It’s not you, it’s me

I’ve gotten a few responses in response to positions for which I’ve applied. Here’s one from the other day:

Hello Mark,

Thanks for contacting us, I apologize, but like so many companies in
the current environment we’ve had to put our hiring plans on hold
temporarily. I’m hoping we can open things up again in Feb or Mar. If
you’re still looking at that point it would be great to talk.

And this one came in today from a large software company in Cary:

Dear J Mark. Turner:

Thank you for your interest in employment at $LARGE_SOFTWARE_COMPANY. We appreciate your application for $POSITION. Because our business needs have changed, we are no longer recruiting for this position, and the opening has been cancelled.

These are phantom jobs. Job seekers get their hopes up but the job evaporates between the time its budgeted and the time its advertised. These phantom jobs are good for one thing, though: meeting the two-applications-a-week unemployment benefit requirements.

Shell game

I saw a “pulic” notice in the N&O’s classifieds today (link may not work as N&O web stuff is sometimes broken). It involves a minor change in the license for WRVA-FM 100.7, a.k.a. “The River.”

I generally don’t pay much attention to these things but this ad stood out its sheer length. Here’s the most interesting part (my emphasis):

The general partner of Capstar TX Limited Partnership is AMFM Shamrock Texas Inc., and its limited partner is Capstar Radio Operating Company. AMFM Shamrock Texas is a wholly owned subsidiary of Capstar Radio Operating Company, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of AMFM Texas Broadcasting, L.P. The general partner of AMFM Texas Broadcasting, L.P. is AMFM Broadcasting, Inc., and its limited partner is AMFM Texas, LLC, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of AMFM Broadcasting, Inc., which is wholly owned by AMFM Radio Group, Inc., which is wholly owned by AMFM Operating, Inc., which is wholly owned by Capstar Broadcasting Partners, Inc., which is wholly owned by AMFM Holdings, Inc., which is wholly owned by AMFM Inc., which is wholly owned by Clear Channel Communications.

Got that? Think the taxman does? Anyone still doubt that lawyers have ruined the entertainment industry?

NC IT job openings drop 30%

Ugh:

Job openings fell by nearly a third in November from the previous month to just over 2,000, according to the latest “IT Jobs Survey” from the North Carolina Technology Association and SkillProof, a national IT talent management and recruiting firm.

With 2,010 openings, the total is just over half the jobs available a year ago (3,910) and far fewer than those posted in November 2006 (4,450).

Taxing drivers by the mile

The N&O says that with gas-tax “revenues” plummeting, North Carolina General Assembly is considering taxing drivers by the mile. This is a brilliant idea, but not for raising “revenue.” I can think of no better way to show someone the folly of her long commute than by hitting her in the pocketbook.

If drivers begin to pay by the mile, I guarantee you they will drive less. This is healthier for the driver, the city’s sprawl problem, and the environment.

What its not healthy for is the state’s “revenues.”

One less vacant house

Friday evening I drove by the house behind ours, one that’s been vacant as long as we’ve lived here. It was being remodeled when we moved in, turning it from a crummy 1500sf house to a fancy-if-not-spectacular 1500sf house. That its price doubled during its month-and-a-half transformation didn’t help things.

Anyway, I saw a man in a shirt and tie on the front porch with a couple next to him. It looked like a real estate transaction had taken place. Sure enough, yesterday morning I heard the house’s heat pump running for the first time ever. I saw a man inside the house while I was out walking Rocket. I think we may have new neighbors.

I also think that its very encouraging that a house like that is no longer vacant. Though I don’t know if the new residents are renters or owners, its nice to be adding to the neighborhood. Especially during these tough economic times.

Weekend? What weekend?

Every day is a weekend day when you’re between jobs.

Woke up delightfully late after a good night’s sleep. After breakfast I took Rocket out for a run. With no bicycle, I might add. It was a shock to me as I haven’t been running for years, but it did feel good. When I stopped. Rocket was a hard-charger for the first half of the run but opted to slow to my pace after a while.

I got back from the run in time to shower before heading out to a birthday party for my friend Matt Pressley’s son, Conner. I enjoyed catching up with Matt and talking more to the parents’ of the kids there. In fact, some interesting things could come from this talk. So that was good.
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A penguin roosts in the Mac Mini

For over a year I’ve had my Mac Mini’s tiny 40 GB drive partitioned to dual-boot Linux one day. Yesterday was that day. While this may be nothing to those Intel Mac Mini users, to get my PowerPC running the latest Ubuntu was a bit of a challenge. There is no official Ubuntu release for the PowerPC: instead its a port. Also, each time I tried installing Ubuntu on this machine using our HDTV as a monitor, the HDTV would refuse to display anything from the Mini. Apparently, the video modes the Mini pushes while in Linux’s framebuffer mode were out of the range of my Toshiba flat-screen. So, a few days ago I tracked down the port of Ubuntu 8.10 for the PowerPC and borrowed my desktop’s monitor to see what was going on.

I also ran into a bug where the Mini’s ATAPI cdrom drive – the most common CDROM drive in the PC world – was not recognized. The solution is to switch to another virtual console (CTRL-F2, for instance) during the install and run modprobe ide-scsi.
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