I recently took the Staff Services Analyst Transfer Exam for the state of California.This isn’t the regular online version of the test but a 75 question,three hour version. The reason I was subjected to this torture has something to do with there being surplus state employees, a State Restriction of Appointments list and some other human resources mumbo jumbo.

I passed, but I must admit this test was not easy. There were three other test takers besides myself and we all used just about all of the three hours allotted to us. Approximately 65 percent of the test is math based, including a bit of geometry, algebra and a lot of statistics. Specifically, the exam has three sections with 25 questions each, all multiple choice….but don’t let that fool you.

I wasn’t sure what to expect going in but I was provided with a hyperlink to the official study guide put out by the State Personnel Board. This study guide includes nine questions and is a complete joke when measured against the real test. If you’re forced into taking this test, do not use the study guide to determine whether you’re ready or not. If the study guide was the only thing I looked over I would have failed.

Luckily, my new boss connected me with two people who had recently taken the test and they filled me in on what’s really going on. Here’s what they told me and what I discovered to be true:

• The test will take 3 hours.
• Know how to do pretty much everything that involves a percentage, i.e. find a percentage, turn a percentage into a fraction, turn a fraction into a percentage and so on.
• Restudy mean, median, mode and variance.
• Restudy basic geometry, especially how to find area and perimeter.
• Brush up on basic algebra.

I was actually told I needed to take the test two days before it was being offered. Having been out of basic math classes for a long time and accustomed to using a computer program to do most math, I knew I would need to study. I hit the books for a good two evenings, using the Web site www.mathisfun.com and downloading a few percentage worksheets from the site http://www.mathgoodies.com . I ran over these several times each and was pretty confident going in.

The last part of the test is composed of project planning questions. Each set of questions will begin with a hypothetical situation, for example: “Your manager has asked you to head a project involving three other employees.” Then the question might be something like: “What’s the first thing you do?”

I already have a kind of project planning background so I didn’t study for these. The only thing I can suggest is that when planning a project don’t be afraid to ask your manager questions, don’t restart the whole process if something goes wrong and always make sure to meet yourdeadlines.

Good luck!

I'm Batman

So, last night I had a dream that I was standing in for Batman.

Now, I wasn’t Batman but I guess because I have the skills and the body (what are you laughing about) to be Batman, Batman chose me to play him when he couldn’t show up for an event because he had the flu or a hangover or whatever. I had the armor, mask, utility belt, all of it; anyone who saw me would think I was Batman.

Anyway, I was at a meeting of some type with various law enforcement officials and I was trying to be mysterious and menacing. This meeting was in a shadowy warehouse and I stalked around glaring first from one shadow and then another.

At some point in time I must have set down my cell phone on a table near where the main speaker of the meeting (Commissioner Gordon?) was holding court. Well, it ended up ringing. If you’ve heard my cell phone ring you know it’s the Keyboard Cat song and, yes, it was also my ringtone in the dream.

Commissioner Gordon stopped the meeting, picked up the phone and began asking who it belonged to.

I played it off and looked around disgusted, but the phone went off again and again and again.

Pretty soon I had no other choice but to go up and get my Keyboard Cat ringtone phone. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy, but I just ignored them and climbed up on some boxes to check who was calling. This is where the dream ended.

So people, your calls are important to me but please don’t call me when I’m filling in for Batman.

War against the debt ceiling

So the country's debt ceiling has been reached, or to put it in layman's terms "America has maxed out its credit cards." If the federal government can't get another card it will only be able to pay a little less than half its bills. Yeah, less than half.

I wish I could say "so what, the federal government is run by a bunch of ego maniacs, let them go bankrupt" but I can't. If the government can't get another card it would be a pretty big deal. Suddenly Congress would be making decisions like, should we pay US soldiers, grandma's medicare or Joe College's financial aid. On a global scale, not getting another card would cause the US's credit rating to drop and, more than likely, tank the stock market. Bye-bye retirement investments!

However unlike you or I, the federal government can essentially create its own new credit card. All Congress has to do is get together and agree on the terms of the new card. Yes, they would have to agree on something and in the poisonous environment of Washington the chances of that are slim to none.

Both Democrats and Republicans agree that we need the new credit card and that the terms of getting the new card should include a plan to lower the US debt so something like this doesn't happen again. The sticking point is how do they lower the debt. Dems want a two-pronged attack with cuts and new revenue (read: new taxes/ letting the Bush tax cuts expire). Reps want a plan totally made up of cuts, which would require them to take a knife to sacred cows like Medicare and Social Security.

HOLD ON PEOPLE! What I haven't heard from anyone on either side or those on no side is the fact that the country is currently engaged in three wars: Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. THREE WARS! The military is already expensive, having the military in one war even more so, in two even more and in three, holy hell it's a financial smelting plant.

Check this out. Yes, it is legit: www.costofwar.com

Normally when countries enter wars they ask their populace to take part, to sacrifice. During WWII the US populace bought war bonds, planted victory gardens and rationed their purchases of countless items. When the US entered these wars, Washington under the Bush Administration cut taxes. YOU DO NOT CUT TAXES DURING WAR TIME.

We are still at war, and as such the whole country must step up and fight it. It can't be fought only on the backs of the elderly, single mothers and soldiers with cuts to social services. Taxes on all must be part of the plan to lower the debt, as the debt is built on the costs of the wars we are fighting. Yes, it may hurt but it's not just the military at war, it's the whole country.

whose birthday?

This is very odd; I forgot my birthday is coming up. I’m not sure how this happened. I’ve felt a little out of sorts the past week or so and time really has been flying by. Seems I sleep, go to work, come home and sleep some more. That’s something else, I’ve really been craving sleep. I’ll look at the clock at 7 PM and think, “Wow, I should go to sleep now.” I’m not really sleepy but sleep sounds absolutely fantastic all the time. Maybe it’s because the weather has been very rainy and cloudy. I always feel like I get a bit depressed when it’s like this and nothing fits with depression better than sleep. Anyway, where was I…oh, birthday. Some family members are having me over this weekend, they said they needed some help at their new house. I bet they’re going to take me out for a beer or something. I only remembered because my good friend e-mailed me and asked what I was doing on my birthday. That’s when I looked at the calendar and thought, “Oh shit, my birthday is in a few days.” Hmm, that a little weird when other have to remind you when your birthday is.

Sometimes you feel like you know someone

So I was messing around on the Internets a few days ago and decided to see if I could find an old friend.

Like everyone else (but me) he’s on Facebook but there was also something else, a video mentioned on a few sites done in cooperation with his church and posted earlier this year. The description mentioned “sanctity of life,” so I figured it for a church anti-abortion bit. It is, but it’s a bit more than that.

At first, I actually had a hard time determining if it was him. He’s gained a bit of weight in his face, he’s sporting a goatee and it appears he’s dying his hair jet black. Also, his voice is different. It was odd because I’d look at him talking on the recording and be sure it was him, and then I’d look back and have second thoughts. Anyway, it is him, the timeline fits, the location matches and he mentions his wife by name.

So the video is anti-abortion but specifically about the ONE, TWO, THREE abortions he pushed his high school girlfriends into!

Three?!?! Three?!?!

Now, this guy was no Lothario. It means nothing these days, but on the high school social ladder I wouldn’t hesitate to place him one or two steps below me. Don’t get me wrong I was nothing special, but besides being a Dungeons and Dragons playing comic reading geek, I played football and was captain of the wrestling team. He was a Dungeons and Dragons playing geek and a band geek. Although, he did begin running track his junior or senior year, not with any great success but it did keep him active which is good.

Now, I had always suspected that he had impregnated his first girlfriend during his junior year of high school. The girlfriend’s sister and her sister’s boyfriend hated him more than normal. (Of course, part of that was that he was three or four years her senior, but there was always a little extra spite in their eyes.)

Without a doubt the second and third abortions took place when he was dating his second girlfriend. It was probably his junior year and once again she was three or four years his junior and very immature.

Although I hung out with him all the time, I probably only met her two or three times. The first time, he invited another friend and I to her birthday party. We didn’t stay long as it was like going to a party for little girls three or four years younger than us. (Now three or four years isn’t that big of a deal once you’re over 25, but at 17 that means she’s 14 or 13 and the maturity gap is huge.) After that, I always got the feeling that he was embarrassed by her so he kept the two relationships separate.

I was pretty sure that he was diddling her. For one thing, he told me that sometimes he stayed the night at her house, and for another, it seemed that he could get both these early girlfriends to do anything he wanted them to. Just the way he talked about them made me think that he had them eating out of his hand. He was, after all, the cooler older guy.

He’s now a husband, the father of several girls and a man of the church; which is another thing I never saw coming. I hope he’s well, but damn three! And while I knew him! Or maybe, I never really did.

Fucking animals

I was listening to the radio this morning and heard a news story about Egyptian Muslims who upon hearing that a local Muslim girl had been caught with a Christian boy decided she should be put to death. When her father refused, they killed him and then went and burned down the local Catholic church. This of course led to more bloodshed and has both sides calling for revenge.

My first thought upon hearing this was, “What a bunch of fucking animals.”

This sentiment was not only aimed at Muslims but at the Middle East in general. I’m not usually one to damn the many for the actions of the few and I fully realize that to do so is wrong, but that was honestly the first thing that came to mind.

I guess I’ve succumbed to Muslim violence overload that media is bombarding me with. It’s all too much. All the tails of inhuman violence taking place in the Middle East, and parts of Africa and Asia dominated mainly by Islam has broken me down.

With this in mind I went to work and came across a news story about an 11-year-old girl who was gang raped by upwards of 15 men and boys in a small town outside of Houston Texas . It seems that many of the people in the town are blaming the girl for being a harlot. Ughh, again my reaction was, “What a bunch of freaking animals.”

This time the sentiment was not only aimed at the people who were involved but at small town Texas inhabitants in general. Again, I know it’s wrong but Sweet Freaking Beejeezuz people, what the fuck is wrong with you?

It’s not Muslims or small town hicks, it’s everyone, they’re all animals. At least 50 percent of the people in the world are animals. You have to assume that everyone you meet is an animal until they prove otherwise.

BEWARE!!

Take me to your leader

Interesting Mysterious Universe released today which weirdly involved something I’ve been reading and thinking about lately…artificial intelligence.

It seems that a leading AI researcher has predicted that the event known as the singularity will happen around the year 2045. For those not in the know, the singularity is the point when computers will become self aware. I’m actually surprised that it will take this long to reach that point as technology advances exponentially.

Just this last week Watson, the IBM computer, played Jeopardy against the two best human players to ever play the game and beat them. The technology behind Watson is amazing. Sure, humans built and programmed Watson, but without human tampering Watson “listened” to the questions, “comprehended” them, analyzed them and then answered them. Here is a very cool story about Watson: http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/17/ibm-researcher-explains-what-watson-gets-right-and-wrong/

It’s all very fascinating and a little scary. Now, I’m not too worried about robots rising up and taking over, but I do worry about them further pushing humans from many menial labor jobs. Fast food service, customer service, sales…I would think that more and more of these jobs and others are bound to disappear. With a population that is continually growing this has the makings of a perfect storm.

But I guess we’ve been dealing with a human labor versus technology clash for a long time. The Internet has changed the way people shop and have succeeded in all but burying traditional brick and mortar retail venues. Video rental stores, book stores and music stores have been replaced with Netflix, Amazon and iTunes. And that’s not all, newspapers are dying, the yellow pages are dead, maps are being replaced with GPS, magazines are going bye-bye, television is slowly but surely losing ground to steaming media and traditional radio is not going to be around for much longer with things like Pandora.

Sure, new opportunities arise but I doubt that they’ll ever generate the labor numbers needed. I guess that is what technology is supposed to do though, make things easier and cheaper by eliminating manual labor. When all labor is eliminated will we all live lives of luxury and leisure or will it just exacerbate the difference between the haves and have-nots?

Well, whatever the outcome, I for one am going to welcome our new robot masters.

Link: Technology has been used in this story to catch a cat burglar…who is a cat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDX7tevXO1E&feature=player_embedded