Deus Ex. When I first played it I was amazed by the graphics and I specifically remember being impressed that your character was reflected in mirrors. I’ve been replaying it recently and the graphics are obviously very dated, but it also doesn’t run smoothly on modern hardware. My PC gets louder and louder as I play it and eventually the game starts to stutter and I have to restart it.

I would do a search for job listings that would be the jobs you would be applying for if you chose to leave your job or were laid off. Do the job descriptions list the certifications you are thinking about getting? If so, it might be worth pursuing, especially if you can get your current employer to pay for it.

For example, almost every project manager job lists PMP certification. If you are currently a PM and don’t have it, you might want it just in case you get laid off to improve your chances of getting a new job. Otherwise, you might be up against 10 other candidates with just as much experience, but 3 of them have a cert and you don’t even get a screening interview.

If you use this equipment frequently, try to quantify them on your resume to show you have experience. You can ask chatgpt for better wording, but you might have something like “unload 20-30 trailers per week using an electric pallet jack.”

Create a list starting out of everything you might want to tell a future potential employer. The original list can be messy and have awkward wording, but try to list all of the useful skills you have and wherever possible, quantify your impact. Once you have that, then go to your AI of choice and practice some different prompts to see what kind of results you get. You’re not going to get a great or even necessarily accurate resume on your first try, you have to put in some effort to edit and re-prompt for improvements. Here are some possible prompts to play with starting out:

• “You are an experienced recruiter helping me craft a resume to get a job in a warehouse. Review this list of experiences and recommend better wording to show that I have the skills to be an effective warehouse employee.” <paste your list that you created>

• “For this experience, recommend how I can quantify my impact to show that I added value.” <paste a bullet that you want to improve>

If you find a job description that represents the kind of job you want, you can also provide that to your AI friend to get even better results. Something like this:

• “Using the following job description recommend changes to my resume that better reflect the role.” <paste the job description>

Once you’re done editing your resume to fix any errors the AI gave you or to change the wording to be a better reflection of your writing, you can paste the resume in again and ask for a final review.

• “Review my revised resume to improve readability and recommend any changes to better fit the job description.” <paste your updated resume>

The first time you do this, you’ll probably think “wow, this is so much better than what I started with” or possibly, “this is garbage, it’s making things up that aren’t even true.” Either way, if you keep playing with it, you’ll start to get a feel for a good balance of words that reflect your experience, but also connect well with job descriptions for jobs you’re interested in. Or maybe you’ll get lucky and get a job offer right away and not have to think about it again for years!

Some bonus prompts for when you get an interview:

• “You are an experienced recruiter helping me prepare for a job interview. I have an upcoming interview with a <recruiter/hiring manager>. Based on the job description, what are 10 questions they are likely to ask me. Explain what the purpose of the question is.” <paste the job description>

You can take it another step and provide your resume and ask it for suggested answers to the question. Careful here though because you don’t want to try to memorize the answers. And finally, you should always ask questions in an interview (ALWAYS), try this:

• “What are some questions that I can ask in the interview to show that I am engaged and very interested in the role?”

Good luck with your job search!

At my old company we would ban customers that were repeatedly abusive to customer service agents. Agents had the right to hang up on customers that were being abusive and if the same customer kept getting reported, eventually they would receive a letter from the legal department telling them to stop. If it continued, they would get banned.

I remember one guy was so bad that a director got the phone system to automatically route any calls from him to his mobile line and put him in his phone book. He would very politely greet him by name as soon as he picked up the call to make it clear that he wasn’t ever going to get through to anyone else.

At a prior employer, we noticed that there were many customers getting essentially free service ($100-200 per month) by calling customer service hundreds of times per month and asking for credits for all sorts of things. They were generally very nice and just picked up $5-10 credits until their service was free. Beyond the free service, they were costing the company the expense of the service calls.

We started routing all of them to a small group of agents and flagged the accounts so the agents would deny them pretty much every time. It was kind of funny because we didn’t tell them anything changed, but you could see that some of them noticed because they started asking which call center they were talking to. They would immediately hang up and call back over and over and just keep going back to the same place. Eventually most of them gave up.

Note: nobody here would/should feel sorry for this particular company, but I still thought it was funny to see these scammers get mad that we caught on to the scam.

I joked recently that I should put a ruinously large bet on Trump to win the election. That way, if he wins, I’ll get a huge payout, which will soften the blow a bit. If Harris wins, I’d be broke, but at least I’d be happy that Trump lost.

Worst book I’ve quit is Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. What a horrible book!

Worst I’ve finished is Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, immediately followed by Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I’ll throw in a special mention for The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby. All terrible books that I finished only because they were required reading in school.

So, is nvidia the cisco of this cycle?

I interviewed for a job recently and asked why the position was vacant. They said the previous person died. I didn’t have the courage to ask if the death was work-related though.

I once had to post a position that was specifically made for my employee, but my recruiter was awesome. I told her there was no possibility I would pick anyone else, so she suggested I make the requirements hyper specific. So, I met with my employee and we worked up a list of 10-20 things that she had done in her career and put them all in as requirements to qualify.

I received no other “qualified” applicants, so I only had to interview the one. My next meeting with her I said, “this is your official interview, do you have any questions for me?” She said “no” and I congratulated her on being selected for the role.

Same. I have a fence that’s barely still standing now that I removed the ivy. I’ve been pulling it and spraying it for several years now. I know I’ll never win, but I’m doing my best to keep it in check. The most painful part is when I go to garden centers and see it for sale. It makes me want to cry.

Wish listed! Also bought Be a Rock, I look forward to being a rock later tonight, it sounds fantastic!

When I was in the office, always metal. At home I’m more likely to listen to classical, but still metal if I need to be totally focused.

I put on music, preferably with full coverage noise canceling headphones to block as much outside stimulus as I can. Depending on the mood, I might put on something soothing (listening to Sean Townsend on YouTube right now) or I might go with metal.

If you are in US K-12 education and have a diagnosed condition (depression, anxiety, autism, etc.), you can have your parents request a 504 plan with the school. This requires the school to make reasonable accommodations for someone with a disability or illness that makes it difficult to be successful otherwise. When my daughter was suffering with anxiety and panic attacks, we worked with the administrators to setup safe places where she could go to calm down. The teachers were required to let her go any time she needed a break from the classroom.

I can definitely ID 2 mosses: long moss and short moss.

In my experience, most men wearing business casual dress very poorly. I typically see ill-fitting khakis, boxy shoes, and a polo shirt (frequently a polyester golf shirt). Companies that have moved to casual dress (jeans) have done the world a favor by letting these poor guys wear jeans and sneakers (still the polos though…).

Same, I actually use a french press and then pour the coffee into the insulated carafe from my dead coffee machine to keep it hot until I finish it.

I’ve noticed this with my kids’ schools. Many kids are open about who they are - LGBT+, neurodivergent, mental illnesses, etc. - and people are generally accepting of that. When I was a kid, people were bullied relentlessly for showing any form of difference from “normal”. It makes me happy to hear them talk about things like that like its no big deal…because it shouldn’t be.

https://www.positive.news/

This site usually has some good stories worth checking out.

Strange Horticulture…I’m probably fine.