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I thought the same thing. Monster emails are almost entirely spam anyways. I mean, they may have been relevant a few years ago (that's being charitable) but I've never had anything but crap from them.

Seconded. Monster is an advertising vehicle, not a job board -- not anymore, at least. I've been trolling Monster for about 7 years now, and while I have had many many interviews, I have received about 10,000 spam messages from recruiters from all over the world. I do UNIX systems administration.

Here's a fun trick, which I recommend for those trolling for recruiters:

[] Sign up with El Jobboard
[] Include superfluous keywords. I have a big block of text at the bottom with a ton of UNIX and systems keywords.
[] Update your resume every Monday or Tuesday. Insert a space. Remove a word. Anything to get your resume 'updated'.
[] Do the same with the other job boards, once a week.

You'll receive tons of email from various recruiters offering you jobs from anywhere and everywhere. Most of them are bunk, which I discuss at one of my projects (shameless plug) Recruiter-Rater. I get offers from modeling agencies, insurance sales, and other completely unrelated stuff. I passively milk the jobboards for new recruiters to post about, as do a few of our other regular users.

Otherwise, Craigslist is the way to go, if you are *actually* looking for work.

I also have the similar experience -- in a place where I match a job description perfectly, the HR person will not quite understand what s/he's hiring for, and disqualify me, and possibly other candidates. I've also seen many many many many recruiters who are 'playing the numbers' with candidates -- they will blast out an email to 500 people that show-up in a Monster search, and not really put all that much effort into filling their req. Lots of this and other kinds of treatment from the recruiting and HR sides, forced me to put together a web-based list of recruiters, Recruiter-Rater.

In the same vein, Recruiter-Rater is a site for rating recruiters, and for jobseekers (and HR professionals) to rate these agencies. Help fight jobboard spam!

As a long-time sysadmin, I've found it hard to keep steady employment -- although I usually do startups and small dev shops because they're fun (if not so lucrative). One thing I've had a hard time with, is getting through all the job board spam -- I hate it!

I have my resume up on monster -- clearly as a sysadmin. I get messages about insurance sales, modeling, marketing, and Amway-style multi-level-marketing jobs. Also, there are recruiters up there harvesting resumes, with no actual jobs. I got so mad that I had to do something about it -- so I did.

Recruiter-Rater is a rate-your-recruiter type of website. Have good dealings with a recruter? Please post about it, we'd love to hear your success story. Got a recruiter repeatedly wasting your time? Post about that too. Bad recruiters need to be shamed out of existance, and good recruiters should see their commissions increase.

Seriously. I would get an email about a job in my area. I'd apply, send-in a resume, sometimes talk to the guy on the phone -- and never hear from them again, until they have another req, starting the cycle again.

I've been at this job-hunting game for a while, and just recently I've almost completely given up as a wage-slave, except that I still need money to live. Of course, being here in Pittsburgh certianly does *not* help, but it is easier to be broke and still live pretty well here, than it is to be broke and live in places like Boston.

Job postings that require security clearances are usually government jobs, possibly as a contractor, which (obviously) requires it.

I popped up because there are not many government contracting agencies on the website, Recruiter-Rater which deal with government agencies. I invite Slashdot readers to post some, and help weed out the spam, scams, and bad recruiters.

Umm...

Right-click. "Save As".

Oh, that's easy if you have maybe 10-50 images in Flickr. Try that with... oh, I guess I only have 200 photos in there. I guess this is why people have the paid accounts. Otherwise, Gallery seems to work okay, even if it misses most of the Flickr features.

Yes, there are lots of bad recruiters out there. I got so upset with the incompetence and wasted time from bad recruiters, that I started a website to track who's good, and who's bad. Recruiter-Rater lets you find and rate technical recruiters -- before you send your resume. Think of it as a public access recruiter database, without any marketing information. Users are free to post recruiters, post comments, and of course, rate them.

hehehehe! I live *in* Pittsburgh, PA, and there aren't many jobs here. This is why I moved to Boston for the dotcom funtime -- Pittsburghers were very slow to gain interest in the Internet.

That isn't at all to say there aren't some great high-tech companies out here, as there are a few. They're just not hiring. There's a list of almost all of the Pittsburgh recruiting agencies on (shameless plug) recruiter-rater.

Of course this is a shameless plug, but you can rate your recruiter and identify job board spam at http://recruiter-rater.zhrodague.net./

Of course this is a shameless plug, but you can rate your recruiter and identify job board spam at http://recruiter-rater.zhrodague.net./

As a terrible developer, I use Google to find the documentation I'm looking for to complete my projects. So, I see ads all the time. Not just on Google's site, but here on Slashdot, and even on my own sites.

Perhaps you, and others prefer to pay someone for your service. I may do the same, if it is convenient. Nobody's ramming free Wi-Fi down your throat!

Okay, so not for *hairy* lobster, but lobster none the less. Excuse the shameless plug, but I do have quite a few Lobster Recipes to choose from. You can add them to your recipebox. Don't forget the Old Bay Crab seasoning.

Well, you could advertise politely about where to get game ROMs in the appropriate forums. Not every advertisement or sig is SPAM -- at least I don't consider it as such. As an example, I could invite you to check out my kitchen cooking food recipe website, which helps me to figure out what to make for dinner. This may not be the most appropriate forum, but at least I can try to make an attempt at posting a link without sounding like a commercial. =_)

This is why I setup Recruiter-Rater -- to find and rate technical recruiters. There is lots of jobboard SPAM and SCAMs out there, and you can use this website to find out whether your recruiter is good or not -- before you send your resume.

Aren't all plugs shameless?

As a contractor working alot with recruiters, I found the best way is to keep track of who is good, and who is bogus. For this, I setup (shameless plug) Recruiter-Rater, as a way to find and rate tehcnical recruiters. Mostly I've done the posting, but other users have started to contribute their experiences. There really isn't another way to find out which gigs are SPAM, and which are valid, until you do some research, or compare with other people.

Or maybe you aren't qualified.

Sorry, it's been a while! I did mean to say m, not g, as in megabyte. Here's the vid. It is in a format of which I have no idea: http://www.zhrodague.net/~drew/images/fire2.avi

Same here -- lots of companies require certifications and a masters in something (even unrelated!!!). I have a GED.

When the HRC* asks about my education, and why it is not on my resume, I tell them that I am self-taught, and that I haven't had a chance to go to college yet. Some HRCs are rude, and then start treating me like a smelly homeless person who climed out from under a rock. The 'better' HRCs will move onto the next interview bits.

Some HRCs feel that they worked long and hard on their Bachelor's Degree in Psychology. They feel that unless you are properly homogemicated, that you just cannot function in life, and must not be able to function at their company. If this is the case with your interview, it is okay to send an email to the CEO, and tell him/her what an asshole their HRC is.

This happened at my last contract -- 4 month interview process, for a 3 month contract. The HRC wasn't all that excited to have an employee recommend me, and wasn't excited about not having found me herself. When I told her that I was self-educated, she started getting rude and insulting, "We have PhDs and scientists on our staff," she told me. I ignored this, and tried to be polite, and interviewee. Later that year, I applied for 8 or 9 jobs at this company, and was astounded that they hired only incompetent people in the IT staff, and not those qualified. So, I made fun of her publicly, and it felt good. Real good. When it got back to me that the HRC had read what I had said about her, what I heard was that she pointed fingers at other people, and made excuses. Now I laugh about it with the coworkers that I brought from there, to where I am now, and it's funny.

I know what it is like to be starving, and not be hired for a job you are perfectly suited for. This is why I fight back any way I can. I make it a point to not burn bridges, but when they're burned for you, why not raze it up a notch?

* Remember, childeren, the 'C' in HRC is for Cunt.

No, no, different Drew. I am Drew from Zhrodague. If this were a plug, I'd prolly do something like this.

No, no, different Drew. I am Drew from Zhrodague. If this were a plug, I'd prolly do something like this.

No, no, different Drew. I am Drew from Zhrodague. If this were a plug, I'd prolly do something like this.

Oh, yuck, dewd! Didja really have to offer those pictures? Hell, I have plenty of pictures, but none of them are like *THAT*. Ugh!

Very frustrating for me as a UNIX admin, and user. ALL, and let me put that in bold, ALL recruiters and HR people will only handle .doc resumes. Not a single recruiter or HR person I have ever dealt with (in 10 years) would accept a PDF, ASCII, or other formatted document. I find that fucking retarded, but it's something that we have to deal with if we want to eat.

Don't believe me? I have documented my job search. The best is when they send a blank email with a .doc attachment of the job description. That pisses me off too.

Drupal seems to be a far better CMS than PHPNuke was, I had created a whole bunch of websites using PHPNuke.

PHPNuke was great at the beginning, until kiddies started using the thing to send SPAM, post SPAM, and generally piss me off. Manual process to deal with that kind of crap.

Drupal seems to have a couple of modules that let you deal with SPAM, though I haven't investigated it enough yet.

I like how modular the code is, and I haven't needed to edit the Drupal code to make it do what I want, like I had to with PHPNuke.

We're working on changing WiFiMaps.com over to Drupal, and I've alrealdy converted Recruiter-Rater over, using a nuke2drupal conversion script -- quite painless!

Don't you mean Zhrodague.NET?

This is funny why I was moderated -1!

HOnestly, and truthfully, I do block all of china. Doing this, I just don't get the 700k+ SPAM emails per day -- they're blocked.

I also publish my blocklist at one of my websites. I really do just take his /etc/mail/access file, and add to it.

You moderators are fucked-up sometimes!

Count me in, I'd be happy to help build a fusion power plant, or even a testing facility. While I'm not such a great physicist, I am an excellent systems administrator!

I spent quite a bit of time unemployed. I applied to thousands of jobs (yes, really!), I rewrote and rewrote my resume, and called everyone I knew, and lots of people that I didn't. I spent two years searching for any job at all with a paycheck as my fulltime job -- and to no avail. I am a GNU/UNIX systems administrator, with 8 years (at the time) of contracting experience.

Here's what I learned:
[] Bad market - Boston (and especially Pittsburgh) was a bad market. No more startups, no more small companies hiring. Financial institutions will go through the motions, but won't touch me with a 10-foot pole (unix, not Microsoft).
[] HR Sucks - Fucking asswipe useless overweight blobs of shit, with absolutely no purpose on this planet except breeding and wasting other people's time - Total waste of an otherwise perfectly fine cubicle. If I didn't have 10 years of experience with Windows XP, they didn't want to talk to me, even for a unix-only job. Fucking sacks of shit.
[] Recruiters Suck - All recruiters suck. One or two out of a thousand are worth 10 times their weight in gold. Most recruiters call me for a gig, get my (really long, just the way they like it) resume, and then I never hear from them again, until they have another position to ask me about. Fuckers.

So, I gave up, took another toke from the bong, and put some of my skills to work on a few public projects. I learned not to waste my time kowtowing to other people's demands, when it wouldn't get me anywhere.

When you say that "uccessful people look for what they are doing right, rather then what they are doing wrong," that makes me mad -- when you have a second interview at a company, and never hear from them again (after repeated phone calls and emails to differnt people), how can you get any feedback to know what you did wrong? How do you know what you did right?

This is why I started Recruiter-Rater, where you can find and rate technical recruiters, and poke fun at them. At least I started to feel better about the jobsearch, and it earns enough to cover my pot habit!

That you, Josh? Dude, I remember when you showed me that Windows NT logo tattooed to your arm -- I couldn't believe it, and I teased you for it. I couldn't figure out why you had a multicolored serial port on the other arm, but I think you told me you had it covered up with a "balance" chip. Do you show those off at work? I guess they take you seriously, since you've been at Microsoft for a while. Here's that picture of me in front of one of those Microsoft signposts from my trip to visit a while ago. Anyway, rock-on, dewd.

Hiring at US$7.50/hr to do helpdesk support for Windows for old ladies with their dialup Internet. Must have 10 years of experience with Windows XP, IIS, Dell servers, and know how to fix our fucked-up Exchange server. Must be able to communicate the most absolutely complex and detailed computing concepts to people who don't care, and just want their email to work. Must have prior IT and management experience, even though you'll be the only one in the building that does any work at all. Must be familiar with different sized pieces of paper, and not get freaked out by them, printed or not. Please reply with a cover letter, resume in WORD format, salary requirements, and how soon you'll move to some ass place that nobody's ever heard of.

Fuck That Job Dotcom
recruiter-rater

Check out this, which has a utility which extracts URLs from Semacode 2D barcodes.

I used to be into PDAs, but the stupid bricks that are being pushed onto the market are obtuse, non-useful, and geared towards being sold, not towards usefulness.

I get far more usefulness from my old Nokia 3650 than I ever did from my fleet of Palms, PocketPCs, and others -- contact lists, calendar/alarm, games, news, and communication with other people.

I might like a Dell, though I'd use it more for wearable wardriving, than as a PDA.

Mod parent up.

Seriously. Why does a color screen become a feature? Yes, some people think that all they need is a color screen on their phone to be happy -- but there's nothing behind it.

I have to point people at things like Semacode, which is a really neat use for cameraphones -- it's a method of encoding a URL into a 2D barcode for printing. Shoot the barcode with your cameraphone, and the applet extracts it back into a URL for easy retrieval.

Also, you're right -- SMS is neat, but not neat enough to be a flagship product. We need data. I need to post my photos without paying my phone provider $.40 for each posting -- it's bullshit.

Oh, jeez. Over the last bunch of years, I have been starving -- no work to be had, few taking me seriously, and my finances went away. I couldn't even get a helpdesk position, with HR saying I wasn't technical enough. I've been passed over by construction-contractors-turned-IT-managers -- and I have one third of my life dedicated towards just UNIX administration.

So I finally got a contract, but the environment is not anything that makes sense from a UNIX perspective. A df -k produces 52 kilobytes of output, in less than 1g partitions. Nobody here has worked in any other environments, and has no experience with other systems, or other ways of doing things. Buracracy turns a simple one-command file-copying procedure into a 4-hour long Lotus Notes Attachment, FTP, and telnet nightmare of futility, and all keymappings are designed for 3270 terminals instead of vt100. I could go on for days, but you get the point. Oh, and I am not allowed to actually fix problems and misconfigurations, I have to work around them.

As a UNIX admin, working here is a grotesquely cartoonish environment, full of overweight soccer moms, and people who could not work anywhere else.

As a human with hunger, it's hard to turn down a paycheck, even if it is small.

However, I have a compromize -- I plan to work long enough to save enough money to live out the calendar year, and take the summer, and the year off. Yes, the WHOLE summer. I'll be working on my own projects, getting stoned at 9:AM, and doing things that you bound-by-chain office denizens only dream of -- enjoying myself.

I spent too many years only looking for work -- a wasted effort after the dotcom bubble. I spent too many interviews, and phone interviews kowtowing to these friar-tuck-haircut sporting, wide-load bearing blobs of useless cellulite. I have spent way too much time talking to idiot rectuiters asking me if I have DNS, SAN, or if I have TCIP, or if I have any Microsoft certifications.

So, being financially ruined actually makes my monthly expenses quite low. Barring any additional financial disasters, mid may is gonna be the perfect time to flip the bird, and enjoy zero stress.

Recruiter-Rater Find and rate technical rectuirers

I personally prefer to see recruiters fight to the death for my amusement!

This is the first post I've seen here about Verizon. People from Europe specify to get a prepaid phone, or to get unlimited text messaging, but if you have verizon, they charge you quite a bit.

I had Verizon for a month, and my bill was $340. I made local calls, occasional text messages. I had a $40 plan. Apparently, I blew through my minutes in the first week and a half, and they started charging me $.50/minute on the phone. I can't imagine how much money they would have charged me. Then when I call to cancel (already pretty irate), I was charged another $170 for cancellation fee.

I've had AT&T for quite a while now, and as long as you rotate your plan every other quarter, they've been okay. Cingular's support seems to be superior, and I welcome our new cellular telephone overlords.

Pictures from my 3650

Having been a consultant over the last 6 years, and an employee before that, I say that there are systematic problems in the corporations with their decision making, and mandates.

When it is policy to mutilate a system, and cause it not to function properly, of course the IT staff aren't able to perform their function! Enter the consultants, who recommend the same things that employees complain about in daily life, and voila -- the consultants look like heroes.

I've been on both sides, and it makes me want to no have anything to do with corporations -- except that they pay.

For those of us who are consultants and looking for our next contract, I have setup Recruiter-Rater in order to find and rate technical recruiters. Read some, post some.

As someone mentioned above, and I second: Thanks for the brainfood, Mandelbrot!

For years, I have been using Fractint, and generating fractals on my PC, usually for print. I prefer it's zebra pattern, and it's appeal when printed very large -- especially when you can take a magnifying glass to the resulting printed image for more fractal fun!

Every single hundredth of a stock option that I was ever offered, has proven to be $20 out of my own pocket. Most companies who offered me these weren't even around long enough for me to vest, or the company would "outsource" the department -- conveniently, just before the vesting period.

But what to do when a company is offering stock options? Since I'm looking for work, I just not and smile, rather than give them a piece of my mind.

Then again, it has been a while since I went on an interview. BRB, gotta send out another couple thousand job applications... I track and rate the recruiters I contact, shouldn't you?

I photo blog with my Nokia 3650. Unfortunately, the time the image was taken is not stored in the (non existant) exif headers, so sometimes the story is out of order. Check out my mobog posts and my personal posts for examples. Not quite a literary thing, but hey -- a picture tells a thousand words.

'96 Subaru Outback Sport, 2.2l.

Sucker rocks, I drove from Boston to Pittsburgh, and managed to chase a WRX through connecticut at 114mph (my top speed), I got 24mpg for that tank of gas.

Generally I see 28mpg average, but I put the googd gas in it. I go further on good gas in this car, than I do with el cheapo gas.

Sucker rocks.

Check it out, Zhrodague WiFi Mapserver is online, and almost ready for prime-time. We have a US map loaded, and more detailed maps for Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. Upload your netstumbler data, and see it plotted on the map. Part of the Pittsburgh Wireless Community.