Oh good lord. Story here this morning is about a police standoff with a guy barricaded inside his house, with tons of police and the neighborhood basically shut down for hours while they negotiated with him.

Except it turns out the dude was at a bar talking to them on his cell phone and not in the house at all.

Nicely done, guys.

How long does a cover letter need to be if I'm applying internally but for a different department? (It's a department adjacent to mine so I know the guy who I'd be working for, and it feels awkward to write three paragraphs of "this is who I am and what I'm good at" when we've been working semi-together for over a year.)

What's the link for the alternate site? It looks like I'm now blocked from here at work via the regular channel. Hopefully I can get in through the backdoor; otherwise I'll just have to suck it up and be more productive. Do not want!

Jessica, I would probably make it shorter and less formal, but even if he knows you he may not really have an idea of your background or where your interests lie.

I basically write any letter the same way -- a sentence or two about why I'm writing, a paragraph with the meat, a couple of sentence wrap-up. The middle paragraph varies in length depending on how much I have to say. You probably don't have to go line-by-line through your resume or the job description, but hit some highlights.

There's apparently some kind of con here this weekend -- I saw several people in various costumes...

Jessica,

will there be people outside the organization applying? I am the kind of person who likes to err on the side of formality if there is a question. He might appreciate you giving the same kind of attention to the cover letter as you would to any job outside the organization.

Customize the beginning and end of the letter if you need to.

Soldier with puppies! [link]

sara - that is so sad and scary.

Well, I'm sure I went to school with lots of rich people (due to going to New Trier) but uh, my closest friends weren't those people. I think my brothers had friends who might have been though.

Ok, cover letter and resume have been sent. I really hope they haven't already hired someone - I haven't been paying close attention to the open job postings (since I only just barely came back to work) so this one may be several weeks old.

a 17 year old girl from NC disappeared from my old apt complex,

I didn't know that was your old complex. jesus.

Does it sound like it was an acquaintance of her half-sister? That household just wasn't right for a 17-year-old.

I know the half-sister's ex-boyfriend was a "person of interest" early on but that may have been because he was the last person to see Phylicia. It seems like they don't want to know. And, while it sounds like the half-sister's place doesn't seem ideal I think about the places I lived in my early 20s and there were a lot of people coming and going and lots of boozing and, we were lucky possibly, but nothing really bad happened to anyone. But, yeah, maybe we were just really lucky.

She had a couple of cousins in the derby league here and I know a lot of people who were very invested in getting the word out about her disappearance and holding fundraisers to raise reward money and so on.

Anyway, it's just so sad. So much wasted potential.