They wish, it would greatly improve their service levels. There are plenty of monkeys out there that know more about how telephone service works than the people they have who eventually answer the phone. Sure their service is slightly less expensive, but I have had nothing but problems with them. Apparently they have no technicians and they must outsource their telephone support to the lowest bidder.

I switched to CavTel in January. When they finally got the number switched over, my phone stopped ringing in my house. So after 6 days without a phone finally it miraculously started ringing here. Hurray! Too good to be true, because on Tuesday people calling my number were greeted with the wonderful message that “This number has been disconnected.” And I have no dial tone. SO, we try calling CavTel support. For three days. Still no service. They claim they never got the number back from Verizon, it’s verizon’s fault the did something at the CO.

I got news for you, I DON’T CARE whose fault it is! I just want to pick up my phone and be able to call people. And I somewhat want people to be able to call me. So if you are an upstart company in an industry dominated by monopolies, it may be worthwhile to spend just a little bit of time either training your customer service people about the telephone industry, or maybe hiring qualified people. I never talked to anyone at CavTel but the customer service people and the exuded incompetence, that is the way I feel about the company, and that will never change.

We canceled service, demanded a full refund and the cost to transfer back to Verizon. Of course now we cannot keep our number if we want service restored in any amount of time, because that takes 10 working days for verizon to do the paperwork to get the number back from Cavalier even though they claim they never got it from Verizon. So I will be getting a new phone number in a couple of days. If you need to call me try in a few days, or write me a letter or something.

I just flew in from Houston, Texas and boy does flying in the winter in Philly suck. Here is a quick recap of the experience:

• Getting up at 3:30 AM for a 6 AM flight because of snow is not desirable.
• Sitting in the plane waiting to de-ice while the AC is turned off, also, subpar
• Houston claims to be the 4th largest city, however it seems to have claimed the distinction by expanding the borders to include the suburbs, where apparently everyone goes to by 7:30 PM. Because the city is deserted then. I could hear birds chirping, when they rig
htfully should have been drown out by traffic sounds, or killed off by pigeons.
• six packs come in buckets full of ice in Texas
• Charging food and transportation to the room is a great invention.
• Having a chick-fil-a in a public cafeteria in the basement of an office building is a good idea
• The banks that have ATMs in airports should go and move them to the other side of the TSA checkpoints. If you are short on cash and need to get a cab and you have left the “secure” area, there could be trouble. Incidently zone fares for cabs are good.
• I don’t understand the cow in the spacesuit that is in the George Bush airport.
• Searching around for wireless connectivity is silly when there is an ethernet jack in your room. (Note: Bring a network cable with you when you go anywhere)
• 70 degree weather in February is great, but I am sure glad I missed the 110+ degree weather that will be there in the summer
• Venison isn’t bad.
• Travelling into a snow storm in philly is much more time consuming than travelling out of one.
• Coming home is great

Well that’s it for now.

Even though my father used to call today Saint Hallmark’s day, and at many levels I agree with him that it is purely a marketing ploy to sell junk. I think it’s as good an excuse as any to pledge my undying love to Michelle.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Michelle, I Love YOU!

Yeah I know it’s sappy, so what?

Oh and Happy Valentine’s Day Allison, maybe your mom will read this to you, and maybe someday you’ll know what it means.

Every conceivable means of trying to hire someone produces a deluge of résumés that someone has to sift through, most of them are an attack on logic and the english language. I currently find myself in a position of turning a mountain into a molehill, and I can’t possibly read them all. So as an engineer I came up with a simple rule to reduce the load to a pile that I can then read through.

The rule is really simple: If a specific technology appears to be key to the job posting and the résumé or cover letter doesn’t mention that technology then discard it. For example, if there is a job for a Perl Developer, I would anticipate finding the word Perl in the résumé, and if it isn’t in the résumé there had better be an extremely interesting story in the cover letter as to why you would apply for this job without the benefit of any knowledge of the main subject. The story wouldn’t even be that hard to write. An example would be, “I have been coding since I could reach my Dad’s TRS 80 and while I haven’t worked in Perl before, I have worked in several different languages and am confident that I can become proficient in Perl development in a short amount of time.” Sure that alone won’t get you an interview, but at least you put some effort into applying for this job, and maybe you even bothered to read the title!

Applying this rule afforded me some time to throw together this posting, because it eliminated about 75% of the applicants to date. Just because monster or dice or whatever job search engine out there gave you the ability to set up keyword agents and spam your resume to the list that matches doesn’t mean you should use it. It is an insult to the person who is sorting through the applicants, you are effectively saying that I can’t be bothered to even read your job posting, but I want you to read my résumé.

An even simpler way to reduce the mountain would have simply to throw out all the applicants that didn’t bother to include a specific cover leter. I didn’t yet apply this rule, but I may soon. If you can’t spend time trying to convince me why I should interview you, or even extending the courtesy of a short introductory note, then why should I bother? By the way if you try to make a point that you are good at communicating on your résumé but don’t include a cover letter, then I must assume you are prone to exaggerate your abilities.

The point of all this is, if you are trying to find a job put some effort into it: do some research, and only apply for a job if you understand the ad and think you meet the requirements.