Amusements of the Day

[lwood]

Had a lovely afternoon with hyndla. Despite a late start, I got to share the wonder and joy of a good mole burrito, because while I'm ambivalent about chocolate when it's candy, chocolate as a spice never fails to appeal..

Things led on to other things, and hyndla wound up driving DLP and I to Wyrmholm, home of the incomparable starfire6910. DLP and xbethfreakx, daughter of lori, were taking pictures of starfire6910's husband (no LJ!) Banging on Hot Metal with Hammers. Stitch and Bitch rumbled along, more frantic than usual due to impending Silicon Staff Feed, but attendees included several of you. DLP and I wandered off for a quiet dinner with lferion after which emberleo drove us and lionessmoon to our respective homes.

While at S&B, I finished knitting a test swatch from a yummy book of Viking artifact-inspired knitting patterns. As DLP currently has my poor digital camera, I had to resort to a scanner to let you all see how it turned out.

DLP would like it made a bit wider (which also means longer) and made into a scarf. Sadist! Currently it's 2x2 cabling; I spent a couple hours this evening expanding the pattern to 3x3 cabling, which made it half again as wide (good) but mussed up the proportion (bad). My next attempt to hack the pattern made it nearly twice as long, and I fear this will turn Cunning Knotwork into far less exciting Aran. I will make test swatches in the next couple of days...

Also made a shiny necklace as part of my ongoing Year Abroad with the local Umbanda House, this one for Yemaya, and I scanned that in as well.

As you might expect from the colors and materials, she's a lady concerned with the sea...

Today I sent out my first resumes in two years. Bleargh. But, instead of the shotgun techniques I've employed in the past, I'm keeping it simple and high-quality, this time: I'm primarily using Craig's List to look for jobs, and I immediately pitch anything for which I'm not mostly qualified, is too far from public transit, and/or prominently displays some noxious requirement like on-call support or wacky shift work. All of that ensured that whatever was left would be fairly good... or such, at least, is my hope.

This is pretty much my exact skillset, and they're in oh-so-handy West Berkeley. The degree requirement is a problem, as I haven't one, so their cover letter centered around the concept of "we doan need no steekin batches."

Desktop Support Tech for the SF Symphony Er... yesplease! Their cover letter also got a certain degree of extra polish:

Hello! I would like to apply for the position of PC Support 
Specialist for the San Francisco Symphony.

        Over and above the qualifications listed on my resume, I have
extensive experience installing, troubleshooting, and maintaining
Windows XP and its products in heterogenous environments. As the   
first item on my resume will demonstrate, I also have lengthy experience
with non-profit organizations, including service as an officer and
a board member and coaxing results from a staff of volunteers.

        Among the things that I couldn't list on my resume due to 
space considerations are:

        At BDTI, I installed centrallized anti-virus software in
addition to the server-related tasks outlined in my resume. This
ensured that all corporate PC's could remain protected against  
the very latest virii.

        At all of my positions, I have been involved in training
and documentation. I very strongly believe that if users know
even a little about how to protect themselves, that makes *my*
job that much easier.  

        At all of my positions, I disassemble and reassemble
computers when required. I consider this a requirement of anyone
who wishes to be a desktop support professional.

        As is hopefully evidenced by this e-mail, I am an articulate
writer, capable of expressing myself quite clearly in written as
well as verbal forms.

        I am an avid fan of the San Francisco Symphony. While financial
considerations have kept me from attending performances as often as
I would like, the fact that this position was at Davies Hall was
certainly a large factor in my decision to apply.

        However, I do not have a college degree. What I do have is
over a decade of experience in the IT industry, which historically
has placed on requirement on skills and the ability to apply them
rather than on degrees, and so I have never thought it particularly
necessary.

        My resume may make it appear that I am overqualified for
this position, and may ask for more pay, or have less interest,
than is appropriate. I assure you that neither is the case: my
interest is no longer on the high-availability positions that   
I held during the height of the boom, and I realise that the 
considerations of this position and my own mean that the available
salary will be far less than I have held in the past, and I am
content with this.

What the heck -- I figure high-strung musicians can't be much harder to steer than my usual fare...

Lastly on the hit parade, Mars Needs Women and craigslist is looking for a sysadmin. On a lark, I made this cover letter more conversational in the hopes that it'd get attention:

        "A short cover letter detailing my strengths in plain ASCII text." 

        Right. Well, I could crank out a page or so of professional
bafflegab, but I'm sure you have a stack of those already. Let's
talk like people, shall we?

        I'm extremely adaptable to new and heterogenous environments.  
In addition to everything below, including the server that moves
(*checks MRTG*) all right, a rather humble maximum of 3.6Mbps,
I do freelance desktop support for friends, who recommend me to
friends' friends, and at that point they actually pay me for it.
When I talk to computers, they listen, and when I'm done, they
run better.

        I keep my website designs very simple, because readability
and good website design are very important to me. If a blind person
can't read it, I don't want it online. I write my web pages by hand,
in a text editor (vi), and run them through the W3C's online lint
checker. Overall, I'd say I'm a throwback to the elder days of
computer useage and administration -- I still read my e-mail with
a text-based client, because anything worth saying is worth saying
in plain text.

        Creative? Okay, I write clean web sites, short stories, long
LiveJournal entries, the occasional haiku, and there's a novel in
progress.  I knit, braid pretty cords on a Japanese braiding loom, and
when all that fails I start tinkering with the nearest computer to hand.
Once, I bought a straw hat, didn't like the color, and dyed it. I've
cooked medieval feasts for two hundred people for fun, and a couple
months ago, I catered a wedding for eighty.

        Resourceful? My current server hardware is donated, because my
best resource is, and always has been, my community and circle of
friends. I crimp my own Ethernet and telephone cables, because sometimes
50' just isn't long enough. I can make TV antennas out of bent coat
hangers, patch chairs with duct tape, and demonstrate knitting techniques
with EEG electrode cables and a pair of long-shafted swabs. I've
been known to substitute pickle juice for vinegar and employ cuphooks
for cable management.

        Self-managing? You should take a look at my Palm Pilot...

        Intent on making the world a better place? Well, I pick up 
trash on the roadside and beach, and when I have money there's a list
of environmental and civil-rights charities that get a good chunk of
my income. The rest of the time, I try to act with some honor and
towards the greatest benefit to those whom I love and cherish.   

        Intent on making the Internet a better place? My websites
are clean, my servers are patched, and everywhere I go I try
to encourage that people get to know their computers, keep their
own patches up to date, and avoid the use of well-known security 
holes like Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.

        I want this job. I think Craig's List is a good thing, and  
I'd be particularly pleased if I could be a part of it.

        Thank you very much in advance for your consideration, even
if it's only a smile and a chuckle before I get an automatic reply
and a trip to /dev/null.

-- Lorrie

Tomorrow, lionessmoon and I will assay a short raid on Costco, after which I may or may not swap her out for DLP and may or may not pick up some inexpensive yarn for the Yuletide Scarf of Knotworked Doom. To defray things, I may have to keep myself to buying it one ball at a time.

urbanbard suggested I should make my life into a reality TV show. Poppycock, says I... nobody would believe it, and once the gods started showing up and the oracles got their seidh-fu on, it'd just be too weird.

-- Lorrie

Comments

[witchchild]

a) I really DO need to learn knitting as that pattern look very yummy.

b) Yay for jobs! The symphony one looks heavenly.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

It does look yummy, and it's also a pain in the arse.

We'll see what happens on the job front -- the ones for which I wrote extra-special cover letters are always my favourites. I tried for an ILM job, once, and that got an even more amusing cover letter that referenced the fact that I own a set of Jedi robes. 8-P

-- Lorrie

[witchchild]

heh. remember driving me to Pixar? the friend there used to work for ILM. how amusing.

[ardaniel]

Everyone in the Industry has worked for somewhere else in the Industry at some point. My SO's former boss worked for Digital Domain and then ILM and then vanished as far as we know. ;)

I just can't get you out of my head...

[emberleo.livejournal.com]

I look at the picture of the necklace and can't help but think

Kai Kai Kai Yemaya Oloro
Kai Kai Kai Asesu Oloro
Kai Kai Kai Yemaya Oloro
Kai Kai Kai Oloro Mi Ami

--Ember--

Re: I just can't get you out of my head...

[lwood.livejournal.com]

...yeah. Bloodydamn song's quite stuck in my head too.

It occurs to me that it would be a marvelous idea to take this necklace to the sea, get some seawater, and marinade it for seven days. Still, given the givens, I probably shouldn't be alone then I make that trip...

-- Lorrie

[camwyn]

Oh, you found that book! I saw it the other day at Borders and thought of you immediately, but didn't have a number to text the ISBN to.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Oh! Is that all? I'll e-mail you my cell number straightaway so you can pester me at will in the future. 8-)

-- Lorrie

[shantak.livejournal.com]

Hmmm *note to self, has book, cross off potential gift list*

I've never knit cable yet. I love how they look though so someday. my mom tells me cables are "easy". I'm still not sure I believe her.

I didn't know you didn't care for chocolate.

Good luck with the jobby things

-smk

[lwood.livejournal.com]

The main thing to comprehend about cabling is this:

Loops go on your needle in a specific order:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

All cabling does is change the order in which the loops are on the needle. Usually, this is done by taking one or more loops, putting them on a cabling needle (a specially bent bit of wire), knitting or purling some other loops, and then putting the loops that you held in reserve back on the needles and knitting those. So,

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

...can become...

1 2 5 6 3 4 7 8

Whether the reserved loops are held before or behind the work while you work their neighbors will determine whether the twisted part of the cable angles left or right. Plus, there should be at least two perl stitches on both sides of any cabling so it'll stand out from the work.

Make sense?

I really recommend The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knitting and Crocheting -- it explains all this in small words with big pictures, better than I can!

It's not that I don't care for chocolate per se. I prefer it as a cooking spice than as a candy, yeah, and I usually find that most desserts are too sweet for my palate to eat a whole serving. So, when I do get a chocolate bar, I'll only eat one square at a time and it'll last days. Or, if I get ice cream, I'll get chocolate chip so it's in discrete chunks and provides some textural variety.

I'm also starting to cultivate a taste for carmel...

-- Lorrie

[shantak.livejournal.com]

You do a good job of explaining things. That clarified things even after years of my mom telling me how easy cabling is. I have a friend who collects (clean) bamboo chopsitcks to use as cabling needles. Sigh I envy your climate and the ability to comfortably wear thick yarn.

I'm quite the chocoholic myself. Actually I know that I crave fat rather than sweet so chocolate covered caramel makes me purr.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

*grin* Thanks!

As for you in your warmer climes, just knit big loose mesh things on gigantic needles -- the more intresting yarns benefit well from that kind of treatment anyway...

-- Lorrie

[shantak.livejournal.com]

Nah, I like some chunky, but most of it just looks like Barbie sweaters to me. The scale is just off. I really like slubby yarn, just not the all over chunky. I do prefer large needles, less knitting. My mom is an Irish lace fan, the kind knit on 000 needles ack! I have done bead knitting, I did a purse with 000 needles. That came out pretty but I kept on poking my...chest *ow*. I just mostly ignore the Vogue knitting and other mags until their Spring and Summer issues. Unless they have nice hats. I like making hats, even if I can't wear them.