There’s this “devil’s advocate” side of me that is rejecting out of my paw my intent to move my résumé to Google Docs. It claims that I am not thinking off the end of my nose.

Am I forgetting that job hunting is a dirty game, and that victory goes to the candidate who is fastest at getting his/her qualifications into the brain of the HR manager?

Let me recap. I have fifteen seconds from the moment my résumé hits their hot little hands to tell the HR manager what I can do for their company. Is it wise to waste five to ten of those precious seconds showing them a hyperlink and telling them to click it?

The Google Docs idea still feels good, and I still need to give it its day in my court. So what I’m most certainly going to do is get more practice with Google Docs. Not just the actual writing of WP docs and spreadsheets and slide presentations, but actually inviting other people to doctor them up with me. I need some lab partners from elsewhere in the Lower 48.

My immediate plans

I’m already doing my emergency number-crunching. I figure I’m already sitting on enough money to pay my December rent, and the last two paychecks should easily take care of the of the credit cards, utilities, and payment and insurance for Ooo Shinee. December is good, but I’m already thinking about January.

Question is, in light of how ProTeam Staffing could conceivably have a new work assignment waiting for me next Monday, how fast should I get on the horn to the unemployment folks? I probably should do it tomorrow to get the benefits going for the latter half of December.

More news as it breaks.

Quick word…

They’re already starting to thin the herd here at the Ohio Department of Health. My job assignment is scheduled to end after tomorrow. I’ll write some more about what I’m thinking of this new development tomorrow. Since tonight’s post is already mostly written, let me present it…

Have you ever puttered around with Google Docs? Google Docs is kind of like a watered-down Microsoft Office that resides on the Internet as opposed to your own home computer. All the apps and all your documents are stored on the Internet, a.k.a. the “cloud”. There’s no need for carrying around a flash memory stick and risking its theft or misplacement. Best of all, you can invite other people from all over the planet to come in and collaborate on these documents with you.

This is probably the only kind of cloud computing that I can readily understand. And trust me, I need to know about cloud computing because it’s going to be the next big buzzword to spring on the next HR manager I talk to. It may not put me on their IT staff, but it should show that I have more vision for their company than most people.

Google Docs and the next job hunt

This is how I intend to conduct my next job hunt:

1. Move my résumé to Google Docs.
2. Send invites to potential HR managers to view my résumé there.

My cover letter is going to say that I’m a big believer in using tomorrow’s office technology today. I will stress that I am making the effort to understand the concept of cloud computing and how it can benefit the office of today, and toward that end, I’m going to conduct the distribution of my résumé the cloud computing way.

Future computing

I see the computing public eventually going to using thin clients, little relatively dumb terminals about the size of a book that do nothing but web browsing, because really, that’s all a user-side computer needs to be able to do anymore (that and kick documents out through a cheap inkjet printer). Now that there are such online suites of office software as Microsoft Sharepoint, Google Apps, and Google Docs, these can totally replace Microsoft Office and OpenOffice. Even the poorest families should be able to buy and use a thin client and do homework for school using Google Docs.

The office at ProTeam has just informed me that their contract with the Ohio Department of Health is expiring at the end of the month. That means I provide them with an updated résumé and begin contacting them at least weekly to see if they have additional work assignments.

Just as well. It is getting to crunch time for parents of school age children. Some of my callers have been getting antsy to get some kind of printout off of the H1N1 site to fork over to the nurses when their kids go to the vaccinations at school. While ODH’s official position is that preregistration is not mandatory to receive the shot, you can pretty much count on some Mensa candidate elsewhere to require it. Probably some school board that lets a law firm do their thinking for them.

And if they do, it’ll be a pretty nasty double whammy to play on anyone to require that kids be vaccinated at the clinic at the school, and require the Patient Form from our web site on top of it. What if the family PC or printer doesn’t work? Who’s going to see to it the poor kiddies cough up the Patient Form?

With any luck, I won’t be there to watch this happen.

This doesn’t hurt me as bad as most layoffs do. I have the distinct feeling in my heart of having pleased God with my little role in helping people get vaccinated for H1N1 in a nice, timely way. I’m happy to have helped.

And as always, I appreciate your prayers that God continues to provide for me.

I think I can finally compile a list of tactics one can use that will help you survive the savage, hostile environment of the college football fan forum, such as can be found at Yahoo’s Rivals.com or ESPN.com.

Here’s the quick and dirty thing to do. Kind of mentally pitch into the round file any post that contains any of the following:

• The words joke, choke, loser, or pathetic.
• Any form of laughter (i.e. “HAHAHAHAHAHA”, “LOL”, “ROTFLMAO”)

Those things are the mark of the troll. Trolls love college football forums, not for the enlightening discussion of what Team X should do to beat Team Y, or who ought to be ranked higher than whom, but because they’re not going to have better opportunity anywhere else of calling another human being a pathetic loser. Trolls are, however, finding an abundance of big game in Christian sims in Second Life.

My expertise on trolls comes from the wrong end of being trolled. Truth to be told, there’s a little troll in me, and I would call myself pathetic. The only two things keeping me out of my mother’s basement is having neither a basement nor a living mother.

It is well said that conflict is essential to good drama. I am here to put before you the claim that conflict also makes for the best comedy.

Inspiration has truly struck. I was thinking back on last Thursday’s griefer attack on the Vine Christian Prayer Center, and I’m sure that with the proper attention given to plot and characterization, I know I can turn this into stand-up comedy gold.

In this comedy skit, I play the role of  a pastor of a virtual church on Second Life that is all too gung-ho about making newcomers feel welcome in his place of ministry. The newcomers he deals with today are a gang of griefers looking to lay waste to all he has painstakingly worked to build. And if they can get him rattled enough to make him abandon turning the other cheek and do something that can be spun as hateful, like banning them, so much the better.

Our pastor smilingly welcomes a new female avatar into his Christian encounter group. Little does he know that this girl plays the pivotal Trojan Horse role in a griefer attack. Her mission, once the meeting has begun, is to send teleport invitations to all the other griefers, so they can pop in and begin setting off particle bombs and noisy gestures.

His associate pastor tries to warn him of the questionable mostly-Goth groups the newcomer has on her profile, but the pastor dismisses that out of hand as being overly paranoid. His cyber-chapel is open to all who wish to come.

The griefers begin to pop in one by one to wreak their havoc, and the fun begins. This is going to be the most satisfying piece of comedy writing I’ve done in a long time.

At the Vine Christian Prayer Center on Second Life, we are being tested very severely. By trolls.

What I cannot fathom is why. I’m sure there must be some immutable law written somewhere on the Internet of how Christians are going to be hypocrites down to the last man, woman, and child, not so much as one exception. And according to Rule 34, there will also be a pornographic variation of that law. (Please don’t ask for a hyperlink for Rule 34.)

So why waste their own time conducting their rigged tests for hypocrisy?

Here’s my take on it: The trolls know going in that we Christians are going to be judgmental hypocrites. The only question to be settled is how fast they can get us to act that way. All troll tests are along the lines of how much taunting and harrassment we can withstand, and almost all guarantee failure.

You may as well drop a bowling ball to see if the Law of Gravity is still in effect.

Last Thursday, a group of griefers pulled off a Trojan Horse style attack in which one of their number comes to the Vine Prayer Center posing as a curious onlooker, which we of course cannot resist allowing to come into our midst. Once the meeting begins, the Horse sends teleport invitations to all the other attackers, who upon their arrival set off particle bombs and noisy gestures. Bedlam supreme.

The test? How quickly, amid rapidly losing control of the meeting, will our moderator, Grace Cuthbertsson, forget all she was ever taught of turning the other cheek, and resort to the judgmental, hypocritical measure of banning the attackers?

She must ban people or she has no meeting. She has no choice. It’s not a question of if, but when, she flunks this test. It’s a very unfair test.

Lord, are these the people to whom You’d send us with the Gospel? How are we going to win them? All we can do is fail their tests!

Let me share a bit about how potential vaccination patients preregister themselves for an H1N1 vaccine.

At the bottom of the form where the individual enters his information, there is a button labeled Print Patient Form. This prints a copy of the demographic information he entered, and he can take this to his vaccine provider. Preregistering ahead of time greases the wheels considerably by getting information about the potential patient into our computers where it can be called up at the time of the vaccination.

Realizing that not everybody is going to have a computer and Internet service, our official position here at the state health department is that it’s not mandatory to produce this Patient Form to receive the H1N1 vaccine. However, if a smaller agency such as a doctor, hospital, city or county health department, school district, or the caller’s employer wants to make it mandatory, we don’t challenge that. We step aside and let them run their own show.

That being said, smaller agencies do require the Patient Form, and I get calls from people with no computers or Internet who are freaking out because their kids came home from school with a note that said 1) they are required to be vaccinated at the school clinic coming up tomorrow, and 2) they are required to produce the Patient Form from our web site to be vaccinated. The red tape unfairly ensnares the Internet-impaired.

So, who should have the responsibility of getting the required Patient Form to the obstinate asses who required it? Me? They never gave us at the call center an option to register the caller over the phone and mail them the Patient Form. And the “not mandatory” spiel will not be enough. Something of a more concrete nature needs to be done.

That brings up the subject of another thing we are not given here—a suggestion box!

You know Mr. Cheetah Guy in Hawaiian Shorts I wrote about yesterday? He’s not a cheetah. He’s a serval, as he would tell me last night.

Leave it to a furry to know much more about animals than the TV news reporter who interviews him.

I looked closely at the news footage, and I found that the serval’s name is Darrien Lightworker. Once I had his name, I searched him up, and looked on his profile for the groups to which he belongs. He belongs to the Vine Christian Prayer Group, just like me, and he also belongs to several Green Lantern groups that protect residents on Second Life from criminals much like the Guardian Angels Safety Patrols do in real life.

I’ve seen him before! I know it!

Picture what Sonic the Hedgehog would be like had he joined the Green Lantern Corps. The green and black tights, the power ring, the “In brightest day, in blackest night” GL Oath, the whole nine yards. That is what Darrien looked like to me several weeks ago at a discussion group hosted by Grace Cuthbertsson.

I decided to IM Darrien, who happened to be online last night, and asked if he’s going to be at tonight’s Vine meeting. He says he still has the serval avatar. Maybe it will show up.

In my search for articles about Second Life and how it made news on the big television networks, I stumbled upon this interesting article:

NBC Nightly News: “Religious Experience”

Now that I’ve sampled churches in both Second Life and “meatspace”, I’m still convinced that there is no adequate substitute for a body of believers that meet in a brick and mortar building. I still go to Christian Assembly, in spite of the fact that it’s still a music/dancing church with very little to do for the writing/drawing member. I’d love for them to promote their web site, at least once.

As for the new congregation I’ve found, Vine Community Christian Church in Second Life, I’m highly curious about that church, too. We’re still trying to feel our way around, and invent ways to worship our Lord. I’m finding it a very fascinating exercise for my God-given problem solving skills. I can’t wait to see what will happen tonight.

I’d like to meet Mr. Cheetah Guy in Hawaiian Shorts, and try to find out from him why he thinks his SL church is the only one that seems to be accepting of him. I can’t help but wonder if there’s some brick ‘n’ mortar church out there that really dropped the ball in how they treated him.

There’s so much more to this story than the sound bites tell us.

Family Dollar is offering a digital still camera for $10 and a small digital video camera for $40.

Should I bite? After all, I do fancy myself a citizen journalist. Such gadgets would be a boon for my blogging.

I got my pay for the week, and bought myself earbuds and a supply of AAA batteries for my MP3 player. And a 10-pack of socks. I don’t feel right unless I have a strong supply of AAA batteries for both my Palm IIIxe and my MP3.

Scratch that. I need a strong supply of everything. If you were to look at my apartment, you would notice an oversupply of paper, both plain copier and college-ruled notebook. In the bathroom, I usually have more than one bottle each of  shampoo and body wash. What I’m not oversupplied on is toilet paper and dishwasher detergent, and I’m thinking seriously about getting such tomorrow morning. I have an extra cartridge of black ink for my printer, even though I don’t use it that much, and I’m starting to feel a strong cry toward getting more colored ink.

And I feel the need to pay the Internet bill off early, too. God forbid I should run low on that. Oh well. Pay the bills when I get home.