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Tag: podcasts (Page 3 of 4)

What’s the return on a college investment?

July 19, 2018 /

In a previous post, I took lots of notes of a short podcast series I found on planning for college. I think I’m going to continue doing that as the host drops valuable nuggets of information in each episode he’s recorded. Here are my notes on his “Return on Investment” episode.

The first part of the episode seems to be a recap of his previous one–which I haven’t listened to yet. He speeds through a number of questions the student should ask himself when deciding on college and career:

1. For what you want to do, is a degree even necessary?

The host references a finding by The Center for College Affordability and Productivity that asserts 48% of 2010 graduates are working in jobs that don’t require a four year degree. Later in the podcast, he points out efforts by Mike Rowe and others to sway people from the “credentialist arms race” that college has become to less debt-riddled paths.

2. What will the job pay?

As I’ve told my child, consider your current circumstances: nice house in the suburbs, a couple of cars, summer vacations and so forth. Do you like that lifestyle? Do you want an even better one when you’re on your own? Then you’ll need to find a job that can support such a lifestyle. The host suggests visiting Payscale.com which apparently has tools to help you find a college that meets your budget and will even give you a projected income for when you graduate.

3. Will your income support the cost of your student loans?

Sure, you have lifestyle expectations that your future career will need to support, but you’ll need to add to that the cost of paying back your student loans. Will your career support both? To get an idea of what those student loans might look like, the host recommends visiting FinAid.org which has a calculator to help you estimate your potential, monthly student loan bills. He also mentioned two other tools for estimating your potential costs that look to be pretty good:

4. Is your chosen degree too general?

A degree in “business” may be too general for your intended career. Here is where more research is warranted where you start with your chosen career and work backward toward the degree(s) that best feed that career.

5. Does the brand name school really matter?

Occasionally, attending that elite school may be the path you need to take for your chosen career, but, chances are, the degree is more important than the stationary it’s printed on. Again, your research should bring such points to light.

6. Does the college itself have a lot of debt? Will it stay in business?

I thought this point was interesting and one I’ve never considered. What would happen if you received a degree from a college that went out of business? Would that negatively influence your standing with potential employers? I have no idea. As I think about it, I recall hearing about some for-profit colleges going out-of-business, but I don’t recall ever hearing about a traditional school closing its doors.

7. Inquire about the college graduation rate, the average number of years to graduate, the percentage of students that graduate, and the student loan balance.

All great questions you should ask of a potential college. He also mentioned Wallethub’s 2018’s Cities with the Most & Least Student Debt as a good resource for identifying what States (and likely State schools) pose the most risk for high student debt.

After his recap, the host then dove into the main points of thinking about your Return on Investment for the cost of your degree. He called out four important considerations:

  1. What’s the total price of your intended college?
  2. How much student loan do you plan on obtaining?
  3. Consider the income potential of your chosen career field. Is it worth the investment?
  4. Consider if the income you make will cover your loans and expenses.

You can increase your ROI by decreasing your up-front costs. Consider these ways to save “thousands” on your tuition bill (for both parents and student):

  1. Parents should set limits. Set a limit to the total amount you’ll contribute each year. Set a limit to the total number of years you’ll contribute to your child’s college journey. He noted, sadly, that due to the fact that parents are the usual co-signers to federal and private student loans, people in their 60s are now becoming the largest demographic paying back student loans.
  2. Apply to the FAFSA
  3. Explore scholarships and grants
  4. Get in-state tuition. Even if the student attends an out-of-state school, there are ways to still pay in-state prices.
  5. Look into CLEP exams and test out of subjects you’re already familiar with to reduce your costs.

Great series of podcasts for those of you, like me, looking at that bright light at the end of the tunnel.

Taking Care of your Family Heirlooms

April 23, 2018 /

As a technologist (and nerd), I love going to technology conferences. Over the years, I’ve been to numerous Microsoft gatherings and a variety of other development and security seminars. Fortunately, all those events were paid for by employers past and present. I did attend one day at the Ohio Genealogical Conference a few years ago, but on my own dime and only after burning a day of vacation. In general, it’s hard to justify the high ticket and travel fees, not to mention finite vacation days, to attend genealogy and other non-work related, but interesting events.

All that said, I don’t know why it never occurred to me before, but several months ago, one of the genealogical podcasts I listen to alerted me to the fact that some of these conferences publish their sessions online, sometimes for free. So, while backing up several gigabytes of media files, I decided to take in the session “Taking Care of your Family Heirlooms” from the 2017 National Archives Virtual Genealogy Fair (I guess there are worse things on which the US government can squander tax payer money). If you have an hour, check out the session–although the audio isn’t great; but for a cliff notes version, here are my notes:

Assess your stuff

Over the years, my ancestors have amassed lots of paraphernalia and a lot of that material has filtered down to me. At some point, though, you have to make some hard choices about your artifacts: for every artifact, you should decide whether to keep it, sell it, throw it away, or give it away.

Document your stuff

For all the material you keep, you should document as much as possible. Ask about each object as all those “W” (and “H”) questions: who, what, when, where, how. As in: who owned this artifact? What is it? What makes it so valuable? When was it acquired? Where was it acquired? How was it acquired? Etc. All artifacts should be documented in multiple ways. For example, photographs should be scanned and the electronic file documented in some fashion. Likewise, the physical photograph should be safely labeled. The presenter said that if you must apply a label directly on the artifact, use pencil instead of pen as pencil does less harm.

Store your stuff sensibly

Wet basements and hot attics can do great harm to your heirlooms as can sunlight, ultraviolet light, pests, family pets, and even dust. Ideally, you store your items safely in, say, the first floor of your home where your environment is a little more consistently controlled. What sort of containers should you choose? For photos, documents, and such, the presenter recommended PAT tested, alkaline buffered containers and, even though such containers are expensive, avoid overfilling them as that might compromise the contents. Old books like family Bibles–I have several of these–should be stored flat instead of upright like you’d find in a library, as gravity can be a harsh mistress to these worn tomes.

With metal objects, your greatest enemy is rust and you seem to exacerbate this problem if your metal heirlooms touch one another, so keep your metal heirlooms dry, wrapped in acid free paper, and stored so that they’re not touching other metal objects. During the question-and-answer period of the presentation, someone asked about preserving tin photos, of which I personally have a lot. Apparently, “tin” photos aren’t tin at all, but iron. The rule still applies, though: keep the photos from touching one another, keep them dry, stick them in a box, etc.

Display your stuff?

In general, the speaker wasn’t too keen on displaying one’s heirlooms given the damage sunlight and other environmental factors can inflict on your items (reminds me of how the US Declaration of Independence was hung on the wall of a patent office in DC for over 30 years degrading it badly). She recommended only displaying them “on special occasions” or, alternatively, displaying a photocopy of the artifact. Photos could be mounted on PAT approved paper and slipped into polyester sleaving for display. I actually did this with one of my grandmother’s old scrapbooks. I took the further step of printing out labels that I stuck to the photo paper underneath each photo…so I safely stored, displayed, and labeled these precious heirlooms all in one fell swoop!

How to handle your stuff

The basic rule of thumb here is to wash your hands before handling your artifacts. Some experts advocate cotton gloves, others advocate latex free gloves. One disadvantage to gloves, though, is that they dull your sensitivity to the artifact you’re handling possibly allowing you to damage it without realizing. Have stiff boards on hand on which you can lay flat your precious documents and make sure you have clean, de-cluttered surfaces on which to work.

Digitizing your stuff

I strongly recommend digitizing as much of your keepsakes as possible. Certainly photos and slides. I do have several large photos, paintings, and posters for which I struggle to find solutions since I’ve not been able to find a retail scanner for documents larger than letter-size. In the past, I’ve had to settle for scanning these items a section at a time and then using software to stitch the images together. FedEx stores have oversized scanners that I’ve used in the past, but I also want to look into building a rig for these purposes, as well.

The presenter noted that sometimes, you’ll get the best digital product by farming out the work to a capable vendor–you may not even own the equipment necessary to digitize some of your material. Here is a list of questions the speaker recommended asking potential vendors:

  1. Will you perform a pilot test for me on one of my artifacts so I can be sure of the quality of your work?
  2. Do you do the work in-house or do you send the items out to another location?
  3. What type of file will I get back? With audio,for example, WAV audio files are excellent for archival purposes whereas MP3 files are ideal for sharing with other family members.
  4. Do you adjust your equipment to get the best quality product? If you’re digitizing vinyl albums, ask what needle sizes the vendor uses. If you’re digitizing audio tape, ask the vendor if they adjust the asymyth to get a better reproduction. You may not know these terms, but quality vendors should.

Further Resources

For further questions, you can always email the Archives folks at preservation@nara.org or inquire@nara.gov. Other sites the speaker recommended include https://www.archives.gov/ and http://www.conservation-us.org/. For good backup strategies of your digital assets, take a look at this site: https://www.lockss.org/.

My cup overfloweth

March 26, 2018 /

I feel like I’m always running at 100 miles-per-hour helping fulfill all the various activities of my family. This week in particular was tough as two of my kids were in a play that had them at school until 9pm each night and three showtimes on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. All these commitments can easily drain my free time of any personal accomplishment. Certainly, I’m spending time with the kids: but more in the capacity of taxi driver and activity observer than anything else. So, I’m always keen on finding ways to squeeze out a few minutes of productivity here-and-there. Here are a few ways that help accomplish that:

1. Bring the kindle

Wherever I go, I always try to bring my kindle with me. I keep it loaded with hundreds of books: from non-fiction books on the ridiculous number of topics I’m interested in to fiction books to just entertain. The kindle is my number-one, go-to item to try to find some sort of accomplishment when I’m out-and-about.

2. Listen to podcasts

I’m frequently criss-crossing town to and from activities, so I try to keep my phone filled with podcasts from which I can learn and try to make the driving somewhat productive.

3. Keep the car stocked with bars and water

Much of the time, I’m too busy to stop at some fast food restaurant for refreshment, but even if time permitted, it’s cheaper and healthier to just keep my car stocked with water and protein bars or other relatively healthy food that won’t spoil or melt.

4. Maintain and manage a to-do list

In the must-see movie Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, the main character is a detective trying to solve the kidnapping of noted cheese scientist, Dr. Forrest. Dr. Forrest has left different clues in the form of lists that the detective has to discover and then deduce the meaning. These lists are everywhere: torn off corners of dollar bills in desk drawers, one is inside a woman’s brooch, another is hidden inside the lid of a jar of coffee. Unfortunately, I find that I’m a lot like Dr. Forrest: I write to-do lists on envelopes or post-it notes only to misplace them and begin anew. Lately, I’ve started using Google Keep in hopes I can be less like the good doctor. Regardless, having a to-do list handy to review and work on during your various excursions can be helpful.

5. Take notes on your bright ideas

Occasionally, I’ll have a half-baked idea on a new blog post or entrepreneurial endeavor: making sure I have tools on hand to write down these brilliant ideas is important. To that end, I always keep pens and small notebooks in the car–that comes in very handy during parent/teacher conferences for note taking. Also, I try to take notes electronically as much as possible. I used to use Evernote quite a bit for that effort, but lately I’ve switched to using Google Docs. Both work great on your smart phone.

6. Read blogs

Like my addiction to podcasts, I subscribe to hundreds of blogs covering my wide variety of interests. Back in the day, I used Google Reader to aggregate the blogs I like to read, but when that was discontinued, I switched to Feedly. Feedly works great on your phone, too!

7. Wear clothes with lots of pockets

How do you effectively carry all the material that aid your on-the-go productivity–kindle, phone, pens, paper, etc.–particularly when you have to march deep into a sports venue, school, or Boy Scout camp? Pockets, I tell you! I own several pairs of cargo pants and shorts that help me haul around the items I need. I’m a big fan of ScottEVest, as well, and own a few of their vests, coats, and jackets that each come with dozens of pockets for storing essentials.

8. Keep a full gym bag and towel in the car

Going to the gym is an important release for me and I’m able to do it less and less as the family’s activities increase. Most days I have to plan out a few days in advance when I can hit the gym, but practices are occasionally canceled, so it’s a good idea to always keep my gym clothes in the car in case I can slip in a workout.

9. Keep portable batteries, charging cables, and related items handy

As a few of these tips rely on electronic devices, I find it helpful to keep portable batteries, cables, and other paraphernalia around and available in case one of your devices gets low on juice. Obviously, keep your devices as charged as possible and don’t forget to charge your portable batteries, as well!

10. Think about other “everyday carry” items

“Preppers” will sometimes discuss the topic of “everyday carry” (EDC) items. Items like flashlights, band-aids, tweezers, multi-tools, and the like. Eyeglass screws come loose, splinters happen, and small items fall into dark spaces. Compiling EDC items and keeping larger kits like first aid kits in the car can help fix an unexpected problem that might otherwise throw off your schedule and undermine your on-the-go work.

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