Long email

As many of you may know I***c is currently doing a great job teaching the helpless Japanese to speak and write English....I used to live there and I know that they need all the help they can get so I'm glad that he is doing what he's doing! Anyways, I owed him an email on finding a job with a chemistry degree. I hadn't gotten to that email for the longest time cause I knew that he was going to be in Japan for another year and also cause I knew that it was going to be a long email. Anyhow he asked me again so I finally sat down and got to it. Since it was a long email and it has some good ideas to it I posted it here for everyone to see. I hope you enjoy it...

So here is that email I was planning on writing like two months ago. You want to know more on what sort of job opportunities you have, right? I don't want to say that I'm the expert in it but I think that I should be able to give you some hints.

First off, what options do you have? From my perspective I see you as a good science oriented guy that not only has great interpersonal skills but also knows about the different ways of living depending on culture. And you were in Japan for a long ass time...can you speak Japanese? That language skill may help land you a job before some other person if you ever get into that situation. In anycase, I think that you were in a pretty similar situation as I was a year ago.

So here are the options as I see them:

1) You could go find a full-time job at some larger or whatever size company. If you're looking for a job the full time job is going to be your ultimate goal for the next couple of years. Most likely you won't be able to land a job right away, since the competition is real big (many experienced people need to look for entry jobs cause they can't get the higher jobs). Most places require you to have some experience and other places want to see degrees (PhD and Masters). But what it comes down to is that you need to be lucky in order to get a full-time job and you have to send out a lot of applications. Your best bet is to do this as soon as possible, as often as possible, to as many places as possible, and most likely you'll also have to do this while you're working at some shit job.

Job options I would say would be in research, quality, and technical services...and if you want to push it you can maybe get a sales, marketing, or business job with the science background, but I think your chances without real work experience is close to 0. So if I were you I would go to many different company websites and start applying to every research, quality control, and tech services job you can find. Quality is, I guess, a job where you make sure that the quality of the product is according to what the customer wants - i.e. you talk to customers and do stuff with the product development group. Quality could also be on the production line in which you'd be preforming certain tests on the product to make sure the product and intermediate products are ok. Tech services is what I'm doing. Its similar to quality but is more oriented towards helping the customer use the product the company produces. This stuff is really fun cause you get to travel (depending on what type of customers you have), eat well while traveling, and have fun trying to fix stuff or help make things work better. Then research and product development is where you do exactly what the title says. Try looking at www.mmm.com, www.medronic.com. www.ecolabs.com and other big companies for jobs...donno in what field you want to go though...

2) Since it takes a hell of a long time to find a full time job you'll have to go look for something temporary. This really isn't the stellar awesome job that everybody wants, but trust me...getting a temp job ain't gonna hurt you. Instead of fooling around doing nothing all day you get to work, make money, get to know people, and the best - during all that time look for a better job! Temp jobs can come in different types so I'd just go talk to some temp agencies. I worked for Pace Analytical and Aerotek Scientific. They make money off of your pay check for finding you a job so getting a job will be a lot easier than finding a full time position...but they also take 50% or so of the money away. So as the name says its a temp job. Other agencies would be Kelly Scientific (sp?) and Vault. Now I'm sure there are many others around the twin cities and elsewhere in the US, but thats all I know of.

3) Go to school, get a PhD and be a hero. This route will take a long time, be a lot of work without much money ....true, you'll end up with good money, but not good as some managers will make...and they're always going to be above you (in therms of job position...if you want to rise up high the best is to get some scientific background and then a MBA...oh, and be a good diligent worker...that one is always the best). If you really want a PhD or a masters title though I would suggest trying to get a job at a big company like 3M, Medtronics, Boston Scientific, Eli Lily....many of those companies will support your interest in further education by helping you out with tuition. So basically you work full time, be a part-time student - you get the money and 401k of a full-time worker, health insurance, dental and vision, get the education (which obviously will take a lot longer), the vacation time increases faster (because that stuff is based on how long you work for the company), and you have a job during and after that education. Pretty good deal if you ask me.

4) Go get a law degree

5) Do some volunteering work

6) Many other options that I can't think of....

Awesome CS video

Oh snap!

I liked the video Brent posted, so much that I chose to post one that I saw a couple of days ago myself.

Enjoy!

...muahahaha

KT got a webcam!! W00t for video chatting...and spoiling the bad news with good news!! :-D

Bad new is good news?

Well, as it seems some people like other people's bad news. Maybe its because it makes em feel better or maybe it makes em happy to pity others. Well, whatever the reason may be today is almost like a birthday.
I got up at 6am this morning, spent 700 bucks on a plane ticket and have no money for food, had a hell of a shitty day, and had to stay till 7pm at work (I started at 8:30am). Cool how I got it all in one sentence huh? Here is an addition to it: Looks like my fun clan is falling apart - only two out of 9 people showed up - and that included me.

Marry Christmas to you who likes to hear my bad news!

Midterm?? What?

Yeah, I have a midterm tomorrow. I'm taking a first responder class and now I ended up with this...a midterm. I should be studying but I had to take a cs break and since I was at it I had to add another couple of minutes of surfin'! And it was worth every minute!!
Here is what I found: first images of people using the wii console. I may have thought of getting the ps3 but that idea is all gone now. I want a wii again!! Check it out! Weeeeeee!!!1!!one!! http://wii.com/jp/wii-experience/

Changes and changes

Instead of going to bed early I made the mistake of messing about with this blog site. Well, now I have some cool feeds going and also added a link to my picture gallery. This is all just temporary and depending how things go I'll decide whether to keep it this way or not. Feedback is always welcome :)
Night ya'll!

Finally!!!

Yes, they announced it....and its for real! A blackberry with wifi! Wooooooot!!! I can't wait for it to come out...I'm getting this one for sure!

Here a picture I found on gizmodo!

October 2006

So another month is over and we're seeing fall creep up. Not much has changed here...I still owe Isaac an email, I still work at Dyneon (i.e. 3M), and I still go biking, running, and swimming. Just that I did less of the sports last week. I got a bit sick thanks to the temperature drop but this weekend came in handy - the temps were way higher and I'm back to being myself. Next week I'm hoping to get on a early morning schedule that I was on last winter. I get up early, go workout and then go to work. Hope I get on it...

Otherwise nothing much new...well, there are some toys I want to get.

1) Nintendo Wii - how could you not want it. Its fairly cheap, has Zelda, and looks awesome!

2) Microsoft Zune - knowing Microsoft I wouldn't be surprised if they're selling it at a loss. Gotta take advantage of that!

3) The third and most anticipated toy: The chumby! Holy smacks!! A bedside clock that does mp3s, shows the time, has wifi and with it AIM/MSNmessenger/ICQ, email, blog update (RSS), weather, and bunch more and more!! I need one! Somebody get me a prototype..please!!

If you want to read some on it go to:

Engadget.com
or
Chumby


Here is a pic of it I found on www.engadget.com:

New blogspot?

I'm confused. They say that blogspot has changed, but I really don't see any real improvements. I wonder if there's something I'm doing wrong....

I'll post an update sometime soon. I've been pretty busy lately and really can't say that I've had the time and motivation to post anything...oh, and Isaac, I still owe you that email. Give me some time. I do have some stuff to say, but it may not be all that much news to you.

Lets see if posting pics is different...

Hmm, no change...