Well, this is irritating. My phone company called up about a week ago and asked if I'd like to upgrade my contract to an iPhone 4S. They said no extra cost and no change to the existing service. The new phone arrived today and it only has half the storage capacity of my existing phone. I anticipate great fun trying to get a proper replacement phone.

Check out this beautiful horned snake. Very dragony.

Meanwhile, whale sharks have been living on hand outs in the Philippines.

And this tortoise isn't extinct it just moved.

I just remembered that I had a dream last night that Paul Bettany had somehow caused a huge amount of traffic on the board (like, he himself was a member), so we had this rule that you could not mention the Buffistas anywhere. And then ita found someone hinting about it on LJ, and asked us not to mention the "Paul Bettany issue".

I like your dream.

Anyone have any questions I should ask doing a phone interview with a potential student worker? I usually go on "vibe" (the two I fired were people I had bad vibes with an hired anyway because of logic), but that is hard to get on the telephone.

My favorite interview question is whether the candidate, given a project and a deadline, would rather finish on time and hand in something imperfect, or hand it in late but perfect.

My favorite interview question is whether the candidate, given a project and a deadline, would rather finish on time and hand in something imperfect, or hand it in late but perfect.

That is interesting. I don't know which one is the "right" answer, especially since I want them to be timely AND perfect.

This is also a hard position, because I need someone to be able to back me up on the phone, for which you need to be super friendly and resourceful and to do boring repetitive tasks with great attention to detail.

The young woman I am interviewing has one of the cutest job duties I have ever seen:

• Fed, changed, and rocked newborn babies

That's a really great question.

This is also a hard position, because I need someone to be able to back me up on the phone, for which you need to be super friendly and resourceful and to do boring repetitive tasks with great attention to detail.

Those seem like a pretty standard combination of low-level tasks, though. Not that everyone is good at all of them, but it's not a crazy thing to ask.

Those seem like a pretty standard combination of low-level tasks, though. Not that everyone is good at all of them, but it's not a crazy thing to ask.

It seems like not very many college students do both well, though. Or I have no idea how to evaluate whether or not they will be good at boring repetitive tasks. I mean, some people really love them!