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With my recent job search, I've noticed something about companies that I feel compelled to write about.

Most companies care what their business partners think about them, most companies care what their customers think about them, and most companies care what their employees think about them. These companies are responsive to those individuals needs and do what they can to keep them informed and up to date.

Companies certainly don't want to get a bad reputation.

My recent experiences have given me a bad taste with a few companies. This all stems from the HR level too. Human Resources. The department that is supposed to deal with people.

I've had HR reps completely ignore my emails and questions. I've had reps ignore my voicemails. If you are working for a company and trying to recruit new employees, why would you give them the impression of an unresponsive, uncaring company? Why would I want to work for a company like that?

Perhaps it stems from the HR person not wanting to give bad news. The flip side is that if I don't hear anything from a company, I spend some time and effort following up with that company. I would rather hear the bad news earlier so that I can move on, and so can the HR person. If it isn't going to work out between myself and a potential job, I want to know as soon as possible.

So what should be done? Keep potential recruits in the loop. If you need more time to make a decision, tell me. If it isn't going to work, tell me. I'm more likely to recommend your company to others if you treat me fairly and respectfully. This is your job as an HR person.

A couple weeks ago I learned that I am going to be having a lot of free time soon. Everyone in the office I work in is being layed off.

This of course has its ups and downs. I have the whole month of December off which is great. Downside is I don't have a paycheck for very long.

One of the things I have wanted to do for a while is a little programming on a mobile OS. The hot one these days is the iPhone, but there are a few problems with that. One, I don't have a Mac, and two, there are lots of know issues getting your software into the app store.

One platform that seems interesting, and I can develop for is Android. From wikipedia:

Android is a mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel. It was initially developed by Android Inc., a firm later purchased by Google, and lately by the Open Handset Alliance.[3] It allows developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries.

I started reading up on how to write apps for Android, their basic architecture, and the development environement, then promptly fell asleep. I needed to get hands on now, so I started setting up a development environment following the instructions on DataSprings site.

One issue I encountered is a bit of an oddball. I set up my virtual device properly, but every time I tried to run it, the emulator claimed I had not created any virtual devices. I tracked down the problem to a non standard computer setup. The setting for My Documents is "D:\My Documents" and the virtual device was created there. Unfortunately the emulator doesn't correctly look up the My Documents directory. It was looking in "C:\Documents and Settings\gfox\My Documents".

I fixed this first by copying the virtual devices to the C drive, but then I undid that and used junction to link the C drive device directory to the actual directory.

So far the craplet I have written has a single button that launches a second "form" when it is clicked. Not bad for a couple days investigation.

I have a couple ideas for applications, so when I am actually not working any more and have some real time to devote, I hope to make some progress.

One hurdle I might face with this project is that I have never done any Java programming. So far the code I have written is very, very similar to C#, so no big deals there. I have a suspicion that I will be referring to Google lots on this.

Over the years I have had temporary issues with tendonitis. I've seen my doctor a couple times, but it never amounted to anything. For a few days I take some ibuprofen, adjust my workplace ergonomics slightly and the issue goes away.

A couple years ago I was having a bout of tendonitis, and I decided to mouse goofy. That is to say I switched my mouse to the left side of my keyboard. The first few days were very awkward, but I got used to it.

I also read this article on Lifehacker on why it is a good idea to mouse with the non-dominant hand.

The linked article on Lifehacker posits that doing this stimulate neural connections between the brain hemispheres. I don't know if I would go that far, but I haven't had a single flare up of tendonitis since I switched.

I find it fascinating that when I sit at my computer at home I immediately reach for the mouse with my right hand, and when I am at work I reach with my left. For me mousing with my left hand seems to put me in work mode.

Another Lifehacker article claims that you can boost your willpower and increse your stamina for focusing on tasks by brushing your teeth with your non dominant hand. I think I might try this some time just to do something different.

All on my own I came up with another non-dominant hand mind trick. Whenever I am warming up to play Ultimate, I catch with my left hand. Over the years I have gotten pretty comfortable catching with either hand. I started doing this since I found that there are times in a game where you can only catch with one hand.

Pain.NET aggravates me. I don't use it very often (which is the problem), but when I do, the pre-release version that I have installed has inevitably expired. Their decision to prevent me from using the app until I upgrade is frustrating and angering. All I want to do is resize an image. I don't want to have to upgrade a perfectly fine piece of software for this.

I know that they really want me to upgrade, but forcing me to upgrade is horrible. Since this has happened to me before I think I am going to go ahead an uninstall it. My time is worth more than this. A long time ago I installed the GIMP. I might have to give that a whirl again.

A couple weeks back the office I work in lost the network connection. Technically we had a network, but DNS was slow to resolve, and we definitely couldn't get to the Internet.

I had a bit of an epiphany about how I work during this outage. I could still work slowly, but I certainly wasn't effective. I decided that I subconsciously solve problems.

My habits are to work for a while, but when I hit a stumbling block in what I was trying to accomplish, I would change contexts entirely and hit a blog, Twitter, or some other site for a couple minutes.

During this break from my work, my subconscious would solve the problem, or at least get me refocussed and when I resumed my task I would pick up and continue right where I left off.

Not having the Internet actually slowed my work down considerably (and not because I couldn't Google the answer).

Several productivity sites I frequent all suggest that the Internet is a distraction and it must be blocked to allow yourself to realize your full productivity. I don't fit that mould.

The iPhone was certainly a game changer in the cell phone industry. I don't even have one, yet I can feel the effects.

When I know someone has an iPhone, I immediately expect that they are going to be more connected and hence more apt to respond to email.

I recognize that this is an unreasonable expectation, but it is still true. I know I would have to set boundaries on when and where I managed email if I had an iPhone. I am sure that other people who are iPhone owners must do that as well.

Hotmail shows ads, and always has as far as I can remember. This is fine with me since I don't pay for using it, and I don't user Hotmail that often. What gets me is that both Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger don't seem to show context sensitive ads. I expect that functionality in this internet era.

Half the ads served to me are for singles dating sites. I don't care about these sites and would rather not see ads from them. My Hotmail profile shows me as married, yet these ads continue. I doubt I am the only one seeing this.

An update on the Kindle book deleting scandal that I wrote about previously. The eBooks were being sold through Amazon were not authorized versions, and the owner of the copyright requested Amazon to stop. Amazon could have simply stopped selling new copies, but they went a step further and deleted already purchased copies from everyone's Kindles.

Apparently the Terms of Service on the Kindle don't mention Amamazon can/will do this. From the New York Times article

Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.”

Not so much eh? I never considered buying a Kindle due to the DRM scheme involved. Now I definitely won't. There are lots of other eBook readers out there that don't have any DRM that I will consider buying. There are also more and more places to buy PDF's instead of dead tree tomes. Sometime (soon I hope) there will be a tipping point and book shelves will become more and more bare as society turns to digital books.

There is a news story popping up all over the place today. Apparently a published asked Amazon to stop selling the electronic version of a certain author's books.

Amazon agreed and then

It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

Yikes. This is yet another example of why DRM is horrible, and bad. You can read more here.

Another huge strike against the Kindle for me.

The other day on ThinkGeek I saw they had something called a Mimo Mini. This is a small gadget, totally USB powered, and highly geeky (I think). This gadget is a USB powered mini monitor. At 7 inches diagonally, it adds a bit more screen real estate.

On a whim I decided to buy one. After making the purchase, and waiting for my delivery, I got it set up.

Setup is extremely easy. Run the installer, click OK a couple times, plug in the monitor, and that is it. There are some tweaks you can do to arrange where WinXP thinks it sits, but other than that, you can start using it right away.

On my main monitor I used to run a Rainmeter system display. I also had to run a small utility to block windows from maximizing over it. I re-arranged my Rainmeter skin to fit on the Mini, and now I can maximize on my main monitor again.

I also run the Task Mangler on there too. This allows me to keeps tabs on what is eating up the most amount of RAM (usually this is Visual Studio, or SQL Developer). I am also keeping the minimal version of iTunes there too.

TechNewsWorld has a review ( warning: advert splash screen ), where they suggest a few other interesting usages. Twitter client, photoshop palette holder, Yahoo Widget holder, are all good ideas.

I've had the Mimo Mini for less than a week, but already I am loving it. I keep it in landscape mode, but it can also be swiveled to portrait mode.