In the months since moving to Newburyport, my dearest husband Jeff has
tried any number of techniques to get yours truly to take up writing rather than, as he likes to put it, “sitting around all day and eating bon-bons.”
These have included: hinting, openly suggesting, flattering my writing skills, insisting, and now finally, bribery.
From now on I will have to earn my weekly “allowance” by writing something, anything. I get paid one whole penny per word, which means in order to earn the full 20$USD, I will have to write two thousands words.
Only 1,900 more to go.
The LA Times has a very interesting article about the new economy and the long-term jobless. Among the more interesting points made in the article is that workers with a college degree are finding themselves out of work longer and with fewer prospects than ever before.
As someone who has personally endured rather more unemployment than average since the Dot-Com Bubble burst back in 2001, I can certainly sympathise with these people who are spending their retirement money, taking out home-equity loans, and tightening their belts just to survive.
Dan Gillespie, a Seattle-area computer programmer, said:
The computer jobs are gone. So what’s next? We can’t all move into gene splicing.
George “Monkey-boy” Bush and other proponents of offshoring much of our technology infrastructure to India, China, and other countries, would have us believe that workers laid off as a result will find work in other high-tech industries. Experience and the abundant evidence to the contrary makes it clear that once again our Nation’s leader is either lying to support the interests of his corporate cronies or chronically uninformed as a result of his refusal (perhaps, inability) to read the news.
John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said “There are more and more specialists. And if there are more and more specialists in an information economy, you get people whose skills aren’t as portable as they used to be.”
Add this to the fact that employers have become even more selective about the skills they want candidates to have and you have a recipe for the current problem of high-tech unemployment. Paul Kostek, an official with the IEEE, said “When there’s a lot of people out in the marketplace, companies can afford to say we want someone truly with this experience.”
And as everyone knows, if only from reading Dilbert cartoons, companies no longer spend money to train the employees they have much less to bring new employees up to speed.
So if you want to change careers or simply become more relevant in your existing career, you can expect to reach into your own pocket to pay for the classes. Even if you’re fortunate enough to have a job, don’t expect your employer to reimburse you, but you’d better believe they’ll take advantage of your expanded capabilities. Of course, the only way to recoup the cost of training is to change jobs, because an employer will never raise your salary just because you’ve become more capable or relevant.
We’re going on Summer Vacation with my high-school buddy, Bradley, and his wife, Erin. The goal is to do some hiking and explore the Green or White mountains just north of us. Of course, this plan may be slightly affected by our desire to get Anna knocked up.
Hiking: Inn to Inn — The Long Trail or Hiking Gourmet options, although expensive, sound cool. One of the inns, Judith’s Garden, was on Erin’s original list of things to do in VT.
Hut to Hut along the AT — The Appalachian Mountain Club, which we joined only the other day, maintains eight huts along the Appalachian Trail in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Each hut is a day’s hike apart — covering a total distance of 56 miles. This sounds incredibly cool. They provide food and lodging leaving us to worry about packing water, clothes and minor other gear. We could easily stash a car at one end of the trail before the trip, and hike all the way across. Reservations are available. We should probably jump on this quickly if we’re interested. Of course, Anna points out that if she’s pregnant, some of the hikes might be too strenuous.
Inns and B&Bs in VT — There are tons of Inns and B&Bs in VT. We could probably plan our own “slackpacking” itinerary. However, the folks at WonderWalks offer lots of cool, if expensive, Inn-to-Inn walks. I doubt if we could actually afford any of these. But they certainly sound cool.
All of this is from a very brief google of `Net resources. I’ll check into back issues of Outside magazine and see what I can dig up.
