To start, I should disclose that I despise online job applications, partly because of the uncertainty regarding whether or not the company being applied to recieved the application, and partly because of the negative attitude toward employees it displays.
I have been looking for a job, and while some have been obnoxious about how long the process was, so far, petco was the worst. Their online application was so bad, that after a half hour of trying to fill it out, I gave up. This was their process for entering something so innocuous as the state and country of employment was arcane to be nice. They expect an applicant to guess the proprietary code they use for a particular entry, and do not use a drop down menu to aid an applicant in entering the data, which is mandatory....
This might be fine if it were some sort of contest where the winner was showered with treasure and fame, but it is not, it is just a job, and not one where the pay is all that great. by having such a process, and requiring any applicant to go through it, it shows that the company does not care about their employees. This means that it is likely to be a place where an employee is subjected to mistreatment, since they make an applicant go through an arduous process simply to let them know that the applicant is interested in the job.
If the situation were reversed, the employers would be flooding congress with lobbyists petitioning for new laws easing their ability to find employees, yet, we are forced to go through stress and storm just to tell them our previous work experience.
We need to tell them that they are not paying enough to act this way. I certainly will not be shopping at petco, seeing as they treat applicants this way.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Some rules for dealing with trolls....
So, after wandering the 'net for a bit, I have aquired a certain hatred for trolls that rivals Thorrs. Now, I don't mean people who troll in a cheeky way, or even those who troll the trolls. The first is really more pranking, which can be funny, and the latter is giving an ass their comeuppance. what I am talking about is the jagoffs who either say stupid shit and then claim they were trying to provoke a reaction, or those who are truly just trying to piss people off.so, here goes:
Rule 1: Never feed the trolls.
This does not mean do not react to the trolls, but more do not play their game. Do not try to convince them of their error, do not argue with them, and above all, do not show your anger. this is because you cannot fight stupid with stupid. That path only leads to dissapointment, and Yoda told us wher dissapointment leads....
Rule 2: Trolls cannot abide their reflection.
One way to get a troll to quit their bullshit is to troll them back. One caution here is that you must not only follow rule 1, but you must be cheeky and intelligent when you troll a troll, otherwise they will become confused. When trolls are confused, they get enraged, and are likely to charge....
Rule 3: If you have to take a moment to determine if they are trolling, or if they are just that stupid, always treat them as if they are that stupid.
This rule is for a few reasons. If someone is deliberately trying to provoke a reaction by saying something incredibly stupid, talking to them as if they were a simpleminded child will make their attempt at trolling blow up in their face. IT is also because trolls are generally not too bright when they are using such an obvious tactic to provoke a reaction. Plus, it is fun to simultaneously talk down to someone by using small words while demonstrating that you are more than capable of using polysyllabic words.
Rule 4: If someone says something that is ignorant,offensive, or both, and later claims to be trolling, call them out.
Yes, I am advocating the nuclear option, it is the only way to be sure. This is because people who are far less intelligent than they think they are have a habit of saying incredibly dumbass things. This habit, in turn, has the unpleasant result of people flaming them for their monstrously poor judgement in saying something the rest of us know to keep to ourselves. Well, these folks have it in their head that they can claim that they were " trolling," or the internet version of " I was only kidding," or " can't you take a joke." Well, I believe that if you have to tell someone it was a joke, it wasn't. So light these asholes up, go thermonuclear, hell, use the neutron bomb if you got it. Call them out as being full of shit, and tell them that what they said was intentional, and that you are truly offended that they would say such a thing, even as an attempt to troll people, hell, make up a long, deeply personal story about how whatever they said affected you/ affected a loved one/ brought up a bed memory, or for sheer force ofmaking them feel like an asshole, how their offensive post triggered memories so traumatic that you started wetting the bed again. Or simply put, make it your mission to make them feel like such a degenerate lackwit for attempting to pass off their inability to use the " would I get punched in the face for saying this" filter that they stop posting for at least a week.
Rule 5; Have a sense of humour.
While trolls are obnoxious, degenerate, basement dwelling morons who give morons a bad name, don't take them too seriously. This deprives them of food, and keeps your blood pressure down. Plus, I f you have a sense of humour about the troll, you can have fun at their expense....
Rule 1: Never feed the trolls.
This does not mean do not react to the trolls, but more do not play their game. Do not try to convince them of their error, do not argue with them, and above all, do not show your anger. this is because you cannot fight stupid with stupid. That path only leads to dissapointment, and Yoda told us wher dissapointment leads....
Rule 2: Trolls cannot abide their reflection.
One way to get a troll to quit their bullshit is to troll them back. One caution here is that you must not only follow rule 1, but you must be cheeky and intelligent when you troll a troll, otherwise they will become confused. When trolls are confused, they get enraged, and are likely to charge....
Rule 3: If you have to take a moment to determine if they are trolling, or if they are just that stupid, always treat them as if they are that stupid.
This rule is for a few reasons. If someone is deliberately trying to provoke a reaction by saying something incredibly stupid, talking to them as if they were a simpleminded child will make their attempt at trolling blow up in their face. IT is also because trolls are generally not too bright when they are using such an obvious tactic to provoke a reaction. Plus, it is fun to simultaneously talk down to someone by using small words while demonstrating that you are more than capable of using polysyllabic words.
Rule 4: If someone says something that is ignorant,offensive, or both, and later claims to be trolling, call them out.
Yes, I am advocating the nuclear option, it is the only way to be sure. This is because people who are far less intelligent than they think they are have a habit of saying incredibly dumbass things. This habit, in turn, has the unpleasant result of people flaming them for their monstrously poor judgement in saying something the rest of us know to keep to ourselves. Well, these folks have it in their head that they can claim that they were " trolling," or the internet version of " I was only kidding," or " can't you take a joke." Well, I believe that if you have to tell someone it was a joke, it wasn't. So light these asholes up, go thermonuclear, hell, use the neutron bomb if you got it. Call them out as being full of shit, and tell them that what they said was intentional, and that you are truly offended that they would say such a thing, even as an attempt to troll people, hell, make up a long, deeply personal story about how whatever they said affected you/ affected a loved one/ brought up a bed memory, or for sheer force ofmaking them feel like an asshole, how their offensive post triggered memories so traumatic that you started wetting the bed again. Or simply put, make it your mission to make them feel like such a degenerate lackwit for attempting to pass off their inability to use the " would I get punched in the face for saying this" filter that they stop posting for at least a week.
Rule 5; Have a sense of humour.
While trolls are obnoxious, degenerate, basement dwelling morons who give morons a bad name, don't take them too seriously. This deprives them of food, and keeps your blood pressure down. Plus, I f you have a sense of humour about the troll, you can have fun at their expense....
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Seriously, do some basic math before posting.
http://cheezburger.com/7517732096
Crap like this pisses me off. Not only does it show a lack of basic mathematical comprehension, but a lack of an ability to perform basic reasoning.
To break down the word problem so it is simply understood, here is the formula they are communicating, before simplification:
((2N+6)/2)-N)=3
This simplifies to:
(2(N+3))/2)-N = 3
which simplifies further to:
(N+3)-N = 3
Which simplifies further to......
3 =3
This is not some sort of revelation. it is so basic that any child old enough to understand language can understand it. Yet, this is the sort of garbage thinking that is so prevalent in social media, and it gets reposted frequently without people stopping to think about what the math actually is saying. Please people, take a moment to do the math before you repost something like this, if you take a few moments, and use the rules for math we all learned in junior high, you won't see this as anything more than a lame attempt to get attention from someone who can't do basic math.
Crap like this pisses me off. Not only does it show a lack of basic mathematical comprehension, but a lack of an ability to perform basic reasoning.
To break down the word problem so it is simply understood, here is the formula they are communicating, before simplification:
((2N+6)/2)-N)=3
This simplifies to:
(2(N+3))/2)-N = 3
which simplifies further to:
(N+3)-N = 3
Which simplifies further to......
3 =3
This is not some sort of revelation. it is so basic that any child old enough to understand language can understand it. Yet, this is the sort of garbage thinking that is so prevalent in social media, and it gets reposted frequently without people stopping to think about what the math actually is saying. Please people, take a moment to do the math before you repost something like this, if you take a few moments, and use the rules for math we all learned in junior high, you won't see this as anything more than a lame attempt to get attention from someone who can't do basic math.
Monday, May 27, 2013
This pissed me off
http://cheezburger.com/7497542912
What is wrong with people, I don't know who pisses me off more with this crap, the mother who is failing to teach her daughter the difference between advertising and '"tricking people," or the jagoff that thinks that the opinion of a nine-year old has the experience and objectivity necessary to be taken seriously.
First off, the little girl's mother is supposedly some sort of 'food activist," which at this point in my life means " Ill informed, anti-business jackhole who wants nothing more than to dictate to others what they may be permitted to place in their mouths." I can't stress this enough: Anyone who teaches their kids that McDoogalss is the bad guy for trying to interest kids in eating at their resturaunt, as opposed to the same parent who lacks the basic maturity and willpower to say no to the kid when the kid asks for a happy meal.
This isn't rocket science, it takes only one syllable to keep your kid from eating too much fast food: No. That's it. No matter how enticing the restaurant might make their food, the kid still isn't the one making the purchasing decisions.
What this means is that, if your kid is overweight because they ate too much McDoogals, it's not McDoogals' fault.
What is wrong with people, I don't know who pisses me off more with this crap, the mother who is failing to teach her daughter the difference between advertising and '"tricking people," or the jagoff that thinks that the opinion of a nine-year old has the experience and objectivity necessary to be taken seriously.
First off, the little girl's mother is supposedly some sort of 'food activist," which at this point in my life means " Ill informed, anti-business jackhole who wants nothing more than to dictate to others what they may be permitted to place in their mouths." I can't stress this enough: Anyone who teaches their kids that McDoogalss is the bad guy for trying to interest kids in eating at their resturaunt, as opposed to the same parent who lacks the basic maturity and willpower to say no to the kid when the kid asks for a happy meal.
This isn't rocket science, it takes only one syllable to keep your kid from eating too much fast food: No. That's it. No matter how enticing the restaurant might make their food, the kid still isn't the one making the purchasing decisions.
What this means is that, if your kid is overweight because they ate too much McDoogals, it's not McDoogals' fault.
IT'S YOUR FAULT!
Then there is the Asshat at Cheezburger that wrote the write up on the incident, gushing about how awesome this little girl was, and how she really showed the Ceo of McDonalds when she started spouting rhetoric. Not only was it a bunch of anti-coporate garbage masquerading ad health advocacy, but the author displayed a complete lack of scepticism at why a nine-year-old would have these opinions, opinions that are more like something an adult would say.
The fact that the author was gushing about the nine-year-old, as if her repeating tired rhetoric made her some kind of genius was disturbing. It bothers me because the author showed an inability to recognize that the girl displayed the very lack of critical thinking necessary to be a successful investigative journalist as the author claimed the girl had the talent for.
Ultimately, this boils down to an inability to recognize that any business has not only the right, but the responsibility to make their product as desirable as possible, and that parents have the responsibility to ensure that their kids are eating a healthy diet. To blame McdDoogals for your kid being fat is unfair to McDoogals, since they are simply trying to earn business, they do not have any magical powers to force you to eat there.
BTW, I took a break from writing this to do some running around with my friend, and he said that all the talk about cheeseburger made him want one, so we stopped by McDoogals and got a couple of dollar cheeseburgers. Sorry little girl, you lose this round.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
name calling is not an argument, and other thoughts.
To start, I wanted to rant a bit about the trend in calling people who disagree with a particular viewpoint "sheeple," "robots," "Brainwashed," or other pejoratives that imply that the person disagreeing is not thinking for themselves. This bothers me for two reasons, the first being that the simple act of disagreeing is an act of thinking for onesself, and the other being that such name calling is usually on the part of someone that isn't bothering to state an argument based upon facts.
Now, I strongly dislike the use of fallacy in argumentation, but using one fallacy to defend another just plain puts me in the sort of foul mood that makes what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah look like a minor hissy fit. This is because neither is really defensible, especially in the majority of cases where the second fallacy is being used to defend the sort of conspiracy theory that even the most dedicated wearer of tinfoil headgear sceptical.
I guess it boils down to a strong dislike on my part for people who fail to see the flaw in arguing that the absence of proof of something is evidence of that thing, and then expecting someone who asks for evidence that can be taken seriously to not get upset when their ability to engage in critical thinking is called into question for no reason other than they use their critical thinking skills........
Well, that can get into a fatal loop, and so I will opt to use the option where I move on to something else.
It has become a running joke that The Daily Show and the Colbert report are the best news shows around...
The sad part is that it is because the rest seem less interested in reporting news, and more interested in creating it. For example, Fox seems to have not gotten the memo about intentionally editing footage of speeches to change the meaning of the speech, as they seem to do it regularly. Then again, they might merely be having a problem where their cameras actually take footage of an alternate reality where their claims are real, and not paranoid fantasies of a global conspiracy to make them look foolish... Then again, how does that explain how they are unable to understand how everyone else has a different view?
Then there is Cnn, who is unable to figure out that we can see the bus passing behind one reporter's screen, to the next screen with a different reporter, all while they are commnicating theough a "satellite link." Apparently, on the planet that CNN reports from, it takes a satellite to communicate with people 50 feet away...
Local news isn't much better, between the puff pieces being reported as real news, and the condescending attitude they mistake for charm, it ends up as unwatchable.
At least Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert make no claims about being real journalists when they present the news...
Now, I strongly dislike the use of fallacy in argumentation, but using one fallacy to defend another just plain puts me in the sort of foul mood that makes what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah look like a minor hissy fit. This is because neither is really defensible, especially in the majority of cases where the second fallacy is being used to defend the sort of conspiracy theory that even the most dedicated wearer of tinfoil headgear sceptical.
I guess it boils down to a strong dislike on my part for people who fail to see the flaw in arguing that the absence of proof of something is evidence of that thing, and then expecting someone who asks for evidence that can be taken seriously to not get upset when their ability to engage in critical thinking is called into question for no reason other than they use their critical thinking skills........
Well, that can get into a fatal loop, and so I will opt to use the option where I move on to something else.
It has become a running joke that The Daily Show and the Colbert report are the best news shows around...
The sad part is that it is because the rest seem less interested in reporting news, and more interested in creating it. For example, Fox seems to have not gotten the memo about intentionally editing footage of speeches to change the meaning of the speech, as they seem to do it regularly. Then again, they might merely be having a problem where their cameras actually take footage of an alternate reality where their claims are real, and not paranoid fantasies of a global conspiracy to make them look foolish... Then again, how does that explain how they are unable to understand how everyone else has a different view?
Then there is Cnn, who is unable to figure out that we can see the bus passing behind one reporter's screen, to the next screen with a different reporter, all while they are commnicating theough a "satellite link." Apparently, on the planet that CNN reports from, it takes a satellite to communicate with people 50 feet away...
Local news isn't much better, between the puff pieces being reported as real news, and the condescending attitude they mistake for charm, it ends up as unwatchable.
At least Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert make no claims about being real journalists when they present the news...
Thursday, May 23, 2013
More thoughts on facts
Earlier this week, I posted an article relating to making sure to get your facts straight before reacting to news, and I thought I should elaborate, as it is an interesting subject for me, and hopefully I might change some viewpoints.
Part of what inspired the follow up article was watching Penn and Teller : bullshit, and the episode was addressing the subject of violent video games, and their alleged effect on violent behaviour. They presented a few facts that bear consideration, one was the idea that many of the people making the claim that video games create violent behaviour make their claim based in part on the notion that the games were present in the homes of those committing violent acts, and that idea was refuted by pointing out that since the games are extremely common, making such a claim is no more factual than claiming that toothpaste creates violent behavior since it is also as prevalent. another point they made was that prior to violent video games, there were still mass killings, one 80 years before video games were invented.
The point of this is, when someone is screaming that the sky is falling, and they cite a statistic, you should look for a context, and determine if the risk they are screaming about is real. That is, if after checking their statistic in context, and you see that the odds of the risk affecting you are astronomically low, there probably isn't a problem.
Part of what inspired the follow up article was watching Penn and Teller : bullshit, and the episode was addressing the subject of violent video games, and their alleged effect on violent behaviour. They presented a few facts that bear consideration, one was the idea that many of the people making the claim that video games create violent behaviour make their claim based in part on the notion that the games were present in the homes of those committing violent acts, and that idea was refuted by pointing out that since the games are extremely common, making such a claim is no more factual than claiming that toothpaste creates violent behavior since it is also as prevalent. another point they made was that prior to violent video games, there were still mass killings, one 80 years before video games were invented.
The point of this is, when someone is screaming that the sky is falling, and they cite a statistic, you should look for a context, and determine if the risk they are screaming about is real. That is, if after checking their statistic in context, and you see that the odds of the risk affecting you are astronomically low, there probably isn't a problem.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Relax, get your facts.
I was talking wit ha friend the other day, and the conversation went towards the subject of fact checking, and how so few people seem to bother with it. Maybe it's my being a bit too sceptical, but I tend to take the "pics or it didn't happen" view on a lot of the crap that gets posted online. This is to say, if it seems to be a bit shaky, filled with hyperbole, or belongs in the "tinfoil hat" section of a bookstore, I tend to disbelieve until I check the facts.
The process usually only takes a few minutes, and can prevent a lot of anxiety over a "news report" that makes an event seem like it is a horrific tragedy. For example, recently the Military reiterated it's policy regarding the use of rank for personal benefit as it applies to religious proseletyzation. They simply said that it would not be tolerated, as it was a clear conflict of interest. Many people who did not read the memo reacted to the statement as if the government was saying that they could not practice their religion while in the military, a position counter to what was actually said. These people got upset because they did not bother getting their facts, and believed someone who did not necessarily want to protray the statement in a fair light, since they were likely the very people encouraging the violations in the forst place.
Another example is as simple as the many e-mail scams out there, people get suckered by slick e-mails making promises that sound great, until you look into whomever is sending them, or whether or not the offer is even legal.
OR, to wrap it up in a nutshell, the best weapon we have against political manipulation and scams us to always check the facts behind the claims.
The process usually only takes a few minutes, and can prevent a lot of anxiety over a "news report" that makes an event seem like it is a horrific tragedy. For example, recently the Military reiterated it's policy regarding the use of rank for personal benefit as it applies to religious proseletyzation. They simply said that it would not be tolerated, as it was a clear conflict of interest. Many people who did not read the memo reacted to the statement as if the government was saying that they could not practice their religion while in the military, a position counter to what was actually said. These people got upset because they did not bother getting their facts, and believed someone who did not necessarily want to protray the statement in a fair light, since they were likely the very people encouraging the violations in the forst place.
Another example is as simple as the many e-mail scams out there, people get suckered by slick e-mails making promises that sound great, until you look into whomever is sending them, or whether or not the offer is even legal.
OR, to wrap it up in a nutshell, the best weapon we have against political manipulation and scams us to always check the facts behind the claims.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Can't sleep. clowns will eat me.
So, I decided to make a new blog, one where I talk about whatever is on my mind at the time, but not necessarily about any particular subject. Some of it might be funny, some might make you uncomfortable, some might seem boring, but here it is in it's unvarnished glory.
I am posting this post right now since I can't seem to get to sleep, so I figure I might as well use the energy creatively. I think this is because I am out of school and out of work, so I have too much time on my hands, and that gets rather disruptive for me. It is one area where I have noticed that my need for stability is severe, that is, if my life is such that i do not have things to do at particular times, and on a steady schedule, I tend to have problems with sleeping, either sleeping too much, or too little. If it goes on too long, it starts to cause me anxiety over my sleep, where I feel guilty about not sleeping the "right" amount, or at "appropriate" times.
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