cougar faţă cu reacţiunea social media.

(acuma, eu aş avea o vorbă cu "specialiştii" social media, apropo de munca lor groaznică, bazată pe realităţi şi inaccesibilă oricărui puştan de 12 ani cu conexiune la internet, dar nu despre asta este vorba aici.)

după 26 de ore de miercuri/joi, concluzia este următoarea: you people suck.

staţi ca limacşii pe facebook şi pe twitter toată ziua, apăsaţi f5 cu mandibula picată de plictis, vă băgaţi bărbia-n piept, bleojdiţi ochii în smartphone-uri şi tablete şi nu faceţi nimic, vă daţi like-uri reciproc la poze iola şi vă minţiţi în faţă şi-n carte că sunteţi frumoşi şi ce bine vă stă îmbrăcaţi aşa.

am 148 de urmăritori pe twitter. puţini ca muşuroaiele de cârtiţă în sahara. cam un vagon şi jumătate de tren. din ăştia, 6 (şase) au retweetuit o postare în care zic cum un om îşi caută un alt loc de muncă, adică vreo trei sferturi de compartiment de clasa a doua sau un compartiment de clasa întâi. nici nu cred că-s toţi ai mei.

am 1176 de oameni în listă (şi 28 de abonaţi) pe facebook. sunt convins că-s pus pe hidden de multe sute dintre ei, după cum îi asigur că şi ei sunt la mine, dar tot mai rămân câţiva. din toţi ăştia 1204 oameni, 15 au dat like/share la postarea în care zic cum un om îşi caută un alt loc de muncă. iar dintre ăştia 15, vreo 4 fac parte din ăia 6 de mai devreme, de pe twitter. iar de restul de 9 nici nu-s sigur că-s în lista mea sau printre abonaţi.

un total de 4 (patru) oameni au vorbit cu mine şi au fost dispuşi să dea cv-ul lui mai departe sau să-i recomande nişte posturi scoase la ofertă.

acuma, ştiu că vă e cu sictir să daţi like/share la postările şi chestiile pe care le fac eu. înţeleg perfect de ce sute de poze absolut bestiale din expediţia s&d în grecia (şi nu poze cu mine, neapărat) au scăpat neatinse de like-urile multora dintre voi. înţeleg şi de ce pagina de facebook s&d e scutită să apară în timeline-ul vostru. pricep şi de ce nu vă place cum şi ce scriu. vă ştiu pe mulţi (şi personal) suficient de bine încât să ştiu de ce gândiţi şi acţionaţi în felul ăsta, şi mă ştiţi şi voi destul încât să vă daţi seama că mă cam doare fix în cot. de-aia nici nu pun în postarea asta link-uri la site-ul de s&d sau la pozele din grecia.

ce trebuie să înţelegeţi este că povestea asta de acum nu mă afectează absolut deloc pe mine, ci pe un om pe care mulţi dintre voi îl şi cunoaşteţi şi vă e drag de el. faceţi, deci, un rabat de la politica voastră obişnuită de "screw it, nu-i dăm like lu' cougar" şi mergeţi oleacă pe partea în care un om cu nişte skill-uri în cv pe care aproape nimeni dintre voi nu le are (cel puţin, eu nu ştiu pe nimeni) caută să-şi schimbe locul de muncă unde este de 5 ani. iar coralfields.blogspot.com este singurul fel prin care ştiu că pot ajunge la mulţi oameni în mod rapid: scriu ceva, apăs pe două-trei butoane de propagare, îmi schimb statusul pe yahoo! messenger şi gata.

vreţi să ajutaţi dar nu vreţi să apar eu în toată istoria? copiaţi frumuşel informaţiile despre om şi scrieţi-le pe bloguri, pe facebook, pe ce vreţi voi. fără "via". promit că dau like, share şi chiar retweet.

A friend that works in IT wants a new place to work.

This post is new for me, for I am about to openly advertise someone in his search for a better work place. It's written in English because - let's be fair - Romanian people working in IT understand the language just fine and I would also like this message to go out to foreign managers or other working people of foreign descent. I'm a bit embarrassed by this post, because this guy deserves something more in the line of The Oatmeal, but I really don't have the skills for that.

So, here goes.

One small thing: I won't disclose my friend's name or his contact information (other than the fact he lives in Bucharest), because his current boss spends way - waa-hay! - too much time on Facebook (this is but one of the small reasons for which he wants to leave his current working place), and she might see this, so you can imagine the number of shites that would hit the fan if she figures out who I'm talking about. Also, for those of you who know our main character, please, like/share, but don't disclose his name. Thank you.

Now, without further ado, let's move on to the CV section:

WORK EXPERIENCE

2007 - present day: User Experience Designer

• Creation of functional mock-ups for e-commerce websites 
• Receiving requirements from French clients, interpreting, making suggestions 
• Building site maps, widget annotations so that the programmer can implement functional design 
• Constant communication with the designer and the programmer in order to deliver qualitative work on time. 
• Checking implementation possibilities and sharing this information with the client and the programmer 
• Define main structure of the pages

 2006 - 2007: Assistant Programmer

• Taking care of active forums
• Basic trainings on MS Office and Internet Explorer
• CD covers and presentations design 

IT SKILLS

• Axure RP (Wireframes, UI design) - advanced knowledge
• MySQL - intermediate knowledge
• XAMPP - intermediate knowledge
• Adobe Flash - intermediate knowledge
• Adobe Photoshop - basic knowledge
• Adobe Fireworks - basic knowledge 

FOREIGN LANGUAGES

• English - advanced
• French - intermediate 

PERSONAL SKILLS

• Great capacity of working under pressure
• Loyal
• Open to learning how to use new tools and learning new manners of doing things
• Open for sharing 

OK, now we all know that people usually write a bunch of bollocks in the skills sections: they are actually the ones who wrote the entire MS Office code, they're super work mules, visionary and revolutionary leaders, they're this close to tattooing the company logo on their butt cheeks to prove their loyalty and so on.

About his work experience and IT skills, let me just say that I have no clue what the bloody Queen Victoria's pantyhose Axure RP and XAMPP mean. Really, I have no idea what he does exactly and I don't plan on finding out, either. However, he's been working with this computery mumbo-jumbo for several years, so I guess he's modest when he says "advanced".

About his personal skills, I'm here to tell you that this guy puts his money where his mouth is. When he gets a project with a virtually impossible-to-meet deadline - his boss being incompetent enough to put him in this situation as often as she can -, he stays up late (and by late, I mean late, and I'm an eagle owl, myself), he wakes up at hours that would put roosters in shame, or he just loses the entire night over it. Bottom line, he gets the job done. Now, I'm not saying this so his virtual employer would know that he could do the same (don't be a bastard, virtual employer!) given his capacity to handle a ridiculously humongous amount of work in a ridiculously tiny number of work days, but as a proof of his determination. And the fact that he's been working in the same place for 5 years speaks of two things: his loyalty towards a firm that has been less than grateful to its employees (over the last year, pay checks were delayed for several weeks for no good reason - the firm's clients did their part and paid their fees in time) and the fact that he was indispensable to them - from an office full of people some years ago, only a handful still work there.

What can I say, he's the perfect employee. If I had a company that works with French, English, Irish, Scottish or American clients and uses Axure RP and XAMPP, whatever those are, I'd hire him in a heartbeat.

On a more personal level, he's one of the sharpest tools in the shed, has a black cat that's the coolest black cat on a two-mile radius, he rides his bike with tremendous joy, he's up for any new adventurous stuff, he provides for himself and his little sister since.. well, since before I ever met him, he presents one of the best, funniest and most clever trolling humour I've encountered in my funny clever trolling life (he is a redditor), and he fancies rock. And I don't mean Green Day, I mean Iron Maiden. And yes, he is also a gamer. Now, I'm going to stop here, because this is not a matrimonial ad (by the way, he's single).

For anyone interested in hiring my friend and in need of more specific information, please get in touch with me (coralfields@gmail.com) and I will put you in direct contact to him as soon as possible.

(Dude, when this comes through, you owe me a bottle of scotch from your first pay check.)

"It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK."

so, them 'muricans gots voting machineys.

here's a cartoon. four years ago.

here's the same cartoon. now.

and here's real life. now.

for those of you too lazy to open the second video on youtube to read its description:

My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work. There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.

I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active areas'. From the top of Romney's button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.

I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said "It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK." and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video. 

There is a lot of speculation that the footage is edited. I'm not a video guy, but if it's possible to prove whether a video has been altered or not, I will GLADLY provide the raw footage to anyone who is willing to do so. The jumping frames are a result of the shitty camera app on my Android phone, nothing more.

well.

earth soundtrack.

One November Sunday.

E cald. Sunt la plimbare pe plajă şi prin port de vreo două ore.

Două familii prietene la plimbare, cu odraslele. Una dintre odrasle, un băieţel de vreo cinci ani, ia o pietricică de pe jos. În secunda doi, taică-su se repede către el cu vocea aia repezită şi joasă de părinte care spune lucruri îngrozitoare: "Măi copile! Dacă se sparge acuma un geam undeva şi te vede cineva cu piatra-n mână *jap! peste mâna copilului înmărmurit, care scapă pietricica*, tu eşti de vină!"

Cum îţi baţi joc de o Bavaria 50: o botezi "El Comandante", îi frigi un steag al Cubei, zdrenţuit din fabricaţie, cu figura lui Guevara pe el, lipeşti pe ea abţibilduri de-un metru pătrat cu băuturi alcoolice şi în rest o laşi să ruginească şi să se depună toate porcăriile pe ea.

Fiinţele din regnul cu cruce ieşite la promenadă pe malul mării sunt de două feluri: a) corporatistele ieşite câte două să-şi deplângă cu volum ridicat problemele de cuplu şi b) piţipoancele ieşite în haită, cu tocuri, blăniţe, glet, agăţate de cocalarii aferenţi, îmbrăcaţi în ochelari de soare de lepidopteră, decolteuri, lănţişoare, blugi strânşi pe gambă şi şlapi (da, exact), veniţi cu toţii cu maşinile pe plajă să-şi facă poze studiate pentru hi5, cu câte un picior ridicat căprielnic.

Tare frumuşel e oraşul ăsta când e gol. Fără băştinaşi, fără turişti. Numai ţipete de pescăruşi.