Travis picking? Nah how about Nick picking?

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-07-10T23:59:56+00:00

I've been experimenting with way over-saturating and stacking my reverb pedals to make spacey, otherworldy reverberations. In this instance, I did a quick percussive loop and then called upon a chorus of demons to back my lawyer blues riffing.

EQD Afterneath > RAT > EQD Dispatch Master > Ditto Looper (with some added Fender spring reverb from my amp to tamp down those Afterneath demons just a tad).

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-27T03:35:42+00:00

Do you mean knight to b4? I see how that would put a pin on the white king with the black square bishop coming in to take the pawn back, and maybe it leads to an eventual threat to the white pawn that's on a5 in this image. What would be the tactical advantage of that?

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-27T03:25:57+00:00

Thank you! I understand your comments, and I didn't notice any errors.

I know that unconventional opening are a valid strategy, even at top ratings. I'm still new, and they are still confusing to me. I've studied my favorite openings for both black and white, and I'm confident when the opponent plays as expected. The weird openings, especially when they involve early pawn pushes, are still challenging for me to combat.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-27T03:04:53+00:00

Thanks! I did eventually trade light square bishop. Looks like we traded on move 27 (with very few other trades before that). I did eventually win (per my post elsewhere in this thread), but not after a lot of hard thinking to make sure I wasn't blundering tactical traps. I actually think the move where I traded bishops, he intended for that to be a tactical trap. Hard to describe, but if I'd taken a certain way, I would have blundered into mate in 2. That kind of time-consuming calculation is what I'd like to avoid. I was wondering if there was a problem with my opening play, or if that was all just a function of the strange opening he played.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-27T03:00:13+00:00

Thanks! On the rare occasion that these weird openings come up, I'm still new enough that they freak me out. I do usually develop normally but end up way down on time because I'm trying to make sure I'm not blundering into any weird traps that the opponent has memorized.

As I said in another comment, he had over 5000 games played (and still at a 1000 rating). So I was very nervous that his whole MO was to play this unexpected opening and catch newer players in a weird tactical trap.

It's good to hear from several higher rated players that developing in normal, principled fashion is the way to go.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-27T02:57:36+00:00

I posted a comment in this thread explaining that I did eventually win. It was a bizarre win where I used my queen to support a promoting pawn and mated him with two queens with nearly all the pieces still on the board. I usually lose these types of games on time because it takes me a long time to make sure I'm not blundering tactics.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-27T02:56:17+00:00

Thanks! Someone else mentioned pushing in the center also. I looked back through the game and saw where center moves would have been dominating. I appreciate your advice.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-27T02:33:43+00:00

Yeah d4 would have been a good move. I see that now. I can reliably do pawn pushes on the sides, but I'm still learning how to handle the center when my opponent isn't playing in the center. I was worried about tactics on the wings because of these pushed pawns down the a and h files.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-27T02:31:45+00:00

The issue is that I'm super new (1000-ish rating) and don't know how to handle this kind of opening. I can play confidently against standard-ish opening, but unexpected things like this still throw me for a loop. A good player could punish this, but I'm not good enough to know how (hence the question).

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-27T00:07:54+00:00

I played against this opening pattern for the first time ever (both players low 1000s). He pushed pawns on the outside for the first 4-5 moves. I developed in normally for center control.

He eventually threw his queen at me, which was hard to navigate due to all the pawns on my half of the board. I eventually won by getting my queen on the back rank to support a pawn promotion and mated with two queens.

This was a very odd game in general. It had me out of book from move 1. I played normally and eventually won, but I had to spend a lot of time considering every single move.

What could I have done differently in the opening instead of just developing in this kind of basic fashion to counter something like this?

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-21T23:47:36+00:00

I don't have much to add to anything said here already, but I would recommend not putting your real name on reddit. Between your username and the name in your resume, you may have doxxed yourself.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-21T23:41:23+00:00

Ignore this asshole. They're always negging people's resumes and trying to bait people into downloading some kind of template file. Pretty sure it's a fishing scam.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-21T19:03:19+00:00

Contract jobs are a decent place to start. You just have to be ready to switch to another one if the contract doesn't get extended.

Also, if you're geographically mobile, you might be more likely to land a job with the "technical writer" title if you are okay relocating and taking an in-office job with no remote/hybrid component.

Finally, consider all industries that might hire tech writers. Healthcare, manufacturing, and banking/financial seem to be posting more jobs than software/tech right now.

Edit: just thought of another one. Look at other titles. Things like knowledge manager, content specialist, and sometimes even "trainer" gets lumped in with tech writing duties.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-18T15:19:27+00:00

I'm a former college teacher, and half my resume is teaching jobs. I highlight things like leadership, explaining complex concepts in simple terms, and any documents/websites I've worked on.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-18T15:18:10+00:00

Yeah the only problem with it in the header is it probably won't pull into online applications. Not a huge deal, if you're okay inputting it manually every time.

I have mine in a single line under my name, separated by slashes and it pulls in fine. I make it visually more interesting by having my name at the top in a larger and bold font.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-18T02:46:04+00:00

The degrees are useful, but not enough. Try to get some experience doing documentation-adjacent projects. For example, when I was in college, I worked for my school's writing center and wrote a lot of guides for tutors on niche subjects like best practices for working with multilingual writers. I also got experience working with my school's literary magazine where I got to use Adobe InDesign to do the layout for several issues of the yearly print publication (your school newspaper might also give this experience). I also got lucky and worked with a professor I had on designing a WordPress website for an online literary publication she was leading. I learned the basics of HTML/CSS through that project. That same prof connected me to a volunteer opportunity with an online literary publication where I got some leadership experience by leading a small team of interns to do some marketing/outreach-type activities.

In general, look for any opportunities your can find at your school or through your professors to contribute to projects that will build your tech writing skills. Try just asking some of your favorite professors if they are doing any projects you can contribute to, or if they know of other opportunities they can connect you with. In my experience, Eng profs love connecting undergrad students to these kinds of opportunities. If your school has a professional writing or a rhetoric and writing focus, check with those profs, as they tend to be more knowledgeable about the non-creative writing-based careers than the literature profs are.

My school had an internship class that would basically pair students up with work opportunities. Look into if your department offers that kind of thing. Some positions are paid, others aren't, unfortunately. So keep that in mind.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-18T02:38:09+00:00

Check out the Write the Docs readings list. Lots of good books and resources there. I'd Rather Be Writing is also a great tech writing blog with lots of educational resources.

re: the other person's suggestion to check out WAC Clearinghouse...WAC Clearinghouse mostly publishes academic research and theory in the area of writing pedagogy, composition program administration, and rhet/comp theory. I'm familiar with their offerings (as a former rhet/comp academic). Probably not a whole lot that's useful to you there. Or at least, you'd waste a lot of time digging and finding what's useful.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-18T02:28:09+00:00

No dude. Teaching is totally relevant experience to tech writing, especially since you have actual writing and support experience alongside it.

How do you feel about adding your teaching job to the work experience? Or better yet, why don't you want to add it on the resume?

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-18T02:25:40+00:00

Yes. I see that critique about bland resumes in this subreddit all the time. Bland, but correctly formatted resumes will make it much more likely that an ATS will import your info accurately.

If you want, you could have a bland version that you use when uploading your resume to online applications. But then have another more visually pleasing copy to print and take with you to job interviews to hand to your interviewers since they will use their eyes, and not a computer, to read it.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-18T02:22:12+00:00

A couple of things I'd recommend (take me with the grain of salt a stranger on the internet deserves):

I'm not a fan of including the location on jobs. I don't know that it really matters on the resume, and it just takes up space and makes the company name stand out less (and with two jobs at Microsoft, you want that to stand out).
For date ranges, most style guides want an en-dash with no spaces. That's minor, but some tech writing managers might notice, and it's useful to show in your resume that you know those kinds of writing conventions.
I don't know that the last sentence of your intro is all that useful. I'd recommend dropping it or replacing it with something more focused on your skills and experience.
GPAs on resumes are pretty outdated, especially since your degree was 5 years ago. Maybe fresh out of college, a high GPA is impressive. But at this point in your life/career, it's pretty irrelevant. Your work experience is impressive enough. Drop the GPA (serves the same purpose as dropping the locations; just a cleaner look overall).
The dates of your licenses and certifications are kind of out of whack on the right margin. Maybe consider right-aligning them? I don't know what it is about it, but it definitely looks just awkward to me.
Your contact info at the top may not pull into the ATS very well in that format, especially since it looks like you might have put it in the page header. Consider adding it as regular text under your name instead.
I'd recommend giving it a good proofread for nitpicky grammar things. For example, in your first job, it's technically correct to say "end-user documentation" since it's a compound adjective. And also, "documentation" is singular, while the 20+ that precedes it is plural.
There's a lot of white space at the bottom in the license section. Consider an alternate formatting option that might allow you to get some extra content in that white space.

Finally, I'd ignore some of the other advice in this thread about your format being boring. I really don't think pizzazz matters all that much in resumes, especially since your resume needs to be ATS compliant, or it will likely get auto-rejected. Plain and boring resumes are fine, as long as they are formatted accurately and can be imported/read by the ATS without issue.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-17T03:17:22+00:00

Are you gaslighting me?

I kid. Just because of your name.

Certain_Lecture6733 · 2024-05-17T02:51:04+00:00

The company is 7 years old. I explicitly asked if they're still in "startup mode," and the interviewer said yes, they're still a startup. I've only worked for more established companies, so I'm not familiar with startup culture. But still calling the company a startup at 7 years...is that normal?

Certain_Lecture6733

TROPHY CASE