Actively considering starting a charity….

I have been toying with this for a while, and think I might actually start the paperwork.

The company I work for does a fair amount of charity work. One charity they support is designed to give kids refurbished computers. I thought I might like getting in on that, but there’s a catch. The install Microsoft Windows on every machine.

I really can’t bring myself to help spread Microsoft’s dope. Getting their claws into kids early, and forcing schools to use Windows has literally kept kids from learning other ways of doing thing- even free ones. Accounts of uneducated people telling kids that they have to use Windows for legal reasons or warranty reasons are abound. It’s a bit frightening. (Want a real world example? Google “HeliOS and AISD”.)

At any rate, I’m all for getting computers in the hands of underprivelidged kids, the sooner the better. What I’d really like to do is TEACH the kids HOW to use computers, and not just how to use Windows Continue reading Actively considering starting a charity….

So, updates are in order…

I did end up leaving my contract position in April. Twice, actually.

I was not particularly happy with the previous employer, as an environment. Not a bad place to work, great people, good assortment of hardware….but they were/are a “company in flux”. That phrase came from a colleague of my new recruiter who had also recently left my previous company. 🙂

It’s not anyone’s fault, per se, but the corporate direction was less a business plan, and more a funeral plan. The upper management seemed to be far more concerned with getting someone to buy us out than to actually run the company. (They were on year 5.5 of a 5-year plan.)

At any rate, I started entertaining offers, and man did they come fast and furious. Continue reading So, updates are in order…

The job market is definately improving for those with a little bit of Linux in their CV…

And how. I am getting daily calls from recruiter looking for Linux experience. I am still receiving calls based on a resume I uploaded four years ago, too.

For the record, I have NOT been looking, just getting approached, repeatedly. Like at LEAST 10 times a day. Some days more, but a quick look at my ‘Droid and I can see that barring holidays and weekends, there’s not been a single day in the last three months where I didn’t get at least that many.

Sure, about half are relocation offers, which I’m really not interested in at the moment, but that leaves half that aren’t. Of those, a good half are ones I really have no business doing (mostly because I would be considerably overqualified, and the pay is not in the realm…but not always.) The remaining ones are really in my zone.

I’d been looking to exit the Contract I’m in now (seeing as how it expired back in October, and they weren’t in a position to keep me in that location, nor were they willing to have anyone in my role as a FTE.) I’ve been on several interviews, and had a couple offers that were simply not good enough to get me to jump ship, but that day is coming soon, I think.

 

**Bootnote… I had saved this to my drafts last month instead of posting…See new post.**