My shopify job application

(c) shopify. I think. Please don’t sue me.

As one whose military “best before date” expires in June 2014, I have to get off my backside and find a real job. Lo and behold, doesn’t delightful Ottawa Canada have info-age shopify, the little-known growing tech company that many are pegging to be a future Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc.

Shopify is a cool tech place where it’s a blast to work. All those young, cool techno dudes and dudettes, just having fun, being techno cool, and bringing in the techno $$$ gazigabillions.

They clearly need me. Here’s my application:

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Hello youthful and exuberant shopify HR person! Where do I sign up? I’ll keep this brief:

– 30+ year Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) career ends no later than June 2014. Haven’t been charged yet. Have to get while the getting is good.

– Because of the terms of my release from the RCAF, I could work for you for free for a few months in early 2014. Kick the tires on me, if you like. To know me is to love me.

– I used to hunt things like nuclear attack submarines. Can’t put a price on experience like that. They’re pesky little critters. Think finding bugs in code is tough? Ha! Child’s play.

– My IT experience will be the envy of everyone at shopify: used to own a Commodore Vic-20 computer, an “8088”, a “286”, and a “386”; I not only know what Pacman was, I actually played it; and I coded in PASCAL, COBOL, and FORTRAN at university in the ’80s. That’s like being able to read ancient things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, Sumerian cuneiform tablets, and Egyptian hieroglyphics on temple walls. My IT cool factor is way off the charts. I am IT Zen. I live on an IT mountain top in Nepal and wear a white robe.

– I’ll be a stabilizing father figure to the younger folks. Seen a few things in my day.

– My home computer is a $50 old used clunker of a Dell. The thought of a free shopify Apple laptop might make me swoon. You can help put an end to processing poverty.

– How many people at shopify have actually used “swoon” in a sentence recently? Ever?

– I come from a culture of taking care of one another, and this means more to me than money ever will. This is what attracts me most to shopify.

– I helped create the Canadian Forces Aerospace Warfare Centre. How many of shopify’s people have helped create an applied military think tank? Call of Duty and Black Ops on steroids sort of thing. Okay, you got me. Sheratons and martinis. Air Forces are such gentlemanly institutions. But we play CoD and B.Ops. When our kids aren’t looking. Assumes we took the course on how to use the PS3 or XBox controllers. My torpedo pre-setter panel was much easier to figure out. What’s with the using the thumbs thing, anyways?

– I promise not to steal from the shopify Viagra closet. Still, don’t forget to keep it locked. Can never be too safe, temptation being what it is. I’ll keep the key safe if you’d like. Never know when you’ll need an emergency compass. Navigators are trained to think ahead.

– Speaking of Viagra, young chicks dig me. That’s because I am way old and “non-threatening.” Unless I fall in a vat of Viagra or you leave the closet unlocked. Thus, I can tell the young shopify ladies that they look great, and actually mean it without trying to pick them up. Good for morale. Plus the young techno dudes can observe and learn. And for $20, I’ll even put the good word in for them. Ann Landers of shopify meets lavalife meets e-harmony, even. I’d get some of the young guys to build the internal website or app or something techie, and then write some BS about advanced algorithms that statistically Kalman filter Chinese horoscopes in a proprietary and classified way. I’d actually be in the background with my tea leaves, Doreen Virtue Angel Cards, and Hogsback Vintage Lager. Hogsback is Ottawa local, and close enough to organic so as to qualify as being spiritual in my books.

– If I didn’t know who Ann Landers was, I’d look her up on wikipedia.

– First book in my forthcoming set of two is scheduled to come out in February 2014. Goal is that they be as profound as heliocentricity. That’s Nicky Copernicus’s idea that maybe it was us going around the Sun instead of the other way around. Radical thinking at the time; have to love a heretic.

– Thus, bringing me on board would thus constitute an act of supreme philanthropy. I wouldn’t starve to death before I finished Book Two. You’d all sleep better at night. Tax deductible, even.

– I own an iPad. At 48 years of age, that has to count for something. It even has a Retina display. My Vic-20 didn’t.

– I made an iPad screen capture of your webpage for this post. I pressed the round button at the bottom while simultaneously pressing the rectangular button at the top right. A complicated procedure, but I live for a good challenge. I’m a little fuzzy on the details after this. Still, it proves that I can be trained.

– I have been blogging for over three months. Most of my 150+ followers are devoted middle-age women. That doesn’t quite make me the Tom Jones of bloggers, but nobody’s perfect. They’re all beautiful, too. Top that.

– If I didn’t know who Tom Jones was, I would look him up on wikipedia. What’s up, Pussycat?

– My mother thinks I look like actor Nathan Fillion. I think Mom is biased and has been into the sherry again, but I love her anyway.

– Vinyl and turntables are making a comeback, just like me. My tube amps are custom 300B transformer-coupled SETs, and my deck is a custom re-built Lenco idler-wheel drive. Okay, so it was used when I got it. Still, if you don’t know what this means, you also need me to be your Chief Audio Officer (CAO). Nobody else has a CAO that I know of. Not even Apple or Google or Amazon. This would make shopify a world leader in the field. Maybe I could even get to meet the guys from Rush.

– I can think big.

– If I didn’t know who the guys from Rush were, I would look Rush up on wikipedia. I likely wouldn’t need Depends adult undergarments, either.

– My Saddleback Leather XL Classic Briefcase would, without a doubt, be the coolest bag at shopify. Nothing even comes close. Can fit a yak in it. Great conversation piece / icebreaker with the guys. You’d be in awe. It’s the bag you want to have when you’re attacked by a grizzly bear. Happens a lot in Ottawa. (Wait—those were Ottawa U feminists at their latest protest, weren’t they? My bad.) It’s a man-spiritual sort of thing. Right up there with cooking meat on the BBQ. Ohmmmm.

– I hear you have good coffee. The coffee I’ve drunk at work for the last 30 years is toxic enough to kill a lesser man. It must be why my bowels are so healthy. No nasty viruses or bacteria could possibly survive the coffee “cleansing” that my system undergoes daily Monday-to-Friday. No prostate medical claims for at least three or four years. And when it did happen, I would regale the young techno dudes with my hospital adventures. They’d be eating oat bran by the bucket in no time. Lower your corporate health insurance costs in a heartbeat.

– I could do the CAO thing part time. Compensation? Used Apple anything. Remember LISA? Thought not. Monthly XLg pizza with the works. Six pack once a quarter. What’s that? No, not your abs. Put the t-shirt back down, Arnold. Victoria Secret calendar at XMAS. McDonalds gift certificates. Employee of the month now and then would be appreciated.

– If I didn’t know what an Apple LISA computer was, I would look it up on wikipedia.

– I just donated $20 to wikipedia. Thanks for reminding me.

– When I was 14, I could clear a 3″ high jump on my skateboard. I only gave it up because it wasn’t an Olympic sport. There were no pools in Newfoundland at the time that I could drain to skate in. There was the Atlantic Ocean, but it didn’t have a plug that I could find.

– I’d use my $250 shopify fitness bonus to buy Lulu Lemon spandex yoga pants. Really tight ones. Just to make my gf jealous, and maybe to gross out everyone at the hot yoga class that I’d like for sure join. Just call me Dr. Downward Dog of Delightful Derrieres. BTW, what’s the shopify policy on “muffintops” at the office? I know you don’t have a dress code, but chubby middle age men in spandex? I am a fashion trendsetter, obviously. On top of being a heretic. Hello, muttonchop sideburns.

– My cousin is presently working on his Ph.D. in math at Carleton University with a focus on number theory. This is what is done with the developmentally delayed young men in my family to get rid of them. Not me. No b-stock here. My theory on numbers is that they exist, and that you can add, subtract, multiply, AND divide with them. Didn’t need a Ph.D. program to figure that out.

– Are any of the shopify techno dudettes in the market for a guy? My cousin’s available, and I’d be willing to split my aunt’s finder fee. He’s good at adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. No guarantees beyond this. Ever see Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man?

– If I didn’t know who… forget it. Need someone to pour the beer? Hogsback?

When do I start?

Obliviously,

“Michael” the Villainous Navigator }:-)>