Saki Blogs

Okay - well it's been a long, slow, drawn out blink... but

One of the most interesting things about the social activities of the past weekend was getting to and from them.

All over this area there are roads with water depth indicators on the side of them. After 13 years of drought - we were firmly of the opinion that these indicators were just there to rub the whole thing in (that and the "dry weather only" road signs). When you're wandering around in 45+ Celsius it's just taking the piss really - starts off mildly amusing and gets very irritating very quickly.

But this weekend those depth indicators actually worked as depth indicators. Bloody hell has it rained in these parts.

Now all the fording rivers and flooded roads, and splashing around in puddles, dodging rain and desperate searching for umbrellas is one thing - kind of reminds you that there's something going on.

But this dam is the same dam that we were rescuing fish from in the first summer we were here. It dried to a titchy little puddle at the bottom. This is a dam that the real estate agent estimated at 5 megalitres in size.

It's the same dam that we had the bank dug into the hillside to help get some run off into.

I think the next thing we'll be doing is rushing around stopping it from breaking it's bank and flooding the highway.

All the tanks are overflowing - including the one that we're using (and I will confess to some rather long hot showers recently).

The duck / chook yard is a mini mud lake and the Alpacas have spent so many days with rain dripping off their noses they are even starting to look more depressed!

But the rain has been astounding. So good for our baby apple trees - and not bad for morale. There's even been the tiniest bit of sacrilegious whinging about the rain. Gotta love the bush.

Okay so maybe I'm the only one that found that vaguely amusing, but this is a production I've been looking forward to and wind (gale really), rain (it turns out those water level indicators on the sides of roads aren't just the universe taking the wee-wee), and whatever else wasn't going to stop us.

http://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/whatson/2010/twelfthnight

We headed down to Ballarat on Friday night, dinner and then the play. And what a production.

It was absolutely fantastic.

Funny, clever, accessible, hilarious in places, sad, beautiful and clever clever clever. Wonderful, energetic, and incredibly versatile small cast, there was some astounding athletic, musical and sheer acting talent on display.

Set in modern day Australia, weaving the aftermath of bushfires into the setting, Twelfth Night takes part on a stage set with a pile of donated goods, and a little smoke affect, and a bunch of shell-shocked players who arrive in centre stage in the aftermath of ... something.

The pile of donated clothes is a centre point for the play - part staging device, part prop, part privacy screen for some very rapid simple costume changes, this production weaves the beautiful and funny words of Shakespeare with a most surprising collection of later day music - including in a particularly gobsmacking moment Throw Your Arms Around Me by the Hunters and Collectors. Honestly it was hard to not feel a tear in the eye at that point. But the high comedy was there - as was a real sense of the cast having fun - serious fun.

We left the theatre with the distinct feeling of having seen Shakespeare in all its glory.

This is a touring company - take a moment to check out the link above and see if they are coming anywhere near you. Anywhere close enough to get to in one or two days - worth every second of the drive.

In my job I get to see a lot of resumes. Being the grumpy dev in the corner, it is usually my task to take a first cut of the resume pile and weed out those who don't have the technical skills required for the job. Only after that happens does someone who can actually make the hiring decision get a look at your resume. So you need to get past me, and I have to say there are a lot of bad resumes out there. In the interests of being a good netizen, I'm going to give you some tips that might mean you don't end up in the slush pile.

Proofread

Don't send me a resume that says you have excellent English communication skills and then spoil it by spelling errors, gramatical mistakes or just plain bad English. It isn't going to fly. Even if the rest of the resume is up to standard, the fact that you don't care enough to proofread means that you likely don't care about your code either. I don't want to have to clean up your typos or syntax errors, so I'm not going to recommend you.

Be Specific

State not only what your position was but give some detail about the work you did, the tools you used and the level of involvement you had. I want to get a sense of how you think and work. I want to understand the challenges you faced and how you overcame them.

Developed websites using PHP, MySQL.

Sorry, that tells me nothing.

Built eCommerce website, including researching various payment gateways and writing interface to meet customer's needs. Other challenges included privacy agreements and data security constraints. Code written in PHP with interfaces using RPC-XML, and backed by a MySQL database.

Better! I can see that you needed to think through problems and overcame them. I can see that you have an understanding of interfacing requirements, and I can see you have thought about topics I am interested in (privacy, data security).

Be Honest

If you have built websites using a CMS and most of your job was in building the theme and configuring modules, say so. Don't hide it behind words like

Site built as CMS in PHP

Yes, it was built as a CMS in PHP, but if you didn't write the CMS, it could have easily been written in Fortran or LISP - it has no bearing on your resume. I'd rather you stated what you were capable of and then if you wanted to get into PHP development say that.

I have been learning PHP over the past x months and would like to extend my skills in this area

Is a better approach.

Be Passionate

Have you done something you are really proud of, even if not as part of your work? Say so! It takes passion to be a good programmer as much as skill, and in fact passion can get you over the hump even if your skill set is on the light side. Tell me why you did things as well.

Fill the Gaps

Don't leave unexplained gaps in your employment history. If you weren't working, tell me what you were doing. Even if it was walking in the Andes, or sunning yourself on the beach. I'd rather know a bit more about you and therefore how well you will fit into the team than have a gaping hole that I have to guess about.

Be Pertinent

If the job is for a web developer, don't highlight your excellent work as a hardware engineer. By all means tell me about that, as it rounds out who you are, but don't make it a highlight. Similarly if the position is a Web Developer, don't put in the intro that you are looking for a Director or Manager level position. That isn't on offer, so don't ask for it. If your skill set or your aspirations don't match the position, ask yourself why would anyone bother to read the resume, and then ask yourself why you would bother submitting it. Are you that desparate, or did you just not read the position description?

Supply a Portfolio

When I look at a resume I want to find someone who will be an asset for the company, and maybe even someone I can learn from. I also want to understand how you approach and solve problems, and what your level of skill is. Think about supplying examples of code, documentation or even links to some websites that you've worked on. But make sure that you aren't breaching copyright.

Make sure the code sample is something you are proud of. I don't want to see a simple function that you could have copied out of a How-To book. And please, comments are not there to tell me what you did, that is what the code is for. Comments are there to explain why you did it that particular way. Less comments and well thought out code is better than inane comments and a complete mess of badly conceived spaghetti.

Please, do yourself a favour and make sure that you have no obvious security flaws in your code. Anyone can write a snippet of code in an arbitrary language, what I want to see is that you truly understand that language, how it fits into the work you do, and what its constraints are. Creating an example without thinking through the consequences or the vulnerabilities is suicide. I will read your code, and I am looking for problems. If you really thought that only the hiring manager was looking at this and nobody was going to double check that you knew what you are doing you are on a hiding to nothing.

If you are providing links to websites, explain exactly what you did on that site.

Think about Open Source

Allied to the above, have you thought about getting involved in an Open Source project? This is a great way to get practice in your chosen field and to give your prospective employer a real insight into your coding style, your skill level and your ability to work in a team. If you are straight out of college this is a great way to strut your stuff and counter the usual complaint of lack of experience.

Remember your Audience

Remember that your resume is likely to hit at least three people's desks. The hiring manager or recruiter, the department manager, and me (or rather a person of technical competence who is looking forward to have someone share the load). Don't just put in headlines for management and forget detail that explains your technical skill level. Similarly make sure there is a summary section that covers the highlights so the recruitment officer can quickly put you in the right pile.

Hit all the Points

If the job spec asks specifics, answer each and every one of them. If you can't then you aren't going to get past the first cut. This is not only for the techincal requirements, but also for the work conditions. If the job states a distributed devlopment team, or that you should be a self-starter, then ask yourself honestly if you can work unmanaged. There is no shame in knowing your strengths and your weaknesses. Quite the reverse.

Don't Panic!

It takes time to get through the pile of resumes. Don't expect to hear back within a few days. Even if you do fail the cut, don't despair. Take a look at your resume and see if you can see why you failed. Better still, pass your resume around to others for comments before you submit it for a position. Try not to take any negative comments to heart - think instead of how you can address them. You may even be able to ask the employer why you were rejected. Not all will be willing to comment, but some will, and getting it from the horse's mouth is far better than dreaming up reasons yourself.

Well I didn't really even think I wanted a pony - okay so it might have crossed my mind when I was contemplating the need for some horse manure. But I never really seriously thought about ponies. And then we got 2 ponies. Okay we only got them for a day - but now I WANT A PONY!!!!!

Sunday was a beautiful day - sunny, bright clear and a little bit quiet in the general neighbourhood, and the main highway out the front luckily. About noon Adam was in the chook yards working on a redevelopment project we've got going to get the back of the house accessible for cleaning out etc when he looked up and saw these two standing at the front gate.

I was in the shed. I could hear him yelling something or other, but couldn't quite make out what he was saying. Or at least assumed I couldn't quite make it out, because he seemed to be shouting about us having Shetland ponies.

Now I don't know what it is about this place, but we do seem to have become a bit of a stopping off point for various waifs and strays around the place. These two:

Macca (the all chocolate at the back) and Lily (the pony at the front) had escaped from their home down on the outskirts of the town of Redbank earlier in the morning and their poor frantic owners had been looking for them since 9.00am on Sunday morning. We are guessing they must have snuck into the nature reserve, wandered through there, came out at the entrance a property or so down from us, WALKED across a major highway and wandered in our front gate.

Talk about lucky.

But the fun didn't end there - we managed to get hold of Macca but Lily wasn't having a bar of us - but she did follow him. So got them into our front yard and then into one of our paddocks, only to have the suspicion I had about Lily being on heat confirmed, in no uncertain terms, by the stallion who lives next door - who in time-honoured tradition, went berserk when he got a wiff of her. We then had a fairly complicated half hour or so whilst we tried to keep him from going over the fence, and recatch the ponies to take them somewhere with a bit of distance - and maybe a few buildings - between her and what was now a very very very frantic Stallion!

Finally managed to get hold of Macca and again led him away to have Lily follow (phew - she was very interested in that Stallion as well). While all this was going on - Adam had put a sign out the front saying we'd found a couple of ponies, and we then bedded them down for the afternoon / night in the orchard. Which meant we had some absolutely hysterical alpacas and some seriously pissed off turkeys who like spending their afternoons in amongst the fruit trees.

Later that evening - got a phone call from two very relieved owners who had noticed the sign when heading down to the local store to leave a notice about their missing ponies. (Exactly where we were heading on Monday morning if we hadn't heard from anybody).

Anyway - owners arrived on Monday to collect Macca and Lily. Macca happily went home - Lily complained and bitched all the way (she nips!) and hopefully they are settled back in with their family and promising to just send a postcard in the future - and not visit across that highway again!

Which has left me wondering where I can get a rescue Shetland pony now. The sound of them snuffling and neighing got very addictive very quickly - and the sheer amusement of watching 4 alpacas have a very quiet conniption fit over these two small ponies - well you can keep yourself amused for hours with these things!