Recycle Your Old Cell Phone

There are charities who will take your old phone and reprogram it for 911 use only, and give it folks who might need it.

There's also this:

http://www.epa.gov/cellphone

The EPA lists drop off locations where you can leave your phone so it will be recycled and won't end up in a landfill.

41 Pounds

Another cool tip from Michelle Kaufmann:

You are a paper saving animal! You recycle every piece of paper that goes through your home. You always bring your own mug to the coffee shop so you won’t have to use a non-recyclable paper one. You never print anything at home or in the office unless it’s absolutely necessary. Great! But there’s something more you could be doing to save paper: keeping junk mail out of your mailbox! Junk mail is not only annoying as all get out but about 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce it. How would you like to be the tree that’s felled just to be reincarnated as the 106th unsolicited credit card offer you received this month?

Thankfully, you can put a stop to the majority of the junk mail you receive in several ways. 41pounds.org is a fantastic organization that will stop 80 to 95% of junk mail for five years in exchange for a small fee, more than a third of which is then donated to an environmental or community organizations of your choice. You can also “opt-out” of receiving credit card offers on your own thanks to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which gives you the right to prevent Consumer Credit Reporting Companies from providing your credit file information to the people sending you all those credit card offers. Visit OptOutprescreen.com to exercise your right and save innocent trees!

Go Green in 2008!

I am really enjoying Michelle Kaufmann's blog.

Read her tips for going green:

http://blog.michellekaufmann.com/?cat=9

I will be working this year to make the big conference that I organize, Architecture Exchange East, as green as possible, both in the implementation and the planning. How can you do that? For instance, planning meetings will have pitchers of water instead of bottled, and there will be no duplicated handouts. At the event itself, we will post all powerpoints, handouts, etc., on the web site for download instead of passing out tons of paper. Those are just a couple of things, we'll be doing more. A major agenda item at our first planning meeting on January 23 will be how we can make ArchEx greener.

Feel free to post ideas!

What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?

Edge.org operates The World Question Center.
Recently, they asked 165 prominent scientists, artists, and others..thinkers all…this question:

The Edge Annual Question — 2008
When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.
WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?
Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?
165 contributors; 112,600 words

The results are fascinating. I’ve only just started to read. After I've read more I may comment here, but I expect this to take a while to get through.

This goes to the Question Main Page:

http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html

This goes to the first answer, if you’d rather just jump there:

http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_1.html#seligman

Please post a comment with your reaction.

Start Me Up

Dr. Mao's Tips for Jump-Starting Your Energy

An excerpt:

Most people eat too many foods that supply a rapid burst of energy in the form of simple carbohydrates and sugars - which burn out fast, leaving us depleted - rather than foods with a more sustainable energy content.

Eat a snack at mid-morning and another one at mid-afternoon. Good ones to choose are nuts, seeds, fruits, or protein-rich foods like hummus made from beans; these will help you sustain your energy and prevent low blood sugar from setting in. Make your own trail mix with almonds, pine nuts, walnuts, dried cranberry, raisins, or any other combination.

Night Swimming

Something happened on January 1. Before that, everything was going along fine, and I was doing ok at work. Then suddenly everything blew up. Actually, that’s a little overdramatic. I’m still doing fine, and I’m still happy here.

I’m just swimming all of a sudden…there’s a huge amount of work to do. This is both good and bad, because no one wants to be bored at work (not that I was bored before), but still…you want a little breathing room sometimes.

I’m going to come in Sunday to do a little catch up. However, right now it’s 5:30 on Friday and sitting at my desk is NOT where I want to be. See ya ‘round.

A New Year

I'm going to try to keep up with this again in 2008. It's not a resolution, just a desire to get back to writing. I enjoyed doing this back when I was writing entries regularly. It's just hard to keep up and find the time. I used to make resolutions, but I really don't any more. Now I view the start of the new year pretty much the same way every year. It *is* a time to do some taking stock, to look both back and forward, to see what I can learn from the past year, and most importantly to do some thinking about where I can take my life in the coming year. Are there any actions I can take to bring myself closer to the person I want to be? Sounds pretty dramatic.

Anyway, stay tuned and we'll see what goes on. The 2007 pictures are below, if anyone is still looking for those.

2007 Pictures

A few pictures of us in 2007. Click on any picture to view a larger version. I've been asked to enter captions and also to tell people how to comment, if they wish: just click on the words "0 comments" (or "2 comments", or however many there are) at the very bottom of this entry.



Julia dolled up for homecoming.

Julia and Katie O'Donohue ready for the Harry Potter release party.

Julia's birthday...she and some of her pals all in a pile.

Sam running in a cross-country meet.

The World's Largest Frying Pan! How can you NOT stop and see this?

Just a few days ago...Julia and Sam in front of our tree.

On top of Mill Mountain in Roanoke.

On top of Mill Mountain in Roanoke.

Missing in Action

Well...it's been a long time since I posted. I've been absent, but busy.

I started at VSAIA on October 8. Since then I have been ...occupied. Even when I didn't have all *that* much to do at work, it was tiring. I'd forgotten how tiring it can be to be in a new job and just trying to soak in as much information as you can.

So far I like it quite a bit. It has many things that are novel to me...structure, clarity of mission, resources. I'm getting to know the staff, and getting busier by the day.

The main reason I'm busy and will be for a couple more weeks is that our major event of the year, Architecture Exchange East, takes place November 7-9.

So far I like all the people I work with. There are a couple with some idiosyncracies, but nothing truly weird so far. Just odd enough to be interesting. The CEO is very smart and very politically astute. I can learn a lot from him.

What else is new? Well, I bought a new laptop. After having one for several years that belonged to my employer, I got really used to having one. Then I didn't have one anymore, and three of us were jockeying for the one desktop computer, and it got to be too much, so I bit the bullet and picked up an HP Pavilion on sale.

Also, I went back to Weight Watchers. When I was going there over the summer, I lost 15 pounds, then I lost my job and started eating everything. So I went to my first meeting again the other day, and my weigh in was 6 pounds up from what I had lost. not too bad, I expected it to be more.

OK, that's enough for now. more later

A Walk In The Woods

Every once in a while I have to go out and walk through the woods. I find it provides me with a certain amount of re-centering of my thoughts, and my attitudes toward life, the universe, and everything. Given everything that’s gone on in the last few months, I had a strong urge to do that this week, and fortunately yesterday was open...the only day this week with nothing else on the calendar. Except hearing Lyra at Christ Church, but I felt I could give that up for my mental health.

I've visited various places depending on how much time I have available and how much I feel like driving, but one of my favorite places to go is Shenandoah National Park. So yesterday I drove up there and got onto the ridge by around 11:00, and the fog was just burning off. I wasn't looking for particularly strenuous hikes or anything, just some places where I could get out among trees and breathe that wonderful air. So I did the first three hikes I came across, Turk Mountain, RipRap, and Blackrock Summit. Probably less than 7 or 8 miles all together, but just exactly what I needed. I am so refreshed today.

Here are a few pics of my wanderings yesterday.

The view from Turk Mountain:



The view from Blackrock Summit:




A couple of deer by the road:




A Mama bear and three cubs! This was so cool!



I walked up to about 100 yards from them to take this picture. A good rule of thumb with bears, or any wildlife, is that if you're close enough for them to notice you, you're too close. I was just about that close. As I was taking the picture, I saw Mama glance up in my direction. I beat feet out of there after that.


If you're interested, Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods is a wonderfully funny book about hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Fret factor: Very low

Music factor: Gomez (good call, Nat!), KT Tunstall, Fountains of Wayne, Alison Krauss

My New Job

A quick post now...more later.

This morning I accepted the position of Director of Professional
Development for the Virginia Society of the American Institute of
Architects. I'll be working in one of the coolest buildings in
Richmond, Branch House, at 2501 Monument Avenue.

I start October 8.

VSAIA: http://www.virginiaarchitecture.org/vsaia_index.jsp

Branch House: http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/virginia/richmond/branch/branch.html

Pop!

All of a sudden things took off on the nonprofit front. As many of my two readers may know, I have been taking classes nonprofit management at VCU. I had to skip this semester due to my impending job-free status. I’m not unemployed, I’m unencumbered by work. Anyway, in addition to training/education jobs I have been sending resumes out for nonprofit jobs, and just last week three of them popped. So, I have an interview with a professional society tomorrow (Monday), one with a conservation association Monday the 1st, a phone interview with a University on the 4th, and I’ve been contacted by a homeless-oriented charity who wants to talk to me, interview date TBD.

The positions (in the same order) are Director of Professional Development, Executive Director, Manager of Instructional Design, and Executive Director.

This seems to come in waves. Early last week I had nothing going and I was really getting cranky. Now I have several possibilities, and I’m not as cranky, though I’m a bit anxious. Psyched, I mean. That’s it, I’m psyched.

Fret factor: Dude, you’re harshing my mellow.

Beer factor: Octoberfest!

Music factor: KT Tunstall, Alison Krauss, The Police.

P.S. I’m considering moving this blog to WordPress. For a while, there will be a duplicate blog at the URL below, though I doubt I will keep up the duplication for long…I’ll either make the switch or not.

http://moresignal.wordpress.com

Don't call us...

In the previous post I wrote:

Conventional wisdom says that you don’t get jobs through the newspapers. You’re supposed to contact the companies directly and talk to a person, and do your networking. However, more and more it seems to me that companies are discouraging the direct personal contact route, and asking for seekers to apply through the web site, only for openings that are listed on the web site.

Several of the companies I have called to attempt a followup have responded with something like this: “We get a lot of resumes. We’ll go through them all and we’ll call you if you are one of the people we want to talk with.”

So, how do you get around this and talk with a human?

Tools and Strategies

Here are a few of the things I have done to keep my job search moving along.

Personal Contacts and Networking
As soon as I knew that my job was ending, I emailed almost everyone I knew. I told them I was looking and asked them to keep an eye out for me. I didn’t send everyone a resume, but I did send a resume to anyone who asked. A number of people responded with suggestions and ideas for me. About six weeks later I sent an update to those folks plus a few more, and once again it generated some new activity. I will probably send one more next week.

Beyond those contacts with people I already know and associate with is the other part of networking, which is finding new people to meet and share information with. I’ve done a bit of this, but not nearly as much as I should. Last week I went to a lunch for a local chapter of a professional society. It was a good thing to do. I didn’t make any contacts for potential jobs, but I did meet a couple of other job-seekers, who I may share some information with.

Web sites
Over the past year or so I’ve created a web page with direct links to local companies’ web sites. Where possible I’ve linked directly to the career sections of those sites. Every week or so, I go through and check all of the web sites for new openings.

Lately I’ve had occasion to share these links with a number of folks, so I’ve begun transferring them to del.icio.us so that anyone can access them If you’re interested, this is where they live:

http://del.icio.us/wconners/jobs

Newspapers
I’ve always looked at the help wanted ads anyway. Some people read obituaries, I read the help wanted. So, this is really just a matter of continuing something I’ve always done. Every Sunday, after church, I sit and go through the ads. I have found a number of possibilities there.

Conventional wisdon says that you don’t get jobs through the newspapers. You’re supposed to contact the companies directly and talk to a person, and do your networking. However, more and more it seems to me that companies are discouraging the direct personal contact route, and asking for seekers to apply through the web site, only for openings that are listed on the web site. What do you think?

Alumni Network
I haven’t tapped this yet. The UVA Alumni Association does some support work in this area, and I’ve visited the web site, but I haven’t contacted them yet. I’m thinking they may be able to connect me with some folks in this area for networking purposes.

Recruiters
I also haven’t done anything here, and I really think I’ve dropped the ball in that regard. For one thing, when I look through the yellow pages or through listings on the Interweb, it’s kind of intimidating…I don’t know anything about any of them, so I have no idea which one to contact. I know a lot of them specialize in certain fields, but I haven’t seen any that list my field. Also, I’ve done well enough on my own, getting a number of applications in and more than a couple interviews, so I’ve kept busy enough that I haven’t felt the need.

So, that’s the list. What have I missed?

Plan The Work, Work The Plan

I’d really like to do more with this blog. Originally, I started it just to have something to play around with, and to have some fun writing and working on my narrative voice. I only gave the address to a couple of people. I rarely posted.

Then, my job search began, and I thought it would be a good venue for expressing some of my feelings, working out some things, and keeping friends and family updated. It has worked well for me in that regard. It’s surprisingly therapeutic to just spew out some of the things that are on your mind.

However, I suspect it’s not very interesting to anyone but me. Not even me much of the time.

Since my time is kind of at a premium these days, I don’t have the time to do a few things that I would like with the blog. It’s not really anything more than a day-to-day online diary, and the best blogs are a whole lot more than that.

I’d like to:

Make the design a little more attractive. I’m considering moving to WordPress, which has cooler designs and more flexibility.
Regularly update a blogroll, interesting sites, and media I’m watching/reading/listening to.
Post on something else…anything. Get a little more topical. A little deeper. Spend a little more time on preparation and composition than I do now.

Hopefully, when I get a new job I will have time to do some of this. Right now, I don’t.

This weekend, I have a lot of music to prep for the church picnic Sunday. I have a 45-minute presentation to create for an interview on Tuesday. My son has a cross-country meet tomorrow that I will probably have to skip.

No word recently from the guy I met with last week at Company SJ. It went well, and my impression was that there would be more conversation. He’s a really busy guy, so I’ll be patient and see what comes up. I’m pretty hopeful about this one.

I got a surprise callback from Local University, which is the Tuesday interview. I was very unhappy with the phone interview, but I guess I did something right. Either that or the candidate pool is woeful. I need to get cranking on my Powerpoints for this one.

More on these as they develop.

Fret factor: It’s been lower

Beer factor: Stone Pale Ale...now in 12-ounce bottles!

Boo!

Being in my situation is kind of a roller coaster ride of emotion. I am by turns elated, optimistic, depressed, frightened...you get the picture. Mostly, I try really hard to cultivate a positive attitude about the whole thing, and to project that to the people around me. There’s definitely been an emotional and mental process to this, which I will write about another time.

An interesting challenge I’ve been faced with is a simple one, and a bit surprising: going to my office.

Gradually, I’ve become a ghost. I shouldn’t be surprised, really, and I’m sure that many people in similar situations face this. In fact, I experienced it myself when I left Arthur Andersen in 1994. It goes like this:

I don’t get any more memos, emails, or other communications. I’m not invited to meetings, either formal or the in-the-hall variety. Not only am I not invited, but I don’t know about them until after they happen. Consequently, I’ve become completely out of the loop in an amazingly short time.

My co-workers stop in to ask me how things are going with my search, which is very nice, but they don’t hang around and talk to me about work items, because …well, what’s the point? They are being very nice to me, and that’s wonderful.

They’re all concerned about whether they will get grant funding for the next five years, whereas I’ve gone beyond that.

My boss and I haven’t had a conversation beyond “Hi” in weeks, though we have exchanged some emails.

So because of all this, it feels really weird for me to be at work.

I should mention that since I have a ton of vacation time to use or lose by the end of September, I’ve only been in the office two or three days a week. I’ve no doubt that my absence has contributed to my ghostly status.

Am I upset about this? Not at all. I can see it’s a logical consequence of my status. At the same time, it just feels weird. I mean, I’ve been working there for 13 years, and suddenly I’m a nonentity.

I have four weeks left.

Fret factor: Mild

Labor Day factor: Sitting on the screen porch drinking a cup of tea

Tea factor: Irish Breakfast

Status Report

33 total applications or contacts made

9 either turned me down or I elected not to pursue

24 still active, though some are more active than others

7 interviews

1 offer

1 meeting scheduled (Thursday 8/30)

Fret Factor: Moderate to High

Motivation Factor: Fairly high at the moment, varies daily

Drinking Factor: Pinot Grigio

Game Factor: Wii!

Choices

Since I have been vaguely dissatisfied (will that be on my tombstone? “Here lies Wayne, who was vaguely dissatisfied”) with what I’ve been doing professionally for some time, over the past few years I have considered a number of career changes. I worked part-time for a relative, selling office furniture. I almost got into a position with a software company in Herndon. I went a fair amount down the road toward working with someone I knew in his company, a digital communications startup. As it turned out, both companies folded, so maybe I made the right decisions. I thought about teaching. I took several classes in nonprofit management, and I’m still interested in that field.

There are several other examples of situations I looked at, but the point is, I’m not one of those people who lives their life with a clear idea of what they want to do and why. I like to try different things, and even though I’ve stayed in my current job for 13 years, for much of that time I’ve been poking around, looking for my next situation. None of the possibilities I’ve examined are directly in my current field.

Why this gets interesting (to me, anyway) is because of what happened when I got the word that the Exit door was looming.

I immediately started sending resumes and applications out. Did I send them to new and unusual career choices? No. I’ve sent them for jobs where I thought I could get hired. All the dreaming about new and fun places has gone out the window, because of two reasons, really.

One, the time crunch. It’s one thing to dream about a change when you have a paycheck coming in, and it’s something entirely different when you face the loss of that paycheck in a matter of weeks.

Two, I have two kids who will be in college very soon. Way too soon for comfort. So, any break in the income will affect how much I can put away. I’ve already stopped the automatic withdrawal of a little extra I was putting away for retirement, but kept up the college withdrawals. I have to stop that soon as well.

Now, all this doesn’t mean I’m not still looking for or won’t still apply for something that is out of the ordinary or just looks fun to me. But I do have to be practical and look for jobs that I can get more readily, and that will pay me enough. I was offered one job, teaching computer technology to middle schoolers, which I think would be great fun. But I can’t take that pay cut. Yet. Maybe someday.

I did get a positive communication today, which I won’t write about until I know more.

Fret factor: Rising

Sleep factor: Erratic

Me and Ted Forth

A couple of weeks ago, there was very little activity happening on the job front, and I was getting a bit nervous. I decided to make an appointment to see Bonnie Miller, a career counselor that I had visited about five years ago, when I was thinking of changing careers. I remembered her as very helpful and encouraging then, and I thought she might have some good suggestions to help me pump up my numbers a little. Job searching is a numbers game. I met with her Thursday.

My goals for this meeting were to:
Get some feedback on what I had done so far (the system I had set up for tracking, the web sites I was visiting, etc).
Ask her to take a look at my resume and make suggestions for improvements
Find out her thoughts on how to push my networking a little.
Anything other suggestions for how I could improve my search.

It was an excellent meeting, and I got exactly what I wanted out of it.

She made several suggestions about my resume, and how to make it more focused so that it could grab someone’s attention. She also had a couple of great ideas for ways I could adjust it depending on the job at hand...mostly just by changing the order of things around. She gave me some ideas about how to increase and make better use of my network.

She was very positive about the work I had done so far, and she really liked my tracking documents, and the list of web sites that I visit for opportunities.

In general, I’m very happy I went back to see her, and I’m feeling newly revitalized about my search.

I had three interviews this past week. I had a very short-notice interview with a lady from Company F, a large financial organization. It went OK...not great. I felt very unfocused, which I can only blame partially on the short notice. It seems like a great job and a great company. I hope I get a chance for a second interview to redeem myself.

I had a phone interview with College U, and as I expected, I do NOT have the technical chops for that job. They’re looking for “faculty liaisons”, but the specs are very technical. They want programmers to develop tools, and that’s not me.

Wednesday I met with folks from the VA Dept. of X, and it went very well. While I’m not that enthusiastic about working downtown (a block from my current spot) for a state agency, I could definitely do worse than this one.

I also left a voice mail for the lady from Company H, but haven’t heard anything back yet.

PostSecret Video