February 10, 2012

A progressive state

Both my wife and I were quite surprised when we moved down here to discover that the children in school here do not get their own Apple laptop issued to them by the schools. It’s been quite a long time now since the state of Maine had struck a bargain with Apple to be able to give Apple laptops to every incoming 7th grade student and let them keep the laptop all the way through high school. If I recall correctly the students did not even have to pay anything for them. Of course they probably had to buy their own replacement Apple Laptop Battery if theirs ever went dead, but that is a small price to pay for being given a free laptop to do your schoolwork with!

When I tell people down here about that laptop program for the kids in Maine I’m told that the kids down here don’t need them because there are plenty of computers in the school already. That’s all well and good, but the laptops were taken to and from home so that the kids did not have to lug tons of textbooks home, and they could do their homework on their laptops. Many kids around here are from families that cannot afford to have a computer at home for the kids to work on. So I think that as much as people like to think that this is a progressive state, I have to disagree on that point.

December 2, 2011

Looking to the future

As the development of the Internet continues to grow exponentially, so will the IT careers grow. When I was a teenager in high school, there was never any talk about personal computers or IT careers at all – the personal computer was still just a twinkle in some one’s brains! I can remember when the first personal computers came out, the storage devices were tape recorders!

Well, as they say, “you’ve come a long way baby” – IT careers are one of the hottest trends in the employment market. If someone were to ask me for advice on what field to enter when they are thinking about college degree choices, I would have to say either engineering or computers because the demand is going to keep being there for a very long time. Well, I’d probably also include medicine in the recommendation, but I think that the big money is going to be in computer technology. One of the greatest thing about working with computers is the ability to work from home a lot of the time. How great is that!? If telecommuting had been an option for me when I was a young man fresh out of school, you can bet I would have jumped at that opportunity!

November 12, 2011

My daughter called this morning

I’m pretty sure I’ve told you about my daughter.  She wants to become a lawyer, but right now she has gotten involved in the local fire department, becoming both a fireman and an EMT, and she is working in the local police department as a corrections officer.

She told me that the fire department has ordered some firefighting training videos to help keep the firefighters up to date with all of the latest equipment and procedures.  She is also going to sign up for some courses over the Internet to help her prepare for paramedic tests that she would like to take in the near future.  The courses she wants to take are through the National Paramedic Institute website.

She said that other members of the fire department took some of their training through this company, and that they were happy with the program.  She is confident that she will pass the tests with flying colors.

October 21, 2011

Working out

Content by Sol Rosales

I have set a new goal for myself. I want to finally be in excellent shape. When I was in high school it was easy, I was always moving and always active in sports teams. As I have gotten older, it is a lot harder to make myself workout. My first excuse was that I didn’t have equipment at my house. My husband quickly got rid of this excuse by buying an elliptical. Then I said it was too boring because we didn’t have DirectstarTV in the room with the elliptical. He then solved this problem as well. Since I was running low on excuses, I decided to finally get serious and commit to working out. I started at once a week. A very weak start and most people would say pathetic, but a start is a start. This week I decided to up it to three times a week. I am determined to have a great body for swim suit season. The only way this is going to happen is if I get serious. Wish me luck because working out is so difficult for me!

September 24, 2011

I have to wonder

When I go online I frequently find advertisements that are encouraging people to return to school in order to get better jobs. there are frequent stories about what jobs will be in the most demand in the near future.

Many of the stories indicate that health fields are always going to be growing especially since the baby boom generation is aging. That would make sense except that with all this talk about how the government might be reducing Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid benefits I have to wonder if there’s really going to be that much demand since people won’t be able to afford to pay for the medical services.  

Regardless it’s nice to know that there are companies still awarding grants for physical therapy students and other medical fields. I’d like to think that people will still be able to afford medical care during my lifetime.

If the country is going to be trying to increase in employment through fixing the countries infrastructure, then going after engineering grants to get a degree in civil engineering would also be a smart idea because we almost always have demand for engineers around here,