in the realm of the fictionman

Two Traveling Angels

From an email:

Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a wealthy family.The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the mansion's guest room. Instead the angels were given a small space in the cold basement. As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it.

When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied, "Things aren't always what they seem. "The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor, but very hospitable farmer and is wife. After sharing what little food they had the couple let the angels sleep in their bed where they could have a good night's rest. When the sun came up the next morning the angels found the farmer and his wife in tears. Their only cow, whose milk had been their sole income, lay dead in the field.

The younger angel was infuriated and asked the older angel how could you have let this happen? The first man had everything, yet you helped him, she accused. The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and you let the cow die. "Things aren't always what they seem," the older angel replied. "When we stayed in the basement of the mansion, I noticed there was gold stored in that hole in the Since the owner was so obsessed with greed and unwilling to share his good fortune, I sealed the wall so he wouldn't find it." "Then last night as we slept in the farmers bed, the angel of death came for his wife. I gave him the cow instead. Things aren't always what they seem."

Boom, boom, boom...

So yesterday I went to a Pow Wow at Aurora University. It was at the same time an exhibit of Native American drumming and dancign, and a craft fest for a mix of hand-made and mass-made trinkets. Some trinkets were very cool. Others were made in China and the things you expect to see everywhere jewelry is sold.

A couple of vendors were selling jewelry made of animal claws. One particular bear claw necklace caught my eye. It's now part of my hat. The one in the picture up top.

In Canada I found a white loon feather that I stuck in the band around the hat. Now there's a claw from a bear on it as well. I was reluctant at first, wondering if it was too much. Lissa (a friend who was also there) agreed that it was cool, so that cinched it. It needs a few stitches to get it permanently in place. Once that's done I'll have Amy get me a picture to post. Shouldn't be too hard to arrange...

In other news, I had one of those odd celebrity moments today at the grocery store. I went by myself while Jareth was napping and Amy was doing more of the not-feeling-good thing she's been working on lately.

Two of the register girls recognized me. "Where's that cute son of yours?" one of them asked. Yes, they recognized me because they adore my son, who I haven't brought in in quite a while. But he goes with Amy, so he's seen there often enough. Still, I wasn't expecting to be recognized as his father.

I came home and jokingly asked Amy what she's been telling them about me. On the other hand, she doesn't have to worry about me flirting there...

They all know I'm married... :-)

Your resume on Career Builder

Today I got the following in my email:

Hello,

I am very impressed with your background and experience. I would like to invite you to contact us to explore our career opportunity at my Des Plaines office for a professional sales position at Western-Southern Financial Group. Please call to schedule a personal interview. If you are not available at this time, please email me at [snipped] or call my office and ask for Scott Kaplan or any member of our management team and we will schedule and interview for you.

Location is as follows:
[snipped]

For more information please visit www.westernsouthernlife.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

Scott E. Kaplan
District Sales Manager

(I've stripped out the actual contact information.)
Now, I understand people use form letters for things like this. I've created such letter templates. And I even have a form letter for resume cover letters. Except I customize mine, so that each one is unique and personalized.

Not so Mr. Kaplan. Yes, I received your form letter. In fact, I received it twice (both copies had the same typo even). I guess that's what I get for posting two resumes. If you happen to read this, consider this me declining you.

You're welcome.

Brian

There's always a complication

I've been a bit slow in posting this month. I've been distracted by things. Work, vacation, the ShadowRun game that started on Saturday, a little bit of job hunting... The usual, I guess.

Quite a few lunch breaks have gone into prepping for the Shadowrun game. I'm the GM, and I tend to take that pretty seriously. Sometimes I get damn near professional about it. I have high expectations of myself, partly because I've done it for so long. In the first session of the game I had to get five players and their characters to get along and get a job done together. It had to be challenging enough to be engaging, but still easy enough that it wouldn't require them to truly depend on each other for their lives.

Often GMs will make the first mission something of a cake walk, a low-planning raid so that the characters can meet each other and see what each other can do. First-time players get to find out what their characters can do. That works, but the rest of the game depends on the players agreeing that they're going to become a team, whether there's a reason for the characters to group up or not.

I'm hoping that there's stuff in this first plot to bring them together as a team. They (eventually) came up with a plan, and pulled it off flawlessly. Basically everyone had a part to play. Of course, they're not as done as they think they are, and hopefully at the end the characters will feel drawn together as a team, so the players don't have to do it artificially.

But, it's time to go to work, so gotta end here...

710

Maybe I posted this before, maybe not. This was from an email, not actually me:

A few days ago I was having some work done at the local Ford Dealership. A blonde came in and asked for a seven-hundred-ten.

We all looked at each other and another customer asked, "What is a seven-hundred-ten?"

She replied, "You know, the little piece in the middle of the engine, I have lost it and need a new one." She said that she did not know what it was but this piece had always been there.

He gave her a piece of paper and a pen and asked her to draw what the piece looked like. She drew a circle and in the middle of it wrote 710. He then took her over to another car, which had its hood up and asked, "Is there a 710 on this car?"

She pointed and said, "Of course, it's right there.

We're Ba-aack....

Well, we're back. We got back about dinnertime last night, and then there was chaos and unpacking until bedtime.

Jareth was good while we were away and he was staying with my parents. He was upset when they left (they were waiting at our house when we got back, saving us a trip to go get him). He and they had so much fun...

The vacation was good. Some things went very well, a couple things were disappointing. But we're back.

Details later. I have to get ready for work and go. Tonight I have some jobs I need to apply for. If I get a chance I'll post more afterwards. Amy took scads of pictures. She'll probably post before I do... :-)

Vacation!

No posts for a few days. Will be in Florida.

Too simple? Heh.

Our anniversary is coming up. To celebrate, we're leaving Jareth with his grandparents and we're flying to Florida where it'll be highs in the 80s and lows in the 70s.

We have a flight out of O'hare around dinner time, which means getting there about 3:00. Which means leaving work today at 1:00.

We get back to O'hare about dinner time Monday. And in between? Sun, ocean front hotel room, big time relaxing.

Stress to bye-bye, at least for a while.

We're not taking the laptop with. We toyed with the idea briefly, but it wouldn't be a vacation as much, so home it stays.

I 'spect I'll have stuff to blog when I get back...

How's that again?

Here's part of the job listing for a CareerBuilder.com job listing:

In this position, you will work in a single specialized functional area: events, collaboration, agency, supplier development, creative development, campaigns, direct mail/circulation, merchandising, technology products, Touchpoint integration, peak performance, etc. You will complete research projects as well as analyze data, study customer market/sales segments and gather competitive intelligence data.

Um, yeah. I see the "single specialized functionl area" there. Its Marketing/Sales/Purchasing/Promotions/Merchandising/Market Rearch/etc.

Seems so simple, doesn't it?

I didn't think so either. I'll pass, thanks.

In other news, yesterday's picnic ended up not happening. We did the relaxing/playing inside/lazy bit instead. In other other news, my web server was screwed up this morning, but it's fixed now. 'Twas the same problem Amy was having, which also got inflicted on Quick Shtick Writing.

The Help Desk Stumped? and Mothers' Day Plans

First Amy fixes my computer so I can send e-mail. Now, there's some server thing screwed up that's preventing her from signing in to Moveable Type for her blog. So that's why no posts there the last couple of days.

In a little bit we're packing a cooler and taking Jareth to a park for a picnic. This morning Amy got French Toast breakfast in bed. Jareth went in there first, and then I brougth in breakfast. He sat between us mooching off both of us. Then we all sat on the bed for more than an hour hanging out and playing. Jareth mostly played with a bunch of bead necklaces inherited from Grandma Howard. Amy played with her camera taking pictures and videos... :-)

She got an extra battery for said camera as part one of the Mothers' Day gifts. Part two is waiting up on the kitchen table for her. She's just uploaded the videos from camera to computer and is laughing over at her computer watching them now. When she's done with that I'll probably drag her upstairs. Jareth's pretty quiet up there... Hurm. That could be a good thing or a bad thing.

Help Desk Amy

So for a while now I had been unable to send email. I don't know how long it was going on, but I think it started at least early during the weekend. There was a popup message telling me they weren't getting out, suggesting maybe SMTP wasn't set up right.

But I hadn't messed with anything. At first it was one address that wouldn't go through, but I could send to Amy fine. Then it was another address, and another, and then not even her.

So she spent most of yesterday being my help desk. Cleaning the computer up, upgrading things, checking for patches. It was frustrating her to no end. All my settings were just the same as hers, and she was working fine.

Eventually she found the solution. Apparently I now have to supply the password and user name to send email through our shared Earthlink account. She doesn't... just me. /shrug

So she didn't even end up blogging yesterday.

Thank you love!