voluntaryXchange

Spotting Our Dog from Space

I’ve always joked that our biggest dog, Max, is big enough that someday he’s going to show up on a satellite image.

Well, Lifehacker posted a hack to get Google Maps a little sharper. I used it on my house, and spotted a good sized white blob on our deck.

There is nothing permanent on our deck that is white.

But there is Max, who often lays in that spot so that he can see in the kitchen windows while keeping an eye on the yard. He is mostly (bright) white, weighs over 80 pounds Bingo! (well … maybe)

Could be sunlight from the southeast reflecting off the kitchen windows … but that would be rhomboid, and given the position of the tree shadows, on either side of where the white blob is.

Technorati Tags: google,maps,max

Student Marketing Resources

We hear it growing up; that a secondary education is the best way to the most rewarding job. What people typically fail to mention is how difficult it is to get noticed after you succeed in acquiring that degree. All the content and credentials in the world can’t help if no one knows who you are or what you are talking about. Enter the resume: civilization’s easy rapid fire form to convey who you are to prospective employers (or a CV if you remain in academia).

Here is where things get dicey. Most people have and use résumés. Even during college, students are advised to build and distribute them. This leaves countless paper forms spread across emails and campus career fairs. You can always remedy this by including a cover letter with your resume but that, along with a reference list, just adds to the number of papers employers have to go through. The goal is to deliver a simple message and get noticed.

Guest lectures, speaking events, or career fairs; each one provides a limited amount of exposure time to people you want to connect with and be remembered by. In business that’s why employees carry business cards. Each one is a quick contact reference. Business cards are less common for students. But in a time when the résumé is prolific, and often discarded unread, they can give an edge in remembrance. Even better than that, it’s important to carry some form of rapid exchange for chance encounters. Guest lecturers often carry a set of business card to expedite trading information. If you carry one as well then it’s just that much easier to be remembered and contacted later.

Regardless, you shouldn’t limit yourself to a single approach. Build a CV for professional engagements and send a custom cover letter whenever submitting a résumé or CV. Carry multiple methods of conveying your contact information. Use cards as a micro portfolio for half minute elevator conversations. Both business and academia tend to flounder in obscurity so it’s wise to not lapse when it comes to how you market yourself in either pursuit.

This post was sponsored by Signazon.

Technorati Tags: ads

Farewell President Benson

SUU’s President Benson has accepted a new job at Eastern Kentucky University. Here’s the view in southern Utah, and here’s what they’re saying in Lexington and Louisville.

The possibility became general knowledge on campus about 2 weeks ago. Then I heard that the base salary was double what it was here (Utah has the most even distribution of income of any state). So it seemed like a done deal.

I’m ambivalent.

Personally, I like Mike Benson. Although I’d still like to know the real reason he dropped my MBA class after one week.

Professionally, we all knew he would not be here for the long haul. He is definitely an up and out after a few years sort of guy: build your resume, and move on. In fact, I’m a little surprised that he lasted 6.5 years.

As a faculty member, I do have to admit that he raised quite a lot of money. He was easily an upgrade in that category, although I think a lot of people were sold a bill of goods that he would be able to raise a lot more.

I’m also not convinced that he didn’t just raise the easy money. He just got a big donation from the Sorensens, but they already have connections to SUU. Presumably he helped a lot in getting some money from the Eccles foundations for the Shakespeare Festival … but Eccles’ money gets showered over the state regularly. It’s not clear how much we netted from our connection to Senate Majority Leader and SUU alum Harry Reid. It’s also not clear whether Benson was able to raise more from the family of former EPA Administrator and alum Mike Leavitt than we would have gotten otherwise.

Now, he did secure a big donation for the College of Science from an alum. That helped grease the kids for a much needed second science building. For better or worse, that still didn’t bring them up to the space they need for their enrollments.

And for my home, the business school, it’s hard to see that we are in any better position post-Benson as pre-Benson.

Part of that is that Benson succeeded in getting us designated by the state as its liberal arts university. Not great for the business school, but this fits our campus environment and our reputation across the state. I wish that came with a bunch of money to upgrade our liberal arts faculty, who are notably weak in some areas.

Athletic programs benefitted greatly under Benson, and he was very honest that he wanted them upgraded. Most academics bristle at this, but I see it as a good thing: high school students just don’t come to a place like SUU because of the sparkling classroom performance of professors like me.

When Benson was selected for us in late 2006, I wasn’t that happy, And after I poked around a bit, I found conflicting views. I give him a lot of credit for calling me up, noting that his sister had told him he should read what I said about him on my blog, and then  coming over to my office for a private chat to give me his sales pitch.

On the whole, I’d put him in the 70th percentile for university presidents I’ve been exposed to (you can view Benson's CV here). He raised more than enough money, he didn’t have any major scandals, he kept out of academics, and he got us some more visibility.

But I don’t think he did much of anything, and we may have even lost ground on a dimension that I brought up at the start of his tenure:

[One of my problems] is that we are the uppity school in the state system; the one that is growing fastest, the one piling up shiny new top-level accreditations, the one beating the pants off a politically connected but academically weaker nearby 4-year college. This choice smells strongly of the Regents not wanting to be bothered with us.

Six years later, we’re growing, but not the fastest. Our shiny new accreditations haven’t led to any groundswell in attendance (other than what we could pick up when everyone went back to school in 2009). And we’re still getting are butts kicked by, what is now Dixie State University, even though the state seems content to give them a name that matches the status we can back up with academics, without giving them the financial support to upgrade the academics that are supposed to go along with that name.

That was SUU’s biggest threat, it continues to be SUU’s biggest threat, and none of that changed under Benson’s tenure.

Technorati Tags: michael,benson,president,eastern,kentucky

Decorating for St. Patrick’s Day

It was parent-teacher conferences last week, so the vXgirl was showing me her desk.

That female decorating and neatness gene kicked in this year.

And how does a half-Polish girl, 350 years removed from any Irish bits on her father’s side, living in the middle of nowhere with few Irish and even fewer Catholics, decorate for St. Patrick’s Day?

By putting a little stand on her desk with a hand-drawn picture of a Shamrock Shake on it.

P.S. I wish I’d taken a picture … it’s one of those memories a parent will hang on to forever.

Technorati Tags: shamrock,shake

Surfing: Buddy Holly > Hogan’s Heroes

I had a question about a Buddy Holly song, so off I went to Wikipedia.

It’s in the nature of surfing that you read stuff you weren’t looking for, and I read this:

In 1949, still retaining his soprano, he recorded a bluesy solo rendering of Hank Snow's "My Two Timin' Woman" on a wire recorder borrowed by a friend who worked in a music shop.

Then I wanted to know what a wire recorder was. It turns out that the technology holding back tape recording wasn’t recording but developing the tape itself. But, in the late 40’s and early 50’s, recording on metal wire was the way to go.

But this is what caught my eye:

Though fictional, the Allied officers of Hogan's Heroes used a wire recorder to record a meeting in Kommandant Klink's office on a device that was disguised as a sewing box made of wooden thread spools.

I can remember watching that episode in repeats almost 40 years ago. And the thing is I can remember being struck by the weirdness of them recording on wire: to a kid in the 1970’s, tape was all there had ever been.

Technorati Tags: wire,recorder,tape,buddy,holly,hogan's,heroes

What a Racket!

I was due a small tax refund from Louisiana. To pay it, they sent 2 Chase debit/visa cards.

If you don’t read the find print about how to claim your refund, you can activate the cards, spend past the refund amount, and end up owing money to Chase.

Perhaps Elizabeth Warren needs to worry less about the banks and more about their cronies in government.

Technorati Tags: debit,visa,tax,refund,card

Map of Interesting and Remote Places

You can’t embed this map of places that are interesting and remote, and color-coded by touristyness, you’ll have to click the link. And do zoom in.

For example, the Grand Canyon is interesting and remote – so it’s shaded, but it’s touristy so it’s colored red. Alternatively, the Canadian shield is interesting and remote, but not touristy, so it’s green. LA is not remote so it gets no color.

So, basically it’s a map of how much effort you take to get there, and how many people are there when you do.

It makes our 1998 tour of eastern Nevada look especially exotic.

But … the color-coding doesn’t extend to finer levels of detail. So, the interesting, very remote, and totally untouristy Kane Springs Road – that leads from US 93 to Nevada 317 – where the vXwife first noticed the funny feeling that blossomed into the vXboy 8 months later is not shaded at all.

Via Information Is Beautiful.

Technorati Tags: interesting,remote,tourist,map

A Little Music Theory …

In another lifetime, I played musical instruments. I was pretty good with technique, good at improvising, and after playing guitar for a few years, my understanding of theory grew into a harmonic sense that was quite a bit sharper than my peers.

But, enough about me …

So I’m listening to NPR for some reason about 2 months ago, and they have an interview with Dick Hyman on. He’s not that big a name to most people, but he is to me, so I’m listening in.

And he said something so cool, that had never dawned on me:

In jazz, there’s a saying that either you’re playing the blues or you’re playing ‘I Got Rhythm.’ Next to the blues, it’s just about the most common jazz form.

Now. I knew a lot of standards, but I never played “I Got Rhythm”. So I start humming it to myself … ta da dum da, dum da dum da … and I can visualize what he’s saying about the harmony. And I start thinking it through, and it’s like one turnaround following another, all the way through to the bridge.

And now, because it’s 2013, even though I haven’t really played guitar in 25 years, I can go to Wikipedia where it tells me that the harmony for “I Got Rhythm” is so popular that the chord changes are known as “rhythm changes”. It all looks so familiar, and I could rattle off a dozen tunes with similar changes … including a bunch of rock songs.

Weird. This is all navel-gazing … but it means a lot to me.

Technorati Tags: dick,hyman,i,got,rhythm,changes

Funny Stuff About States

I don’t like Joe Queenan’s columns much, but “Five States That Work Me Into a State” made me laugh a few times:

Then, in Hernando, Miss., a waitress at an ice-cream joint refused to serve me coffee because she insisted that it was only "a seasonal beverage." I got the impression that this was tied in somehow with the War of Northern Aggression.

Or try this one:

Finally, in West Virginia, at the resort that hosted my nephew's wedding last summer, a shotgun competition involving sheriffs from all over the Mountain State made me too nervous to get a good night's sleep.

Or this:

In Kentucky, while driving all the way across the U.S., eating only at Hooters, I got tailgated for six miles and then pulled over on a deserted stretch of highway late at night by a cop who said that he had received a report of "a suspicious driving pattern matching my vehicle." Was that ever creepy: just him, me, his gun, the deserted ribbon of highway, the blue moon of Kentucky, my New York license plates and my suspicious driving pattern.

I can beat that. I was dumb enough to borrow my mother’s car to go visit Canada with my 10 year-old boy. Late at night. In a driving rain storm (so shoot me, we had limited time).

So there I was trying to back into the U.S., 11 PM on a weeknight, with a 10 year-old with no ID, me with a Utah driver’s license, in a car with New York plates that was registered to someone else. Getting passed through customs that time is proof I look innocent.

Technorati Tags: quennan,states,work,me,canada

More Earthquakes

The USGS now shows 5 earthquakes (that people can probably feel) and 14 smaller ones. This includes one that popped up while I was writing this post.

These are all clustered in a very small area on the northwest side of Enoch. Basically right under the house of vX friends KQ and RQ.*

The worry is that a swarm of quakes like this can be foreshocks before a much larger quake. Let’s hope it’s just reducing stress instead of building it up.

* FWIW: the latitude and longitude figures for these quakes are just bizarre. Most of them are around latitude 37.80 N 113.13 W, with a give or take that’s almost always less than a tenth of a degree. That’s about 7 miles. Some of them are showing up separated by a few thousandths of a degree from each other. That’s a few hundred feet. But, they are all coming at different depths. Kind of fun to watch …

Technorati Tags: earthquake,cedar,city,enoch,utah