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Subject:Almost OT: Re: (Zachary) tayloring (mini-rant) From:Matt Ion <soundy -at- SOUNDY -dot- ORG> Date:Mon, 8 Mar 1999 10:26:32 -0800
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999 09:49:43 -0500, Scott Havens wrote:
> It never ceases to amaze me how many contributors to this list
>make systematic errors that any grade school student should be able to
>recognize and avoid.
<RANT="mini">
If you visited the house of an electrician you wanted to hire, and saw
loose lighting fixtures, live wires hanging out of the walls, splices held
together with black tape... you would think twice about hiring that
electrician. Same thing if you went to the house of a plumber and saw
water squirting out of cracks in the wall. An "artist" may be able to get
away with throwing some cans of paint at a canvas and calling it a
"masterpiece", but you'd never hire a house painter that did his house in
that style.
How many people contribute regularly to this list? A couple dozen? Maybe
a couple dozen more who post sporadically? Meanwhile Eric claims how many
hundreds of subscribers (not including those who read it via USENET who
cannot be counted)? How many of those may be potential employers? They
could pick up far more about your work, your attention to detail (even
when it seemingly isn't important), and especially how well you deal with
people just from reading this list for a couple of weeks, than they could
from any resume and/or cover letter, or even from an interview, all of
which you've carefully prepared to present the "right" image at the right
time.
I welcome any attempts to pick apart this post; I'm not running a
spellchecker, grammarchecker, or any helper of the sort. I just crawled
out of bed a half hour ago and have a touch of a fever today, so if my
fingers slip and transpose a couple of letters, it's maybe understandable.
I'm striving to make sure though, that it speaks well of my abilities,
because I never know if my next potential employer may be reading it.
Now... can't we all just get along?
</RANT>
Your friend and mine,
Matt
<All standard disclaimers apply>
"Reality is in alpha test on protoype hardware."
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It is impossible to rightly govern the world
without God and the Bible.
- George Washington