PlanetOfOrd

What do cell phones look like in the year 2144?

Obviously they won't have a screen anymore. They'll be pop-up displays. So if you're sitting on a train and your romantic partner sends you a steamy selfie...guess who has an audience?

Has this annoyed anyone else?

If they're tactical screens, that makes sense. But I still don't think transparent displays on personal devices will be a thing in the future.

I'm in tech; senior level. But I've been looking for work for over 3 years. I've been getting advice/tips/tricks from other people, but nothing has worked so far. These are things I've tried:

• Blindly applying for a job through the job form
• Working with a recruiter to get me a position.
• Asking to chat with someone on a team with an open position.
• Asking to chat with someone on a team with NO positions.
• Working to establish myself as an expert on social media.
• Asking friends if their company is hiring.
• "Slow networking" (not asking for a job directly, but trying VERY hard to be patient and get to know someone first)
• Fast networking...taking the direct "hey, you hiring?" approach.
• Lynchpin networking (connecting people w/ other people)
• Giving talks at conferences
• Guerrilla tech support (providing my 2 cents on a post even if no one was asking for it).
• open source contributions
• Temp agencies
• state jobs
• looking for "hiring" tags on social media.
• connecting with high-profile people and asking if they need help.
• developing a complete MVP that would help someone (yet I couldn't quite market effectively).
• Leveraging previous employers to see if they have anything new.
• Offering "low hanging fruit" gigs on social media.
• Putting my resume on job boards.
• Getting a role well below my pay grade and working my way up (if I try this I get automatically disqualified for being too overqualified).
• Providing free consultation to businesses.
• Hosting a podcast interview with someone from a company.
• Writing a guest post for an article (I've kind of done this, I think).

Edit:

• I've also had my resume, LinkedIn profile, and other social media, looked over by professionals and nonprofessionals alike. I've even gotten coaching. I've probably gotten more coaching than interviews at this point.

Another edit:

• The only think that's worked lately (as terrible as it sounds) is groveling and telling people the severity of my situation. And that's just gotten me very very small dead-end projects in someone's back pocket. I'm definitely trying to leverage these as best I can.

Any other strategies people have found that works? How did you get your job? I'm running out of ideas.

I've been a believer for a while, and always assumed scripture that talked about Jesus coming soon was intended to be "someday." But lately I've learned that most NT writers (Paul, John, James) were expecting Jesus to come back in like a generation or 2. And most wirings seem to incorporate Jesus's return as an answer to ancient Rome's brutality.

So in the 21st century, how can we reconcile this? Did Jesus say he was coming soon and the NT writers like Paul were basically assigning their own timeline? If Jesus returned to overthrow Rome today I think the most he'd have to do is have a coffee chat with the Pope on ways he can lead the Roman Catholics back to him. So what's with all the imagery of Jesus coming back to annihilate the Roman emporor?

I'm so conused. 😅

Title should explain it. What are you working on? What are you excited about? Looking to make new friends, so 👋 and let me know you're alive. 😀

I'm a tech lead developer. But the past couple of years I've been looking high and low for sustainable work. The most I've gotten is projects people pulled from their back pocket because they felt sorry for me.

I've been at this opportunity search for years now...not just months. I can't pay for my health insurance anymore and my diet is 90% peanut butter sandwiches.

What hasn't worked: following the "formula" everyone tells you to follow. Reach out to the recruiter, talk to the hiring manager, get a take-home assessment (I always decline these), then maybe get hired. Perhaps it's because my mind tends to work more like a business owner--the closer I can get to taking ownership of projects the happier I am.

For the longest time I didn't talk to recruiters. They'd be the first step in a company wasting my time. I realized this is because the employer is paying for the recruiter. The recruiter is getting paid by the employer and could be completely blind to how much of a jerk the employer is.

So I decided, you know what? Tech pays a boat load of money. Even if half my paycheck were spent on someone I'd still have a heck of a lot left for savings. What if I worked with a reverse recruiter.

Better yet, several!

So I've started the rounds. I am hiring recruiters to work for me. I was very transparent with the fact that I'm talking with others, and said whoever gets me a position first wins and gets the royalty.

I'll even generate more competition further down the line. Once I'm financially stable I'll continue to work with the recruiters and offer to pay them again for yet another position. Generate competition with my current employer.

I'm sick of being looked over. It's about time I took the reigns.

I'm not saying Empire is bad by any means. It's still entertaining. But I was shocked when the Internet burst my bubble to declare Jedi a joke and Empire the best. (btw, potential spoilers)

Why I don't like ESB As Much. There doesn't really seem to be any central thesis. Also, the protagonists lack any agency. The inciting incident is that they rebels are on the run from the Empire. I mean, obviously it's in the title. But you have Luke that gets a vision to start a training program to which he just says, "sure, why not?" And you have Han on the run from the Empire with a broken hyperdrive where they just kinda just chill and twiddle their thumbs for most of it, until they think they can hide out with Lando who turns them over to Vader (which, yes did have a lot of tension!). The final lightsaber battle is decent, but there doesn't seem to be much umph behind it until Luke's hand gets cut off. I think the story could have been vastly improved if Luke & Han had their plot lines interact, possibly Luke had a plan he conferred with Han about, and Han knew about this, and Vader knew Han knew about this, so then Vader was chasing Han to get the information...something like that. That would have raised the stakes. And the whole ultimatum Vader doesn't sound convincing or within character--there was nothing in Empire that supports the motive, so it's a payoff that didn't have a setup. Again, Empire is far from a bad movie. I've seen it many times and probably will again. But to me it just felt an "in-between" type of movie.

Why I like ROTJ. Yeah, there are issues. The whole Ewoks battle does turn into a Home Alone type scenario. I think the only reason why is that George Lucas fumbled the storytelling a little--that the bonds that hold the rebels together (with little in the way of armaments) are what defeated the empire with their colossal Death Star. And the characters did seem to start from a blank slate as if Empire didn't happen. But overall it carried the emotional weight I look for with movies. In the scene with the Emporer overlooking the battle for several minutes not a lightsaber is unsheathed but you can see the chess game unfolding between the Emperor, Vader, and Luke. And then the Dark Side wins, not through force of will, but through Luke's desire to do the right thing. The space battle, too, is epic. Some people critique that the Death Star being operational wasn't as big a twist as Lucas intended, but I don't think it was ever intended to be a big reveal. It was just another setback for the rebels that were already frantically trying to defeat an overpowering enemy.

Alright, time for the comments! XD

My tendency seems to be owning my own business and freelancing until I die (until I get stable enough to build my own products). I've been trying to connect with more business-minded people--"average of 5 people" type of mentality. Currently it seems that the only way of doing this is LinkedIn.

But obviously, LinkedIn is creepy.

Any other people think this? How having a federated business networking platform would be awesome?

Not sure if this is strictly a Linux meme, but I'll let you folks decide.

One day I was thinking about the common “girls like bad guys” trope often found in fiction. One prime example is an action/kind-of-romance film from the 70's Badlands. It does appeal to most people because it fits in with what society considers “masculine” and “feminine” traits.

At the same time, I also appreciate fiction that subverts common gender tropes. Wonder Woman subverted the “strong male hero must defend the feeble woman” trope effortlessly.

So I took it upon myself to do this with the aforementioned trope. In addition, within a compelling story, main characters must have an arc—each character has to come away with the story changed.

Using these rules, I explored this dynamic—a “good guy” is attracted to a “bad girl.” While I appreciate dark story tones, the tone of this story is darker than I anticipated.

Even so, I hope you enjoy it.

Looking back this definitely isn't my favorite story. I think it suffers from the same ills that Steinbeck admitted East of Eden suffers from. Even so, I think some folks would like it.