What you did today

[theslug]

I skipped class today. Thought I was going to sleep in, which I did by roughly 15 minutes. Now I'm about to eat and listen to sports talk radio. Jim Rome is pretty awesome.

[Walsingham]

I've been in Oxford attending a conference. I had forgotten what - perfectly natural - effect a large number of scantily clad student girls would have on me. One colleague can be summarised as observing that I didn't know whether to drool or cry.

[Shryke]

yay for birthdays...

Happy birthday Shryke

 

 

heh thanks - even a forum post is more than most people have given

 

it's been a bit of a fail this year

just got home from mine and my friend's birthday drinks, and while relatively fun, i wasn't at all surprised to notice that many people who'd promised me that they'd come along this year were a complete no show

 

it's always kinda depressing to hear from people saying (and i quote) "you're a really super friend. i will cross oceans for you" - and then they don't show up and wont reply to txts/calls

nice to know they give a ****

[theslug]

heh thanks - even a forum post is more than most people have given

 

it's been a bit of a fail this year

just got home from mine and my friend's birthday drinks, and while relatively fun, i wasn't at all surprised to notice that many people who'd promised me that they'd come along this year were a complete no show

 

it's always kinda depressing to hear from people saying (and i quote) "you're a really super friend. i will cross oceans for you" - and then they don't show up and wont reply to txts/calls

nice to know they give a ****

Happy birthday shryke. But hey what can you expect when you surround yourself with drunkards and floozies?

 

At least you'll always have me to criticize your lifestyle shryke. I'll never stop.

[Walsingham]

That reminds me: how's the domestic revolution going, Calax?

[Calax]

It's going ok, got the car, working on getting all my stuff together for the move (which is hard considering the sheer amount of stuff that's mine). Right now tho, I'm actually packing because I'm going to NY on thursday to my grandparents wedding anniversary (60th) and trying to find somebody to drive out to Iowa with me so that I can assuage my parents (who think that if i go alone I'll like... blow up the car or something)

[Calax]

Hate to double post but I gotta say this. I'm VERY confused right now, I got this email

 

Hello! We found your resume and it seems interesting to our company. Bastolvin company needs employee. Salary - $22.000.

 

 

Best regards, HR-manager

Alex Clark

Bastolvin Company

http://www.bastolvin.com/?qn=jzac4x2ab0e

 

And then I googled them (because it's more of a form letter than anything), the ONLY hits I got from them was their specific website (which says they've been around since 86). I'm guessing it's a dummy corp or something, any ideas?

[Syraxis]

And then I googled them (because it's more of a form letter than anything), the ONLY hits I got from them was their specific website (which says they've been around since 86). I'm guessing it's a dummy corp or something, any ideas?

 

I get stuff like this occasionally (more like checking gmail spambox for any misplacements), just trash it.

[Archmonarch]

A badly written form letter at that. There are at least 4 things wrong with this that I notice at first glance:

 

1) Any professional Western company will make sure to use proper English and sound like a business in their correspondence. Nothing says incompetence like an inability to speak/write intelligently and clearly.

 

2) The content of the email is very lacking. Saying simply hey we need employees, we'll pay this much tells you absolutely nothing about the company, the position, or its responsibilities. This strikes me as intentional as it is directly followed by a link to their website. Seems like temptation to find out more by clicking the link.

 

3) The URL itself. Business websites just aren't designed like that. A random, long list of alphanumerics is not how pages/subpages are indexed to the viewer. It's unprofessional and to anyone internet savvy reeks of unsavory business, such as hidden redirects or attempts to hide information before clicking the link. Think something like how TinyURL or the like give such monikers for sites. There, depending upon the person using it, it tends to be benign. This may very well not be. It could very well link to spyware or otherwise infected sites in an attempt to steal information.

 

4) Unless you have an outstanding resume or highly valuable skills in specialized areas (both typically requiring post-grad education/employment), there is absolutely no reason a company would ever approach you completely out of the blue about a job like this. Given you are just going to undergrad, I doubt you fulfill those criteria (no offense intended). And anyway, even if they were just plastering the web about a temp job or low position or something, why not use one of the numerous sites dedicated to posting such openings?

 

Another thing: have you actually posted your resume online anywhere? If not, they they're definitely lying. Notice that they don't use your name anywhere (unless you removed it). If they have your resume, then why not use it? Exactly as you said, this is a form letter of some sort. Anyone looking to hire you would address you by name, again assuming they didn't just spam the internet with emails like this.

 

Either way, I rule this to be a scam of some sort. It just feels sleazy and doesn't meet any criteria I would expect in a true job offer.

[Serrano]

Sigh, too slow replying again. Recruitment scammers are generally after things like identity fraud or money laundering through your salery in case you wondered.

Edited July 5, 2010 by Serrano

[Enoch]

$22.000.

In addition to all the stuff Archmonarch pointed out, that's a big ol' red flag right there. Americans use a comma between the thousands and hundreds digit-- anyone actually hiring for American workers would know that. Some dude writing spam somewhere in Eastern Europe, though, might not.

 

 

Today I successfully replaced the dead ceiling fan in our bedroom. Much swearing was involved, but I eventually emerged victorious.

[Calax]

That's about what I figured. Yes I have posted my resume on the web (2 years ago now) but nothing has really come of it. Given my google turned up nothing (I only really glanced at it before doing the google) I figured it was a fake corp. And yes, they tossed in my name but I deleted it (which is kinda useless given I'm going into New Vegas, but I sorta kinda want to give that spot to Hades name rather than mine)

 

Worked tonight when I thought I was tomorrow. Had our Gift Card system die on us later, so we couldn't sell a guy a game because our system said his card was dead, they'll fix it tomorrow with customer service. Got pissed off because a kid decided to leave his ice cream on one of our racks out of our sight before he took off with his parents, and it dripped over 6 controllers and 4 bags of 360 AV cables which required about 40 minutes of cleaning.

[Walsingham]

Stay well away, Cal. I agree it sounds like fraud for all teh reasons above.

 

But even if it isn't what are the prospects if you work for a company that can't run either recruitment or its website properly?

[Calax]

According to their site they've been around since 1986!

 

And *grumbling* I can't seem to have a solid sleep schedule!

Edited July 6, 2010 by Calax

[Walsingham]

According to their site they've been around since 1986!

 

And *grumbling* I can't seem to have a solid sleep schedule!

 

It would be an audacious farudster who'd claim they'd been around since last Tuesday!

 

I'm not blaming you, mate. The only people I blame for fraud are those who commit fraud.

[Calax]

According to their site they've been around since 1986!

 

And *grumbling* I can't seem to have a solid sleep schedule!

 

It would be an audacious farudster who'd claim they'd been around since last Tuesday!

 

I'm not blaming you, mate. The only people I blame for fraud are those who commit fraud.

I wasn't taken in don't worry, and I didn't think you were blaming me. I found it funny how stupid the guys were to send me that and post that fake website. Although how they were intending to defraud me is odd because their website had jack squat on it (of course, I didn't have scripts running so meh)

[Walsingham]

A lot of fraudsters are pretty dumb. They just repeat the same old lies and expect the same sorts of people to fall for them. The greedy and or desparate.

 

My favourite fraudster incident was when one of them threatened another member of my team with a police complaint for harassment. Which, given that we had no positive ID up to then was greeted with warmest encouragement!

 

Fantastic day yesterday. Today shaping up to be another belter. Heaps of work done. Good food. Friends around. Happy days.

[Gorgon]

Well, doesn't it make sense to try to weed out the intelligent people when you are running a scam, leaving you with just the suckers and less chance of things going south.

[Gorth]

We should make a top ten... most popular fraud attempts

 

From top of my head, what regularly ends up in my mailboxes is the treasurer who needs help to move an ex-presidents money, the hbsc bank that needs me to verify my account, I won the big prize in the UK lottery, I have a job offer collecting money from debtors and I get to keep 10% of the money, plus a handful of others who are variants of the first one (aka '419' or 'Nigerian' scams). I used to trace most of them back to their true origins by investigating the headers, but these days I'm getting old and lazy, so I just dump them into spamcop who does the hard work and generates reports for abuse contact information.

[Calax]

I remember one posted in one of these threads a while ago where the bottom of the email had a skillion random words (relating to porn/sex acts) just to pick up more hits in the google so more people saw it.

 

 

Also there's the odd adbot that we find on the boards.

[Walsingham]

Not much fun at the hospital but it got me down the other end of town to see a few folks I used to greet daily. Some work done, but finding it hard to concentrate. Anyway, good stuff, and more confirmation of new contracts forming up like thunderheads of awesome. May have to take on new staff, which is always fun since I involve all my existing staff in the process.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Today at Kaftan's

 

"Continued work to setup a useable workflow for vray elements in nuke. Had a strange gamma problem that went away by itself, it should have been linear gamma at 2.2 but it seemed like it was the inverse 0,4545. But that's not the main thing, which was that I solved the bug causing white fringing and artefacts in the global illumination pass. Turns out vray apparently isnt entirely compatible with a blend shader using ambient occlusion as a mask. I wish we would migrate to mental ray, but that's not going to happen."

 

 

Its so incredibly interesting I can barely contain my delight.

[LadyCrimson]

Might have to with acoustics. I'm having the exact same setup I used to have in my new apartment, and there's absolutely no impact in bass. Sometimes it just works out that way.

 

5.0 setup here. Need a sub, as a decent sub would be at least in the same 1,5k euro ballpark my tv and amp were, I'm currently restrained by my grad student budget from obliging my desires.

Room acoustics are definitely a big factor. Settings too, of course.

 

But I'm also talking about the sound systems in theaters. Which again, isn't to say it always sounds bad...it's just completely different. The bass is loud, but it does not 'thump' deeply in the same way. Also, my ears are very sensitive to treble/high pitch and since somewhere in the early-mid-90's many theaters now seem to have it set to a point where it feels like I have broken glass bouncing on my eardrums.

 

...today I'm doing almost nothing. Which is kind of nice.

[Hurlshort]

I'm doing traffic school as I type this. The online option is pretty nice.

[Guard Dog]

Hello everyone, it's been a while since I dropped by. I just got home from a date, it was nice but no big deal. I finished the book I've been working on but so far have had no luck even getting a publisher to bite on more than a sample. I'm looking into self-publishing but I don't know if I want to invest that kind of money into a real long shot like this. I'll keep trying though. I never did that for the money anyway. Now I'm going to pour a highball of Knob Creek on the rocks and go sit on my porch. Maybe the coyotes will start up tonight, i have not heard them in a long time.