely a scenic place, I am most certainly Not A Desert Person, and find it hard not to feel under assault by the elements as a result of the extremely harsh, bright sunshine and ultra-dry air.
Thankfully, today is one of those occasional days where some moister air has managed to make it past the multiple mountain ranges, so there is some respite from the assault. Still, it will be nice to be back to someplace where one simply never has to worry about getting a painful sunburn in October.
Update: Shortly after I posted that, the rain commenced in earnest. It ended up being the heaviest rain in a year or more, with an inch reported between 7AM yesterday and 7AM today at the Albuquerque Airport. That’s over 10% of Albuquerque’s normal annual rainfall, in one storm. It ended up delaying my flight’s departure (desert airports like ABQ are quite naturally last in line for any IFR equipment). I didn’t mind; it was a minor delay, and it was worth it to have an early respite from the harsh desert conditions that normally prevail there.
I interviewed at some anonymous company that was big on XP (aka “Extreme Programming”): pair programming, test-driven development, etc. One thing I will say is that they did a very good job if interviewing, giving candidates an actual opportunity to try the techniques they use out.
And one thing that struck me about test-driven development was that it makes it very difficult to write code in a bottom-up fashion. The basic response was something along the lines of “you just don’t do that.” Lovely. A powerful and productive technique that you “just don’t do” because the methodology you have required people to adhere to does not allow for it.
And what if programmers sometimes come up with better ideas on their own? Sorry, no can do, either. Pair programming doesn’t allow for alone time.
“Sorry, we’d like to incorporate that feature change, but we’ve frozen the feature set because the software is now in alpha test. We just can’t do that.” Funny how the supposed diametric opposite of the traditional waterfall model ends up sounding so much like it.
The problem here is one of taking rules too seriously. Any set of rules — it fundamentally does not matter which ones. You cannot fix such a problem merely by choosing the right set of fixed rules, no matter how enlightened the motivation behind the choice of them might happen to be.
If you can’t make exceptions for exceptional cases, you’re going to end up sometimes forcing people to act like stupid robots, doing something suboptimally because that’s the only way The Rules allow for it to be done.
Basically, unlike in Venezuela, the revolution in Bolivia is a bottom-up affair, backed by a diversity of groups, as opposed to being something orchestrated from above by a single charismatic figure. That becomes clear when you read stories like this one about a highway project being opposed by the indigenous people whose land it would compromise.
Of course Morales has become a new oppressor. How could he not, given the nature of the job he sought? By becoming the chief executive of a hierarchical system of authority, he chose to participate in a rotten system.
That’s not to say its a useless achievement and that Morales administration is no better than those it replaced, only that it’s a very limited achievement. Past administrations would not have stepped back, embarrassed, and called a moratorium. However, unless the pressure from below continues and intensifies, the outcome will be the typical “compromise” of industrial civilization: less wild nature and more development.
No Compromise. Courtesy of "Super Happy Anarcho Fun Pages."
No, I didn’t visit the ghost brickyard in Gresham, Oregon again on my recent trip to Portland. I’m revisiting it in this blog, now. I found a gallery of what it looked like in 2005 here. There’s a few pictures showing some of the increasingly decrepit piles of bricks in past styles; this one is particularly good.
I haven’t been back there since 2008, and something tells me that it’s probably completely gone by now, seeing as how much “progress” had been made in erasing it by 2008.
It’s hardly a new thing for them to do, but an item on the NPR news this morning shows them doing so yet again. To paraphrase what they said, they reported the following:
President Obama will be speaking at two engagements in Seattle. One is a $35,000 per head fund raiser, the other is larger and cheaper.
Cheaper? Than $35K/head? That’s meaningless. Virtually every event is cheaper than that. $1,000/head is a full 35 times cheaper and it’s still unaffordable to Americans of normal means. $100/head is 350 times cheaper (enough to qualify as “much cheaper” by most definitions), yet is still out of reach to most.
It’s quite transparent what NPR is trying to do: spin the story to make the Democrats seem as something other than a bourgeois party. And sure enough, a little research on Google comes up with this story, which reveals that neither event is geared towards the sort of average Americans that liberals profess to be so concerned about:
Then Obama will head to a larger fundraiser at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle, with tickets starting at $100 for balcony seats and up to $7,500 for VIP seating and a receiving-line photo with the president, according to event invitations. Up to 400 people are expected at that event, which will include a lunch catered by chef Tom Douglas and a performance by the Robert Cray Band. [emphasis added]
And really, how could it be otherwise? It’s a bourgeois society; if you participate in its formal means of exercising power, you will be compelled to act according to bourgeois values. You can’t fundamentally change rottenness simply by participating in it.
