Deceitful Job Offer Responses

I made the mistake of "quick applying" to tons of entry level marketing positions on careerbuilder.com. After talking with countless deceitful people trying to convince me that I will be in management training for their "marketing firm" I started to get annoyed. Now I just have fun with it.

Just to be clear, these semi-legitimate "firms" advertise grand positions with vague business terms and sidestep every serious question I ask. They are tricking people into door to door sales. I do not mind door to door sales as a career choice, I just don't want to be tricked into it.

Here are some of my responses to their ludicrous offers:

Thank you, but after speaking for an hour with my psychic, he suggested that I might not be happy with the position at Central Payment Corporation. I trust his vision and judgement, and he said that because I am an Aquarius born under a half moon this will not work. I really want to interview for the position, but what the psychic says goes.

I am not who you think I am. I am a wizard with capabilities far greater than you could ever imagine. I should not speak about my talents via email, as the galactic government is reading all of my emails(sometimes even my thoughts). If you are truly interested in employing my sometimes unconventional sales tactics, meet me next full moon at the Santa Monica Pier.

I had unexpected personal issues. Sorry for the confusion. I will call you when all charges are cleared.

Engineering Awesome Moment (Thanks Mechoptronics and Senior Project Lab)

After looking up that the legal size to keep a cabezon is 15 inches, we became curious as to really how big the fish was. We were thinking it may be just about a legal size fish.

As it turns out, with a little photo analysis, simple ratios, and the dreaded Pythagorean Theorem the cabezon is a whopping 24 inches. We used the sinker as our reference length in the plane of the fish. Here are our quick scribbles (which resembles my drafts for engineering assignments before I clean them up):


We double checked the numbers and it looks like my dad landed a pretty rad fish. Do any bored recent grads want to double check my work? The size of the sinker is 27/32 inches.

We let it go, but according to fish and game,

They are one of the most sought-after rocky shore inhabitants.

And if Donald Trump wrote the description

They are the most sought-after, gold-plated, Italian marbled, rocky shore inhabitants money can buy. Really a great fish, all around a truly great fish.

Fishing Report: LB Breakwater 7/19/09

After receiving the "you need to get a job" talk with my parents, I needed to take my dad fishing and share some of the good life with him. I wanted to make it as easy as possible, so got his reel restrung with some 15lb test and cleaned it. The boat was ready in the water with gas, and all the tackle and tools were ready to go. We had a party at my cousins' house last night, so we went to bed easily when we got home. We left the dock at 5:45am.

Anchovies again and straight to the weather side of the breakwater. My dad pulled in a big sand bass on his first anchovy, and not too much later I pulled in a small calico bass.

My dad landed a big cabezon with an octopus in its mouth. After setting it free, he hooked up the octopus and had a huge hit from probably another rock fish but "farmed" it. My dad said that growing up being called a farmer on the water was a serious putdown.


We then shifted spots and I wanted to fish plastics, so I tossed a color that I have never used before, all red and speckled. I worked 4 calicos into the boat on the red lure.


The live bait was bringing in the bigger fish, but fishing plastics is super fun. Today was the best day of fishing that I have ever had with my dad. It was constant action on different kinds of bait and excellent conditions. I had some fish leftover from lunch on Friday, so we are gonna eat 8 fish tonight.

Keeper Kount brought to you by the folks at Mackerel Hunter:
4 Sand Bass
1 Calico Bass (and 3 released legals)

Fishing Report: LB Breakwater 7/17/09

Left the dock at 5:30 with my buddy Danny Bluth, Servite '05, same as Wednesday.

At the fuel dock, the bait guy didn't like the fact that we were getting anchovies, while everyone else was getting sardines. Most the boats looked like they were going out for 1+ days of offshore fishing, so sardines were their pick. This meant the bait guy actually had to open the anchovy tank and move his net to a different location. There is no amount of Pabst Blue Ribbon at 6 in the morning that can make that an enjoyable activity. I also found out that if you give the bait guy some hats and a T-shirt from your fishing sponsors, you can cut in front of every boat. Anyone interested in my new venture Mackerel Hunters LLC? We have apparel! We asked for only $10 of anchovies, rather than the $20 I have been accustomed to and found that this was the right amount. The bait stayed alive longer and still had enough dead guys to chum the waters.

Limited by gas, we chose to fish the breakwater just past the bait barges. We fished the inside of the breakwater and hooked into 3 legal sandbass, 1 octopus, and 1 queenfish. We dropped anchor about 5 times, but never pulled more than 1 fish from each spot. There was action, but not as constant as the other side of the breakwater.

We left for the other side of the break water at around 10am. There was a zoo of 3 small boats anchored and 2 more trying to get in all trying to fish the end of the breakwater. Knowing that these goofs probably saw some boats and thought that it was the spot tried to squeeze in. I did not want a fouled anchor and crossed lines, so we went down the breakwater about 100 yards. We anchored 20 yards off the wall and we easily dropping our anchovies into the surging rocks. There was less thick kelp as the bay side, just some light growth, so for the most part we could get our bait into the rocky surge.



The action was hot on this side of the rocks. We were getting constant hits on the anchovies. We experimented with the couple of sardines that made it into our scoop and found that they were awful, which explains why every boat jockeying for position at the end of the wall were skunked and resorting to trolling.

We pulled in lots of calico bass, 1 sand bass, and 1 barracuda. You were either getting caught in the rocks or hooking up on the weather side of the rocks. We ended up running out of bait and tired by about noon.

Plastics and irons were not working, and really not needed because the live bait was so hot. I was working one pole with 10lb test and outfishing Danny on 2 poles with line in the 20lb range. The largest bass was landed on 10lb test.

The Keeper Kount brought to you by the folks at Mackerel Hunter:
4 Calicos
4 Sand Bass (largest 16.5 inches)

Fishing Report: HB Flats 7/15/09

Went out to HB Flats by the two oil rigs off Bolsa Chica/Huntington Cliffs. At least ten 1/2 day boats and about 20 private boats were working the area past the rigs. We stayed inside by the platforms and had a consistent action. The 1/2 dayers never held a position and we could see that they were not doing well. Barracuda were in the area the day before, but none today.

Picked up sardines from the bait dock with some squid. The live bait did not do well for a couple reasons:

• No Pump, only buckets of water
• Sardines were a month old
• Too much bait
  
• Mixing varieties
  

Got bait in the water at about 5:20. First sardine hooked a calico withing a minute. Saw color and the calico spit the bait. It was possibly legal sized.

We were plagued the whole day by fighting fish to the boat and as soon as they saw it they spit the bait. We are gonna try again tomorrow with live anchovies. We are hoping to set the hook with some smaller bait that can easily be swallowed.

I snagged a 12 inche halibut jigging a squid head on the white/glow iron by one of the rigs. I got the Tady blue/chrome and worked the surface every now and then. No action on the blue/chrome.



My legal sand bass was caught on fresh dead squid hooked on a 1/4 ounce lead head.

I landed a short sand bass on fresh dead squid.

Sand bass seen but not landed, roughly 5, were all in the possible legal range and all sand bass on either squid or live anchovies.

I filleted my sand bass at home and cooked it on the stove with 1 part olive oil, 1 part butter, and 1 part white wine with bay leaves. It was some of the best fish I have had in a while.

We are heading out tomorrow at about 5am probably back to the flats with frozen squid and live anchovies or small sardines. Hopefully the bite will open up and we can catch our 10 fish limit.

Kayak Fishing (Actually a Complaint About the British System of Units)

I went kayak fishing with my uncle on Saturday at a man-made island about 1 km of the Ventura coast.

I am glad to use the metric system to describe things. It is so much easier to deal with once you learn it.

Metric System Example: 1000 meters = 1 kilometer

Conversions in the Metric System are elegantly simple. You just need a basic understanding of the decimal system and a couple prefixes and you are set for life. Not too difficult.

British System Example: 5280 feet = 1 mile

What an ugly and arbitrary conversion. This site gives a history of the unit of a mile:

One mile was the distance of a thousand paces: in Latin, mille passus. A pace being 5 feet gives a mile of roughly 5000 feet. The mile acquired its current value of 5280 feet (1760 yards) by the decree of the English parliament during the reign of Elizabeth I. Since this was a legal definition it became known as the statute mile — statute being another word for law.

For the sake of my story about how far the island is offshore,

1 kilometer = 0 .6213 miles (for fairness to the British System let's simplify it to 2/3)

and every American Soccer Mom and Joe Sixpack knows that

2/3 mile = 3520 feet

and every high school graduate in the United States knows that

3520 feet = 1173 1/3 yards

and every NFL player knows

1173 1/3 yards = 9.8 Football Fields (from goal post to goal post).

Finally we have a system of units that everyone can understand and I can finally talk about kayak fishing. But our friends everywhere else in the world won't understand, because what they rightly call "football", a sport that primarily uses the feet, is really "soccer" in America. It is no surprise that the American sport is poorly named.

I am now too tired to write about fishing.



Why didn't I just skip that whole exercise and do this right from the start?