First, I won't be updating the next couple of weeks. Back in mid-February.
I represented my company at a job fair on Monday afternoon, which was interesting. I heard later that we collected 107 resumes and 59 would be sent on to hiring managers. There were a few pretty amazing things I ran into. Having hand-written corrections on your resume is not a very good idea, for example. Probably the worst was the guy who had a 6 page resume with no white space and who, whenever I asked him a question, just pointed to his resume and said "it's all there." Another thing I noticed was the reluctance of a lot of people to answer the "what are you looking for" question. This is largely a problem for those fresh out of school and I suspect they're afraid of ruling themselves out by being too specific. But aerospace is a pretty big field and it really helps if you can tell me whether you are interested in, say, communications or propulsion, since that can help get your resume to the right person. There were a few promising people, so I suppose it's worth it for the company. Afterwards, I told my boss I felt more sympathy for his struggles to fill open slots.
The other thing I wanted to say about work is that it strikes me as inefficient at best if you make every single person in the company "upgrade" their software themselves, instead of having computer support people go around and do it for them. (The word "upgrade" was in quotes, because it involved Microsoft Office, for which change is rarely an improvement.) The process took well over an hour (during which I unpacked another of the boxes in my office, so have just one to go) and during much of that time disturbingly little seemed to be happening. The most annoying part of that is that it seems to have changed some file locations, so I have to reconfigure another piece of software I use frequently, which relies on Excel for plotting outputs. A minor annoyance, but that doesn't make it any less irritating.
My other minor annoyance, by the way, involves the debit card that goes with my flexible spending account at work. I attempted to use it to pay for two prescriptions on Friday and it was rejected. So I called Aetna's customer service. Which is annoying because they use this voice recognition system, which is something I've railed against in the past. I did eventually get to a human being, who first insisted I must have not activated my card. He made me go through the activation process again, before he'd believe me. Eventually it turned out that the card is set up so you can do only one co-pay at a time. So if you pick up multiple prescriptions, they apparently have to swipe the card for each one. I swear that there is nothing in anything they sent me that told me this. I even went back and looked at all the material and it never mentions that limitation. I also found out that I can't use the debit card for dentistry at all. So it is, essentially, bloody useless, and no improvement at all using my credit card (which, at least, gives me frequent flyer miles) and submitting reimbursement forms.
My weekend was far less frustrating. There was a Volksmarch in the Ballston section of Arlington yesterday. The weather was good, so I decided it was a good time to get in the first 10K of the year. While I was registering, I ran into a woman I'd met at the Savannah walking weekend last year. Claudette was there with her niece, Monica, and the three of us ended up walking together. The walk itself was not a spectacular one, since it just went past a lot of semi-suburban houses, with a few sections on paved trails. It was hilly enough to be a good workout. We had a nicely compatible pace and good conversation, too. Monica, who doesn't walk for credit, was amused by the large assortment of special event books I have. (This walk, however, just gave me event credit and distance.) I came home thinking about planning a few weekend away walking excursions.
My other big accomplishment of the week was finishing a charity crafts project. I am totally in love with the color combinations Paton's has in their classic merino wool. The downside is that I ended up buying more of it, which doesn't help in the "my den contains the equivalent of at least three sheep" problem. But it's still absolutely gorgeous yarn.
Copyright 2007 Miriam H. Nadel