That Old Email Joke

We've all heard the one about the IT department sending out an email to all users announcing that the email server is down.

I've not only heard it, I've lived it. Some times IT has an excuse. We had an email from them recently that announce that email access at our Sunnyvale office was down. That at least informed people why we're not responding. Of course, the email itself seemed directed at the Sunnyvale staff, but maybe IT thinks that joke is funny still.

But today my hosting service one-upped IT. They changed the default settings for email access and followed it up with an email explaining how to adjust your settings to get your email.

Seriously, I checked the times. They did the change and then they sent the email.

Fortunately (?) my hosting service has screwed up email in the past, so I have it set to forward all email to another address that I can access, just in case. So I went and found the email, made the updates, and everything was fine. But if I had not had that I could have used the web mail service they offer. That service is somewhat low key however and I only knew about it because of past screw ups by the hosting company.

So I am going to bet that the support team at my hosting service has quite a busy day today. Well, I bet the phone guys did. The email guys probably had a pretty quiet morning.

IQ: A Bad Resume Idea

Being a front line manager in a tech company, I spend a lot of time in the hiring process. There were times during the first web boom that I spent half of my time reviewing resumes, phone screening or interviewing, and providing feedback on candidates.

Of course, given the number of resumes that have crossed my desk, I have seen my fair share of bad ideas. I just reviewed a resume last week that had one of the more rare mistakes.

The person in question put their IQ on their resume.

This is always a mistake. There is no winning in this situation.

First, there is no way that a hiring manager can verify this tidbit of information. Your resume should stick to things that can be reasonably verified or demonstrated. So it is a useless piece of data.

But it gets worse. If you claim to have a high IQ, you may look like you are bragging or come off as an elitist. Is that the impression you want people to take from your resume? The best case scenario is that you will set unreasonably high expectations for yourself. Imagine every slip in your interview being greeting in the mind of the interviewer with, "You didn't do so well there, did you Einstein?"

And if you do not have a high IQ (and I had a resume that listed an IQ of 105) who cares? What message are you trying to send? That you do not have enough experience to fill a letter sized page of paper? That you do not understand the IQ scale?

So keep your IQ to yourself.

Overboard for Anna Nicole

While I am sorry for her untimely death, I rather think the Yahoo! headline writer went a little far with this allusion, effectively putting her in the same league as Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana:



Still, I am resting easy on my worry that Elton John might change the lyrics again for a few more bucks.

New Age Corps!

I was looking at the iTunes beta "Just For You" recommendations page this morning. I wanted to see what they would pick for me based on what I had purchased in the past.

Under the heading of "New Age" music was one surprising item: "Music of the Marines"

It features what you would probably expect, "Semper Fidelis," "Washington Post March," "The Marine's Hymn," and more like that.

It is certainly music I know and enjoy (and already own), but is it "New Age?"