Splash Web Effects

In the wake of all of the hubbub about facebook’s security practices, the various how-tos and informational paranoia, I am asked quite frequently by friends and family of all levels of acquaintance about my continued use of frequent facebook and twitter updates, and their varying degrees of professionalism.

I am an avid social media user. I use twitter, facebook, linkedin and a host of other services. I check-in, I tweet and I update statuses. I post pictures of myself and my friends in fun, and silly engagements, such as playing rockband in my living room. I also tweet about what I’m working on (although I no longer post any actual details due to an NDA that covers my public speech). In short, I like to talk about what I am doing, a lot.

I enjoy disclosing details about my life. The reasons I have found for doing so- as they are generally rationalizations rather than instigating reasons- are many. I feel my professional and personal lives are enriched by a living, breathing, up-to-the-minute portfolio of not just my work, but my entire personhood. I also enjoy that it is easy for people I know to keep up with my day-to-day life, as I am young and mobile, and tend to lose contact with people for months at a time before revisiting them.

Now, most of the concerns shared by those that know and follow me are this: Are you not afraid people will judge you incorrectly, see you out of context or assume false things about you?

Of course not. My twitter feed, facebook profile, buzz list and linkedin updates are me in context. No more perfectly am I captured anywhere. I have a unique personality, varied interests and am overall, complex emotionally.

The company I work for while writing this post has a leader within it’s ranks that exemplifies everything right with corporate culture, and is someone I am deeply and profoundly proud to call my boss. The main thing done correctly is the hiring of new staff, as our company is growing rapidly. Many companies, especially in times of growth, tear themselves apart by giving each applicant only a cursory glance, comparing numerical qualifications and cherry-picking only the brightest gems, polished to the glossiest shine. These gems then mix in a pool of others, all gawdy and imperfectly aligned.

The art of arranging human beings so that they will best work together, and choosing those that have not become so set in their ways, and allowing them to support those that are set correctly- this is a skill that many so-called executives will never master in a lifetime. Selecting only the optimum arrangement, the most efficient, frictionless set of gears that don’t wear each other down due to ill-fitting size and shape, this is the skill practiced here.

But this skill is not something that can be summarized in a brief interview, or a scan of a few carefully selected words by a potential interviewee- it is best summarized by a portfolio of life that grows with a person- ideas and information growing and changing with the person it represents- something a simple resume could never do.

So yes, on my portfolio, you’ll find that I am a programmer- I have experience with Classic ASP and other server-side scripting languages. You’ll see how many years I have worked and who for. You will also see the whimsy and talent, the lack of sophistication and the supreme dedication I have to perfecting the profession I have chosen- all of this information is unmeasurable on purpose- it has to be cataloged accidentally, along the course of life, and through the lens of context.

Google, in all it’s well-meaning splendor and ethos of not being evil, has decided to make a change in policy regarding unaccredited pharmacies. Hooray.

Another change Google’s dropped on the table however, is that it’s stance on drugs from accredited pharmacies from our friends to the north has shifted dramatically. New rules state that Canadian pharmacies will no longer be able to target consumers in the US, and that search results will be filtered.

For those of us embroiled in the healthcare debate, either side acknowledges that prescriptions for drugs in the US are often far too costly, and not covered, or not covered very well by current insurance. Even life-saving or medically necessary drugs come at a high cost, and without subsidization by our government, many people do without their medicine, opting to feed their families at the cost of their own health.

Enter Canadian Pharmacies, such as canadianpharmacymeds.com – which is an accredited pharmacy in Canada. Many customers of the pharmacy receive medicine at much lower prices than at non-subsidized us pharmacies, or where generics are unavailable. Due to these new rules however, it could become much harder to comparison-shop, or even find these legitimate pharmacies in order to receive cheaper medication from reputable sources.

The problem that is not currently being solved however, is cutting down on pharmacies that have bad reputations for sending out sugar pills, or are fake/scam sites. These places have little moral or legal obligation to skirt past any rules Google imposes, and so the only people hurt by this are law-abiding, policy-following and generally reputable sources of medication in Canada.

Hopefully, Google will see these issues with the policy change and reverse course, as this is one of the few avenues consumers have of leveling the playing field with regards to healthcare and the rising cost of prescriptions.

I waited a bit after writing this- 3 months to be exact. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t fueled by a slight against my ego, and that the feminist rage I was feeling wouldn’t falter after time. This is the blogger equivalent of writing an angry letter and waiting till morning to send it.

Here I present, the most feminist rant ever.

A question I am invariably, and I do mean invariably, asked when people find out that I have a child, “How do you manage a family and working?”, or alternately, “Who watches your son while you are at work?”

The audacity of this question is understated, as it has clear implications: people always want to know- not as a polite aside like “What is his name”‘ “How old is he”, etc, is how I can be so irresponsible as to have a career when I have a child to raise. There are then unfortunate implications to that statement that do not merely happen to be rather rude and presumptive, but effect my career as well. Assumptions range that I do not actually like what I do, I am merely doing this to “feed my kids”, that I would not do this if I didn’t have to, that I am disorganized, rushed or hurried in my work, or that I simply do not care.
But this is not predijudice against parents- it is prejudice against mothers, spisifically. My male collegues, many of whom have children- some of whom are single parents- are never asked this question. They might be applauded, if they are single, but it is a badge of honor, not a mark of shame.
This stereotype is absurd- the idea that I would rather be a housewife or homemaker of any sort- that I don’t do what I love or love what I do- that my ambitions for myself are extensions of the ambition to provide well for my offspring, these assertions are ridiculous.
I am much more ambitious than many of my personal acquaintances, and many of my coworkers- but the assumption is that I would give it all up were I to marry someone well off, or attain some sort of lump sum in a stroke of luck. This stereotype is not only one of the single most damaging ideas to feminism in society today, but many professional women- women who would raise intelligent, well-fed and well-adjusted offspring put it off until the end of their careers, or off entirely, due to this assumption. This leaves these incredible people out of the gene pool, and can only hurt posterity. To talk about sustainability, sustaining a population segment with a high enough IQ to maintain and use the technological wonders we use today is one of the highest priorities we can have as a species- this trend has to stop.

I was scanning documents today, now that google docs allows uploading I feel I have no excuse to turn everything digital.

I was scanning and encrypting tax returns, and the numbers really struck me for some reason. Some older returns, ones that included such places as The Black Eyed Pea and Working For My Dad, and the pitiful numbers that were the final score for the year. I was looking at later ones and how the numbers had gone up, and thinking about being handed the sum total of the years 2004-2010 and attempting to live off the total for six years.

While I probably would save a bit, not paying any late fees or finance charges, I realized that the tax forms, notices, final counts and various mailings from various companies really do add up to my entire life’s work.

Everything I’ve ever done, reduced to a payable (or in my case, refundable) amount to the IRS. I could, while looking through the many offer letters, 1040s and W2s, letters of recommendation, medical expense logs and car insurance claims, recount every major event in my life. Every marriage, divorce, childbirth, car wreck, new job, layoff, and paycheck can be accounted for. And zero-sum’d.

Everything I’ve ever done in my life, relates to a final number. A score. Eventually, the number at the end accounts for the number on your social security card- and it’s made me realize one thing.

There are too damn many people. The fact that the number takes into account my friendships- every airtime minute and round of beer, every gallon of gasoline or sympathy pie baked. The fact that the number takes into account my love life- marriages, divorces, dates, emails (internet access, electricity?) and ice-cream trips at 2 AM. The fact that the number is compared in the census, to my family’s, to my friends, to people in my zip code, and to people in my same field of work. All these collections and data-driven assumptions about who I am, reducing me to a number and the fact that the number is correct- terrifying.

My name is Liz Howard- I score in the 90th percentile for people with my level of experience, education, vocation, gender, skillset, family history, location and lifestyle.

AEH …………………… 90%

I wonder if I can beat my score.

Sometimes we get working, or we get excited about a change in our lives. Sometimes it’s for something we love, sometimes it’s for something we hate. Sometimes we go off on an adventure, and even, times come where the adventure becomes our everyday lives. These are the times when we forget.

We forget to paint, or to read, or to ski or to blog. We forget to go on dates. We forget to follow the plans we lay out because of life and love and children and layoffs.

The problem is when we fall asleep, and never remember again. We go to work and we come home and we think about what we are forgetting to do as something we are forgetting to do- not something we love.

It becomes something we regard as secondary to our lives. It moves into a tertiary thing, and then something for “only” when we have time. And then we have no time.

The biggest change we can make for ourselves is to audit and reclaim our time. Look at the biggest detractors in your life- Commute, Chores, Spending time with individuals that you don’t enjoy, and don’t benefit from you. Imagine the difference these hours add up to.

With commutes upwards of an hour long, imagine getting back two to four hours a day? What could you do in two to four hours? Change your life?

There is a Microsoft Knowledgebase Support Article that points out yet another flaw in IE8 or lower. This states that Microsoft Office can’t download documents when you set the page to expire immediately- so essentially you can’t have very secure pages if you want to export information to excel.

Firefox could do this since firefox .8

Chrome could do this from the get-go.

Safari and even Netscape Navigator have this capability, and most versions of AOL’s horrible browser can do this.

Why can’t Microsoft get with the program? The issue here is that MSIE will do what it damn well pleases. It always has, as it commands the majority of market share. Until we can get people on other, more stable web-standards compatible browsers we won’t be able to really open up the modern web.

I want to redesign all of the local government websites.

Seriously, who writes these? A lot of time they don’t work or validate in anything but IE7 and when they do, they are still the most hideous things you have ever laid eyes on. Regardless- some of them get awards.

I genuinely want to redesign these, and I will take a significantly lower sum than I would normally charge, in the name of patriotism. I do not want our nation’s children subjected to bureaucracy, but when they do have to endure it, it can at least be pretty.

Not to mention the functionality. Most government websites have some sort of registration you can perform on them, be it for jobs or to pay your water bill- but the instructions are convoluted and obviously to make up for a developer’s bad user interface or a database designer’s bad practices.

What happened to intuitive, useful and accessible with these people? There are many documents people would love to submit online that don’t require actual paper anyway- stuff that could be submitted directly to the correct database and would only require you to mail in a signature form to satisfy their archaic standards. This would cut overhead by such a significant amount that they might be able to pay someone to, I don’t know, update their website? Scroll down to the bottom of the Tarrant County website, and you will see that it has not been touched since May of 2005!

Governments are slow to adapt to new standards, but the days of putting a website on the Internet and then being “done” are over. You are never “done” with a website. People expect more and more functionality every day, and you need to keep them updated with events and pertinent information.

The trouble with looking for a job in Dallas, Texas is not the amount of jobs availible or really the extreme market penetration of other professionals like you, or with more experience. There are plenty of jobs to go around.

One of the largest problems is out-of-state staffers that do not understand how large Texas is.

I live in Plano, which is just north of Downtown Dallas. This is not anywhere near San Antonio, Austin, Huston, Beaumont, Brownsville or Amarillo. Those are all more than 3 hours one way from my home, in good traffic and no highway patrol on the way down.

A lot of recruiters in India, Missori and even New Zealand want to place me in jobs that are there- asking how far of a drive it would be for me.

They then proceed to tell me they mean Houston, Texas not some other “far away” Houston in another state.

Texas is roughly twice the size of Germany. If you lived in Northern California, would you drive to a job in Southern California? No. You couldn’t do it.

Why do people insist on trying to recruit for these jobs in the wrong areas?

Database design for resume databases and for job hunting sites need to recognize this and divide Texas into distinct regions so one can search DFW and not get anything from San Antonio, and once can search Galveston and not get anything for Amarillo.

Remember, STATE is not a good search parameter, you need to add a REGION field or your results will always be shoddy and low relavance.

I am already tired of this recession. It has caused one company to fall apart under me and now another to restructure their entire business model, leaving me without a position in a few weeks.

I tire of the job hunt- slogging through the thousands of entries posted on job sites like monster and careerbuilder for jobs that require masters degrees in computer science and want 5 years of experience in technologies that are only 5 years old to begin with.

Early adopters are great to hire, but what about the rest of us perfectly capable individuals that didn’t want to hedge our bets too early- who are perfectly capable of writing what you wanting us to write and taking ownership of a large project but who didn’t play in intergal part in the early development of the language?

The other complaint(I shall file this post under “gripes”) I have with many of these postings are the education requirements- how many software programmers do you know that went through 4 years of school?If I entered school to learn software development today, everything I learned in the first two years would be completely useless by the time I graduated, I would have student loans weighing me down causing my initial price tag to be beyond my actual, real-world experience level and my programming technique would be a mirror of what an idiocyncratic professor with very strong opinions about how things should be done (which is why they profess) with flexability that would only come over a great deal of time.

The freshness of new minds entering the programming trade is weakened considerably by these institutions- I don’t see why we should have to fill an arbitrary beurecratic requirement just because we achieve a higher pay grade than an average unskilled worker. We are skilled. VERY skilled. We deserve to be paid as much- regardless of where we learned the trade.

I recently had the fortune(good or bad?) to fill a few internships at a company I worked for. I decided to post an entry on craigslist.

I made it a pretty open-enrollment, no school requirements, no previous experience, capped at one year experience. I was looking for a few eager young marketing break-ins like I was (not that I’m not eager, young or a break-in myself.) to teach the ropes and get cheap labor out of.

Well… my post went locally viral.

I am not sure why, or how, but every community college professor and abuser of linkedin found my craigslist post and ran with it, telling everyone they knew. After about a day, HUNDREDS of local applicants e-mailed me their desperate attempts to get an internship. I had to set up e-mail filters, and was intensely grateful I had given my Google voice number instead of my personal cell.