Isn't Carson Cool?
Carson Roberts is a former physicist, college professor and manufacturing engineer who is presently CEO of Tech Explore, LLC (tech_explore@yahoo.com) in Dayton, Ohio.
My first HTML project was to put the catalog of Jairations jewelry company online. Jairations produced Silver and Enamel lockets, earrings, and bracelets with beautiful designs in brilliant colors.
Sadly, my Dear Sister, Jai Williams, and her two children, James and Jessica, were killed in a fire on May 4, 2003. I have written a memorial website for them; it is at:
http://www.jairations.com/
They will all be missed terribly, but we hope to re-start her jewelry business before too long.
His last employers, Zeller Research, Ltd and Xpres Electronics are both too busy building the physical infrastructure of the 'net to actually post web pages.
If you are looking for a brilliant consultant or engineer, perhaps you'd like to look over my Resumé, which I have just updated for the first time since I actually got a job in Sept. '99. Steve, I promised I'd get it re-done "soon"!
Here is a set of Pictures of the work I did at ZRL, Given as a talk at Barrington Middle School
In 1999, while looking for work, I wrote a paper on some research I did while in Graduate School and later. The paper is in HTML format, and for those interested in coding, it makes lots of use of outlines and nested tables. If you are interested in Gallium Nitride and flat panel displays check it out.
I've been hacking about on computers since 1980 or so, and using the Web since '94, but I've really just begun to write HTML. My real motivation has been to try and get a job. Of course, when I did get a job, it was through old contacts, and has nothing to do with writing software... For other helpless souls like myself, I have gathered a collection of employment-related web sites, feel free to try them out (none have worked for me so far).
In the process of becomming a World Class Experimental Physicist, I've picked up the unsavory habit of fooling about with these nasty digital monsters we call "computers". Aside from their obvious (to those of you viewing this page) uses as portals to the sea of garbage (as in GIGO) that is the Internet, I have found a number of other ways to use a computer as a way of avoiding doing actual productive work. I would put them all under the general rubric of "hacking". This is not to say that I'm the kind of geek who is willing to spend days running through millions of random passwords in order to get free access to someone else's boring records (I really don't have the patience, to say nothing of the morality of such activities). To me, "hacking" is when I'm actively working on the computer, but it isn't actively working for me.
I divide my hacking activities into two basic, though overlapping, types: hardware hacking and software hacking. Hardware Hacking involves getting a new piece of equipment (computer, monitor, modem, printer, scanner, GPIB card...) to work with what you've already got. Software hacking involves writing, or better yet modifying "codes" to get the hardware you have to do new things. Unfortunately, my Brother-in law, who is a great LINUX guru, informs me that true geeks consider hardware hacking to include only that fraction of time you spend actually soldering things. Under that definition, I suppose I am really a lowly software hacker after all.
Of course, in my last job, I spent almost all my time either soldering or mechanically assembling computers and other hardware, though I didn't do much design.
In 1994, I discovered an unparalleled environment in which to carry on
both types of hacking, An operating system called LINUX.
Check back here later for more of the saga, along with some great links.
For now, if you are interested, a good place to start is at
The Linux Documentation Project
(LDP)
As with any subject on the 'net nowdays, there are A LOT of sites supposedly
devoted to helping us get jobs. Many will allow you to post a resumé, and
almost all will have a searchable database of job listings.
I've collected a few that I have personal experience with, along with some
comments.
Send me a Note
If you have any comments or names of great sites I've left out.
Since I'm a Physicist, and a member of the American Physical Society (APS) I started at the APS web site. Their employment section: APS Careers in Physics has a decent selection of physical science type jobs, as well as other "employment resources"
The APS's Parent organization, the American Institute of Physics, has a Resumé Posting Service for Physicsts. You'll have to re-write your resume in HTML, if you haven't already, but they have a simple template to help you to do so. That is actually how I got started on my Resumé.
APS has a sort of sub-group, the Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics (FIAP) and They have a "jobs engine" hosted by a company called Career Web. For Scientists, a good place to start is at the FIAP Jobs Engine This place has a lot of good advice about job search strategies and how to write a resumé.
For non-scientists, perhaps a good bet is to head straight to
Career Web's site. This place has a
resumé posting service, and their database is supposedly searchable by
employers, but I've been with them for months and no-one has called :-(
What they do have is a very large and fairly easily searchable jobs database,
with what seems like jobs of all sorts. Another advantage of this site is
that once you've uploaded your resumé and a generic cover letter,
(They have to be in plain text form)
then you can respond to interesting job ads immediately, with just a few
clicks of the mouse. The employer then gets an email containing your cover
letter and resume. I've actually gotten a couple of responses this way.
Another completely unrelated company is Career Path. You can get started with them at their Login Screen Career Path also has a searchable resumé database, and they scan your ASCII text resumé for key data to fit into their particular format. Career Path's database seems mostly to contain newspaper job ads, but they do represent most regions of the country.
This document was written with help from the NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML , a really useful source of information for understanding what all those weird codes are that build up the pretty pages we see online. I strongly recommend browsing through it!