A common piece of advice to job seekers is: Don’t focus your resume and cover letter on what you want; focus on how you offer what the hiring company wants. This advice also applies in reverse to a hiring company writing a job ad, but in practice, it’s almost never followed, which is why this ad for a position at the Irvine Public Schools Foundation (IPSF) jumped out at me:
HW Explains the U.S. Newborn Mortality Rate
Just in time for Mother’s Day, Save the Children has published its seventh annual State of the World’s Mothers report on newborn mortality.
As usual, the U.S. takes a beating:
My Dog Sends a Bark Out to His Mom for Mother’s Day
Hi Mom!
Happy Mothers Day!
I can’t believe another whole year has gone by already! Seven dog years! LOL!
My owners take really good care of me. They take me to the dog park here in Irvine almost every day. I am very loving, but when some dog at the park runs up on me and tries to get all dominant, I use my illegal ninja moves on him, especially if it’s a big dog, like a Great Dane.
You would be proud of me! Thanks for teaching me to always stand up for myself.
Miss you . . .
Love, Lightning
P.S. I wrote this post myself, but my owner helped me with the HTML.
P.P.S. Say hi to Dad.
— Lightning 
Meet my New Stockbroker
I’m looking at my brokerage account on the laptop, with my son, age 12, watching over my shoulder.
“I know your account number,” he says, reading it off the screen.
“I’m not sure how that’s going to help you,” I say.
“I can hack in and trade stocks,” he says. “‘It’s going up! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL! Now it’s going down! BUY! BUY! BUY! BUY! BUY! It’s going down some more! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL!’ It’s a trading frenzy! . . .”
The Cat in the Hat as a Management Consultant
This little tale, which appears to be a book for children, is actually a clever evocation of what happens to a corporation when a management consultant is hired by absent, clueless senior management to evaluate its organizational structure and to effect change. Beginning slowly, the Cat proceeds to take everything apart, make a total mess and get everybody in potentially the worst trouble in the world — all at no personal cost to itself. By the time the Cat leaves, it has frightened everybody, and very little has changed except the mind-set of the protagonists, which has been forever disrupted and rattled.
Better, Faster and Cheaper?
Somehow we’ve got it in our heads that every programmer in India is good, fast, and cheap, and every programmer in the United States is lousy, slow, and expensive. My theory is that for version 1.0 of a product, the maximum allowable distance between the engineers and marketers is thirty feet.
My Hair is Too Short
The girl at Fantastic Sam’s cut my hair too short. She was telling me about a car accident she had yesterday and I asked her, “Were you drunk at the time?”
“In the morning?!” she yelled. “Hel-lo!? I was drinking coffee!”
O-kay, like, overreaction! Probably in major denial mode, and does in fact have a serious drinking problem. And like I said, she took it out on my hair.
Who Doesn’t?
I Made a Mistake on the Hockey Jerseys
OK, I made a mistake on the hockey jerseys . . .
My son’s playing on a new team this season so I had to order new jerseys for him. They asked me what name I wanted to put on the back and I don’t know why, but I gave his first name instead of his last name.
It’s the only thing he talked about all weekend.
“I had my first name on my jersey in second grade!” he said. (He’s in seventh now.) “Does Steve Yzerman have ‘Steve'” — he draws out the “e” sound to make it sound extra ridiculous — “on the back of his jersey? NO! ‘GOAL, NUMBER 19! STEEEEVE!'”
Every time I tried to talk to him about something else, he’d look at me with a goofy blank stare on his face.
“Did you understand what I just said?” I’d ask.
“Does Teemu Selanne have TEEMU on the back of his jersey? . . .”
Private Military Companies Better Than the UN?
As the international community dithers over Darfur, private military companies say they’ve got what it takes to stop the carnage, if only someone would hire them.
Why is that not a good idea? Could they possibly do a worse job than the UN?
OK, you could raise objections regarding accountability and the responsibility of the international community, but . . .
”This came up a long time ago. People were saying that if we use private sector in the Congo, the international community will never get its act together,” says industry spokesman Doug Brooks. ”But that was 3 million dead Congolese ago. The international community isn’t going to wake up no matter how many people you kill. I think that it would be a good idea for the international community to get its act together. But we’ve got to find another way.”
The Dragons of our Lives
Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once brave and beautiful.
Why God Builds Gated Communities
I’m looking over this flyer for a church group meeting that my son’s going to next week. It’s being held at a member’s house in a gated community, so the flyer has directions, as well as an entry code for the security gate.
“Jesus wouldn’t like gated communities,” I say. “He was very welcoming to all people. This is racist. They’re trying to keep out blacks and Mexicans.”
The World of Make-Believe
I take my cell phone out of my pocket and notice that the battery’s gone dead.
“Way to plan ahead,” my son says, without looking up from his GameBoy.
How Homework Gets Done at My House
My son’s reading Catherine, Called Birdy for his 7th grade Language Arts class. The book is set in medieval England and written in the form of a 14-year-old girl’s diary.
“It’s got no theme, no plot, no flow, no fun, no nothing!” the boy says. “It’s gay!”
I sympathize with him — it reads like a 13th century MySpace blog — but that doesn’t change the fact that he has to read it.
“I refuse to read this book!” he says.
“You can’t,” his mom replies.
“I have a restraining order! Catherine has to stay 10 feet away from me.” And he tosses the book into the middle of the living room.
I look over at my wife . . . her eyes are now closed and she’s biting on her lower lip, accompanied by a slow, dramatic intake of breath, all of which suggests that clowntime is just about over . . .
Notes from the Asylum
My son’s on spring break and my wife — a moderately functional paranoid schizophrenic — is taking a day off to spend some time with him.
3 Former Titans of Industry Now Having a Worse Day Than You
- Ken Lay – On trial for conspiracy and fraud. Could get 20 to 30 years in prison. Not good if you’re already 64 years old.
- Scott McNealy – Following yet another dismal financial report, resigns as Sun’s CEO after 22 years.
- Sanjay Kumar – Former CA Inc. CEO pleads guilty in $2.2 billion accounting fraud, faces up to 20 years in prison.
Sun Microsystems Circles the Drain
Sun Microsystems Inc. said co-founder Scott McNealy will give up the job of chief executive to the No. 2 person at the company, Jonathan Schwartz, a historic transition for a computer maker facing stiff pressure to cut costs and boost revenue.
So long, funny man!
World of Warcraft
My kid’s explaining World of Warcraft to me . . . if I understand it correctly, it’s like an old-fashioned game of Capture the Flag, but with some killing. And yet as I’m watching him play it, it looks more like World of Running Pointlessly Through a Forest. There’s no warcraft, no nothing.
“Dude,” he says, “that’s because I’m at Level 6. When you get to, like, Level 19, there’s more warfare.”
“Maybe it should be called World of Jogging Aimlessly Through the Fields Picking Flowers Like a Girl Until You Get to Level 19,” I suggest.
“You don’t pick flowers, stupid. You quest.”
Card Games You Can Play With One Card
My kid had a deck of cards in my car last night and lost the king of hearts. Today, he searched the car and found it, but in the meantime, he’s lost the rest of the deck.
“Know any card games you can play with one card?” he asks. “How about Go Fish? ‘Got any kings?’ ‘Crap!'”
Another Reason Dogs Are Better Than Wives
Here’s how my wife describes me and the pug: an old man and a boring dog. But the dog doesn’t insult the old man, and that’s why the old man likes the dog . . .