Career

I Have a Job, They Don’t: Pro-Active Networking

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Introduction:
I have kicked around this idea for ages – writing something about how we progeeks with jobs can help those without.  I finally figured I'd do it as a series of blog posts and see how it goes.  Yeah, you know me, sometimes I need to just try an idea out and not dither so much.

We've been there before.  We know people out of work and we want to help, yet it's frustrating at the same time.  There seems to be an infinite amount we can do, yet we're not sure where to start – and what will work.

I've been in your position.  I've had many friends, co-workers, acquaintances, and so on have issues with unemployment.  So I'm going to be writing up individual things you can try, bite-sized morsels of advice to help your friends and family out in their job search.

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Thoughts on Aspiration

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Aspiration.

It's a funny word, really, not one we use a lot. We talked casually about aspiring to something, having aspiration, but "aspiration" isn't one of those words people use a whole lot. It’s just a funny, useful words that we take out occasionally, like a special tool we use only under certain circumstances.

I've been thinking about this word lately, as I do; language fascinates me. Thinking about it, I realized that what a lot of people actually lack in their careers is aspiration. Maybe one of the reasons we don't use this useful word is because we don't experience what it means very much in our lives.

Aspiration. Aspiring to something. Directing ourselves towards something and hoping to get there. It's really a lovely word.

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Second-Class Formatting?

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Yes, once again I'm going to talk about my Amazon Kindle. No, this is not a case of me going on how great it is, how much I love it, ad nauseum. You've probably had enough of that as it is. Instead, I want to share an insight on the nature of e-books that I didn't notice until I began using the Kindle so much.

What have I noticed? I've noticed that, despite many of the e-books I'm reading coming from professional print sources, some of them have distinct formatting errors on the Kindle. I'd say easily two thirds of the books I've read on the Kindle have noticeable formatting problems, some of them quite distinct and incredibly annoying, such as unclear graphics, oddly placed titles, mashed words, and more.

It's as if Kindle books get a kind of "second-class" formatting.

Somehow, I don't think I'm alone in experiencing odd, strange, and outright painful formatting problems on books I'm reading on the Kindle. I'm quite sure other people are experiencing this as well; all those people on my daily trains reading Kindles doubtlessly are experiencing questionably–formatted books too.

So unless I'm the unluckiest reader in Amazon–land, everyone is experiencing formatting problems with their Kindle books now and then. So why aren't we complaining?

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