History of The Earth Measured With A Ruler.

This is something I’ve been meaning to post for a while. It has to do with my Anthropology class I took over the summer. While this was only a small side discussion in the class, it still grabed my interest. When studying the history of the earth people usually reference what is know as the geological time scale (GTS). The GTS is broken into four eons, each eon is broken into multiple eras, and each era is broken into multiple periods.

Before this I’ve never really given much thought to the history of the earth, nor what the spans of time were for past events. Once I started looking into the details of the GTS I was amazed at how long the time span was from the begining of the earth to when dinosarus first apeared. I also started to realize how much time 4.5 billion years is. If someone asked me, before I looked at the GTS, what the history of the earth is I probably would have replied: Well, the earth formed, small animals came out of the water and turned into dinosaurs, one large contenent broke into many, dinosaurs died, then people apeared. That would pretty much sum up my high school education of the history of the earth.

After doing some preleminary research I wanted to, somehow, convert the history of the earth into a measurement that I could grasp. So I tried converting the time periods into measurements on a standard ruler. It turned out pretty good. I then had the ambition to create an electronic version of these measurements so I could post them on my blog, it took me a while but I finally took the time to finish it today. Now the measurements may not be 100% accurate but, hey… whats a few million years between friends, right? Its ok, because scientists still argue about the exact dates anyways.

So without further ado here it is, The History of the Earth. Measured on a 12 Inch Ruler!

P.S. This isn’t meant to be a topic regarding if this is true or not (young earth vs old earth), simply me facinated with how scientists currently measure the history of the earth, with todays tools and methodologies.

References:

http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/timescale/timescale.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_Time_Scale

Job Interview Prep: How to Create Your Portfolio

I finally found a how-to on making a career portfolio to use at interviews! I’m posting it here on my blog for two reasons.

• To reference later
• Because this type of information was hard to find and I don’t want to lose it!

But honestly, this is something everyone should be doing when looking for a
job. So here is the full article:

Your Job Skills Portfolio: Giving You an Edge in the Marketplace

by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.

An old job-hunting tool is making a big comeback. For years, graphic artists, journalists, teachers, and other creative types have used career portfolios while job-hunting, but it is only recently that the idea has caught on for all types of job-seekers.

What is a job skills, job-search, or career portfolio? It is a job-hunting tool that you develop that gives employers a complete picture of who you are -– your experience, your education, your accomplishments, your skill sets -– and what you have the potential to become -– much more than just a cover letter and resume can provide. You can use your career portfolio in job interviews to showcase a point, to illustrate the depth of your skills and experience, or to use as a tool to get a second interview.

This article will show you how to develop your job-search portfolio, key elements to consider in developing your job-search portfolio, and the best resources to explore job-search portfolios in more depth.

Your biggest time commitment will be the initial development of your portfolio, but once you’ve developed it, keeping it current and up-to-date should be fairly easy. Your two biggest decisions in developing your portfolio are determining the format of the portfolio and the organization of the portfolio.

Most experts agree that the portfolio should be kept in a professional three-ring binder (zipper closure optional). You should include a table of contents and use some kind of system -– such as tabs or dividers -– to separate the various parts of the portfolio.

Besides the traditional portfolio, if you have access to space on a Web site, you should also consider developing an online Web-based portfolio.

Once the development is complete, you then have to gather, write, copy, and assemble the material that goes in the portfolio. This process will not only result in a professional portfolio, but should help you be better prepared for your job search.

So, what types of things go in a portfolio? Here are the basic categories. Don’t feel you need to use these exact ones for your portfolio. The key to remember as you contemplate these items is that you want to give reasons for the employer to hire you — you want to showcase your education and work experience by showing examples and evidence of your work, skills, and accomplishments.

1. Career Summary and Goals: A description of what you stand for (such as work ethic, organizational interests, management philosophy, etc.) and where you see yourself in two to five years.
2. Professional Philosophy/Mission Statement: A short description of the guiding principles that drive you and give you purpose. Read more in our article, Using a Personal Mission Statement to Chart Your Career Course.
3. Traditional Resume: A summary of your education, achievements, and work experience, using a chronological or functional format. If you need help developing a resume, visit Quintessential Careers: Fundamentals of a Good Resume.
4. Scannable/Text-Based Resume: A text-only version of your resume should also be included. More information about this type of resume can be found at: Quintessential Careers: Scannable Resume Fundamentals.
5. Skills, Abilities and Marketable Qualities: A detailed examination of your skills and experience. This section should include the name of the skill area; the performance or behavior, knowledge, or personal traits that contribute to your success in that skill area; your background and specific experiences that demonstrate your application of the skill.
6. List of Accomplishments: A detailed listing that highlights the major accomplishments in your career to date. Accomplishments are one of the most important elements of any good job-search. Read more in our article, For Job-Hunting Success: Track and Leverage Your Accomplishments.
7. Samples of Your Work: A sampling of your best work, including reports, papers, studies, brochures, projects, presentations, etc. Besides print samples, you can also include CD-ROMs, videos, and other multimedia formats.
8. Research, Publications, Reports: A way to showcase multiple skills, including your written communications abilities. Include any published papers and conference proceedings.
9. Testimonials and Letters of Recommendations: A collection of any kudos you have received -– from customers, clients, colleagues, past employers, professors, etc. Some experts even suggest including copies of favorable employer evaluations and reviews.
10. Awards and Honors: A collection of any certificates of awards, honors, and scholarships.
11. Conference and Workshops: A list of conferences, seminars, and workshops you’ve participated in and/or attended.
12. Transcripts, Degrees, Licenses, and Certifications: A description of relevant courses, degrees, licenses, and certifications.
13. Professional Development Activities: A listing of professional associations and conferences attended — and any other professional development activities.
14. Military records, awards, and badges: A listing of your military service, if applicable.
15. Volunteering/Community Service: A description of any community service activities, volunteer or pro bono work you have completed, especially as it relates to your career.
16. References List: A list of three to five people (including full names, titles, addresses, and phone/email) who are willing to speak about your strengths, abilities, and experience. At least one reference should be a former manager. Read more in our article: The Keys to Choosing and Using the Best Job References in Your Job Search.

And remember . . . once you’ve created your job search portfolio, be sure to take it with you to all interviews and use it as a tool to getting job offers.

WOTD: ostensible

ostensible:

Represented or appearing to be true, but not necessarily so.

Example:

Aspects of environmentalism have long been criticized as using ostensible concerns about nature to serve private purposes such as property values.
– Gregg Easterbrook, “The case for sprawl”, The New Republic, March 15, 1999

Old school notes on philosophy – Divisions of Philosophy

Along with my econ notes I just posted I also found some notes on philosophy!

These notes are a bit modified from what I actually have written down to make more sense. Just like my notes that I posted for econ this is simply the basics of philosophy.

The Divisions of Philosophy

Metaphysics:

Questions relating to being or existence.

Epistemology:

Questions relating to knowledge.

Ethics (Moral, Social, Political, etc):

Questions relating to values.

Logic:

Questions relating to reasoning (Theory of correct reasoning).

Some of my old notes from Econ 1A

I was going through a lot of junk that had piled up on my desk and on my bookshelf this morning and I came across some old notes of mine from my first weeks of my Economics 1A class. Economics always has fascinated me, not that I really study it much, but the underlying concepts of how societies deal with scarcity of resources. Here are the notes for those who care:

Econ 1A – Macro Economics
The Ten Principals of Economics

How people make decisions:

• People face tradeoffs.
• The cost of something is what one gives up to get it.
• Rational people think at the margin.
• People respond to incentives.

How people interact:

• Trade can make everyone better off.
• Markets are usually a good way to organize economic activity.
• Governments can sometimes improve market outcome.

How the economy as a whole works:

• A country’s standard of living depends on its ability to produce goods and services.
• Prices rise when the government prints too much money.
• Society faces a short-run trade off between inflation and unemployment.

Interesting OOP presentation

Found this post from JavaRanch. From the slides I looked at it gives a good over view of OOP.

Project Management Workshop

Yesterday (Saturday) I spent from 8:30am to 3:30pm at a Project Management (PM) class. Its a class designed to introduce students to what Project Management is in the context of the PMP standard. PMP stands for Project Management Professional and you can become PMP certified by working enough hours in project management and then passing a test. The PMP standard was established and maintained by PMI (Project Management Institue, http://www.pmi.org/). This particular class that I went to was put on by the Sacramento Valley Chapter of PMI, which I am a member of.

The class was a fantastic experience with a lot of really interesting people attending. One person, Jerry, that was in the class is a Sac State graduate from the MIS program. Jerry finished MIS 161 with Dr. Legorreta last year so we talked about the MIS 160 & 161 classes. Another interesting person was Julie who is a manager at the department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. At the begining of class everyone introduced themselves and I was suprised that there was quite a bit of CA State management there so when it came to my turn I had announced that I was ‘listed’ for the programmer analyst position. Later on Julie came upto me, gave me her email address, and said that she knew of an opening for that position! Nifty!

Anyways, the class itself was really amazing. The instructor, Alex, was obviously very experienced in PM and well educated. The class covered a lot of PM topics that I have learned in MIS 160&161 but really put them into context with the whole project management process. Also a lot of the termonology was a bit different than what we have learned in class, for example, in class we learn that project managemet is being on time, on target, and on budget while at the workshop we learned cost, scope, time.

All in all my Saturday was time and money well spent. In the business world PM is one of the best things you can do to advance your career, according to what I’ve heard at school and at the few PMI events I’ve attended. Alex said in class that one of the main goals of PM is too keep the projects that the Executive’s don’t want to deal with out of their hair but also produce good results in the end. After you complete several successful projects the Executives take note of that and will consider you for upper management down the road.

In the context of software development, understanding the SDLC (System Development Lifecycle) and PM and being a people person you will quickly be able to move up in any company!

Nifty Java code

Here is some nifty Java code I wrote.

while (improvedMoral == false) {
beatingsShallContinue();
}

I’m slowly reading Head First Java and it, like Head First HTML, is a fantastic book! I’ve become a Head First evangelist!

Uploading files/images into MS Access using ASP.NET

Here is a good CodeProject artical that may come in handy for my MIS 161 class

http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/fileupload.asp

Deans Honors List!

Woo-hoo!

I haven’t been on the Deans list since my hey day at Sierra College! I was browsing my Academic record for Sac State this morning and saw this:

-----------------------Spring 2006-------------------------
MGMT-182 -11 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT         A-   3.00  11.10
MIS -124 -02 WEB PROG APPL VISL BASIC     A-   3.00  11.10
MIS -140 -01 BUS TELECOMMUNICATIONS       B    3.00   9.00
MIS -150 -02 DATABASE SYSTEMS BUSINESS    B    3.00   9.00
MIS -160 -02 SYS DEV LIFE CYCL PART I     A    3.00  12.00
-----------------------------------------------------------
       Good Standing
       Dean's Honor List
                            EHRS    QHRS    QPTS     GPA
     Current                15.00   15.00   52.20   3.480
     CSUS                   82.00   82.00  253.90   3.096
     Overall               144.00  144.00  467.90   3.249

See that little note in the middle? “Dean’s Honor List” How sweet it is!

However, I have no idea how this benefits me other than a little note in my transcript and me patting myself on the back…