Happy Summer Solstice!

Do what you love -- Ya right.....

Do what you love and you will never have to work a day in your life. I am sure you have heard of that saying and it is true. What they don't tell you is that you most likely will be working for yourself while desperately trying to get paid to do what you love. The bottom line is if somebody pays you to do a certain job it is usually because it is unpleasant and they themselves would rather not do it so they pay somebody else to do it instead. If the job were pleasant and not like work at all they would be doing it themselves in most cases and not paying you to do it. There are all kinds of examples like that in the world. Jobs that few and if anybody likes doing but they do it because they are desperate and need the money to survive and there is somebody with money willing to pay them to do all the things the employer hates doing themselves which just happened to be all things that most people don't like doing either.

I continue to be in the situation of staring at jobs that only can be described as loathsome. The job boards are littered with them. Reading the want ads is depressing. They describe jobs that are pure drudgery. You know the ones that list a long line of hard, tedious duties but the pay is a joke. The jobs involve sleep deprivation, heavy lifting, long commutes, harassing people to buy stuff they don't want or need, putting up with the abusive public, bullying bosses and idiot co-workers, being on call all the time, working evenings, weekends and holidays, forced to hold one body position all day like standing or sitting all day until your body is screaming from the discomfort. The list could go on but I won't bore you. Suffice to say it is very difficult to get paid to do what you love in most cases it will only be a dream for many of us.

If only we had crystal ball that foretold the future...

This is sad if only people could have peered into a crystal ball and be able to see the future they would have never bothered getting a Ph.D. in hopes of becoming a tenured university professor. A lot of the people teaching at university now are adjunct professors who only teach one or two courses a semester for poverty wages. Young people thinking of majoring in say mathematics or American history might think twice about wanting to become a tenured university professor after reading that article on Ph.D.s collecting welfare. It is hard to pick the right career with the job market in such constant fluctuation. Careers that are hot now might not be so hot four years from now when students graduate from university. Also you don't have any control over new technology that might do you out of a job or the economy that might dive into a recession at moment’s notice. The only thing people can do is watch the news and keep informed about the economy and their chosen career path and hope for the best.

Field of Dandelions

They are everywhere now since the pesticide ban. In ten years people's lawns will be nothing but weeds.

The Extra Large Saturday Moon

DRM sucks say no to DRM

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm_digital_restrictions_management

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

Free Speech

Over the years I have been hearing about people being fired for what they say in a tweet, on their blog or on facebook. Some of the people were famous while others just ordinary joes. Personally if your going to shoot your mouth off at least go under a pen name and don't mention where you work specifically or mention details that could identify you and for goodness sake to don't post any identifying pictures of yourself along side your pen name. That defeats the purpose of posting on the web anonymously. For some unknown reason most employers don't like their employees to have opinions especially ones they don't like.

It sucks that we don't have much in the way of free speech on the web anymore. I think the web has really tested the concept of free speech and it has come up lacking. People all over the world have run into all kinds of trouble for shooting off their mouth everything from losing a job to being arrested because somebody somewhere didn't like what they had said. It is worse in dictatorships but it is not peachy either in so called free societies such as Canada or United States. While it highly unlikely a person will go to jail for criticizing the government in the U.S. or Canada there are other penalties people have paid for exercising their free speech.

Some people I have learned have more free speech than others. People with money have more free speech because they can afford defend themselves in court while celebrities have the least amount of free speech of anyone. A famous singer for instance is a lot less free to shoot off their mouth about politics than a nobody like me. Nobody cares what I have to say about American or Canadian politics but with a famous singer people hang on their every word and take great offence if they don't agree with the famous person. That famous person could end up alienating part of their fan base with one careless remark. That ends up translating into lost sales of their music. See what I mean about their being penalties for exercising your free speech.