Another Job Thread? I could do that at home with MS Word!

Aphostile

No, moving back to the bay area because Portland isn't for me anymore. I'm 4 years out of college now.

Wondering if I should include some sort of statement on my resume (if they don't accept a cover letter) that states I am planning to re-locate and do not need relocation expenses to consider it.

Zonugal

Today at work a Russian kid with severe autism tried to strangle my coworker.

And that Dilophosaurus kid? He is pretty much entirely non-verbal but the past couple days he's been switching off from basic noises, what we can imagine sounds like Chinese and a hushed tone similar to someone talking in tongues.

Today though? While walking to a park he looked at my coworker and said in clear precision, "Jimmy is the first to go down." At which I immediately became horrified and upon request he wouldn't/couldn't repeat what he had said.

Hunter

Zonugal wrote: »

Today at work a Russian kid with severe autism tried to strangle my coworker.

And that Dilophosaurus kid? He is pretty much entirely non-verbal but the past couple days he's been switching off from basic noises, what we can imagine sounds like Chinese and a hushed tone similar to someone talking in tongues.

Today though? While walking to a park he looked at my coworker and said in clear precision, "Jimmy is the first to go down." At which I immediately became horrified and upon request he wouldn't/couldn't repeat what he had said.

Is this what the little Russian kid looks like?

Zonugal

Almost!

Zonugal

So rant time!

#1.) My boss wanted me, against every logistical reason, to go work with this kid I have in the past. I tend to try to come up with an excuse to get out of it because this kid is horrible. A month or two ago him & I were in my car on the way to see a film and news came on about Selina Gomez's mother possibly having a miscarriage. The kid began to laugh and saying that she deserved it. He then followed that up by praying to God for this to happen to more women.

#2.) My boss wants this teenager Michael to come to camp tomorrow. He has been kicked out of camp before and we all don't want this to happen but well if he comes my boss gets more money so... This kid has threatened to kill me and has attempted to damage my car just for the joy of it. During another camp a while back he was in a van that pulled up to an red light. Next to them was a homeless man requesting money via a sign. Michael rolled down the window and asked the homeless man if he was hungry. The homeless man said yes and Michael replied by pulling out an apple, eating it all as quickly as possible and than throwing it at the man shouting, "Eat that you chump!"

Jesus Fucking God Damn Cunts.

ThreeCubed

vermiculture wrote: »

Phone interview went pretty well I think. They had some laughs, the questions were fairly standard I felt. The one that threw me for a loop was, 'you notice a bad fish while feeding pelicans, what do you do?!!' Now I just have to wait 1-2 weeks to see if I get a call back.

I wore pants.

You give the fish a warning, and then call its parents if another incident like that occurs.

Blake T

Should have thrown the kid out and yelled, "any money you find on him is yours!"

Then drive off.

Zonugal

Blake, my hate... My hate is so great.

And come tomorrow night I will drink an ocean of booze.

Blake T

You know what you must do.

Shit in his water bottle.

Shazkar Shadowstorm

if i need to brush up on algorithms and some basic computer science (like, pseudocode stuff, not language specifics, it's not a technical position but they want to know you have some technical knowledge), where would you look?

i haven't done much of this since like, data structures in college... which was a long time ago
and i wasn't a CS major so i didn't continue using the stuff

Zonugal

That...





That might just work.

Abracadaniel

so hey

If I wanted to start learning SQL

where would be a good place to start

Shazkar Shadowstorm

Smart Hero wrote:

so hey

If I wanted to start learning SQL

where would be a good place to start

i had a similar question not too long ago... umm, i forget what the answer was though, and then one of my coworkers started teaching me

but i would also like to know, because i just got data access from my client and i barely know what the hell i'm doing, because i only learned the basics

DrZiplock

vermiculture wrote: »

awww yeah they are already asking me for references. Good signs. I am just going to put all of se++ as a reference.

Successfully performed "The Penis Dance" for one Mr. R. Khoo.

Fishman

Learning the basics of SQL to do simple things is pretty easily done via internet. Stuff like 'SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE mahnamahna' isn't hard to come across.

Unless you're going to try database optimisation or query tuning, mostly I get by with judicious Googling of whatever it is I'm trying to achieve and it usually gets me from A to B.

Abracadaniel

Fishman wrote: »

Learning the basics of SQL to do simple things is pretty easily done via internet. Stuff like 'SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE mahnamahna' isn't hard to come across.

Unless you're going to try database optimisation or query tuning, mostly I get by with judicious Googling of whatever it is I'm trying to achieve and it usually gets me from A to B.

Yeah I did some of this today in our live company database

Spoiler:

I tested in the mirrored test company first, of course

One of the big issues we've encountered is our system and the data within it about products, vendors, customers, basic record keeping best practices, etc were not used or considered or documented or future-proofed when it was all put in place.

For example, we have stuff we sell that we consider 'catalog items' ie 'stuff we advertise in our two catalogs'

But we never did anything within our system to properly denote 'catalog items' from 'every-fucking-thing-else'


So this week I worked with our VP of Sales and we narrowed down our 15,000+ parts to abour 8,000 'catalog' items and I successfully ran a few SQL statements to update an unused field on the item record tables to mark them as catalog items. So now, with the built-in tools of the system, it's easy to query and bring up a list of said items, export it to Excel, pretty it up with formatting, and now we have a working and always-up-to-date price book for our inventory.


I've done the same with customer-specific pricing search tools

But no one in customer service uses them despite me telling them.


So, so frustrating.


In any case, I would like to learn more and get a handle on it so I have at least one or two obvious skillsets I can throw onto my resume.

Abracadaniel

In the past the poor VP of sales, whenever we had a price increase, would have to go through literally hundreds of worksheets in an Excel workbook and manually adjust customer specific pricing.


Then I found out the very same data was stored in the SQL db and created another search tool that automatically displays a customer's 'special price items' along with their special quotes.


I suppose 'Developed numerous business intelligence tools for sales analysis and customer service support' could be added to my resume.

Blake T

Also, blocked Facebook.

Abracadaniel

Haha, that reminds me.

So last Friday, about ten minutes til 5, one of the girls in accounting sends me an IM

'You need to come over here ASAP, [Blank] did something to their computer'

So I go over and sure enough she managed to get some fucking malware 'YOUR COM-PUTOR HAS BEEN INTEFECTED WITH 18 CYBROVIRUSES CLICK HERE TO CLEAN' And only thought to ask me about it after she clicked it and it prompted her to pay $99 to fix all the cybrovirii.

'Well I'm always asking you to come over for stupid [her words, not mine] computer questions, so I didn't think it was a big deal to click on it'


REALLY


So while she was out sick today I spend a little time doing some discovery (that's IT code for snooping!) into her internet history and she has a creepy obession with Barbie dolls and custom Barbie dresses on Etsy.



Aaaand since she can't figure out where she went to get her machine infected, I've blacklisted pretty much every non-work related site in her history.



My policy is 'if you can sneak your laziness past me and the firewall, then good on you, but when you break something, the gate shuts, no more funtimes for you'


Thankfully Malwarebytes took care of it, after I remoted in from home and ran scans on both her machine and the server her user profile is backed up to.

MetroidZoid

In the *almost* five years I've been with this store/company, our employment pool has devolved into a gigantic clusterfuck of incompetence, ass-kissing, and immature hypocrisy. That is all.

Fishman

Smart Hero wrote: »

Fishman wrote: »

Learning the basics of SQL to do simple things is pretty easily done via internet. Stuff like 'SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE mahnamahna' isn't hard to come across.

Unless you're going to try database optimisation or query tuning, mostly I get by with judicious Googling of whatever it is I'm trying to achieve and it usually gets me from A to B.

Yeah I did some of this today in our live company database

Spoiler:

I tested in the mirrored test company first, of course

One of the big issues we've encountered is our system and the data within it about products, vendors, customers, basic record keeping best practices, etc were not used or considered or documented or future-proofed when it was all put in place.

For example, we have stuff we sell that we consider 'catalog items' ie 'stuff we advertise in our two catalogs'

But we never did anything within our system to properly denote 'catalog items' from 'every-fucking-thing-else'


So this week I worked with our VP of Sales and we narrowed down our 15,000+ parts to abour 8,000 'catalog' items and I successfully ran a few SQL statements to update an unused field on the item record tables to mark them as catalog items. So now, with the built-in tools of the system, it's easy to query and bring up a list of said items, export it to Excel, pretty it up with formatting, and now we have a working and always-up-to-date price book for our inventory.


I've done the same with customer-specific pricing search tools

But no one in customer service uses them despite me telling them.


So, so frustrating.


In any case, I would like to learn more and get a handle on it so I have at least one or two obvious skillsets I can throw onto my resume.

Sounds like you might have just a few big tables that your users hit a lot with large scans, yeah?

Do you know if you have indexes on those tables? It might be worth trying to see if you can get performance gain that way.

Abracadaniel

Fishman wrote: »

Smart Hero wrote: »

Fishman wrote: »

Learning the basics of SQL to do simple things is pretty easily done via internet. Stuff like 'SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE mahnamahna' isn't hard to come across.

Unless you're going to try database optimisation or query tuning, mostly I get by with judicious Googling of whatever it is I'm trying to achieve and it usually gets me from A to B.

Yeah I did some of this today in our live company database

Spoiler:

I tested in the mirrored test company first, of course

One of the big issues we've encountered is our system and the data within it about products, vendors, customers, basic record keeping best practices, etc were not used or considered or documented or future-proofed when it was all put in place.

For example, we have stuff we sell that we consider 'catalog items' ie 'stuff we advertise in our two catalogs'

But we never did anything within our system to properly denote 'catalog items' from 'every-fucking-thing-else'


So this week I worked with our VP of Sales and we narrowed down our 15,000+ parts to abour 8,000 'catalog' items and I successfully ran a few SQL statements to update an unused field on the item record tables to mark them as catalog items. So now, with the built-in tools of the system, it's easy to query and bring up a list of said items, export it to Excel, pretty it up with formatting, and now we have a working and always-up-to-date price book for our inventory.


I've done the same with customer-specific pricing search tools

But no one in customer service uses them despite me telling them.


So, so frustrating.


In any case, I would like to learn more and get a handle on it so I have at least one or two obvious skillsets I can throw onto my resume.

Sounds like you might have just a few big tables that your users hit a lot with large scans, yeah?

Do you know if you have indexes on those tables? It might be worth trying to see if you can get performance gain that way.

I started adding a few to the more common ones (customer master table, item master table) but I'm not sure if there was a measurable performance improvement or not.

SabreMau

What are current CS graduates using in the way of programming languages? I got my CS degree nine years ago but have never actually put it into use for any job yet, and am wondering what the best way to get up to speed is.

Abracadaniel

if it helps, the ERP software is Dynamics GP 2010.

Hmm

Actually, our GP VAR/Support vendor sent me an invite for a luncheon in Orlando in early March. Might see if I can go and get some recommended learning resources from them.

Fishman

Smart Hero wrote: »

Fishman wrote: »

Smart Hero wrote: »

Fishman wrote: »

Learning the basics of SQL to do simple things is pretty easily done via internet. Stuff like 'SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE mahnamahna' isn't hard to come across.

Unless you're going to try database optimisation or query tuning, mostly I get by with judicious Googling of whatever it is I'm trying to achieve and it usually gets me from A to B.

Yeah I did some of this today in our live company database

Spoiler:

I tested in the mirrored test company first, of course

One of the big issues we've encountered is our system and the data within it about products, vendors, customers, basic record keeping best practices, etc were not used or considered or documented or future-proofed when it was all put in place.

For example, we have stuff we sell that we consider 'catalog items' ie 'stuff we advertise in our two catalogs'

But we never did anything within our system to properly denote 'catalog items' from 'every-fucking-thing-else'


So this week I worked with our VP of Sales and we narrowed down our 15,000+ parts to abour 8,000 'catalog' items and I successfully ran a few SQL statements to update an unused field on the item record tables to mark them as catalog items. So now, with the built-in tools of the system, it's easy to query and bring up a list of said items, export it to Excel, pretty it up with formatting, and now we have a working and always-up-to-date price book for our inventory.


I've done the same with customer-specific pricing search tools

But no one in customer service uses them despite me telling them.


So, so frustrating.


In any case, I would like to learn more and get a handle on it so I have at least one or two obvious skillsets I can throw onto my resume.

Sounds like you might have just a few big tables that your users hit a lot with large scans, yeah?

Do you know if you have indexes on those tables? It might be worth trying to see if you can get performance gain that way.

I started adding a few to the more common ones (customer master table, item master table) but I'm not sure if there was a measurable performance improvement or not.

Without some decent also-runs-in-production database tuner tools, it can be hard to get good data for performance sometimes.

I have no idea of what you're trying to achieve or the stubborness of your users, but maybe creating and circulating some convenient read-only views for the most common querys?

At this point you're more or less trying everything I can think of, but I'm far from accomplished at DB improvement. That's what I have DBAs for.

Ruckus

Smart Hero wrote: »

if it helps, the ERP software is Dynamics GP 2010.

Hmm

Actually, our GP VAR/Support vendor sent me an invite for a luncheon in Orlando in early March. Might see if I can go and get some recommended learning resources from them.

MS Dynamics products used to be the bain of my existence.

Now I do desktop support for a custom NIS, which is also a bain, but since our developers are in house and like me, significantly less bainful.

Anosognos

@vermiculture

So, besides, "What do you do with spoiled pelican food?" what kinds of questions do they ask at such interviews?

Asking 'cause I'll be doing an in person interview at one next week.


Side note: I have had two phone interviews in my life. The first one led to a job. I did not wear pants. They second one landed me a job flat out. I wore pants.
Based on my sample of two, pants correlate with faster employment, if not greater success.

vermiculture

@Anosognos
a zoo interview?

Anosognos

Yes that kind. Well, not the phone ones. The one next week.

vermiculture

If you are interviewing for the same job I just did today, I am going to punch you in the jeans. Incoming PM sent your way!

Anosognos

Haha, appreciated.

Don't worry. I can't afford to move to California for zoo money.

Abracadaniel

Ruckus wrote: »

Smart Hero wrote: »

if it helps, the ERP software is Dynamics GP 2010.

Hmm

Actually, our GP VAR/Support vendor sent me an invite for a luncheon in Orlando in early March. Might see if I can go and get some recommended learning resources from them.

MS Dynamics products used to be the bain of my existence.

Now I do desktop support for a custom NIS, which is also a bain, but since our developers are in house and like me, significantly less bainful.

Which ones? And yes if GP isnt set up and maintained properly, it gets pretty bad.

Doesn't help that we're overly obsessed with keeping all of our data in the live company, versus setting up a secondary 'archive' company.
Yes, we are definitely going to need that sales order record for five ten cent o-rings from seven years ago sold from the retail store we no longer operate.

ASimPerson

SabreMau wrote: »

What are current CS graduates using in the way of programming languages? I got my CS degree nine years ago but have never actually put it into use for any job yet, and am wondering what the best way to get up to speed is.

It really depends on what you want to do.

I've been writing C for five years, for instance.

I guess if you want to be hip with the current trends, doing iOS (Objective-C) or Android programming (Java) would be one way to go. Python is popular for scripting, and C# seems like the go-to application language these days.

SabreMau

ASimPerson wrote: »

It really depends on what you want to do.

Something that people are currently paying money for knowing how to do, mostly.

ASimPerson

I'd probably check out some job listings, then.

Veretas

So in a week some guys from some obscure website called "Penny Arcade" are coming to my place of work and fight a bunch of dudes in some weird game called 'Ping pong'

Basically

@Khoo

I'm callin' you out!

CrackedLens

Yukira wrote: »

Janson wrote: »

Northern California, you say?...

No! My vermiculture!

He was the East Coast crew's first

We popped his forum meeting cherry

Yukira

I know.

ASimPerson

Veretas wrote: »

So in a week some guys from some obscure website called "Penny Arcade" are coming to my place of work and fight a bunch of dudes in some weird game called 'Ping pong'

Basically

@Khoo

I'm callin' you out!

You need to post updates here.

spono

I'm starting to get comfortable in my new job (relatively new -- I've been there since the start of this year)

it still weirds me out that I'm working as a contractor though

apparently all engineers are incompetent and all subcontractors are crooks