\begin{snark}

If we're unable to reproduce and dying off from testicular cancer, there will be less pressure on the food supply that will be dwindling as the pesticides kill off the bee population and the plant pollenation function they perform. The humans that are left can do that pollenation by hand when the bees are all gone.

See... it's all good!

\end{snark}

I can recall when an entire Linux -- not "pared down" -- ran in "as little as" 16MB. (No X Windows; server only.) It was the Anaconda installer that forced me to upgrade systems to 32MB. (At least temporarily; after getting Linux installed I could pull out that extra memory.) Of course, this was a "few" years ago. Nowadays, I have more memory than that in my old Laserjet. What's limiting these devices to have only 32MB? Power?

Try taking that with you to the bank when you try applying for a loan after your credit has been trashed by an identity thief. See how far along the loan approval process that letter gets you.

WTF are you supposed to do with a damned letter? Feel all warm and fuzzy that they care?

``...they might wonder if the sheet is upright or upside down.''

Um... surely you're thinking of APL.

Yeah... Let's make "security through obscurity" the law of the land.

That'll help so much.

Effin' idiots.

I knew the answer to that one in grade school. I hope that successfully answering that question is not a major factor in getting hired there.

It's not just an Italian car.

...I have a key to an old Sun 6-drive desktop disk enclosure on my keychain though I'm not sure why. (I do still use two of those boxes but I haven't needed to get inside them for a few years.) It just seems like I won't lose it if I keep it with the rest of my keys.

A bunch of CEOs and their deep-pocketed investors want to increase their profits by driving down the cost of labor and want to do that by bringing in (basically) lower-wage indentured servants.

Call me when there's some real news on this front.

``IF THE JOB DOES NOT CONSIST MOSTLY OF DOING MATH AND REQUIRE THE WORKER TO BE LICENSED BY THE STATE, IT IS WRONG TO TITLE IT "ENGINEER!"''

You forgot the people who actually drive trains. An old friend of mine is that kind of engineer.

The argument over who should be called an "engineer" has been going on since the '70s. At least. It's only gotten worse over those 40+ years. Lately, it seems to be the job-title-enhancer of choice by employers who aren't willing to offer a higher salary. "Maybe they'll like a fancier title... We'll call them an engineer."

``I hadn't asked, we hadn't discussed the particulars of the job/my skills etc.''

The classic is when the recruiter calls about a [generic job title] position and the first thing out of the recruiter's mouth is "How much are making?" before even telling you what the job's requirements are.

I wouldn't go as far as setting up some sort of auto-responder. But I do have a canned letter that I started using to cut-n-paste into a reply to emails that were for positions outside my desired geographic location. Essentially, it read "Thank you for contacting me about the [fill-in-the-position-name] position. While my background appears to be a good fit for this position, I am not currently considering positions outside the [current city] vicinity." Some of the replies generate a nice "Thank you. I'll keep your information on file..." response. Others are ignored and they continue to send me emails about "long term" 3 month contracts (not even C2H) for jobs that I'm barely qualified for that are halfway across the country.

...but it seems the author isn't really talking about receiving 30 job offers. I can easily imagine receiving 30 calls about job openings a month. I've gotten as many as ten calls -- not emails, calls -- in one day. Granted, several of those wind up being for the same job but those calls are not offers. They're not even a guarantee that you'll be selected for a phone screen let alone a face-to-face interview.

I started receiving office management job ads partly, I assume, because my resume contained "administrator" and "manager". The laugh-out-loud ad was for an administrative assistant. For some reason I'd also started receiving near-daily ads for legal jobs, utility jobs (I used to know the lyrics to "Wichita Lineman" but I doubt that experience counts), and transit jobs (bus driver and cabbie jobs). Idjits.

It wouldn't surprise me to, one day, receive an email for an urgent job for which my experience with "the" makes me the ideal candidate. Oh, and it'll be halfway across the state to boot. Five hour commute each way? I've actually had a few recruiters wonder why I thought that might be a bit of a problem.

Great... Next we'll be told that it's a "transportation appliance" with no user serviceable parts inside..