ONE Kind of Blog Post That Makes Me Mad

In all of the on-line guides to "improve your blogging and increase your audience," there is the "list of kinds of blog entries." This list says that there are X kinds of entries, and using them will help drive traffic to your site: The Leading Question, The Scare Tactic, The "I will make your rich/sexy/healthy" Entry, The How-To, and finally The List.

Yes, the list recommends itself.

And normally, I like lists. Since I do web development and design, lists are good for me: "15 sexy footers," "10 trends in graphic design for 2009," "12 javascript techniques every developer should know," "6 CMS frameworks that real web developers use."

You know what lists I hate? There are two kinds:

"3000 Fonts Every Designer Should Own!"

Okay, that's just obviously stupid. A designer should have a stable of maybe 300 fonts he or she really likes, and suitcases of styles for specific genres, but 3000 fonts is more than anyone can be asked to carry around in his or her head. There's no point to that kind of list: either we already have the font sets we enjoy, or we don't have time to filter through 3000 fonts to pick out ones we need for any immanent projects.

But even more blazingly stupid, in a similar way, is this one:

"95 resources to make you more efficient and productive!"

That's the height of ridiculous: reading 95 separate articles just to find the three or four techniques that might appeal to you to make you more productive is a waste of your productive hours. A thoughtful blogger would have pared this down to "Four techniques for maintaining your productive day," and under each technique, "Three tools for maintaining this technique," with commentary for each. A blind list, especially of 95 different articles, tells me that the writer probably hasn't read them all and is just trying to drive traffic.

I can consume 10 to 20 graphical examples, and when it comes to development techniques a well-written headline will help me filter through 15 or so to find the two I don't know yet. But lists are supposed to help reader acheive some goal, and these super-long, super-fat lists without descriptions or guidance from the writer are just a waste of time.

Resume scanners suck

In the past three days, I've received calls from young woman with thick Mumbai accents, asking me if they can arrange telephone call interviews for tasks for which I don't have the skillset. The dance goes something like this:

"Sir, can I arrange for someone to call you about your HTML and CSS experience? Microsoft has need of experienced PSD to HTML developers."

Since I'm bound by the terms of the unemployemnt insurance, I grudgingly accept. I get a call from a first-line interviewer, who soon realizes that I'm (1) way overqualified for what he wants, since I'm not just some HTML monkey, and (2) I don't have PSD to HTML conversion on my resume. (I can do it, it's just not on my resume for a reason. It's boring!) The conversation closes with a mutual agreement that he doesn't want me for the job.

Then I get a call back from Mumbai. "Sir, it says here that you were not picked up for this job, and the note says that the keywords were not appropriate. Can you tell me what keywords I should be looking for?"

Politely and trying not to lose my cool-- this is my time she's wasting, after all, whatever her employer pays her-- I tell her that I don't know what keywords she can look for since I'm not in the field she's interviewing for, that it's not my job, it's not my job to help her, and no, I can't help her. Thank you. Click.

The other one is that since I've done Rich Internet Application development for "industrial environments," and have the word "prototype" on my resume, I've gotten calls for "Industrial Prototype Design and Development." When it becomes clear that what they want is someone who does rapid prototyping of physical things, not software, I ask them why they called me. "It says prototype on your resume.'"

I have to sigh and tell him, "Prototype is a programming framework and language for web page development. It sounds to me like you've got a bad keyword lookup."

"Can you tell me what keywords I should be looking for?"

"Maybe you should see if the words 'industrial' and 'prototype' are even in the same paragraph?"

Ah, the adventure never ceases. I just worry that I might soon have to tune down a resume' to something small and inexperienced to qualify for one of those scutty webmonkey jobs.

Insurance companies suck!

I am so tempted to mail this to my former "benefits provider:"

Attention, "corporate service provider" schmucks! The following notice on your website is not only a sign of incompetence, assholiness, and a general lack of concern for your customer's well-being, at this point it indicates an almost dysfunctional malevolence on your part:

This site has been optimized for use with Microsoft Internet Explorer browser version 5.5 or higher.
Please check with the Microsoft Website at www.microsoft.com for a browser upgrade.

No, I won't check with Microsoft, as nobody in my house is running a Microsoft-based OS. It's all Macintosh and Linux here, guys. 22% of the home user market is now non-MS. You are failing one-fifth of your market. Your website doesn't work at all with Firefox, looks horrible in Safari, and boots users out the first time some MS-only exploit fails. Get yourself a better collection of designers and developers.

Hell, hire me.