Archive for the 'General' Category
I just posted something on Facebook that I thought you might like to consider:
As we take this day to think about our blessings and give thanks for them (a good and noble cause), let us take a moment…
Posted by Bud Cookson on Thursday, November 22, 2018
This post was based on this article which I was notified about in the local CPR newsletter: http://time.com/5457183/thanksgiving-native-american-holiday/
Take a look and consider this during your own Thanksgiving celebration. Best wishes for a happy and healthy holiday.
The recent election has brought the question of the Electoral College to the forefront again. I believe there are lots of thoughts running around about why it should or should not be abolished and I wanted to add my two cents to the fray. Let me say that I am only very slightly supportive of the idea of the electors (in the college) voting inconsistent with their State’s laws.
The Electoral College was established as a means to deal with populations that were not able to provide easy communication and therefore sent a representative to Washington in order to make their desires known. At the same time, there was the possibility of negotiations and adjustments at the meeting of the College. If this was not the case, it would just be a matter of sending a messenger with the results of the elections.
Now, how does it work today? Each state has the same number of votes that they have Federal Legislative representatives (two Senators and some number of Representatives). The two electors, equivalent to their Senators are independent of the population of the state. On the other hand, the Representatives are allocated on the basis of population (as determined by the last census).
Now, with these electors, each state have a given number of votes. In each case, all of the states except two, take their popular vote and give all of their votes to the popular vote winner (the one with the largest number of votes, not necessarily a majority). With that approach, the votes that are provided by that state are representative of the popular vote. The result of this is that the votes that are entered in the Electoral College voting are representative of the popular vote in the state but there is inconsistency because those who voted for the loser have lost their representation. This is exactly why it is possible for a candidate to win the popular vote but lose the Electoral vote.
One of the arguments that is made for the Electoral College is that it removes a bias that allows large population centers (cities and metropolises) to over-whelm more rural, lower density areas. However, with the current “winner take all approach” the electors that are in the states’ voting group are representative of the popular vote for the entire state and therefore have automatically over-whelmed the rural vote. Therefore, the current system actually eliminates any protection for rural areas being give a fair shake even though that is part of the reason that the Senate was setup with only two Senators per state.
What would make it better? The first logical step would be to assign the electoral voters to the district that has given them authority. This means that each district would have the electoral voter vote according to the district’s popular vote. This would provide equal representation for the District and their voters. This would provide a more direct connection between an individual’s vote and the Electoral College vote. All of this is a result of the gerrymandering that goes on in establishing the districts in the first place which creates the boundaries of the districts to the advantage of the politicians rather than the voters but that is a different discussion. The other issue here is that all of the districting and the number of Electoral votes that are allocated to the State are based on a census which may be as much as 10 years out of date. With our extremely mobile society, this can cause a significant imbalance in the number of votes that a state can wield.
Okay, is there a better way? In fact, if you think about the problems with the current approach and/or the suggestion above, they all have problems representing the individual accurately. If our desire is to have accurate representation, then the only real solution is to eliminate the Electoral College and move forward with just a popular vote as the basis for the election. This would eliminate the “Senatorial” support provided by the additional votes for small states but that is a relatively small effect in this situation but would be the basis for using the previous suggestion.
These are just my opinions but I hope it provides some things to think about.
I have spent the last four months looking for a new job. It has been an interesting experience and I can provide a couple of pointers for those that are in this position.
The first is that networking is extremely important. Those that you know can be very helpful. However, that isn’t the end-all or be-all to job hunting. What you want to do is to keep a “networking mindset” meaning that you want to talk to anyone that you can about opportunities. But remember that when you are conversing with someone who is not a recruiter, then keep it on the level of “what is the environment like at your company?” or “what information can you provide about opportunities that you know about?”. It doesn’t work to come right out and say “will you hire me?”. You are gathering information.
The other is keeping a sales mentality. It is easy to be in a technical detail mindset where you want to present all of the details about your experiences. Unfortunately, this creates a resume (or other “marketing” piece) that is incomprehensible to the reader (i.e., recruiter/hiring manager). What you need to do is to tailor your resume for every job opportunity so that it highlights the experiences (and ACCOMPLISHMENTS) that are applicable to the job description (and any other information that you have gathered about the opportunity.
One thing that I found very, very helpful was a program by Phil Rosenberg (http://recareered.com). He does a weekly free webinar that discusses the basics (you can read more at http://ResumeWebinar.com). You can check into that Phil does a great job of changing your thought process when it comes to writing / modifying your resume. The only thing that I a little problem with is his insistence that you need to pick out targeted companies and focus on them. I don’t disagree with this as a concept (if you know of companies like this) but I don’t believe it should be the entire focus of your job search.
Part of the reason that I disagree with Phil is that I believe that limiting your focus to specific companies is limiting to your search. In a major metropolitan area, there a thousands of companies that are potential targets and you don’t know that they are out there so you will miss a lot of opportunities. Second is that the recruiters can be extremely useful in bringing opportunities to you but you don’t want to sit back and wait for them to come knocking.
The other tool that I found very useful was a job posting aggregator call ZipRecruiter (https://www.ziprecruiter.com). You can setup alerts/searches that will be run on a regular basis and provide you with emails listing potential opportunities. There are others out there but this one seemed to work the best. One thing that I found about this was that it can be repetitive. You are looking at the same opportunities several times a week but you begin to sort out the same jobs and skip over them. I found that I only reviewed them twice a week. It takes time and can be boring looking through all of these opportunities but finding a job should be a full time job.
Out of all of this, I was lucky to find a contract position with Ciber. Interestingly enough, I was not submitting my resume to Ciber because I felt they were too big. However, when talking to a friend, he indicated that they brought all of their contract PMs in through Ciber and that they were a good company. With that I submitted for one position and was able to get a contract. It worked out well for everyone.
Those are just some thoughts on my job search. Good luck and let me know if you need any help in your job search.
I have been away working in the real world without time or desire to post here. However, now that I am changing jobs, I wanted to start working on my blog again. I will be posting some more in the near future but it will probably be focused more on personal things than Project Management and my other categories. We shall see. Best wishes and hope everyone has been well.
It has been quite a year. I have gone from being a consultant back to being a part-time Project Manager, part-time Programmer, part-time Teacher and part-time Operations Manager. Unfortunately, my time has been following the standard PM 90/10 rule. For those who are not familiar with that rule it says: “The first 90% of your project will take the first 90% of your effort, cost and schedule. The remaining 10% will take the other 90% of your effort, cost and schedule!”. That is exactly what has been happening but I am now getting to the point where I can breath at least a little. I am not to the point of being able to work 5 days a week but my To-Do list has actually stopped growing. I am looking forward to the day when I come to a Saturday and say to myself “Okay, what would I like to do today to have a little fun?” I don’t mean to be a whiner but I have had very few days off during the last three years and I am getting a little tired, so, I am working on clearing the decks.
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