waterrockets 

And heaven forbid any of the men and women coming back broken get the VA health services they require.

furiousferret

I owe quite a bit to the USMC. I bounced around from home to home and really was not raised by parents, and they did a great job of filling that gap. Not everyone needs it but many do. Luckily nothing bad happened to me, or my other fellow Marines I went in with, (knocks on wood).

grolby

No thanks.

Ygduf

if you're turning it down, there are probably other guys who will step up.

Homebrew01

Well, I can't see my 17 year old daughter going in the military, or to trade school ..... Some kind of "gap year" might be worthwhile if we can devise something productive.

Ygduf

that's because caging humans in a for-profit scheme is both theoretically rife with moral hazard and demonstrably rife with the corruption and inhumane situations produced by that very moral hazard.

prisons take a poor person (worth little in terms of spending power) and vest them with $50k value (paid for by you and me, btw) to the prison complex, as long as we, you know, don't mind taking away their humanity.

ridethecliche

City year.

Homebrew01

I'll check it out.

hammy56

shovelhd

Say what? IT unemployment in my area (Hartford CT/Springfield MA) ranges from 4% for entry level to 1% or less for highly skilled positions. I am trying to get a SharePoint designer for a temporary maternity leave situation...good luck. There are a dozen full time SP openings in the region that are unfilled. I am also looking for a systems analyst with strong business reporting skills. I see lots of resumes. They fall into two camps. One set get paid market salaries but their depth is weak in core skills and do not have the education to back it up. The others are well educated, with 2-3 years of experience and are demanding $20K-$30K above market salaries. It's crazy out here trying to hire people. I hear the same thing in Boston. One of my guys decided to relocate to Phoenix, and got a job within a week paying market salaries. There has been an IT resource shortage for years now. It started with the dot com generation, accelerated with the IT outsourcing trend, and morphed into "the company owns you 24/7" mindset that exists today. The collateral damage was that what was once an attractive college major with great opportunities has been shunned by those seeking a more normal lifestyle. Couple all that with visa restrictions, and we're in the mess we're in today. The shortage is real, and it's not getting better anytime soon.

Homebrew01

What are your expectations for education ?? I think there are plenty of us with very little IT related education (or much education at all), but a lot of real world experience at solving problems and getting things done.

botto 

if you're going to add cross, you might as well as add beer drinking, frites eating, and riding bikes in silly costumes events.

globecanvas

I've probably looked at a thousand resumes in various technology related fields. When I look at a resume I don't care at all about formal education. Some of the most brilliant people I've ever worked with were dropouts, including some people who are considered practically deities in their fields.

What I care about is that the candidate is smart, eager to learn and work, and has a sense of who they are. Smarts and character are everything.

Not to say that education is useless, but IMO a hypothetical career pathway is not the correct motivation for education. A compelling desire to learn is the correct motivation.

However, I know that very few HR and admissions departments think this way. A friend who is a coach at an ivy league college says that they have some strict numerical guidelines for GPA and such, and if you're below the line your application is canned before anyone even reads the rest of it. At a company of any size, the person doing the first pass over the resumes won't be the person managing the eventual hire, so there will probably be some quantitative lines in the sand and if you don't have X education and Y experience, your potential future coworkers will never even know you exist.

But I still come down on the side of following the path that best interests you, rather than the one that you think might best interest some potential employer.

shovelhd

BS in CS, Engineering or Math. It's not that those without it are not smart or capable. Many are. It's just when we drill down and ask the hard questions, the lack of depth shows. This has just been my experience with the two dozen or so candidates I have interviewed lately.

mattm

Published another iOS app today, this one shows you race videos from steephill.tv. (download)

Fwiw it's not just a rehash of the content from the site, it resizes some of it to make it easier to view on a mobile device, and allows the videos to play in the background (doesn't seem possible with mobile Safari).

Feedback appreciated!

wanders

I thought those were pretty much covered with curling, power lifting, and dressage.

echappist

well done

grolby

Then I'm hearing conflicting things. Maybe it's IT vs. software development. Maybe (MAYBE) I have no idea WTF I'm talking about. It's happened before.

grolby

When we (me and my wife, fiancée at the time) moved up to the Boston area last July, we moved into my grandmother's house and having been living upstairs in the spare room since. It's been pretty great, she's very easy to live with and it's hard to beat a rent of $0, but obviously we need a place of our own. So the plan was always to find jobs, stay for a while and save up at least a little bit of money, then go and find ourselves an apartment of our own.

This evening we took a look at a nice little one bedroom. In our price range (just), acceptable size, high ceilings, heat and hot water included, great location, no undergraduate renters, allows cats. We like it. We're going to sleep on it and nothing is 100%, but I think we might have found ourself our place. Pretty excited about it.

Inquisitor.

I downloaded the app, and it seems very cool. I wish I had it while I was deployed. I'll definitely let you know what I think after I use it more. Thanks Matt.

Racer Ex 

You mean luge and curling?

Flatballer

Exhausted. In to work at 5 AM again today, then I catch a train at 6:15 AM tomorrow to travel for work, back home about 9 PM. At least I get Friday off for all my work this week, and hopefully can leave around 10:30 today since I worked so much yesterday.

topflightpro

Just north of Atlanta used to Dobbins AFB/Naval Reserve Station. Many years ago, there used to be a high-end strip club located just a few hundred yards from the end of the runway, and this particular club had an outdoor patio and pool. The dancers often would spend their days working on their tans at the pool.

This became a problem when the pilots would come in to land, turn the plan sideways so they could check out the girls and then straighten out just before landing. According to a friend, who worked at the Lockheed facility there, they had a couple of near misses because of it.

kensuf

I tend to agree with this assessment. Even finding an entry level desktop support tech that is worth a damn can be a chore.

rkwaki

What the ****? You got married?