Thursday, February 13, 2025

From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XVIII

Introduction

This is the eighteenth and final installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. (No, it’s not really the final one, so far as I know. Just seeing if you’re awake.) Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, and Volume XVII is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another, and can be read in order of importance, in First World Order, in the order in which they were received, in any other order you like, and/or not at all. (Note: I do not recommend that last option.)

What are Bits & Bobs, in the context of this blog? They’re like the bits of film left on the cutting room floor after a movie is made. Except you know what? That’s a nice metaphor but completely false. These are not leftovers but pertinent snippets from letters I wrote people. Some of the letters were actually printed letters, on paper, couriered by the post office. Others were of course emails. I only selected stuff that I figured any audience might find entertaining, especially nuns. Obviously snippets like “my flight gets in at 7:46 p.m.” would be excluded. (“Especially nuns?” No, I don’t know why I put that.)

Pay attention to the dates. These bits and bobs sprawl all over the place—or, to be more accurate, all over the time.


March 8, 1990

You know, there’s actually a very good reason for procrastinating on a [school] paper. The writing process is very complex, and very personal. What you write has everything to do with your life experiences, and I figure the longer I wait before writing, the more life experiences I’ll have to go on. Something could happen to me right now, for example, which could change the next paragraph of this letter. So it is with my paper. It’s not due for several more days and I’m still young … I should wait.

November 6, 1992

I sprained my right index finger about three weeks ago. I was at the bike shop after-hours truing a wheel and a customer suddenly bobbed up in front of me. Somebody must have left the shop door unlocked, and the customer ignored the “EMPLOYEES ONLY” sign. Scared the crap out of me, and as I flinched my finger went right into the spinning wheel. A few days ago , since it wasn’t healing, I jerry‑rigged a cardboard splint for it, but that didn’t help. Finally I broke down and saw a doctor. Well, a nurse, anyway. She seemed more concerned than I had been, and gave me a real splint which I’m supposed to wear for six weeks! I talked her down to three weeks, but the splint is still a major hassle since it holds my most important finger in a basically straight position.

“But wait,” you’re saying, “this letter is typed—how do you do that?” Well, I have to be able to type, since I have at least fifty pages in papers due before the end of the semester. The splint really does concern me (or rather, it did, as I shall explain). It’s a two‑centimeter‑wide aluminum plate (padded out with foam rubber) which extends beyond my fingertip, and the aluminum is curved at the end. I tried a number of typing drills—the word “jumpy” being the best challenge—and the splint would indiscriminately strike the “u,” “h,” “m,” or “n” key when I was trying for the “j.” The word “jumpy” came out anything from “hynpu” to “nhmph” or even “hunmjhupuh.” What would I do? Without the ability to type, I’d have no papers to turn in, thus failed classes, no graduation, no job, NO FUTURE. Something had to be done. It was then that I remembered the motto of the Marine Corps: Semper Fidelis. No, wait, that wasn’t it. What came to mind was a little saying I’ve somehow attributed to the Marine Corps: “Adapt, Overcome, Improvise!”

I remembered a small worn‑out mechanical pencil eraser I’d replaced a few days earlier, and dug through the trash until I found it. It’s perfect: hard rubber, about seven or eight millimeters in diameter, and maybe five millimeters thick. I glued it to the end of the aluminum splint, and you can see the results. I’ve been typing at about ninety percent of my normal speed (that is to say, about seventy or seventy‑five words per minute). While it’s somewhat trickier than normal typing, I really don’t mind it. The only minor problem is that every so often—once in three hundred words or so, perhaps—the eraser stub gets caught in the intersection of four keys, and hangs up, trapping my splinted finger. This gives me that same queer, shocking sensation as being clotheslined or when the front wheel of your bike somehow locks up.

November 10, 1992

A question my friends like to ask me is, “So what are you doing after you graduate?” I tell them, “I’m gonna get a job,” and then the real interrogation begins: “What can you do with an English degree?” they ask. At least they realize now that it’s too late to persuade me to change my major … that had gotten old over the first couple years. So, recently I was talking to a friend I hadn’t seen in ages, and she asked the same thing. “I’ve got a job lined up,” I told her, “in a factory, deburring plastic parts on an assembly line. You see, when plastics are molded, there are flashings left over from the holes the liquid material was poured through, into the mold. It’s actually pretty tricky work, because if you slip with the file you can ruin the whole piece.” I was pleased to have pulled off the entire description with a straight face. “Wow!” she said enthusiastically. “That’s great!” Sheesh. She took it hook, line, and sinker. So you can see how little respect we English majors get.

September 27, 1996

My pasta is infested. I’d bought like twenty pounds of De Cecco from the restaurant supply store down the street for super cheap, not worrying about what looked like maybe minor water damage to some of the boxes. I store most of the pasta under my bed because our kitchen is so tiny. Well, a week or so ago I saw little flecks of something when I poured the pasta in the boiling water, but wrote it off as minute cardboard debris. I made up a big batch of corn goo pasta and as E— and I began to eat, we both noticed that there were little specks in our dinner. I isolated one and determined that it was reddish in color and seemed to have a protuberance at one end. I ran and grabbed my albeit cheesy microscope and had a closer look. As I had begun to fear, it seemed to be an insect: six legs and a snout at one end. I fished out another speck and examined it; same thing. My next question was, what kind of insect could it be? I racked my brain to try to think of what kind of insects have a history of invading foodstuffs. Then it came to me: a word commonly used to describe the meals endured by peasants in Russian novels: “weevily,” as in “his grey, weevily porridge.” So I looked up “weevil” in my CD-ROM dictionary and found this definition: “Any of numerous beetles, of the superfamily Curculionoidea, especially the snout beetle, that characteristically have a downward-curving snout and are destructive to nuts, roots, stems, fruits, and pasta.” (Yeah, I added that last bit.) A picture was even provided:


E— couldn’t bear to eat the pasta, but I was hungry and just kind of ate around the weevils. I regaled my boss at work with this anecdote and he told a story of some relative who was a POW in Japan and was fed weevily rice. At first the POW refused to eat it; then he just ate around the weevils; then, eventually, realizing he wasn’t getting enough protein, would not only eat the weevils but would push them back down into his rice when they tried to escape up the side of the bowl. Reassured by this story, I’m continuing to eat the weevily pasta, since I have so much of it. Last night I made perciatelli, which is tubular like macaroni but straight and long like spaghetti. It’s particularly weevily because the weevils crawl inside of it. But it’s fine … I can’t even taste them.

September 9, 2009

A few days ago [in preparation for the Everest Challenge bike race], I shaved my legs for the first time in three years. I think it does make the legs feel a bit cooler. Plus, my leg hair was literally blowing in the wind during the Mount Diablo descent two weekends ago, which I’d found distracting. I think shaving may offer a placebo effect as well. Couldn’t hurt (unless you nick yourself). Anyhow, congrats on biting the bullet and joining me for the race. You will not suffer alone, unless you drop me.

I don’t mind driving you home on Sunday night after the race. My un-doping regimen [only using caffeine before bike rides] means that one NoDoz can wake me from the dead, and/or keep me going on a late night drive after two days of cycling overkill. And I even have a valid driver license, because I braved the DMV today to get a temporary license extension since my real license is, for some reason, moving at the speed of a glacier through the bureaucracy.

September 22, 2009

I don’t have a time trial bike you can borrow, but if you’re really, actually doing a triathlon you’ll need an appropriately dorky jersey as well, ideally one made by (well, branded by) a former pro triathlete. And you’re in luck: I still have a Scott Tinley jersey you can borrow—see attached photos.


Notwithstanding the mesh side panels, I had to make the jersey even more Tri by cutting off the sleeves so I could wear it “properly” with arm warmers (per T—’s astute observation about this dubious sartorial choice triathletes make). The hole in the chest is from when I got shot during a triathlon by an angry biker on the sidelines. Either that or I crashed on the Golden Gate Bridge and slid on my heart rate monitor transmitter; I can’t remember which. I don’t have the matching shorts anymore, which T— (in his capacity as UCSB bike club president) forbade us to wear during races; I gave those to my wife’s would-be ex-stepmother-in-law, who wore them with pride and aplomb for years. Though not in triathlons.

October 2, 2009

[To my bike team members and some other friends.] It’s been a long bike racing season. If you’ll be too tired to cook on Saturday, October 17, but not too tired to eat and drink and hang out with other bike people, celebrate your fatigue with your spouse/other and/or kids by coming to the Albert house. If you’re too tired to move, have someone drag you here. If you’re too tired to eat or drink, we’ll put you in a barber’s chair and pour beer and salsa right down your throat.

What? Salsa? Not homemade pasta? That’s right. Because we’re too tired to cook this year, and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mario’s La Fiesta, we’re bringing in Mexican food—lots of it. Beer and the raw materials for mixed drinks will also be provided. If you have m4d sk1llz at the blender, a spot in the kitchen is reserved for you. Bring your favorite beer if you like.

I realize now that I’ve used a vague acronym in the past: RSVP. While this can mean “Regional Senior Vice President,” it also stands for “Répondez S’il Vous Plaît.” And while this phrase literally translates to “respond if it pleases you,” it can also mean “respond, damn it.” It is in that sense I now say, “RSVP” so we’ll know how much food to order.

October 20, 2009

There’s a guy out front (visible through my office window) parking a horrible fake-wood-paneled Buick Roadmaster station wagon. He’s taking a very long time. He’s an old weird guy with plaid shorts and a jacket. Kind of a cross between L—’s husband and my dad. Now he’s done parking and is cleaning the interior meticulously. He has an unimpressive dog. He wants $6K for the car. People are mighty strange.

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Monday, February 3, 2025

Five Tips for Improving Your LinkedIn Profile

Introduction

“There is no better way than LinkedIn to curate your personal brand,” says the blogger Dana Albert, “though I can’t tell you how tired I am of the word ‘curate’ and the phrase ‘personal brand.’” Do you like how I referred to myself in the third person just now? That was to sound more important. Speaking of which, here are five surefire tips to improve your LinkedIn profile, whether you’re looking to change jobs or just want to impress people.


Tip #1: Post a better profile photo

Ageism is real, and unless you’re literally a twelve-year-old who has somehow infiltrated corporate America, it’s time you started looking younger. No, I’m not hawking lotion or plastic surgery; you only need to look younger on your LinkedIn profile. The easy way to do this is with a really outdated photo, but that’s bound to backfire. Either your hairstyle will be outdated, or you’ll be wearing an “Alf” t-shirt or something. As with every problem these days, the real solution is A.I. Just take your existing profile picture and have ChatGPT enhance it for you.

Case in point: I did this myself today. And while I was at it, I modernized the picture to bring it in line with our new, angry, ultra-masculine America, following the lead of major league rabble-rousers like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Here’s how I did it. First, I uploaded this photo to ChatGPT today as the baseline to work from:


I told the chatbot, “The attached photo above is not right for my profile photo because it’s too friendly and nerdy. I need a photo that shows me as a strong man who can handle tough decisions, and who maybe isn’t too happy about how things are going in corporate America and wants to fix it. Kind of a bad boy who moves fast and breaks stuff.” Note that I didn’t even have to ask ChatGPT to make me look younger. As detailed here, it always does that.

The chatbot (version ChatGPT-4 Turbo, and no, I am not making that up) replied, “Got it! I’ll generate an enhanced version of your photo with a stronger, more decisive expression, giving off a ‘moves fast and breaks things’ energy while keeping it professional.” To be clear, ChatGPT didn’t produce the perfect picture right off the bat, and I had to coach it a bit, but eventually it announced, “Here’s the latest version—lighter blond hair, a thick goatee with no sideburns, and a much angrier, more intense expression,” and served up this excellent picture:


Granted, it still needs a bit more work, such as making me look even younger, but you get the idea. One more thing: if you’re a woman you obviously don’t want to look more masculine, and you certainly don’t want to look angry. Instead, ask for something like a mashup of yourself, the girl next door, and a younger Lauren Boebert.

Tip #2: Rework your “Headline” section

It is now considered a rookie move to put only your job title in the LinkedIn “Headline” section. A brief description of your current and past roles frankly isn’t much better. Nowadays, LinkedIn CVs are almost never seen by a human; instead they’re scanned by A.I. bots on behalf of the hiring companies. Thus, it’s not enough to highlight your skills—you need to present the kind of idealized employee that recruiters are actually looking for, and basically graft that description to your own profile. Pro tip: use the “pipe” symbol (|) in between items because it looks really cool. Here is an example of a good Headline:

Growth | Digital | Generative AI | Culture Cultivator | Mentor | Advocate |Outside the Box | Clarity Bringer | AI/ML | Driving Innovation | Flawless Executation| Podcaster | Olympian | Frontends | Evangelist | Stakeholdering | C++ | pDOOH | Rainmaker |Delivering Scalability| Solutionist

I’m not just supplying that as an example of what a tech worker would list; I’m telling you to literally copy and paste the above into your Headline (except “Executation” which was to make sure you’re paying attention). What’s that, you say? You don’t do anything with Generative AI? You don’t even work in tech? Look, you’re missing the point. Nobody is hiring outside of tech, and if you don’t have “Generative AI” in your Headline, your CV will never get past the bots. It doesn’t matter if your Headline entirely misrepresents you. You can clear that up during the interview.

Still skeptical? Let me explain how this works. The bot reads all the LinkedIn profiles in existence—which is over a billion of them—and when it finds a profile with all the right keywords, etc. it forwards it to the human who launched the query. That human will then read your entire CV and—so long as you’ve acted on all five tips presented here—will be totally impressed and invite you in for an interview! On the other hand, if the bot doesn’t find what it’s looking for, no human will ever see your CV. True story: none other than Albert Einstein filled out a LinkedIn profile and for his Headline put, “Creator, General Theory of Relativity” and yet never got a job. The bot didn’t know to look for “General Theory of Relativity,” because that obviously didn’t exist yet. (This was in 1914.)

I have my own experience with these keyword triggers. As you can well imagine, I get far too many comments on this blog to read them all, but of course I want to be made aware of the important ones. Some time ago, the Blogger platform zeroed in on a particular comment and emailed it directly to me. It was from jianbino311 and read, “nike air max michael kors outlet 2024 rolex watches camisetas futbol baratas giuseppe zanotti outlet wallet sale kobi 9 tods outlet.” Even though this comment was obviously generated by a bot, I was duly impressed and hired the bot on the spot. It’s been my albertnet fact checker ever since!

Tip #3: Create an entrepreneurial vibe

Let’s face it: rank-and-file employees, be they wretched “individual contributors” or pathetic “middle managers,” just don’t get any respect. They’re as despised as tourists. But people love entrepreneurs. The trouble is, we can’t all be entrepreneurs, and if we were, we probably wouldn’t bother to fine-tune our LinkedIn profiles … we’d be whispering right into the ears of angel investors. But there’s another way forward: figure out what other type of –preneur you might be. Choose from the following or invent your own:

  • Intrapreneur – has the attitude of an entrepreneur but works for an established company (i.e., is basically in denial)
  • Solopreneur – entrepreneurial, yes, but apparently never dreams bigger than a sole proprietorship; still, has that -preneur cachet
  • Hellapreneur – like an entrepreneur but better
  • Contrapreneur – has a startup that bucks current trends; for example, launches a new flip phone to corner the digital detox market
  • Epipeneur – this person is launching a startup despite having a severe peanut allergy
  • Codependepreneur – spins his wheels on yet another doomed startup because between him and his partner they’ve convinced themselves this thing is viable
  • Omnipreneur – has a startup specializing in EVERYTHING
  • Retropreneur – has bold idea for a startup manufacturing fax machines
  • Saagpaneur – wants to open an Indian restaurant

Just add your –preneur to the Headline section, and watch your inbox fill up with interview requests!

Tip #4: Refine your Experience section and make it data-driven

All too often, the Experience section of a LinkedIn profile simply lists the duties you carried out at this or that job, without emphasizing the achievements you can rightly claim credit for. Just listing duties isn’t nearly as impactful. (By the way, you should try to use the word “impactful” in your profile. It’s perfectly attuned to our modern business zeitgeist.) Whenever possible, make your achievement descriptions data-driven. There’s no room for subjective opinions on how you did; you need to be extremely specific.

For example, instead of just saying, “Performed software QA testing,” put, “Via disruptive and visionary software QA testing, reduced operating costs by 37%, saving $2.3 million in one year while improving CSAT scores by 24%.” The recruiter reading this, whose BS detectors will be lighting up like crazy, will think, “Oh, good, he’s also a storyteller! We can always use more of those.”

Tip #5: Revise all the dates

I cannot emphasize it enough: ageism is real. Nobody wants to hire anyone over the age of, like, thirty. It’s widely known that anyone over that age is basically falling apart completely—physically, mentally, and emotionally—not to mention is totally out of touch with every industry. Never mind that the person who would be your boss is oven older than you are … that person is grandfathered. (And why do you think they call it “grandfathered”? QED!)

Some career counselors therefore advise that you remove all the dates from your LinkedIn profile. Then nobody can tell your age, so they’ll automatically assume you’re really young … right? Of course not! They’ll figure you’re older than George Burns! Plus, there’s something inherently suspicious about simply removing dates.

Other counselors will say just jettison all mention of the first ten or twenty years of your career, and then delete the dates from your Education section. Alas, this is no silver bullet either. If there’s no date listed for your college, the recruiter will assume you dropped out … or worse, that you only went on campus to party and were never even enrolled. Besides, what if you did really impressive stuff long ago, like founding America Online? Who would want to leave that off?

The solution, my friend, is as simple as it is ingenious: just change the dates. There’s a basic formula you can apply: subtract 30 from your current age to produce the “required delta” (RD for short). For example, if you’re 50, your RD would be 20. Then, for the first role listed on your profile, add 20. As you approach the present day, adjust the dates more granularly, compressing the span of your various roles as needed. This will bring your chronology in line with what recruiters want.

Here’s a real life example. Steve Case is 66 years old. From a career standpoint he might as well be dead. He has the unusually high RD of 36. Applying that to his CV, he founded AoL in 2021. So he gets credit for launching one of the most important Internet companies in history, but still reads as young. (Would the recruiter remember that AoL was actually founded in the ‘80s? Not important. Mr. Case could clear that up during the interview.)

I know, this might sound like a drastic measure, but believe me, it’s important. Do you know how Daniel Craig got hired to be the new James Bond for “Casino Royale” at age 38? He lied! He said he was only 28! What’s more, his portfolio photo wasn’t even of him … it was of Jude Law’s head grafted onto Chris Hemsworth’s body! (It’s a good thing actors don’t use LinkedIn … so many movies just wouldn’t get made!)

A final thought…

I really, truly hope you understand that this post is 100% facetious. (Well … maybe 90% facetious.) I had a little fun here, and of course I would never recommend that you lie about anything on your LinkedIn profile (or anywhere else). Meanwhile, some of the information presented herein is just plain inaccurate. What can I say? My fact checker is a bot! (And that’s not even true … I fired my actual fact checker for lying on his LinkedIn profile! Which is also a lie! Stop reading this, I’ve gone completely off the rails! Besides, you’ve reached the end!)

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