The Hire Knowledge Project ... Find the right one.

Here is a photo of the nearly new timing belt that went RRRIIIPPP! doing 100 kph down the main highway north of Edmonton, one week after passing a vehicle inspection and just after I got insurance. If I had had the better AMA class of membership and was able to tow it back to where I live, I'd fix it myself or get somebody to help me do it. Sadly, it IS an interference engine, and the cost of even getting a mechanic to try a new belt is more than 600 dollars, with low odds of success.

Hello bicycle...

After watching tech support scramble around the last couple of days fixing Windows XP machines made useless by a bungled anti-virus program update, i can only conclude that:

To err is human.
To really foul things up requires McAfee.

In a surprising move, the city council of Nanaimo, British Columbia, voted overwhelmingly to ban the city' s best known culinary export, the namesake nanaimo bar, from publicly funded facilities and events. When asked for an explanation, Avril Felles, a spokesperson for the local health department, pointed to a recent study that showed an alarming rise in obesity rates, and disclosures of staff with addictions to the popular dessert. “The municipality takes the long term health and safety of its workforce seriously”, she said.

Do you want to know which companies were awarded big contracts for goods and services, and might logically be needing extra help? Good news: government departments are generally required to disclose contracts larger than $10,000, so the information you seek will eventually be made public. The various departments disclose contracts separately, but the Treasury Board Secretariat has kindly assembled a directory of links that can help you find what you are looking for.

Need to contact someone about a Canadian government job? Want to know who you might be working with? Need a name or two to show you've done your research? Maybe you just need an inside address for a formal cover letter or the location of your future workplace. All of that can be found on-line.

Anonymous sources report that Santa's once-booming business will be forced to put more elves on the unemployment lines once this holiday season is over. "This is not your usual seasonal workforce reduction", says elf rights activist Elrond Hubbard. "It's something much more serious, and many of are very concerned."

Santa himself was unavailable for comment, and his representatives from Scrouge, Scrouge & Grinch would not confirm or deny the reports.

Have you ever wondered if that customer support rep you waited hours to speak with is from another planet? Well, it just might be the case, if not now, perhaps in the near future, as Earthly companies look to lower operating costs even further, according to Xark!*ga*@h, a spokesbeing for Arcturus-based recruitment firm Galactic Solutions.

User Trinity sent this link about huge layoffs at EA that will put plenty of experienced game developers and the like into the market. EA Lays Off 1500 Despite Record Digital Revenues

A reader recently asked for information about an unidentified advertiser of jobs that has been posting job ads on various job boards using the address jobpostings101(AT)gmail.com. While I did not have any special information about the identity of the poster, be it an employer, agency or individual recruiter, a search of Google showed where they have been posting ads, for how long and what they advertised.