[Author's note 2016: the reason for these older pictures from as early as 1980 appearing here is straightforward. The early pictures are scans of photos and I had no provision to produce until 25 years later. True, jpegs were around in 2007, but there was no way to know if those would become a standard, or if they would always display properly. Hence, while the pictures are old, the digital versions you see here are very recent. And in 2007, there were not many places to get advice on how to effectively use pictures in blogs.
There was also no guarantee that blogs would endure, or that if I didn't get the pictures posted then, that they would ever appear anywhere but a shoebox in my closet shelf. Remember that the option to post videos was taken away (by Google) so there was no assurance I could post these or any pictures unless I did it then and there. Many sources said the pictures would be permanent. You can believe them if you want to, I posted these pictures at the time mostly because I could.]
Here’s another ever-popular photo from the past. RofR and Fat Hombre over at his (Hombre's) new place on the north side. Notice Hombre’s big screen projector. This would represent one of the very last times all three of us were together. Within a few months, RofR was in Saudi Arabia, Hombre got a teaching job on a boat in Iceland and I moved out to the coast.
Time to express my new-born respect for the durability of consistent work. It will still be a while before I apologize to the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) people, but it might happen. During my job hunting I referred several people to my on-line work for samples. I quickly noted that my writings are very “findable”, and my material gets top billing. Alas, cashing in on this will undoubtedly be made very difficult by people who don't want a system based on quality. It puts them out of work.May I add, I’ve made no concessions to being found other than coming up with unique handles (such as “veryatlantic”), which I would do anyway. Whatever sophisticated algorithms the SEO people use, there must be more to it than tweaking meta-tags. What’s left is pure authorship. If you write often, you get found often. (It is too early to say, for about a tenth my articles don’t get found when expected.) Last time I investigated, it took up to six months for a web crawler to find anything new. Now, my articles often appear same day.*
My task of gathering course information was very successful. Eleven advanced accounting courses in cost management and an indeterminate number of general studies at City University. That is where I was attending when my course reimbursements were cut off—it finally dawned on my company they were paying me to get another job. Only took them eight years to figure it out. Toward the end, some of my studies get totally rarified, for example, I wrote term papers on topics like libel and slander.
How could I take courses and forget about it? That is simply like asking me to recall every place I’ve ever been. I plead the Hunt Brother’s defense: people who remember every course they’ve taken probably haven’t taken very many courses.
Close inspection of job descriptions takes even more care nowadays, as employers have learned to disguise what they know people don’t like. I looked at several promising home-work jobs only to notice a short question about IM (instant messaging). That is pure and simple a scheme to do random checks on whether you are really at your computer. They know what they can do with that. Home-work means my time, not theirs. What’s next, they mount a video camera and pay by the hour?
Government jobs are prolific. Remember Zeke, the cheapskate? He had some mickey-mouse certificate and got a $100,000 a year job counseling criminals. And still tried to gyp me on his Internet time. I look at the jobs to see what the government considers to be “comparable work in the community”. Did you know that is what they are required to pay their employees. It really means find the highest paying public job in any category, and match that.
Did you know a pharmacist only makes $35,000 a year? Didn’t John Campbell go into that? I’m sure he’s done far better but I thought pharmacy was a Bachelor’s. Who wants to go to school that much to make less than $18 an hour? I used to make $16.50 doing payroll. The highest paying jobs in any category, however, were government.
Tie on the old feedbag, I’ve got a Thanksgiving gig. I’ve been asked back to Jimbo’s and reminded to “bring the tip jar”. Gary is showing up with “two new harmonicas” and they will be deep frying turkey in the parking lot. There is more than meets the eye, it also shows that the regular Thursday karaoke show will let them down on special occasions. I don’t think I’ve ever tried deep-fried turkey.
*[Author's note 2015-11-21: some of these early on-line posts are hard to follow as they are written in sections, then compiled or redacted. I'm saying that this blog finally began to appear at the top of searches with its own name and content items. I did not know that Google would eventually tweak the SEO algorithms to prevent good or consistent material from continually getting top spot. So I was prematurely happy when this blog got there.
Also, I have an unused course allowance from the old company to take any courses anywhere I want and they will pay for it. I don't specifically remember why I was doing looking at courses on this day in 2007. But what eventually happened is I could not find any courses in Florida that were worth the money.]
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