My yard is winning at spring!

Happy Tuesday!

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT THANK YUO!

The advertisement for forklift operator at work has had overwhelming response. I was fascinated by this:

• All CAPS

Subject: FW: HI THERE IM SENDING THIS EMAIL/RESUME REGARDING YOUR WEB AD & IM APPLYING FOR FORKLIFT TRUCK OPERATOR, THANK YOU
or
HI. I W'LL LIKE TO APPLY FOR THE JOB
or
HI. I'M INTERESTED IN THE JOB ,I SEND MY RESUME AND I'M AVAILABLE TO WORK. YUO CAN CALLME ANY TIME THANKYOU.

Believe me, I hear you!

• JPG of their resume. Example:

• page1.jpg 
• page2.jpg
• page3.jpg

This is so many kinds of wrong, I can't even go there or we'd be here all day.

• RTF - ugh. Seriously?
• WPS - ok now I want to hurt you.
• Applying more than once.  Dude, you got so baked on the weekend you can't remember you already applied on Friday night?
• Sending the email, forgetting the attachment. 1% of our applicants did that. Disappointingly (for me) 0% wrote "oops" the second email.
• Subject "resume" or "Resume". 10% of the applicants did that!
• No subject line. No text in the email. Just an attachment. One person. It's kind of Zen. But not in a good way.
• Spelled their name all in lowercase - 30% of the applicants. I almost died. Many more used lowercase letters for their subject & email.

 "hi, i want a job but i care so little, but if u just got 2know me ud see i care even less"  Indicative that these people have barely graduated high school. Do kids nowadays really think adults are going to look deeper to find the real person behind the don't-care-facade? HA.

• Sent their resume as the text of the email. I'm guessing they don't know how to do an attachment. - 1% of applicants.

Wow. Just wow.

342222

For the past year and a half I drive to work every day and home for lunch & maybe a nap and back to work. I like to watch the numbers go up so quickly and sometimes match up.

Bringing a guest

Today, an invitation to a wedding in the mail, addressed to Pink Lemonade & Escort. My mailman is gonna think I'm some strange kind of girl. :(

You know who this is!

That's right! Mr. Potato Head in the car in front of me on my way to work.

Capital City Clean Up

I have a confession to make: I am a garbage picker. The city does a spring clean up activity when the snow starts to melt and I've volunteered again, for a second year. I suspect this does make me the granola-crunching hippy my brother-in-law accuses me of being. But I am surprised again this year by how many people litter but not what they litter. Cigarette packs and fast food, big surprise. It's not like people don't continually go places where they can dispose of their trash, so how come so much ends up on the streets?

I picked up 17 Tim's paper cups last Sunday, and 17 again this week. I walk only 2 blocks... that is a lot of cups in that short distance. Both weeks I got a full black garbage bag of trash.

Last week: 3 cups from 7-11, 2 from Second Cup and 1 from Starbucks. Numerous McDonald's drink cups, bags, and wrappers. Tim's bags and wrappers. Those two fast food places make up 70% of the garbage I've seen. Less presence of the other fast food places: Subway, DQ, KFC, Taco Bell, Wendy's, etc.

This week: 3 Starbucks, but only 1 cup from 7-11. Oddly enough: 2 Coronas, 1 Polar Ice. Too many wrappers to count.

I've gotten friendly honking, waved at and given the thumbs up. What I really want is people to get out of their cars and help out in their neighbourhood. At very least they could keep their trash in their vehicle until they find a garbage can at their next stop.

Oops!

I just told one of the eleventy-million pregnant ladies in my personal circle she looks "comfy". I really meant slobby.

It also seems I might have just killed some unknown person in my office...?

FTW! = For the Win(95)!

I would just like to let you know that I have just finished looking through our entire shop for Win95 floppy disks. It comes on 21 3 1/2" floppies FYI! My friend who's a tech at another shop told me he just looked at Win95 on CD last week and threw it out because he won't need that old junk... lo and behold, I call him a week later and ask for it on floppies. After he stopped howling he said he had kept 4 sets of Win95 on floppies and he will give me one set as a present. Lucky me! Christmas came early!

You know you're geeky when...

You carry two different operating systems on USB flash drives on you at all times.
A camera.
Two cellphones.
And a flashlight.


The only reason to tell you're a girl-geek by the contents of your purse: tinted lip gloss.

And the fact that you have a purse I suppose...

Book Review: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

In 2010 I committed to reading at least 12 new (to me) books. Recently on Bryan Allain's & Jason Boyett's blogs they featured book reviews based on Bryan's hilarious CANNARF Rating System. It's a subjective rating system... kind of funny to me, so I'm going to give it a try.

Author: Reif Larsen

Book Name: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

I’m Glad it Wasn’t Called: A Broken Compass and a Stuffed Sparrow in a Winnebago. That'd just be weird.

Book Synopsis in Twitteresque 140 characters or less: Genius kid with a funny name travels from Montana to Washington DC to illustrate for the Smithsonian, finds out his parents do miss him.

Where I Bought It: I read a review about it online (where? not sure) and asked for it for Christmas.

Paid for With: Ha, Free!

How Long it Took Me to Read: A bit longer than normal as I tried to savour it, the last couple of weeks it was a Sunday morning with nutella, toast & tea read. There are so many little maps and squiggly sidenotes in the sidebars to take in it just took me longer to get through.

Who I WOULD NOT recommend this book to: People who can't remember what it's like to be an angst filled 12 year old.

Who I WOULD recommend this book to: My mom and sister. They'll read anything! (Ha! Kidding) People who appreciate long words and descriptions. Anyone who likes to use their imagination.

What I used for a bookmark: Gift receipt that came with the book.

What did I like about the book: T.S.'s description of his life in Montana, pictures and maps he draws of people or places or sounds. The way he describes adults and analyses their fake facial expressions. And Oh! The story his mother wrote in her journal that he reads on the train in the Winnebago. (I'd read her book for sure!)

What I didn’t like about the book: The end felt rushed. I wished there was resolution with his mother or the Smithsonian. And those weird Megatheriums.

Expectations Going In: Great expectations; they were lived up to up until the last chapter (but I feel that way about most books).

Cannarf Rating: Worth a read! I am glad I got it for Christmas (thank you)!
The Rating: +5 cannarf.

Birthday party!

I've been invited to a birthday party not happening for six more weeks... for the kid next door. She's turning 18, and apparently her parents and their friends are all going to be at the bar waiting for her to be allowed in at the stroke of midnight. Her parents believe I am one of their friends but I believe she knows better...

Last year, for her 17th birthday, her parents allowed her to have her boyfriend sleepover for the first time.

For New Years this year they had a supervised under-aged drinking party for the hoodlums.

Keeping the neighbourhood classy! Awesomesauce!