jasper

JASPER: Jobs Assets and Strengths Profiler

I discovered this on Monster.com today. JASPER is a test that you can take to learn about your work profile. The test takes about twenty minutes and, unlike most similar tests, I found it quite revealing.  There are a series of questions in various and interesting formats.

There are nine different JASPER types:

1. Thinker
2. Dynamo
3. Visionary
4. Motivator
5. Advocate
6. Organizer
7. Mentor
8. Achiever
9. Individualist

I am a 3, a visionary. Here’s the visual display of the report that JASPER returned for me:

Homescribe’s JASPER Results

You can take the test for free at Monster.

resignation letter

The downside of getting a new job is writing and delivering the letter of resignation to the old job. I never really hated my old job, but a 25% salary increase is too much to ignore.

I just wrote the letter and emailed to my managers. I am sad in many ways, but quite happy in others.

Stay tuned for more info on the new job, which starts May 21.

job update

Hold the presses … the job offer is now final, accepted, and I have a start date of May 21. It feels great to have this finally taken care of. I must say, though, that I feel sad to give notice at my current position. They have treated me wonderfully there and I have no complaints at all, except that the pay scale is so low.

Wish me luck! I’ll be sure and let you know how it goes.

job

First, Job. I took a week of vacation a couple of weeks ago, just to hang around the house. On Monday I got a call from a recruiter about a job. I’ve been getting lots of calls from recruiters, but none of the jobs held any interest for me.  This one did.

Over the last few years, I added training to my technical writing skills. When I’ve been training, I’ve enjoyed working with customers, but missed creating content. When  I was a technical writer, I missed the contact with customers.

 The position I was recruited for is a corporate trainer. About half the time, I’ll be training customers. The other half, I’ll be developing new courses and creating web-based training.

In other words, the perfect job. The interviews went well and I’ve received an offer, contingent on my background check. My recruiter tells me that as I’ve never been arrested for anything, there shouldn’t be a problem.

I hope to have some good news in a week or so.

And yes, the Homescribe will still be able to work from home 2 or 3 days a week. I am the Homescribe, after all.

and more business analyzing

Once again, I’m being asked to be a business analyst. What’s fun is that I’m starting to do some real problem-solving and coordinating between products that work together on the same platform. I’m calling them together, getting consensus, and assigning tasks.

It’s fun, but I think I want a raise. The stress level is a bit higher, you know?

a business analyst?

I think my manager is trying to turn me into a business analyst. In addition to writing help and bulletins, I’m now being tasked with working with technical specifications, which are always done by a business analyst.

I don’t think I’d mind being a business analyst. I’ve always been interested in the internals of how software works. Could be fun.

And, I think it might be a good thing for my fiction writing. Sometimes I find it difficult to easily switch between writing styles.

Besides, it pays more.

my mouse hand is falling off

I must admit, my work life has been pretty steady and not horribly demanding the last month or so. Until today, that is.

The product I work on has an interesting release strategy. Instead of putting out a new release every 9-18 months, we put out “builds” every 2 to 3 weeks. The most current build is a single feature that is, truth be said, a bit complicated.  For each of these “builds” I write a bulletin that explains each new feature; I also write new online help as needed. I have to say, it’s usually not rocket science.

This build has some conceptual complexities and it was decided that our users needed a lot of hand-holding, much more than I had provided in my first draft (there is a reason we have drafts). And oh by the way, we need it by Friday for a beta customer.

Thing is, it took me a couple of days of thinking to figure out exactly what to tell our customers about this new feature. I worked on my mindless tasks while I was thinking … I wasn’t completely slothful.

I got up today knowing what I needed to write and I sat down and wrote a lot. Fifteen pages worth. Concepts, procedures, examples, scenarios … the whole enchilada. Complex tables, diagrams of processing flows, lots of extras. And it looks great. But some 16 hours later, my hands really hurt. My mouse hand is especially sore.

So, the homescribe is drinking a nice glass of wine, watching the Daily Show, and plans to sleep in a little bit.

bad habits

It didn’t take long for me to fall into what I suppose is one of the bad habits one picks up when working from home.

Not getting dressed. Working all day in pajamas.

This started the week between Christmas and New Years.  I only had one day of vacation left, so I wound up working for three days sandwiched in between the holidays. The weather was rather drab–it is Portland, Oregon after all–and I just decided not to dress those days. Throw on a robe, put on another pot of coffee, and relax. It felt so good I kept on doing it in the new year.

It didn’t affect the quality of my work, but it certainly did change my outlook. I started feeling that I was looking at work as interfering with my play time. Ouch! I had to remind myself that work pays the bills and that one can only play so much Snood in a day.

So, I am back to wearing clothes to work, even from home. Don’t worry, just a turtleneck sweater and blue jeans. But it does feel so much more professional.

Have a great work day, everyone!

deadlines

Don’t get me wrong. I like deadlines. They’re a great impetus to getting a lot of work done in a short amount of time.  But it’s nice to know when they’re coming, these deadlines.

On Thursday last week, I was informed that there would a drop of the new release to QA the following Monday and that the help files needed to be ready.

What new release??!!  Oh dear, we forgot to tell you. Well, we promise to do better next time, but for now, can you please have those files all finished by Monday? 

It was a long weekend, but the help did get finished (15 new topics, 20 changed topics; not trivial).

It’s nice to just have a bit of lead time …

multi-factor authentication

Yes, that’s what I’m writing about lately. Multi-factor authentication for people’s online banking accounts. If your bank hasn’t added this yet, you might want to ask them about it. But first, you can ask the HomeScribe.

It doesn’t take much imagination to understand that a user name and password don’t provide a lot of security when it comes to protecting really important personal information, like your financial records. Therefore, a government agency called the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (does that sound boring or what) has decreed that banks must use this multi-factor authentication for customers to access their accounts.

 This is a very good thing.

In the solution I’m writing about, bank customers will choose a picture and a phrase to identify themselves. They will also choose answers to several challenge questions. They will also answer if they are signing on from a private (your own personal home computer) or a public computer (any other computer, including the one you think only you use from your office, for example.)  In addition to your user name and password, you’ll also verify the little picture and phrase. This picture ensures that you are indeed logging on to your bank’s genuine site and not some site a phisher has created to get your private information.  And, if anyone is logging in from any computer other than your private home computer, they’ll have to answer one or more of those challenge questions. And, each time you sign in to your bank, you’ll be presented with information about your recent logins.

 No, of course it isn’t perfect. But it’s pretty close to that. It’s a pretty good first-line defense to identity theft and it will help protect your personal information.

 And, if you aren’t doing this already, be sure you’re running a good spyware checker to make sure that you’re not running software that’s capturing your keystrokes, for example, to harvest your login information for various sites. The HomeScribe recommends a free product called Ad-Aware, which can be downloaded at www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ .