Been continuing to look at continuing education opportunities and certifications I could get in the GIS geographic information systems field. I am really not excited about going back to college, I am so beyond that in my life but I do see some value in having some formal training for more structured thinking around map making – and as something I can list on my resume.
I am hoping at this point to keep my current job for the remaining years of the decade so I can get 20 years in and that extra bump that you get with Tier 4 retirement. But additional skills wouldn’t be back to fall back on should things not go to plan. Plus I will have a gap I need to fill between when I own my off-grid homestead and full retirement. The GIS field is in high demand and I have a lot of hands on experience from my blog and community groups and others I’ve helped out with map projects.
Still something to research further. So far I’ve not found a GIS study program that fits well with my hands on experience, my learn it non professionally way of doing things with a hobby. Something that is actually worthwhile to list on a resume. I should read up more and network with the folks in the state GIS Association. I am also a bit hesitant to learn commercial software and the formal ways of doing maps, as I like the anything goes, if its pretty and works well for my purposes as a hobby. The professional GIS industry just seems so stuffy and set in its ways, resistant to the hobbyist who likes to play with maps. Plus I’m no fan of expensive commercial software and proprietary datasets when I’m such a big user of free government data and open source QGIS.
Certainly there is a lot of things that can be done with GIS professionally. But I can’t imagine ever working for a planning commission or even worse a developer when I’ve used my learned by doing skills over the years to critique and challenge developers and planners. I get there is a lot of money working to be made developing farmland and forest into commercial developments but it’s not an industry I’m particularly interested in supporting. But maybe if it is a good income for that time between my reduced income work when I have my off grid homestead until I can collect all my well earned retirement benefits.
Now that cannabis has been legalized in more places around the world, scientists have started looking into its effects on productivity. The study published in May is based on tests conducted by professors Jeremy B. Bernerth from San Diego State University and H. Jack Walker from Auburn University. They found that regularly smoking a joint after work did not hurt employees’ performance the following day.
The great migration to remote work in the pandemic has also had a profound impact on how people think about when and where they want to work.
"We have changed. Work has changed. The way we think about time and space has changed," says Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of the book Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere. Workers now crave the flexibility given to them in the pandemic — which had previously been unattainable, she says. Working In Sweatpants May Be Over As Companies Contemplate The Great Office Return The Coronavirus Crisis Working In Sweatpants May Be Over As Companies Contemplate The Great Office Return
Alyssa Casey, a researcher for the federal government, had often thought about leaving Washington, D.C., for Illinois, to be close to her parents and siblings. But she liked her job and her life in the city, going to concerts, restaurants and happy hours with friends.
In the United States, organizations where employees have been largely working from home for the past 16 months are having a mild freak-out. Depending on the organization, they’re hemming and hawing. They’re treading water. They’re having seemingly endless meetings with HR. They’re analyzing focus group data and surveys, and drafting carefully worded “back to the office” plans. And they’re dealing with or anticipating or totally ignoring employee blowback.
Working long hours poses an occupational health risk that kills hundreds of thousands of people each year, the World Health Organization says.
People working 55 or more hours each week face an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared to people following the widely accepted standard of working 35 to 40 hours in a week, the WHO says in a study that was published Monday in the journal Environment International.
Google is adopting a series of changes to give its employees greater workplace flexibility as the tech giant prepares for an updated, post-pandemic return to normalcy.
Chief Executive Sundar Pichai announced that Google will allow employees to work a hybrid workweek, which would allow some workers to spend three days in the office and two days teleworking. Google is also allowing some workers to request a change of office locations altogether.