Yesterday I just didn’t feel like getting dressed and after taking a teleconference at 10 am I decided to work at home.  I rarely work at home, but it is actually amazingly productive.  I did quite a bit of work, and also managed to do six loads of laundry and bake some chicken.

Today I went back work and I realized why I can’t concentrate very well there.  People are just talking constantly over each other and I hear them from my cube. Then I’m constantly distracted by people walking in the hallway because I happen to face the hallway.  Additionally, there are too many snacks and drinks in the breakroom so I find myself going there every hour or so.  You would think that an office environment lets you concentrate on work, but it is rather distracting.  Being in my home office is much more comfortable than coming to the office.  It is much quieter and much more relaxing.

Knowing this, I might ask my manager to let me work at home once a week.  Several of my coworkers actually work at home full time so it is not a huge request.  If I work at home once a week I could save a gallon of gas every week and also cook instead of going out.  I could also shave off some snack calories. We will see how this works out.

How about you?  Do you find working at home more productive?  Or do you need the human interaction at the office?

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Recently I just read this list of on CNN. They list the following sectors as still growing in the current economy:

1. Education
2. Energy
3. Environmental sector
4. Health care
5. Security

Looking at this, it seems that my family has the bases covered. I am in a software security firm, my mom is in education, and my dad is in the non-profit environmental sector. We all switched jobs in the last two years to our current positions and I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

I used to work for a company that focused on retail shopping and mortgage leads. Last year everyone’s bonuses were cut drastically because of the mortgage fall out and I sort of knew that it was going to get worse. So I looked for a new job, and I specifically looked for companies that I thought wouldn’t be affected by real estate very much and ended up in this software security firm last November. I think it has been a good move because this company is doing well despite the current economic atmosphere.

My mom used to be in commercial real estate, and all of the properties managed by her company were sold by the owners and her management company basically shut down completely. She was given an extremely generous severance package and after looking for a couple months she landed a lower paying job in a university this January. She complains about the bureaucracy sometimes, but she seems to be adjusting to her new job.

My dad has always worked in non-profits, and decided to take a new job after working at the same place for almost 10 years. He seems to be very enamored with his new organization’s goal of combating global warming around the world, and I think that’s pretty awesome.

The fact that we have jobs in these sectors now shows that these types of companies are still hiring in a downturn. I think if you are working in an industry that is suffering the effects of the economy now you could still move into the better sectors as long as your skills are fairly transferable. You do not have to wait for a layoff to start looking because the job seekers who have a job already usually have better bargaining power and have a better chance at landing a new job. As long as you have a job throughout a recession life should go on normally, and it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for a recession by moving into a growing sector.

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I told Jane that I was familiar with work in the kitchen.  She asked me if I had guaranteed hours for working and I told her that I was a student at the college and I can guarantee that I would work 2 hours a day and 10 hours a week.  Later I found out that the cafeteria is extremely busy during the lunch hours and they must have people that get there on time and guarantee the smooth operation of the cafeteria.

After listening to me Jane handed me an application, and told me to fill it out and bring it back.  Additionally, she asked for a copy of my last health checkup.  I think that is because I would be handling food and they need to guarantee that I am not diseased.

The next day I brought the finished application form and a copy of my health check to Jane.  She brought me to the kitchen’s grill.  There I saw a very muscular and tanned woman grilling many pieces of hamburger meat.  As she flipped the meat the oils that seeped out sizzled on the grill.

Jane said to that woman, “Morri, I found you a student helper!  His name is Jian, and now he is yours.”  Morri is one of the cafeteria’s chefs, and she was my supervisor.  Her supervisor is named Craig, and they’re both native Hawaiians and are both tall and large.  They’re both very nice and humble people.  Later I heard that Morri is actually 1/8th Chinese.  I guess  most people in Hawaii are very mixed and a couple of her great grandparents were Chinese.  However, she didn’t look Chinese at all.

Since I kept my promise and always came to work on time no matter how busy I was, Morri liked me and treated me very well.  Even though I told Jane that I know how to cook, but I never worked in a kitchen that served hundreds to thousands of people before.

–

Part 4

After I was hired by the student cafeteria, I would work there two hours a day, and I usually served lunch so I got there at 11am.  After I finished class, I would go straight to the cafeteria.  My main job was to help Morri make hamburgers.  Even though making hamburgers looks easy, it took a bit of practice for me to make them efficiently.

For example, the tomato slices in each hamburger must be even.  It is not good to have some thick pieces and some thin pieces.  At first, I was not good at balancing the tomatoes and my hamburgers looked lopsided.  Additionally, it is important for a hamburger to be cooked to the right temperature.  At that time the cafeteria made three types of hamburgers: beef, fish, and vegetarian.  Each type required a different cooking temperature and time.  The beef needed to be cooked the longest and at the highest temperature to kill the germs in the meat.  However, you couldn’t cook for too long because if all the juices are evaporated then it would be dry and tasteless.  If it was cooked for too short a time the meat would be raw and the consumers could be seriously sick.

The fish and vegetarian burgers were different.  First, these two types didn’t ooze oil like the beef so they didn’t create big oil  flames on the grill.   They were quite easy to cook.  Finally, there was quite a bit of skill involved in wrapping these burgers after they were cooked.  At first, I wrapped them extremely slowly and my products were quite ugly and the wrappings fell off easily.  After quite a bit of practice, the hamburgers I wrapped finally had the right shape.

Each day when I went to work, I would cut up the tomatoes first, and then prepare the lettuce.  Then, while I cooked the patties, I would lay out pieces of the wrapping paper and split the buns.  On each sheet of paper I would prepare the buns and place the tomatoes and cheese.  At the same time I would flip the patties.  After the patties were done I would put them on each of the buns and start wrapping.  When the students start to come in it gets extremely busy and my hands and feet were constantly moving.

Besides making hamburgers, I would sometimes help with frying the French fries and onion rings.  The hot oil often splashed onto my hands and body and it hurt like needles.   However, this bit of oil is really small potatoes compared to the heat I experienced in the steel factory I worked for during the Cultural Revolution.  At that time, I was only 15 and I lifted molten steel measuring thousands of degrees and passed many months chanting the mantra of “defeating heat and compete for the highest production”.  In that seven years of physical labor and training, I lost a lot of time for education, but in that environment of  “thousands of hammers and hundreds of purifications” I acquired an extremely strong will.  Another slogan that the Communists often taught was that “people need a bit of spirit”.  This will or spirit is what gave me the power to conquer the trials of starting over again.

After one month, I became a hamburger making expert.   However, I really wanted to bring the real “Yangzhou Fried Rice” to the cafeteria.

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When I tell people that I am a release engineer I usually get a blank look. Then I explain the aspect of my job most people understand and say that I make programs that you double click to install software. Then most people say something along the lines of “oh you’re a software engineer”. I suppose that’s true, but a release engineer’s job is somewhat more specialized and it involves duties that are quite different from most software engineers’ daily routine of fixing bugs. So I decided to write a list of things I love and hate about my job, and I would love to hear what other release engineers think.

Here are the things I love about my job:
best prices cialis generic – Release engineers handle a lot of the critical systems like builds and version control in an engineering organization. Any screw up in those systems could potentially destroy a lot of other people’s hard work. So I learn to tread carefully and be an expert in these systems.

best prices cialis generic- When you have to package builds for a bunch of different operating systems and programming languages you have to learn a bit about everything. I admit that I’m not an expert in any one programming language, operating system, or database, but I’ve picked up enough in the past few years to at least answer interview questions about a broad range of subjects.

best prices cialis generic – In my last company I was the sole release engineer, and now at my current company I am sort of moving into that role. This means that I have to be aware of all the product releases and the plans for these releases. Generally I like knowing what’s going to happen in the grand scheme of the company I work for.

best prices cialis generic- Release engineers serve a specific function so the job isn’t that ambiguous. As I have written before, a lot of people are disastified with their jobs because they don’t see the fruit of their work and they feel that it is pointless to work. Generally, I know what my deliverables are so my efforts don’t seem so useless.

best prices cialis generic – Release impacts a lot of groups including support,documentation, QA, and development. This means that I have to talk to a lot of people to get a good release. This makes the job less boring in a way.

best prices cialis generic- When you search for software enginering jobs online most of the job descriptions are “software engineer” and the responsibilities section basically say that you will be a code monkey. There is nothing to distinguish one software engineer from another besides that they code different things. There are usually less job listings for the title of Release Engineer, and that usually means less competition and better compensation. So in terms of my career, I like being more specialized.

Now here are the things that are annoying:

best prices cialis generic – I hate setting up machines and monitoring their disk space. I hate upgrading software. I hate making images of machines and then deploying them on new machines that usually do not work right away. I hate power failures that mess up my fleet of build and test machines in mysterious ways. Basically, when you have to be a daily user of a bunch of different machines you generally end up maintaining them at least a little bit, and that could be a pain in the butt.

best prices cialis generic- At my last company I kept a hall of shame for those who broke the build, and then I got bored of taking down people’s names because they were doing it every few hours. Someone emailed me once and said, “you’re like a zookeeper”. It really felt like that sometimes when I had to manage 30+ code branches with around 80 developers checking in code. At my current company we don’t have that many builds or developers and people seem to be more careful so it’s not so bad.

best prices cialis generic – I actually don’t like to send emails that tell people what they broke. However, this is really part of the job, too because the goal is to get a clean build every single time and I have to be whiny sometimes for the sake of product quality.

best prices cialis generic – I think a good release engineer has to be somewhat obsessive compulsive to make sure a build contains exactly what is supposed to be there. In the most extreme case it involves manual inspections of hundreds of nasty code merge conflicts from various branches of code. If you ever used CVS for a large project with a crapload of branches you might have run into this problem. I have done that before and it was painful. Then again, a lot of other jobs are also very tedious so I don’t think tedium is a unique problem.

At the end of the day, I am pretty happy to be a release engineer because it is an important job in any engineering organization and I have a lot of autonomy to do my work. This job also helped me develop my organization and management skills that I could use in the future.

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My hubby just told me that there was a .  That is the small suburb east of Los Angeles where his parents live.  We got in touch with his parents and they were both pretty far from their house, but we are unsure if their house was damaged in any way.  His friend who lives in a town about ten miles away said that a lot of picture frames in his house fell and the glass shattered and he actually ducked for cover. Currently there aren’t so many damage reports coming out of Chino Hills because most people are probably at work. We’re hoping that their house isn’t damaged in any significant way.  Most of the homes there are built post 1980 and they should be engineered and reinforced for earthquakes so hopefully the only damage is on some frames and other wall hangings.

The crazy thing about earthquakes is that you can’t really run away from them.  It is not like a hurricane, tornado, or fire where you actually see it coming and take the appropriate actions.  An earthquake just hits and leaves destruction in its wake.  Earthquake insurance is also extremely expensive in California so most homeowners do not have it.  I think the best preparation against earthquakes is really  cash that’s readily accessible.  As long as you have a bit of an emergency fund and can afford shelter and food then it would be okay.

Disasters can really strike anywhere at anytime, but it really is impossible to worry about every possible thing that could happen. Right now we are just waiting to hear back from the hubby’s parents on the condition of their house, and if they need any kind of help we would definitely contribute.

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