I recently decided to update my résumé since it had fallen into disrepair. In addition to new experience and credentials, I felt I needed to give it a little facelift as well. I opened up my old Word document version (in NeoOffice) and began to apply some of the suggestions in this article—but I found the process really irritating and quirky. So I tried using Google Docs but I found it just as unsatisfactory. Zoho is usually better than Google Docs, but no luck there either.
Finally I decided to just create my own (X)HTML version. So this is my résumé. After I'd put together a valid XHTML 1.0 Strict template, I decided that maybe others might find it useful, so I'm sharing a stripped-down version of the template. If you find it useful or have any questions/suggestions, let me know.
Up until recently ( play or download mp3), Deborah Rodriguez has been congratulated as a conscientious activist for social change in Afghanistan. Her work in putting together a beauty school in Kabul where, up until a few years ago, the Taliban would publicly beat women for putting on makeup is just the sort of heartwarming story that Hollywood and American book publishers love.
In fact, they loved her story so much that Random House gave her an $80,000 advance for the book and there's a movie deal in the works.
And the plucky budding Afghan beauticians?
They get nothing. They get worse than nothing. Apparently, they claim that Rodriguez promised she would not publish photos of them because they live in a violent repressive society (remember how Islam is a religion of peace?) and they feared their lives would be in danger if it ever became public knowledge that they are running a beauty school. Sure enough, those photos did appear in the book—the book that has earned the Afghan women nothing—and they do now fear for their lives. And where's that warm-hearted made-for-Hollywood heroine from Michigan amidst all this? Long gone. She left Afghanistan last month. But she hasn't fully abandoned her friends:
Rodriguez says that she knows the women are angry and terrified—but that they should realize that things take time. She also claims the girls misunderstood what she promised them.
That's right, ladies . . . I mean girls, I know you're afraid because I knowingly endangered your lives after I promised I wouldn't, but you have to realize: they were giving me a lot of money! Surely you see that, right? And it's not like I've completely forgotten about you: I'm working really hard to get you out this mess, but these things take time. And of course I want to share some of my newfound good fortune with you:
She says she plans to give the girls a small part of the royalties from the book, along with 5 percent of her earnings from the movie Sony Pictures is planning.
Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention, but this is the first time I can remember seeing an MSN advertisement on Google:
With the increasing animosity between the two Leviathans, how does this fit in the grand strategy?
I ran across this job posting on Craigslist in the SF Bay Area. I read it out loud just to confirm what it sounded like to me. Here is what I think it boiled down to:
I have a nebulous idea for a "company" that I want to run.
My company should be able to save the world, somehow.
I want you to "implement" my company for me. I'm just an "ideas" person. I need an "everything else" person.
And by "everything else," I mean even the rudimentary search engine-based research that I should have done the very first day I had this idea. That's your job.
Preferably, you can work for free.
If you can't work for free, can you work just slightly above the $7.50/hr CA state minimum wage?
Know any good venture capitalists?
Know any good clients?
Know any good programmers to build my idea?
Know any business development people to put together my business?
Oh, and I'll totally pay you back when the checks start rolling in.
Did I mention that I'm going to save the world?
But maybe I'm being uncharitable. Good luck to you, my friend.
At Muhammad's recommendation, I just watched Startup.com, a documentary about two friends and the startup dot-com business they started in the late nineties. As is always the risk when reading or watching something that directly impacts what I'm doing (in Shiny Metal Assets), I may have just seen the conclusions I wanted to see. Anyhow, these are the lessons I took away from it:
Build your business organically. Instead of building massive infrastructure for tomorrow, address today's needs. Stay manageable and let the organization grow as your business grows, not vice versa.
Retain control over your business. Your goal should not be gaining venture capital; it should be gaining profitability. If you have a wonderful idea that will change the world but is expensive, you might need to seek funding. But let's face it, there are plenty of manageable products and services you can offer and create with limited resources. Scrounge, work after hours and weekends, and make ends meet on your own. govWorks, the company featured in Startup.com accepted funding and lost control of its own destiny. I don't want to be in that position.
Address a specific market. govWorks wanted to be the premier site for dealing with municipal government, but perhaps it aimed too high. If they'd started with just one municipality and worked organically from there, their team could have grown with their business. Finding a small, lucrative niche and building from there is much more tenable than trying to take the world by storm.
The trust between friends who start a company is an asset. Money makes people do strange things, but power struggles are far more dangerous. If you have equal partners, make sure everything is clear and in the open before you start. If there is a chain of command, be willing to follow decisions you might disagree with. Ego can destroy your business just as easily as confidence can build it. It might be a fine line, learn to tread it.
Last week, Amazon had a short-lived offer where you could buy both of the Arrested Development box sets for $32 (saving $10 more than the current price). I bought them and I've been working my way through them. Last night, I started watching the second season, and in the first episode, "The One Where Michael Leaves," I stopped the DVD to get a closer look at the "half English, half Scribbly" contract between George Bluth Sr. and Saddam Hussein:
and I noticed that the "Scribbly" is not in Arabic, as one would expect, but in Persian (Farsi). There's a word I don't know in there, but the sentence fragment that is understandable says, "the Bluth company has the right to hire a president who . . . "
Even though it's the wrong language, the attention to detail is pretty impressive. Although, I do wonder if Saddam would have really signed his name using Latin characters.
This guy's a pixel pimp: This guy's page is built on the premise that people will pay to have a permanent (in internet time, that means five years or longer) small number of pixels advertising what they want on his homepage at MillionDollarHomepage.com. Apparently, he's right. Brilliant.
Calvin and Hobbes has always been my favorite comic strip and I was very sad to see it go. There is one thing that has always bothered me about it, however: that vapid decal of Calvin urinating on anything from the logo of your redneck rival's pickup truck, Osama bin Laden, or whatever else you don't like. I was thrilled to learn today that the comic's creator, Bill Watterson, never licensed that image and he had always tried to stay away from turning his art into crass merchandising. There's an article on Slate that gives a great overview of the strip.
Don't shoot students, shoot the messenger . . .
A high school in San Antonio, Texas, was shut down yesterday due to fears of a terroristic attack. The fear was raised by the postings of some students on MySpace.com. So far, the reaction (while it might seem overly cautious) makes sense considering previous student attacks and the liability issues a school would undoubtedly have to face. But the school's administrators are now threatening to sue MySpace, because:
"It just seems to me that if you put up a public web site, and you allow students, teeangers [sic, but fitting, no?], minors to post their thoughts and ideas, and not monitor it in an adult manner, you are asking for trouble," [Pasqual] Gonzales [of the Northside School District] said. "This particular web site has been a pain for all Bexar County schools for a long time now, and it just seems that the owners of MySpace-dot-com should be held accountable."
By this absurd standard, even my page, by virtue of being a "public web site," has an obligation to moderate the comments made by minors. You hear that, whippersnappers? No terrorist activity in my comments, please! I'll have to consult with Mr. Gonzales to find out whether this principle applies to the adults who might comment here, too. (via waxy.org)
More stupid policies:
A German IT company has banned grumpiness at work to try to promote a more congenial atmosphere after a female employee was caught wilfully breaking company rules about smiling in the office.
(from The Australian)
Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but what a German approach to the problem. Personally, I just think somebody must have been suffering a case of the Mondays.
