NC IT job openings drop 30%

Ugh:

Job openings fell by nearly a third in November from the previous month to just over 2,000, according to the latest “IT Jobs Survey” from the North Carolina Technology Association and SkillProof, a national IT talent management and recruiting firm.

With 2,010 openings, the total is just over half the jobs available a year ago (3,910) and far fewer than those posted in November 2006 (4,450).

Taxing drivers by the mile

The N&O says that with gas-tax “revenues” plummeting, North Carolina General Assembly is considering taxing drivers by the mile. This is a brilliant idea, but not for raising “revenue.” I can think of no better way to show someone the folly of her long commute than by hitting her in the pocketbook.

If drivers begin to pay by the mile, I guarantee you they will drive less. This is healthier for the driver, the city’s sprawl problem, and the environment.

What its not healthy for is the state’s “revenues.”

One less vacant house

Friday evening I drove by the house behind ours, one that’s been vacant as long as we’ve lived here. It was being remodeled when we moved in, turning it from a crummy 1500sf house to a fancy-if-not-spectacular 1500sf house. That its price doubled during its month-and-a-half transformation didn’t help things.

Anyway, I saw a man in a shirt and tie on the front porch with a couple next to him. It looked like a real estate transaction had taken place. Sure enough, yesterday morning I heard the house’s heat pump running for the first time ever. I saw a man inside the house while I was out walking Rocket. I think we may have new neighbors.

I also think that its very encouraging that a house like that is no longer vacant. Though I don’t know if the new residents are renters or owners, its nice to be adding to the neighborhood. Especially during these tough economic times.

Weekend? What weekend?

Every day is a weekend day when you’re between jobs.

Woke up delightfully late after a good night’s sleep. After breakfast I took Rocket out for a run. With no bicycle, I might add. It was a shock to me as I haven’t been running for years, but it did feel good. When I stopped. Rocket was a hard-charger for the first half of the run but opted to slow to my pace after a while.

I got back from the run in time to shower before heading out to a birthday party for my friend Matt Pressley’s son, Conner. I enjoyed catching up with Matt and talking more to the parents’ of the kids there. In fact, some interesting things could come from this talk. So that was good.
Continue reading →

A penguin roosts in the Mac Mini

For over a year I’ve had my Mac Mini’s tiny 40 GB drive partitioned to dual-boot Linux one day. Yesterday was that day. While this may be nothing to those Intel Mac Mini users, to get my PowerPC running the latest Ubuntu was a bit of a challenge. There is no official Ubuntu release for the PowerPC: instead its a port. Also, each time I tried installing Ubuntu on this machine using our HDTV as a monitor, the HDTV would refuse to display anything from the Mini. Apparently, the video modes the Mini pushes while in Linux’s framebuffer mode were out of the range of my Toshiba flat-screen. So, a few days ago I tracked down the port of Ubuntu 8.10 for the PowerPC and borrowed my desktop’s monitor to see what was going on.

I also ran into a bug where the Mini’s ATAPI cdrom drive – the most common CDROM drive in the PC world – was not recognized. The solution is to switch to another virtual console (CTRL-F2, for instance) during the install and run modprobe ide-scsi.
Continue reading →

Mystery woodpecker

Last Saturday afternoon I spotted a woodpecker in our yard that I couldn’t identify. Both my Audubon Society field guide and the Cornell University Ornithology site had nothing that looked like it.

Any of you birders know what it is?


Update 11 PM: Most of the folks on the CarolinaBirding mailing list think its a yellow-bellied sapsucker, though not everyone agrees. According to the Cornell site, these birds are supposed to have a distinctive white stripe running down their side. Also, this one’s crown is black rather than red. Other than that it looks to be a female YB sapsucker, perhaps an immature one.

Jeff Pippen said this:

Wow Mark, that is one funky woodpecker. Perhaps a Hairy X Y-b Sapsucker hybrid?

Dave Magpiong of Bellmawr, NJ had this to say:

At first look, the overall impression (shape, posture, majority of plumage, etc.) comes across as female YB sapsucker. However, there are variations that I’m not familiar with – i.e. black on crown, missing that trademark white patch on the wing coverts.

My gut call goes for YB sapsucker but very curious to hear what others think!

Here’s a photo of a similar YB sapsucker also missing the white stripe (but including the red crown). Maybe mine is a mutant after all.

Thanks to everyone for weighing in!

Health care is broken

We got our quote back for our own Blue Cross health insurance plan, independent of $FORMER_EMPLOYER. The bill was sky-high! Apparently because I’m now into my second bottle of cholesterol medicine the premium for me alone has tripled. Just like that.

They’re crooks, I tell you. Health care in this country is majorly, seriously broken.

Self-changing socks

I’ve been dreaming up interesting product ideas in my Now Truly Copious Free Time(TM), some of these ideas I may actually try to patent. One that might not make it to the patent office but is interesting nonetheless is my idea of self-changing socks. Since almost no one reads MT.Net, I can share my idea with you.

Here’s how it works. Simply take a pair of cotton dress socks, let’s say they’re blue, and put them on in a room illuminated by fluorescent lighting. Then walk out into daylight, or to a room with incandescent lighting. Voila! Your blue socks have changed to brown. Or your brown socks have changed to blue. Socks that change themselves!
Continue reading →