- Have scientists figured out room temperature fusion? Could be. Here is the supplementary data that goes with the article Observation of nuclear fusion driven by a pyroelectric crystal at Nature. You’d have to pay for the article, or read it at the UCLA website, but they’ve been slashdotted. There’s a decent story at MSNBC, too. I’m pretty sure this is the group Bob was working with when he was at UCLA. [slashdot]
- Apparently I’m not the only one wound up about the new Twins stadium. Timmy Ramone says we’re being Foul Balled by the Hennepin County Board. As I said yesterday, I plan to contact them. And pay attention when they come up for re-election. I hope you’ll do the same. [jim]
- Minnesota’s Conceal and Carry law makes return appearance, and looks like it’ll pass. The only real obstacle are amendments that might get slapped onto it in the House. [strib]
- Thanks to the PATRIOT Act, Your Money Under More Scrutiny beginning sometime in the next couple years. Banks have to install software to watch for money-laundering, but most of the people it flags will be run-of-the-mill tax evaders and such. As for the actual bad guys, they’ve got a pretty strong incentive to figure out ways around the system. [wired]
- Claire notes that Credit-card minimum payments to increase, doubling over their previous values. That’s going to put a lot of people into a credit-crunch, and would have pushed many into bankruptcy. Of course it’s now much tougher to declare bankruptcy. Hmm. And as Claire points out, this has received almost no press. How convenient. [claire]
- In a bit of good news, the Feds Rethinking RFID Passport, after thousands of people commented and others demonstrated that the proposed passports could be read from up to ten meters away, rather than the ten centimeters the feds thought was the maximum range. Think anyone will pay for the mistake, though? [wired]
Is no news good news on the personal front? Well, yes and no. Things have been quiet. That’s partly due to the cold and rainy weather (and hail yesterday afternoon) that have kept me from doing much that’s exciting. The biggest task on my to-do list at this point is finishing up the rewrite of the résumé. While I continue to hope that I’ll find a new contract to keep me busy within my own company, I think I need to have a backup plan ready in case I can’t make that work, and getting a full-time job working for someone else is a definite plan B at this point. I don’t want to just get a GOOD job, but I can see that becoming a necessity if I dawdle.
I think the real problem is that I’ve sold the Mac-programming side of my business well in a bad economy. The worse things were for people who were looking for full-time work, the better they were for me. I portrayed myself as someone who could come in, fix some problems, and move on without being a long-term burden for my clients. That’s a great strategy in tough times, but doesn’t fit as well when companies are looking to invest in long-term goals as the economy improves.
And that’s where I’m running into trouble this week. The process of “updating my résumé” hasn’t just meant adding the past couple years of experience to the list, but shifting the focus to emphasizing the long-term benefits I can bring to prospective clients. The core message is still “I’m a smart guy, who can solve your problems”, but my presentation of that message needs to change, and that’s taking a lot more skull-work than I initially thought it would.