Vacation, Employment, and Tweeting
It seems that other than my weekly radio show summaries, the only time I write in this blog is when I'm about to travel, in the midst of being on the road, or when I get home from vacationing. To be fair, these are usually the only times when anything noteworthy occurs. And who am I to break with tradition? Yes; once more, I'm about to head north for a couple weeks to escape the Texas heat. And to celebrate, I'm going to cover a few brief topics I've investigated for the last few months.

Employment. Remember that word? Lots of folks, including yours truly, haven't had it for quite some time since the massive layoffs began last Fall. Frankly, it's a bummer, and things are only going to get worse before they get better. The good news is that there are still a few options out there-- even for persons with disabilities. Desperation has led me to several recruitment agencies and online job sites. The first, Bender Consulting Services, seeks to assist the technically-oriented find work. I can speak from personal experience that these guys are the real deal and believe whole-heartedly in what they're doing. I strongly urge any unemployed geek types get in touch with Bender; you may get a break.

The next place I investigated looked promising. The goal of NTI is to help disabled folk gain employment as work-at-home customer service agents for various companies around the United States. One caveot they try to hide, however, is that they don't have any interest in helping blind job seekers. They claim that the software that the customer service agents use isn't the least bit compatible with screen readers. I frankly have no idea if this is true or not. My attempts to follow up with the company on what constitutes accessibility have gone completely ignored. Frankly, a maximum of $9 an hour isn't worth my time fighting over. However, if you aren't blind but have some other type of disability, then these folks may be able to help you.

The next place I've been poking around is Flex Jobs. They specialize in sifting through telecommuting work all over America and make it very easy to build resumes, profiles, and apply for these jobs. I haven't heard back from the various companies to which I applied, but the job site itself isn't to blame for that. A subscription is required, but I can assure any readers interested in remote work that it will be money well spent.

Finally, I came across Cyber Coders about a week ago. This site is free to use, and like Flex Jobs, offers a lot of positions around the country and eases the resume submission and application process. Definitely give this place a look if you're technically minded.

Aside from job hunting, I've also been sucked into the land of Twitter. I honestly didn't see the point of it last year, but I finally understand its appeal and like having it around. I won't link to my profile here, but it should be easy enough to figure out. And if you can't, drop me a line, and I'll let you know whom to follow. One thing I like about these social networking sites is the wide array of tools with which I can access them. On the desktop side, I've linked my LJ Talk/Jabber ID to Tweet.IM. Twitter shows up as a contact in my message list, and with the flexibility I enjoy with Miranda IM, I can keep in touch with virtually everyone out there inside one program. On the mobile side, I've become a real fan of Twinkini. This small, no-nonsense Twitter client is amazingly well designed and makes tweeting a real treat, or should I say tweet? Tracking my timeline is much easier than slogging through the mobile Twitter site in Pocket IE, and I don't have to send text messages to update my status anymore. Plus, the client can do some other cool things like geocaching if you want to broadcast your GPS position to the rest of planet Earth. It also stays alert in the background and chirps at you when new tweets arrive. And for the MobileSpeak Pocket users out there, this puppy is accessible right out of the box. That can't be said for the majority of Windows Mobile apps out there, so my hat's off to the program's developers for doing it right.

There are also some cool things coming in the land of Windows assistive tech, and I should be able to talk about them soon. In the mean time, the above should keep you busy until I post again. I will endeavor to update the blog more often, but only time will tell if I manage to do so with any regular frequency.