I’m adding to my personal website. The new addition will be devoted to my cute but evil pet guinea pig, Snowball (from Hell). Here’s a little teaser of what it’s all about. Pay attention to his eyes ;p.
Category Archives: My Life
Monster.com Website Update — Stinker …
Monster.com has updated its website and it now drives me NUTZ!!! It’s too interactive, to the point I can barely use it and I don’t know what I’ve done with the web interface until I recieve a confirmation e-mail. It suffers from having too many notes. Here’s what isn’t working for me:
- When I browse the list of jobs that have resulted from my search, as I move my mouse pointer over the job, a worthless job description covers the viewport obscuring the other jobs. This wouldn’t be bad if I didn’t have to click the close button on the description, which is especially annoying because I didn’t click on the job to read the description in the first place. I was using my mouse to guide my eye over the long list of jobs.
- The pop-up job descriptions are useless. I imagine this is do to the job seeker putting useless stuff in the job description. I want to know the major duties, the job level, the key skills, the job location, and the pay range.
- There seems to be no way to upload an update of an existing resume. When I cut and pasted directly from Word, the text became corrupted with a bunch of junk that is usually hidden in a Word file.
- When filling out information to create or update a profile, the user has to save each section separately. The problem is that several sections are presented on one webpage or tab webpage, so it’s natural to think that the save at the bottom of the page will save everything on that page or tabbed page. When the user does this, the user gets an error and is asked if they want to continue. I thought this meant to go back to fix the error so I clicked “ok” which caused me to lose all the changes I made and because I was popped back out to my profile home page, I wouldn’t have known that my changes didn’t stick unless I went back to check my profile.
- Every field tries to auto fill by popping up a little window next to the entry field. It’s distracting and none of the auto fill options matched what I was entering.
- The pop-ups, in general, make reading the site very difficult. The pages are densely packed with information, so I use my pointer to guide my eye. Because of the interactivity, putting the mouse anywhere in the viewport causing something to pop-up. It broke my attention and because I didn’t actually click to activate the pop-up, I didn’t feel in control of the experience.
Yeeks!!! I hope they dial is down soon because “slick” doesn’t mean everything is interactive. I got the impression that they went for “more” rather than really thinking about how users use the website and using interactivity to really enhance the experience of using the website. It’s kinda embarrasing.
Happy 2009
Let’s hope it is better than 2008. I believe it can be if we all just keep pressing forward and get on with the business at hand. There’s no shortage of things to do. So let’s get to work and put people to work so we can get happy again. I hope this time, though, people spend within their means and companies take a more long term approach to growth. I think it’s unreasonable and unsustainable to expect big established companies to have double digit growth year-over-year. To be honest, I’m very suspicious of companies that do when GDP growth doesn’t reflect that kind of growth. You have to ask where the money is coming from. Also, this kind of expectation leads people to cheat in order to make unreasonable numbers so they can get bonuses and promotions. Anyhow, I think a longer term approach will lessen volatility and lead to growth in long term careers rather than “jobs.” I also think getting back to trading good and services rather than debt and promises would be beneficial for us all :).
Learning about Leadership Through MMORPGs, Part 1
I never thought playing a video game would teach me so much about real life and myself. Yep, you can learn about leadership, teamwork, and yourself as a leader and a team player by playing MMORPGs. I had an encounter tonight with a player who was quite a control freak. This person claimed to be leading 4 Warbands in an effort to lock one of the tier 4 zones in “Warhammer Online”. He was telling players who were below level 40 to refrain from playing in contested scenarios because he or she wanted to have only his or her pre-made groups in scenarios. I popped into a contested scenario without knowing what was going on and then was promptly asked not to queue up anymore. My feeling was that I paid to play the game, and so I will play however I please. This guy then proceeded to ramble on about how low level players will cause our side to lose. I was laughing pretty hard because his pre-made parties were getting their asses handed to them in this particular scenario and I felt he needed all the help he could get. Continue reading Learning about Leadership Through MMORPGs, Part 1
Goodbye and Good Riddance 2008 — Green Rant
It’s the end of the year and it’s mighty slow for those of us looking for a job. Things started drying up dramatically around Thanksgiving and then it trickled to next to nothing on Christmas Eve. I guess it’s to be expected. I hope things will pick up shortly after New Years.
Sigh … I wonder how the latest financial problem involving that Madoff guy will affect everything. How many more are out there like him? And how many companies will soon find out that the money they’ve “lent” out evaporated? I hope this doesn’t erode the little bit of confidence that could have been built up in the past few weeks. I realize that it’s going to take a while to unwind everything and figure out how much money there really is in the system. I imagine a lot of money is being double counted now. My feeling, though, is that it’s time for a return to sanity and for the world economy to be based on actual trade again rather than debt swapping. We’ll see if that actually happens. The US isn’t in the best position to actually manufacture much of anything anymore. Plus, there aren’t enough creative business people and managers who can envision cost effective manufacturing in the US that pays a good wage, is safe for the environment, and provides cost competitive products for consumers. It takes a strong will to change things and it takes courage to act. Right now, though, I see a bunch of flimsy spined folks running around who only know how to cut costs with a chainsaw or beg the government for corporate well-fare.
( Hahaha … irony of ironies … spreading personal wealth to corporations. There are so many out there who don’t have a pot to pee in blinded by the thought of the stereotypical “Well-fare Queen,” who have been fooled into thinking that they are middle class or even rich. Hahaha!!! It blows my mind! I guess this explains the state we are in. Everyone was living beyond their means because so many people deluded themselves into thinking that they had means. Welcome to reality and enjoy the global “three finger salute.” Not everyone can and should own a house and a car … that’s why there are apartments and public transportation. The rest of the world seems to understand this. Anyhow, there are some nice stats on Wikipedia about household incomes in the US — link. I wonder how many people have actually looked at their finances to understand their true situation.)
So what comes next? It’s clear that the rate at which people are accumulating stuff is not sustainable because there’s only so much matter on the planet. Which leads me to some “Duh!” moments I’ve had in the last few days:
Duh! #1: My husband says to me after thinking really hard about it,” What if there were some way like plants and trees to convert the CO2 to oxygen and water, then we wouldn’t have to worry about carbon so much anymore.” My deadpan response, “Uh, why not just plant enough trees and plants to cover your carbon usage …Duh …” Continue reading Goodbye and Good Riddance 2008 — Green Rant
More Rambling 