I haven’t written here much. I haven’t written much anywhere. I have been trying to put my finger on why, so I could either accept it or work through it.

It wasn’t until I caught up with my now favorite podcast, The Conversation, that I figured it out.

Before I tell you what I figured out, let me give some mad props to Dan Benjamin for creating a show and then being that host. Not just that host, but that host, who gets his guests to really pull something deep out. Dan is killing it.

Anywho, back to the discussion about Jered’s sucking at writing a blog. Follow me on this one, it might be a while before it circles back to me writing and such. Got popcorn? Good.

I have been a huge fan of Merlin Mann Merlin Mann. At time Esther has joked with me that I have a “man crush” on him.

(Whatever, I mean… I only tell her about everything that I find insightful from him. Which, come to think of it, is a lot, but whatever.)

The year was 2004. I was fresh out of college, newly employed and way over my head. I had no clue how to do a J-O-B. I was a graphic designer, all latte sipping and deep thoughts about design. The meshing of the J-O-B and my artsy-fartsy side was about a smooth as my learning to drive a stick shift.

So, enter 43folders. What a brilliant site.

Or at least it was for me. At that moment.

Merlin was talking about this GTD book and how to forget your keys less and crank out more email with a few simple short cuts and I loved it. Soon after Lifehacker started and they mentioned the GTD and I figured I could blow 23 of my hard earned, and at that point, very few, American dollars on a book that was the panacea of “work life balance”.

Damn, was it ever.

I figured out this job thing and had all sorts of little, fiddly, stupid systems to remember to buy grapefruits and not lose my keys and a shortcut that would do something spectacular to my email. I was living in the future.

When Merlin when radio silent for the birth of his daughter and came back a little less “5 ways to clean your oven” and more “How do creative people create?” I was totally ready to go there. I too had had enough of the formulaic Numbered List Pro Blogger crap that had cropped up around the idea of a “lifehack”. I mean, when I start a lifehacky bullshit blog and podcast, you know the end is nigh.

So, creativity over lists, I got it in the sense that we all got The Constitution when it was first covered in grade school, but now several jobs and two kids later, I get it.

(Slowly, this is circling back.)

My favorite Merlin Mannerism goes something like this “Priorities are like arms, if you have more than two, people should start to look at you funny.” Never has this been more true post having babies.

This blog was not a priority. I have tried. Post more! Post links! Bookmarklet shit! But every time, it felt empty.

(Ready for the loop back?)

So this weekend, I’m outside with my daughter, she is playing, I am cutting the dogs hair, which by this point has become paritally sentient due to the length of time between this trim and the last. I have on some speakers and a device outputting Episode 29 of The Conversation. Dan Benjamin is interviewing Mike Davidson and they are saying things I’m really absorbing.

Heavily paraphrasing “I can look at any screen and have 8 hours worth of stuff to do. So, why am I adding to that stream? Why am I writing that thing on Twitter that no one cares about?”

Hello, jeredb.com.

I have been sitting at the threshold of posting, and Pro Bloggers say, “Post even if it is crap!”, but that is not how I roll. Sure, you can look through the archives and see plenty of drivel I have written that falls into the crap category. I have written a handful of things that I am proud of. But why do I want to clog your screens with my garbage output?

So, where do we go from here? I know that this has been a long “it’s not your it’s me”. But it is. I am really not sure what I want to do with this site. Some part of me want to export it all and start completely fresh, focusing on publishing things that I am incredibly proud of. Part of me wants to keep it around as a constant reminder that I have and will unintentionally gravitate to publishing garbage.

I guess what I am saying is that you should expect to see this as a dormant blog. One that updates so infrequently that when it does show up in your news reader of choice, you really want to read it. I would love to post awesome stuff almost everyday like Liz Danzico or become a awesome metablogger like Jason Kottke, but I don’t have the drive to become that Internet famous. I am trying to focus on the things that matter, my wife and my kids and then fit the rest in.

So, if this monster post was one pebble too many for you to carry, I hope you can find it in your heart to unsubscribe. If after all this, you are willing to stick around, I hope that I can be “better”.

As an employee in the Virginia state government system, my coworkers and I bandy about the phrase “Good enough for government work”, which is essentially a euphemism for how we do not want to work any harder on a project, or that perfection is eluding us. Remember that phrase: “Good enough for government work.”

Every 6 months, I conduct a fairly comprehensive overview of the job market, local private industry as well as state and federal job opportunities. In my latest scan, I have decided that USAjobs.gov is completely broken. In fact all federal government job application systems are broken.

1. Search / Meta data = keyword-bombing

   
   Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

   I understand that there are multiple locations for the same job classification, but these keyword-bombed listings destroy the integrity of searches. What is to stop a job lister from simply copying their entire operation’s locations and pasting them into the field? Why can’t each job be broken out in the USAjob.gov system and then be routed to the same person without them having to create and manage multiple job listings? This has to possible to do in code.

2. Writing for the Web 101

   I realize that the “duties” and “qualifications and evaluation” sections are written and wordsmithed by faceless, nameless bureaucrats, but “Important information for applicants with family members with special medical or educational needs” is weird qualification.

   What am I actually going to do? What do I need to know to get the job? Also, half of the duties are taken up notes about how the current / past system is being phased out and click a link to a new DOD regulation to read more. Yeah… duties vs. regulations.. See NOTE. Really is that a duty?

   Also, has no one ever thought that people apply to jobs in the government may not know all of the acronyms that any particular organization might use? How many directives and § sections need to be referenced before one applies to a job? Can’t this be put on its own tab, or at the very least standardized? Also, <acronym>

3. The little things that kill

   This is not a criticism of USAjobs.gov, but of nearly every other system that I came across today.

   • If you are going to have embedded frames, which all of them do, make sure you have your SSL certificates sorted. I should not have Chrome telling me that your application system doesn’t have a proper certificate and then shows me the “brick red frame of doom”.I was instructed: click this link, then scroll down, search for this term and then scroll down again, then click the link… and this is what I got.
   • If you are going to hold me accountable for spelling, then make sure your system is effing bullet proof. Make sure there is not a single typo, on a single page… anywhere… ever.
   • Along similar lines — Do not confuse people by telling them that an acceptable file format to upload their resume as GIM. It is a GIF. The federal agency that made that mistake spends more than $2.415 billion in 2006, FYI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dea

All of these things are a good enough for the phrase “good enough for government work”, but there may be a silver lining.

The Million Dollar idea

I took a look at the application process on a few jobs I found interesting. This process was so frustrating that I am almost completely turned off from ever applying to jobs in specific federal agencies or military branches.

So here is the big idea: All of these jobs have the exact same requirements: Name. DOB. Previous employment. USAjobs.gov lets you input a “resume”. Why isn’t every one who lists a job required to use the USAjobs.gov application system?

If everyone in the government, literally everyone, from the State Department to the Department of the Interior to the FBI to the Navy all had to use their same system,
do you know how much money that could save?

Don’t get me started about how stupid the Navy’s civilian job application system is. Who in their right mind designs a system that required me the job applicant to, before filling out the important information, select my pay band and pay system classification. I don’t know, hmm, shouldn’t they pick that?

I know there have been a fair number of developers who have made a pretty good system in-house, I know they did their darnedest.

Besides those idiots who built the Navy’s system—that was a contracted, low-bid cock up.

And I know there are plenty of third-party people who are supposed to know now what they are doing in creating an application system.

On a side note, have you ever tried to apply for a job with the DEA—talk about an outsourced nightmare of an application. Slick on the surface, but horrible to use.

Back to my point, the million dollar idea: Build a common system and centralize. There is no single federal government job application requires such unique detail that can’t be left to a later portion of the job application process.

This is literally a million dollar idea, or more likely a billion dollar idea.

Update: Added some links to my issues and corrected the DEA’s budget… I was shy a few zeros.

Esther and I have a superstition joke that if I die before her and I come back as a ghost or otherworldly element, I would let her know I was around by influencing the music that was on around her.

Since Esther’s Dad passed away, we have experienced several oddly timed renditions of Somewhere Over The Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo’Ole. It was the song that Esther and her father danced to at our wedding reception. So this idea is not foreign to us.

Now, as I said, if I go before her, I would let her know I was still around by increasing the number of times she hears Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen.

Don’t Stop Me Now

Now if she is every playing Super Mario with our children and she experiences this, she will know I’m being a little insistent that she notice.

YouTube – Automatic Mario～Don’t Stop Me Now～【自動マリオシーケンサ×Queen】.