After just a few hours playing with my iBook, Rod and Megan have converted to the Mac side: they’re the proud parents of a brand new baby 600Mhz iBook.
How to cut and paste in X11. In case you ever wanted to know.
Some friends of mine were discussing the pro’s and con’s of college. My thoughts:
First, I’ll admit I have a degree.
However, it’s in Geography. I really enjoy the field, but I don’t want a job in it. GIS sucks.
Meanwhile, I used my spare time during college to immersively study PCs and networking. Now I work for a large Internet backbone access provider.
From what I’ve seen here, in this cube farm, all of the people in 5th level have degrees [in CS], and are paid very well to know what they’re doing. Most of the people in 4th level have degrees [some in English or Art History], but even the ones who don’t have degrees are very skilled, and have every intention of obtaining a degree. In my own group, most of the techs have degrees, but again, they may not be directly related to networking.
When I asked a former HR nazi why degreed techs were preferred, she said it was for several reasons. First, if a large company wishes to get certain [government] contracts, those contracts require that large company to have X number of degree-holding employees. Second, on a personal level, a lot of older engineers went to engineering schools and obtained engineering degrees, and feel that if they went through all of that to get their jobs, everyone else should too. Third, even if the degree isn’t in the exact field of the job, having a degree proves that the potential employee was able to stick with college for four years or so — the potential employee has just enough fortitude to get up for class, to study
hard enough to get a C, to take all the tests and do all the useless chores needed to get the little piece of paper.
Going to school is a lot more work than you’d expect, primarily because it takes so much time. Sure, you might be a genius, and you could force-study a subject matter and pass an exam with only a week’s worth of study, but can you get up for some mind-numbing class on economics or biology or ‘Maps and Maps Interpretation’ every other day for 8 months, knowing it will have no real bearing on your future career? To a manager, or an HR nazi, the business analogy is: you might be an ultra-genius able to solve all sorts of weird problems at a glance, but can I count on you to show up to work every day? Can I count on you to have decent communications skills? Can I count on you not to skip important meetings?
My final recommendations: having a degree won’t get you a job, in and of itself. However, in a tight job market, it might help put you above someone else.
If you have the opportunity, do go to school, but major in something you’re interested in, be it Art History or Tennis. Don’t waste four years studying something you hate, just because you think someone will ‘give you a job’ once you get out of college.
Have your friends ever received a phone call from Miss Cleo? Al Pacino? They can now with the Celebrity Soundboard!
and hilarity ensued.
Look at the label on the last package you received from UPS, or at the back of your driver’s license. Chances are there’s a rectangular area on there containing tiny rectangles, circles, hexagons, or similar patterns. You’re looking at a two-dimensional barcode, which can store several kilobytes of data as compared to the roughly twelve bytes in the UPC barcode on that bottle of lotion you keep by the bed. Daniel sent me a story at the New York Times about a club in Boston that is pulling and storing the name, age, height, home address, and other specifics of its patrons. So I want to know just what is on the back of my own license. Here is a document that gives a brief introduction to the roughly twenty different types of 2D barcodes in common use today. Read more for further stuff as I find it.
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Apple unveiled its new 10GB iPod today at Macworld Tokyo. For an extra $49, you can get your iPod personalized. Here’s a preview of my personalized iPod.
