A good productive day.

And to think all we set out to get was a labeling machine..

Typical weekend morning here at Offhand Manor. I "slept in" until about 0800, Kiri a few hours later. Screwed up a perfectly good game of Nethack. We decided to take the bag of cans over to the recycling place and then get food.

We picked the right time to hit the recyclers.. the place was nearly empty. Got $26 for the cans (which went in my wallet.. hey, I drank most of them!) and headed off for Denny's. We picked the wrong time to go to Denny's - caught the tail end of the church surge. Still, lunch was good. Kiri saw an ad for a radio/cd player at Fry's; off to the pyramid for us!

Where we saw that the featured item was crappy, everything else was way-over priced, and the service was down to Fry's usual lack of standards. We did find a couple of things (a new alarm clock, a book on the Martian rovers, and some batteries for my PalmPilot) There was one odd thing...

( Cut because it involves an incident in the men's room, and some non-PC commentary. )

OK, I hope none of you were eating for that little adventure. Anyway, free of Fry's (after dealing with the time-shifted cashier. Poor man was moving at a much slower rate than the rest of us) we decided to "go to Cost Plus and look at outrageously priced furniture we have no intention of buying." (100 points for identifying the source, which character said it, and the store/item he was talking about in the strip.)

Going back to the store was weird. I almost started straightening things a few times, and almost headed for the registers when someone called a "Service 20" (next cashier needed) over the PA. We did get some good ideas for changing our decor from Early College Student (a collection by the famous Belgian designer Han D. Medown) to Vaguely Asian. Replace the ass-eating leather couch with a futon, get rid of the damn shelving unit Bill and Charles left us with and finally bring up the TV cabinet from the garage (after spraying it with Raid, nerve gas, and Orders to Quit Premises on the 8 billion spiders currently living in it.) Remove the desk we got on Freecycle (by freecycling it, how else?) and replace it with a papasan chair for me. Maybe a screen or something to cover up the big empty wall. Kirsten wants to get us a couple of laptops and use the tower PC as a home base sort of affair. Works for me. We got a lot of good ideas there and the amazing thing is they aren't all pipe dreams this time!

All in time, of course. We have to dig out the apartment first. We're making progress there, and I've established an "eBay/Craigslist/Freecycle" box. I foresee a lot of my older gaming material going in there. I've really been holding onto some pieces out of stubbornness, and they need to go. Same with many of our books. Any number of them can be donated to the library or Goodwill.

Back to the day, our last stop was RiteAid where we found a better stereo system for Kiri's office, the labeling system we set out for in the first place, and I grabbed my work sodas for the next week (I grab the 20oz Coke bottles, taking two a day. That, and a big bottle of water keeps me happy.)

Just brought up a load of laundry.. socks, underwear, and t-shirts. Some days I like having Aramark cleaning my work uniforms. Less work for me. Clothing, that's another area that needs serious culling.. (makes a note.) Finally, I've accomplished my Weird Task for the weekend. Looking at iTunes, I noticed that there was a number of songs in My Top Rated that didn't list any plays. The explanation is simple, I mostly use iTunes for my iShuffle, and rate songs based on what I know about them. But this weekend I set the favorites folder to display Play Count from lowest to highest, and started listening. Five more to go!

About time! (27 years too late for me, alas)

NO DEGREE REQUIRED Technical courses gain favor for those interested in finding new career path

Without a college degree, are you condemned to a lifetime flipping burgers?

That's the conventional wisdom. Studies, aphorisms and the press all preach the gospel that a baccalaureate is the only way to achieve success in an increasingly competitive job market. What with outsourcing, technology advances and productivity increases, one might think the only jobs left for those who haven't graduated from college would be service-sector ones such as nurse's aide and janitor -- jobs that don't pay enough to support a middle-class lifestyle.

Truth is, there are plenty of decent-paying jobs that don't require a four-year degree. They include many familiar occupations -- nurse, carpenter, truck driver, plumber. But a number of up-and-coming jobs -- the not-your-father's-Oldsmobile category -- are also on the list: MRI repair person, solar-panel installer, biotech lab assistant, biodiesel technician. You could think of some of the new ones as chrome collar (working as technicians in various fields) or green collar (clean energy, environmental).

"If you're interested in the steak but not the sizzle, look at where the jobs are," said Marty Nemko, a San Francisco career coach and host of "Work with Marty Nemko" on KALW radio. "There are livable-wage jobs in areas like plumber, carpenter, auto mechanic. A student with low SATs would be far wiser to pursue one of those paths."

Government studies show that the overwhelming majority of jobs, both today and in the future, will require some post-secondary education, but not a four-year degree. Jobs requiring high school and some college currently account for 110 million out of 145 million total jobs in the United States, said Richard Holden, regional commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By 2014, the "some college" jobs will account for 121 million out of 165 million expected jobs.

"Clearly most jobs are not college degree jobs, and there are great many of these jobs that pay well and are satisfying occupations," he said.

In fact, the majority of students do not earn a college degree.

Focus on training

Now California is starting to address the needs of students who are not candidates for four-year schools. "Vocational education," once considered a low-status choice for students who struggled academically, has been rechristened "career technical education" or career tech. Instead of being confined to classes in shop or home economics, it encompasses academic courses integrated with real-life skills -- the math needed to enter a construction apprenticeship, for example.

"It used to be thought that the only way you could be successful in society is if you have a college degree," said Jose Millan, vice chancellor of economic development and workforce preparation for California Community Colleges, the agency that oversees the state's 110 community colleges.

The story goes on quite a bit longer, and is worth a read.

When I went to school, the entire focus was on getting us ready to enter the UC/CSU system. There was one vocational program in the county, and it was chronically underfunded and seen as a dumping ground for people too stupid or too rowdy to make it in normal classes. Problem was I had no intention of going to college, really sucked at the mechanics of schooling, and knew in my heart that I would be working with my hands and back. But that sort of talk wasn't allowed from a kid who blew the standardized tests off the chart, and everyone assumed that I'd bear down, get good grades, and toddle off to CSU Hicksville to get a BS in something.

Ha. Folks, my high school GPA was under 1.0. I didn't give a damn about any of it, was miserable, and drove teachers crazy by not doing any work, reading SF novels in class, then demolishing the midterms and finals. (I never studied, either. I'd read the textbooks and listen to the lectures. See why I wasn't good at school? They aren't set up for people who learn the way I do.)

Had I the chance to enter a vocational program, I might have caught on to my love of driving 15 years early and not spent over a decade wandering lost. I still would have joined the Army, but with a little experience under my belt I might have gone for a Transportation Corps job, or trained as a mechanic. The career path I chose was based on "get me the hell out of San Jose now" and not much else.

The road not taken. Admittedly, I'm projecting a rosy view of what might have happened, but damn, compared to reality there would have been some improvement!

That being said I'm glad that we are beginning to realize that the world needs builders and movers. Being a professional geek at Google or eBay might be nice, but without people like me, your offices are an empty field. Now we'll get people who set out to be the best carpenter, or plumber, or truck driver, they can be from the start, without the belief that they need a diploma in 17th Century French Drama to be worth something.