This is my second blog. I guess you could say that Facebook, twittering are real time blogs, but following are just a collection of my thoughts. My first blog was a log of my travels to and working in Toronto, Canada. The best advice for the year is be friendly. There are interesting people out there other than the ones you meet day in and day out. There is a big variety I find in folks playing tennis. I encouraged my teammates, after a match to strike up a conversation with fellow teammates and their opponents, you will be seeing them again in the future!
Retirement
Over Thanksgiving, we got to visit with Mike & Sharon Yoder,
who now live in Bethany
Beach, Delaware. Mike is a clever guy, founder of FortNet,
retired from UPS and planning on retiring again from NASA.
Mike sold FortNet when he was offer
twice what it was worth. Mike plans on working a part time job
as a tennis referee. It pays $350 with room expenses paid for, mostly
college tournaments on the east coast. Mike has an interesting blog -
More Interesting Info
especially if you have an interest in the latest gizmos.
or
How
about building the worlds tiniest 12
cylinder engine. or a model train set called Wunderland
in Hamburg, Germany.
Getting the next Job
I'm currently working at Verigy, recently bought by their
competition, Advantest, who both make industrial test equipment for
Integrated Circuits(ICs). After companies make ICs they have to
test them before they sell them to other companies that put them
in computers, cell phones or other electronic devices. The guys there
are not sure how the new organization will shake out even though
there is little overlap. On guys suggested I give a class on how to
get a job if you are not ready to retire or like me who can afford to
retire, so here is all I know:
o If you are layed off and
receive an severance pay, either by a franchise or take the mental
attitude that your former employer just gave you a paid leave of
absence.
o If you need to work, I would recommend looking
for opportunities that you will enjoy doing.
o Resume -
Yes, update that resume and only mention stuff you like to do and not
mention the tasks you hated. Listing tools, programming languages,
operating systems and applications are the buzz word the resume
processing software is looking for. I have a web site,
Mathegraphics.com which is
more about me and tennis than anything else. Recently I added a
link to LinkedIn and links to products a contributed to the
development.
o Post your resume and setup alerts on
CareerBuilder, Jobster,
Dice and Indeed,
my favorites, mainly because their email alerts are formated to my
liking....easy to scan for location, position type and pay rate. The
headhunters will find you.
o Find a good placement guy or
gal. Someone who will only call you with a good position fit for you
and the employer, at locations you select and a pay scale reasonable
for the opportunity. And if you are unavailable won't call you boss
looking for other placement positions and will set his tickler
in the future to call back when he has a follow on opportunity.
However I do take calls mainly to see what and where thing are going
on in the country. My measure of how well the economy is doing is by
the number of other phone calls I receive per week. I usually have to
tell the India recruiters, who speak in broken English to send me
Email with the job description, location and pay rate range. For
awhile they usually present to low ball contract jobs like, $30/hr
Software jobs at either HP or 1 year contract at Lexmark, Lexington,
Ky.
o I have only been contacted a few time over the last
10 years for permanent positions.
o The contract positions
are all over the country. Jobs in India are constantly posted. Be
sure to check out and get an idea for living expenses. I've been able
to find long term furnished places: $300/week in Cincinnati at $55/hr
rate on W2, $100/day in Toronto but current rate at $75/hr.
o If you are still working, save as much for retirement until it
hurts. this is one are I didn't pay enough attention to. Between
contracts I 've been living off savings and it's just about all gone.
The trade off was raising my kids with a better life style than mine.
Thinking of Selling you house
Check out zillow: your home may already be listed
Investments
I've haven't had any time the last 3 or 4 year to investigate companies, so I'm not the one to pick stocks and besides this is the quickest way to lost a friend when they go bad. But if I did I would look into the following areas.
Energy
problem is the battery technology is not there yet. How long has a rechargeable work for you in a cell phone or laptop computer. Also the complete life cycle to build, use and disposing of batteries is pretty bad for the environment.
Dr. Edmund Storms has been
out front in LENR and/or cold fusion research for several years, in
this video he gives his
opinion of what the future will be with cold
fusion. The last site is Dr. Storms bio, so you have an
idea of his background.
He is not unfamiliar with the workings of our
government and is probably being sought after to advise the
government. At
one point he says "they are trying to
figure this out".
http://coldfusionnow.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/edmund-storms-on-transition/
http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/views/storms/StormsBio.shtml
A
paper from the company who bought the rights to manufacture Rossi's
E-Cat (LENR, Cold
Fusion)
http://www.defkalion-energy.com/White%20Paper_DGT.pdf
or
Seems to be in use in California. We seem to have plenty of it. It's already delivered to our homes for heating, my American made Goodman furnace is 95% effecient, works great and can beat gas range for cooking. I think we need more CNG re-filling stations. All you need is a compressor and holding tank. Another option could be to install a CNG compressor at your house—this company offers one for $4,500. You run the compressor at night when electrical energy is cheaper. I found a dual-fuel conversion unit made in Korea by ... How safe is Natural gas? DOT approved tanks. What happen to the city vehicles that use to use CNG? Government Motors even offers CNG equipped trucks. Wikipedia even discusses Bi-fuel vehicles.
Storage
Companies, government need more and more storage to keep track of the rest of us. And we need a place to keep our photos and videos. A new type of storage, well not really, is coming out - Solid State Disk (SSDs). Companies are taking the flash chips you find in a jump drive or the SD card in you camera and putting them in the same form factor and interface as the hard drive in you laptop. It makes some sense to replace the hard drive with an SSD, faster, lighter, with no moving parts but not the same price of a hard drive, about $1/GB.
Communications
Cell phones, cell tower companies, smart phones, iPADs that need to tether phones for WiFi seem to keep going and going. I guess every body still needs a electronic book reader or smart phone with GPS to get around unchartered locations....
Local todo list to reduce monthly expenses
o Get rid of Satellite/cable - $55/month - DONE I got a 42"
LCD $1200 couple of years ago when my reliable Sony 35" went
out. The problem with appliance repair is finding parts in particular
custom ICs. That LCD now < $300 and 55" for <$1000. The
program selection on Dish was limited to History Channel and tennis
on ESPN2. I had asked them for ala carte selection but I'm sure their
licenses would not allow this, so we all pay to support MTV, food
channel, etc and no way would I pay $100 just to get the Tennis
Channel which might be cheaper on cable...There are a half dozen over
the air(OTA) channels we can pickup with the regular ole Radio Shack
antenna in the attic, so I went a bought a Logitech Review to add to
my entertainment center, ran an Ethernet cable from my router, I
don't use wireless- OTA tuner, Internet access, HDMI in+out, Infared
keyboard/touch pad for $100 and re-newed my NetFlix subscription
$8/mo, setup had an adjustment for full screen, no vertical bars,
access to my local photos/videos, nice but no DVR.We decided we
needed to record Rejeanne's night time soaps, returned the unit and
got a Tivo Set Top Box (STB) for $99, monthly subscription half price
$10/month.
o Shutdown the land line - $55/month -I been trying
to get an OOMA VOIP, that converts you local POTS,
plane-ole-phone-system to the Internet, where you can keep your old
number, but I wonder why. If we just dump the current provider, we
lose calls from political, charities, Alumni and other folks wanting
money. I can just let my friends, family, recruiters, work, USTA and
update my resume on-line.
o Water Bill - For years now, we
have been maintaining a hard water softener - RainSoft, which run a
couple hours maybe more the once a week to back flush the filters and
requires constant feeding of heavy bags of salt or blocks. Why? The
measurement a few years ago indicated the Chlorine was a little high
and it yellows Rejeanne hair. Actually the water quality is better in
Fort Collins than a lot of the bottled water. The real solution is to
contact the local water treatment guys and tell them to turn down the
Chlorine! The home owner solution I want to check into is EasyWater.
Is fluoride really good for the teeth?
Advantages
Longer life of
appliances including washing machines, dishwashers, and water
heaters; less use of household cleaning products, such as detergents,
as well as personal care products, like shampoo; reduction of water
spotting; cleaner, softer feeling clothes.
Disadvantages
Softened water
from a salt-based water softener is not recommended for drinking,
watering houseplants, lawns and gardens due to its sodium content.
There are many health risks associated with sodium intake. During the
softening process sodium is released from the exchange media into the
output water. For every grain of hardness removed from water, 8mg/1
(ppm) of sodium is added. People on restricted sodium intake diets
should account for increased levels of sodium in softened water. Your
family physician should be consulted. Sodium intake from softened
water can be avoided by leaving one kitchen tap un-softened from
drinking and cooking. Water used in recharging a water softener may
over load or reduce the effectiveness of small septic or sewer
systems. Softened water is not recommended for small appliances such
as steam irons or evaporative coolers. There is additional cost and
maintenance required. Salt-based softeners require that salt be added
to the system on a regular basis based upon the hardness of the
water. Cost of salt is approximately $5 to $7 per 40-pound bag
depending on the form