I was off work, which was great. Even better, we saw Alter Bridge on Wednesday.

The setlist was awesome and they played great, as usual. When the first notes of Silent Divide hit in the beginning, every single hair in my arms was standing straight. On the downside, now I’ve had an ear worm since the concert.

🎶 There’s no doubt we’ll phase out the one who lies 🎶

Oof. That’s worse than suboptimal!

Calm down, kids. These issues were resolved a longtime ago by ASN.1

I do once or twice per winter. It doesn’t grow much, though.

I’ve been intending to cut the grass, but I’m worried the lawnmower will sink if I try. It’s been raining that much.

Forgot to mention, I will offer Ardbeg Uigeadail as a preparatory sedative. The only condition is you need to take it neat.

Would it make more enticing if I was to say my wife is a retired dentist?

When will the wet weather stop. I have a lawn that needs moving and few other things to do in the garden that aren’t happening at the moment.

Getting the complaint out of the way, I’m off this week. I was looking forward to Friday whole of last week. Alter Bridge to look forward to and wife’s birthday too. (In that priority order, mind)

Mate, I have really good pliers, so I can save you couple of tons. DM me.

It sounds like you overdid your workout badly last weekend.

After good several years, I started again going to the gym late last year. At my age one needs to be careful to avoid causing more harm than good. So far no major aches or pains, and happily a noticeable improvement in the way my body (or what’s left of it) works.

Saturday was lovely with bright sunshine through the day. The contrast with the past several weeks was remarkable.

Sadly Sunday was back to grey and damp. On Sunday evening I found myself wondering how bloody bored must I be to be watching curling!

pizza cook in Honduras Woking

FTFY

For reasons that remain beyond my comprehension, company Christmas party was organised in Revolution one year. For me it became two visits in one go, first and last. Good riddance.

The muddy walks season is at its peak. We have two energetic dogs that need their walks, and right now all the decent paths around here are more or less covered in mud. That’s probably the same everywhere this time of the year.

After tasting 23 different bean brands, I tell you what else got tested ca. 12-18 hours later: the local sewers.

Let us know when you’ve nailed Kill the King (imo Blackmore at the top of his game).

I’ve been mostly the hiring manager, so I’ll comment from that perspective. Last time I was job hunting was over 20 years ago and before that almost another 20 years prior. I know very little about being a candidate.

People who know you referring you is by far the most efficient channel. Candidates referred by people I trust almost invariably jump the queue. Use that to the maximum. This is how I’ve found my new jobs, save for the first one and one mid career.

Tailor your CV for each application. It is a lot of work, but it will increase the probability of getting an interview, which is the only purpose of a CV for you. Ensure you highlight experience that matches the role, picking key words from the job ad. I would recommend using plain English and ensuring all sentences are easy to read. Clunky text will easily send your CV to the no pile. For love of god, make sure there are no typos.

Prepare yourself for rejections and ghosting. The problem is not you. Every recruitment process has its flaws and good candidates get rejected regularly. Some of it is incompetence and some just random bad luck. Also, you have no way of knowing what is being used to filter CVs and prioritise candidates. A candidate who gets an interview will already have been very lucky, avoiding accidental rejection and somehow matching the filtering and prioritisation criteria.

When you get an interview make sure you prepare well. I’ll highlight a couple of things I think are important. Pick four or five relevant examples from your career you want to talk about and plan ahead what key things you want to say. The examples will give you a great starting point to answer even tricky questions. You will likely be able to make a bridge from a question to one of your prepared examples and therefore will immediately know how to proceed. This reduces the risk of getting stumped and gives you confidence.

A good format in answering questions is explaining situation you are talking about, what you did and what was the outcome because of your actions. Situation - your actions - outcome. Try to be fairly succinct allowing the interviewer to ask about details that are relevant for them.

If you have gaps in your CV plan what you will say about them. There is nothing wrong in taking a beak, needing a rest, being unemployed, being ill, etc.

Prepare a few questions you want to ask. If you are not curious to learn anything that easily comes across as you not caring. If they don’t give you time to ask questions it’s probably a place you’ll want to walk away from.

Final point I’ll make is that there is nothing wrong in being nervous in an interview. It is not a normal situation and most people will have at least some nerves. I’d probably be super nervous if I was to interview for a job. I would probably simply tell the interviewer that I’m nervous because it’s been a long time. A good interviewer will help you ease into the interview.

Best of luck!

I think this is getting rather hilarious: Nadhim Zahawi failed in bid for peerage from Tories before Reform defection, sources say

GMC Tribunal threw the case out. As it says, the complaint was made by “UK Lawyers for Israel” who are the ones who lost their lawfare case, not UK Government.

Wes Streeting is a weasel, though, and the UK Lawyers for Israel could for once do something value adding and fuck off, the further the better.

You had just one job!