CareerSpammer

Received this happy pile-o-bullshit from CarreerBuilder, despite the fact that I have found a job, and have thus closed my resume, some still prefer to spam my e-mail with this. Lets do a blow-by-blow teardown of this spam. 

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Dear Jobseeker,

We have recently reviewed your resume on CareerBuilder.com and have decided to contact you with a rare job opportunity.

If you actually took one freaking look at my resume you'd realize very quickly just how utterly irrelevant the rest of your spam would be.  Either that, or your reading comprehension is so lacking you really belong in the 3rd grade, and not running a "recruitment" firm.

What we are looking for

Our company is currently hiring responsible and motivated individuals to help us improve our financial system and increase our cash flow. We are committed to improve ourselves and we value honesty and responsibility for which we reward our employees financially in a productive long-term employment.

What we offer

     New income system: commissions without sales
     Very attractive income based on a standard salary plus commissions and bonuses with each order [emphasis mine]

Did you mistake a resume for a technical person for that of a sales drone? It's a common mistake, I can understand...

     No fees ever required

Oh, good to know I won't have to pay you to have such a wonderful job

     You can start immediately
     Net income up to $95,000 per year
     You can work part-time or full-time

 Red Flags! This is how i know you're a spammer:

"You can start Immediately" translates to "we have no screening process and need warm bodies that will hopefully take orders for us."

"Net Income up to $95,000 per year" translates to "You'll be lucky to make $100 per year, but we're not gonna tell you that, 'cuz the more people you rope in, the more you can make, amwayiright?


"You can work part-time or full-time" translates to "Really, we couldn't give a rats ass. If you're at least half-intelligent you'll realize this is a golden opportunity you shouldn't toss your day job for. We know this, so we're desperate enough to take on part-timers to take orders.

     Flexible vacations/holidays - you choose how much and when to work or have time off

Not necessarily a red flag, but shows desperation; what this really means is "We're desperate enough. if you decide to take a 6 month "vacation" while you're flipping burgers at Micky-D's we'll understand, after all, it's a much higher paying job that what we have to offer.

     Job for a large and stable company which means higher financial security

Seriously, Amway, is that you?

What is required?

     Microsoft Office (Word) - basic knowledge
     Access to the Internet and e-mail

"We don't require much. Can you breathe without drooling? No? Well you're hired anyway!"

     Good level of work ethics

Not really a hard requirement, after all you can set your own hours. So long as you actually get something right once in a while, we'll cling to you desperately.

     Will to learn and perform tasks in a timely fashion
     U.S. resident or green card holder
     You are not required to quit your current job.

You're consuming oxygen, right? Great! you're hired! Enjoy your new career in telemarketing!

Obligations and responsibilities

     Dedication in helping our company’s financial system and improving our business
     Perform various basic financial tasks
     Provide regular reports and updates on your orders and their status

By "helping our company's financial system" we mean hard selling to people who never wanted our crappy products in the first place.

"Perform various basic financial tasks" Can you do order data entry and take people's credit card numbers without stealing too many of them? Great! you're an excellent fit!

We are also offering the possibility of advancement inside our company for the more dedicated and ambitious employees. During the initial stage of this new job you will receive and depend upon precise instructions as well as help from our Support Department. Qualified candidates will be offered flexible schedules of work, competitive salary, bonuses and other benefits. Company covers all expenses needed to perform this job.

 Ready to climb the pyramid? We have some double-diamond(tm) opportunities waiting for you!

This job entails only a few hours of work per week so you will be able to plan your work schedule with ease.

In other words, we warned you: "Don't quit your day job"; now our asses are covered.

Looking forward to working with you, reply to this e-mail if you are interested.

Oh, and if you reply, thanks for helping us update our spam database. We need to confirm you e-mail is valid so our inbox on the crusty server at an undisclosed location somewhere in the Philippines  stops flooding with invalid address messages. You're helping our spamming operations become more efficient and irritating.

Human Resources

Cute... They think they're people.

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What annoys me most, I think, is the total lack of regard for the job seeker's skills and desires. It would be a cold day before I even considered something like this. Also, did the author of this message even notice when they were "reviewing" my resume that I had flagged myself as unavailable for hire because I found a job? Or did they harvest my account name from the system before they did that?

In short: No. I don't even consider opportunities like this for a second. They have demonstrated utter contempt for the potential "employee" --and I use that word loosely --by offering something that doesn't even remotely match their skill set or interests.

Discovery Reality Shows

So, taking a cue from Michael Mock's blog, I'm creating a pitch-list for programming shows that the discovery networks could air:

• Storm Chasers: Coders on the Road - A group of software developers join forces with one of the storm chasing teams and code up analysis software on the fly for their instruments.
• Industrial Refinery Programmers - Software engineers working on control systems in a refinery. What could go wrong?
• Timber Mill Coders - A group of programmers on a tecnical support mission to service the automated equipment used to cut various wood sizes (a spin-off of Extreme Loggers)
• ER: Code Blue - Programmers race against the clock to fix software bugs in life support equipment.

What's wrong with this diagram?

Take a look at the following image:

Source: NCBI PubChem database

I'm relatively certain there's something wrong here. Can you guess where the problem is? Answer after the jump.

A Rather Sobering Experiment

So, there was I was, minding my own business and browsing along on Wikipedia (which I tend to make a habit of, when I started reading about cognitive dissonance for no particular reason. A few clicks later, a came across this article. Go ahead, read it, then come back when you wipe the cold sweat from your brow.

The set up a fake prison with respondents on a prison study. Some were slated to be guards, some slated to be prisoners. There were very few rules, the most notable of which was that you shouldn't physically harm the prisoners if you're a guard. What followed was pure horror: Guards humiliated and psychologically tortured the prisoners. Early on, the prisoners staged a revolt. Eventually, 2 had to leave early because of severe psychological stress, and the experiment was cut short because an outsider began to question the morality of the study.

This study is a strong example of human nature, and our desire to fit within our respective groups. Things spiraled out of hand because of the lack of controls and the fact that the person conducting the experiment was also a participant. But, it shows what happens when people are left to their own devices, with only vague instructions, specifying the need to make life uncomfortable to the imprisoned. It's suggested that some of the behaviors seen at Guantanamo Bay were similar to what was seen in this experiment.

It's also chilling reminder of this statement (I forget who said it first): Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Truer words have not been spoken.

Reviews of things that suck: KCl

Summary:

OK, SO! My ex was deeply offended when I stated that I did not like the salt free ketchup. I now know why.

Instead of salt, the ketchup uses a substitute: Potassium Chloride. Innocuous, food safe, but dangerous if you're on a potassium sparing diuretic. I'm not. My blood pressure stays just fine unaided (even on a CNS stimulant like Adderall), but, for kicks and because, I don't have very many salts of potassium, it was a cheap addition to my reagents collection (and I'm ALL about the cheap right now!) so, I decided to do a little taste test this morning. This strongly reaffirmed my belief that the addition of KCl to ANYTHING will render it unfit for human consumption.

OK, so, in my usual spice/seasoning tasting procedure, I shook out a small amount onto my hand. The crystals were just as cubic as our friendly NaCl salt that we all know and LOVE ♥. That, my dear friends, is where the similarity ends.

I wet my index finger, dipped it in the small pile to pick up a few crystals. I then placed my finger in my mouth and onto my tongue. For about the first 10ms it was kind of like salt, then it hit, an acrid, cloying, and gag inducing sensation of, "OH MY GOD, SOMETHING IS SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH this substance in my mouth" Yes, I gagged. Yes, my eyes squeezed down tight and my feeble brain tried to process this horror-inducing sensation in my mouth. I swallowed. The small amount won't actually hurt me, WILL IT? No, I'm reasonably sure it won't. The aftertaste, an impossible to describe, somewhat bitter, medicinal aftertaste permeated my mouth. If I didn't do something quick to neutralize the horror building in my mouth, I was sure to lose my breakfast. I grabbed the nearest drink. A freshly poured glass of cola, and chugged it down, to remove the ionic nightmare from my mouth.

I will never EVER ingest such a vile substance again. Into the reagent cabinet it goes, never to soil another morsel of food ever again.

Pros:

• It won't raise your blood pressure
• I'm sure it would be just as neat as sodium chloride for growing pretty cubic crystals
• It looks just like salt
• Has a nifty warning to consult your physician before using any sort of salt substitute
• Makes a fine addition to my reagents. I don't have any potassium compounds, and now I do
• An excellent source of potassium.
• A great way to pull cruel pranks on unknowing friends when they go to salt up their delicious fries.

Cons:

• May induce vomiting
• Looks can be deceiving. It looks like salt, it shakes like salt, but unlike salt, it tests your gag reflex. 
• It might kill you if you are on certain medications for the blood pressure you're watching so closely.
• It's not iodized like sodium chloride. Your thyroid will be angry. 
• It has a highly disagreeable medicinal aftertaste that will leave you wishing you were dead. 

In short. It looks great on paper, but the reality is it isn't the real thing, and it's not really a substitute. If you're watching your blood pressure, you're probably much better off either going really easy on the NaCl salt, or just skipping the salt all-together. Most food already has enough salt already, so leaving a bit off will leave you better off. 

An update -- What is happening, projects, and stuff...

So, I discovered Monday that I'm no longer employed; that's always fun. On the bright side, it's an opportunity to find work closer to me, and possibly better pay.

I at one point started the design for a CPU, it's still in the back of my mind, and I'll get back to it.... eventually. And, I'm currently having a bit of fun trying to figure out how to separate copper sulfate from what appears to be a binder to keep it from crystallizing out of the solution. It's this that I want to talk about.

So, I picked up a bottle of algaecide at a store because it contained copper sulfate. I immediately knew something wasn't quite right, because the solution was green, rather than the characteristic blue that copper sulfate has. So, I looked on the ingredients, and most of the contents of the bottle are "stabilizers", polyacrylate, and another chemical that's escaping my memory at the moment. I went ahead and attempted to drive off the water, and see what happens. What I wound up with was essentially a useless green goo that smelled similar to something I had played around with as a kid, friendly plastic. I've given up on this being a useful form of copper sulfate to work with, the goo binds everything, I had a little luck with acetone, but the yield made it pointless.

There's a lesson here: If you're an amateur chemist looking for copper sulfate to grow blue crystals, buy the root killer stuff. It's already crystalline, and doesn't have the binders.

The sad state of science

This post illustrates in so many ways what is wrong with our world today. To continue stereotyping, and to continue to engrave the idea of blatant consumerism rather than real discovery and science simply disturbs me on so many levels.

I couldn't agree more with Bree. We should cultivate the culture of discovery in all kids, whether they are boys or girls. Arguably, one of the most significant discoveries in the 20th century was made by a woman, and that discovery brought about the nuclear age. (Whether it was a good thing or a bad thing is another matter all-together. That's what the governments did with the discovery...) which among other things helped broaden our understanding of physics, brought about a powerful new source of energy, and gave us life-saving cancer treatments.

Mock Ramblings

Some shameless promotion of a friend's blog:

Mock Ramblings

He's a writer, and posts some rather clever series. If you haven't read any of his writing, you really should! It's good. Real good. One of my favorite (though they haven't made an appearance recently) is Reflections of a Deranged Cultist. Formatted as hijacked blog postings, the deranged cultist, and no sometimes his love interest make postings about the goings on in a secret Cthulhu worshiping cult. What could be more fun? A steel sphere filled with angry porcu-bats, that's what!  

Lab Notes: Elemental Iodine - wrap up

In my previous experiment I extracted elemental iodine from Tincture of Iodides. Now to explore how it happens. I knew that the mixture of hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric acid caused elemental iodine to precipitate from the solution, but didn't understand the mechanism. Now, after a bit of exploring and research, I understand the reaction mechanism. Starting with what is known:

You can see the potassium is left as a positive ion, as the iodine is no longer combined with it. Also note the Iodine was in the -1 oxidation state, but is now in the 0 oxidation state. This means it has been oxidized, not reduced. So, an oxidizer is needed to move the state up one. Hydrogen peroxide is readily available, and at low concentrations is relatively safe to work with. No oxygen was evolved in the reaction between the hydrogen peroxide and potassium iodide, so what is hydrogen peroxide reduced to?

Water and an oxygen radical? Not quite. I'll get to why in a moment.Since no oxygen is evolved from this reaction, I know that oxygen is not generated, so the hydrogen peroxide must be reduced to water. In order for that to occur, there must be hydrogen ions available to balance the equation. So, this pair of half-reactions is most likely:

Adding an acid allows the hydrogen peroxide to decompose to 2 water molecules. After combining the 2 equations, you obtain this equation:

Which is the mechanism behind the reaction. It is a redox reaction, where the Iodine is oxidized, and the hydrogen peroxide is reduced. In my reaction I used hydrochloric acid, so putting everything together, this is the resulting reactants and products:

As you can see, the result is elemental iodine precipitating out of a solution of potassium chloride.

Lab Notes: Iron Oxides

For fun, I had this idea: the classic grade-school experiment: making rust. Good ol' iron oxide. So, I grabbed a small row of staples, added some salt, and dropped them in the water.... and waited.

I'm not the most patient person in the world, so I grew tired of how long it was taking to turn steel into rust. Thinking to myself, "Hydrogen peroxide is an oxidizer, therefore, hydrogen peroxide should make the rust faster", and it did. What I ended up with was iron hydroxide, no iron oxide, but with heat it dehydrates, which yielded the black iron oxide, magnetite. Not surprisingly, it's magnetic and quite fun to play with, but it wasn't what I was after, I wanted the deeply red Iron (III) Oxide. When rust forms, it's a mix of oxides and hydroxides. I was hoping to separate the two by somehow driving one into solution, while leaving the other alone. The idea occurred to me by way of a mistake. I had a vial of what was left over after attempting to get a purer form of acetic acid through heat distillation, instead of grabbing the empty vial, I grabbed that one instead, pouring  the magnetic iron oxide into that instead of an empty vial. I noticed that the brown portion was gone, leaving behind only the black. I also noticed that the solution took on a very strong orange coloration. So, I set out to attempt this. Reacted more of the oxide with vinegar (acetic acid), and filtered. To my surprise what came out was a stunningly bright orange solution. What I'm not sure of right now is if it is iron acetate, or iron oxide dissolved in acetic acid. I'm in the process of evaporating the liquid from the solution, and I will see what I get when I rinse the dry product with water.

On another note about the oxidation with hydrogen peroxide, it seems to go much faster with the introduction of sodium chloride (table salt), I don't know the mechanism behind this, but it was very interesting to observe.