Husker, If the publisher can accommodate floppies, it's not imperative that you convert to another medium. However, one floppy per chapter sounds a bit unwieldy.
In fact, it might be best to hold off on converting anything until your friend knows what the publisher requires. One of the publishers I work for has specific software requirements. It has editing software which must be imposed on what the author submits. Compatibility is essential.
I'll thinking about security of a floppy going bad, after repeated rewrites and saves. I'd have a base copy for his protection.
I'm an Economist. I have been university professor, head of a public opinion company, television programmer. I'm also a journalist.
But I won't tell what I do now.
Guess I can say this yet again. Retired newspaper reporter/photographer, before that real estate sales, before that medical assistant, before that secretary, before that soda jerk, before that popcorn & candy sales in hometown movie.
Went to college in my 30s so at some point was working, raising kids and attending college. I'm still writing.
People still use floppies? OMG. It's a dinosaur moment. Lookie that thar T-rex walking through the office.
I just changed my career.
I'm now the "International Man Whore."
By the way, the new portable storage looks sort of like a key to a new Mercedes, uses flash memory, connects directly to your PC via a USB port, and appears just like a disk drive. These are getting to be so common that they are given away as party favors.
I work in risk management for a large global real estate company.
It's pretty interesting and sometimes I wonder how I got into this, and when will people find out I make it up as I go along! That said, I can B.S. with the best of them, and I have a pretty strong personality which means I'll take no crap. I sort of fell into the area of insurance and risk management about seven years ago.
I have had a wide variety of jobs from floristry to clothing manufacturing, selling houses, renting cars, being a travel agent, among others.
At school I was always interested in accounting and business subjects and would have loved to have had my own little business. Maybe one day I will realize my dream, win couple of million and buy a nice little pub and run it myself. Bliss!
I would also have liked to explore the writing thing but I don't have the patience to actually follow-through and be committed like a good writer should be. I envy Roberta her occupation.
I also like the idea of being a "Fraud Detective" like Husker!
Hi all -- I'm a writer of fiction and poetry, which isn't an easy vocation being the daughter of a visual artist/painter. I grew up in a small town with people asking me, "Aren't you going to grow up to be an artist like your mom?" I do paint and do a lot of crafty projects, I'm sort of the official artist in resident at work--which chiefly involves decorating our small, ugly conference room for celebrations and farewells. But the writer thing doesn't come out of no where, I get a lot of it from my dad, and other relatives on my mom's side as well.
To pay the bills--that's another story. As a kid I worked babysitting and then in retail including a map store (very educational). In college I studied communications/journalism and decided I wanted to be behind the scenes in local television. I wanted to be assignment editor, the person who assigns the reporters to their stories & runs things behind the scenes. I was working & eventually producing shows that we showed on our cable system at university and I felt my journalism classes were too technical and I wasn't getting a broad enough education. So I switched my major to English and no one noticed. I had some great English professors, one of which won the Pulitzer Prize and fled...And they all encouraged me to write. My style evolved from the whole writing for TV or writing for voice/ear theory and it's been the yellow brick road ever since. I did my journalism internship at a local Boston station and decided I had to the stuff to work in broadcast but I hated who I was and had to be do it well. I went back to college and finished not really knowing what to do then. The economy was bad and my parents wanted me to go to grad school but I didn't know what for--meanwhile I had an English degree and a resume that read like TV journalism. Add in another few logistical mistakes and bad luck and I felt sorta trapped.
I had a few ideas in the back of my mind including working in public relations for a nonprofit or a charity, although I was unsure on now to make a PR crossover. I worked a few awful jobs as a receptionist for a health insurance company. This was actually a permanent temporary position, for ironically, they did not want to pay health benefits. Then for a two months I worked as a paternity clerk. That was probably the worst job ever. I remember calling friends working at a cable station in NY begging them to put in my resume for shows they told me would surely be cancelled. At that time the whole computer desktop revolution was really taking off. I went to school at night to learn desktop publishing. I landed a small job at a small, family run computer consulting company. I was the receptionist/executive, editorial, marketing, sales and everything assistant. I did everything from return movies/videos to laying out the pages of the reports they produced. Then I decided to go back to school at night for a masters in communications and I left there because my employer wasn't accomodating about my hours, i.e. attending classes at a certain time. I got a terrible job at a wire company, where I had to retype press release that came in over the wire and then code them according to their sales packages and send them out. That was my #2 worst job. The women in that office were just awful & tortured me, but I got a free trip to New York City for the training though. So I quit that job and started grad school, and joined the campus paper to keep busy while job searching.
By absolute chance I landed a job at a nonprofit as an assistant doing fund raising, development and public relations. It was a small agency serving women in prison and released from prison with histories of substance abuse. I loved it and I worked very hard. But the agency was in trouble and eventually "merged" with another--however it was more like being bought out. And so I left before they fired me (another mistake). I took a job at another local nonprofit, that I had admired growing up in the Boston area, but it was leaving one bad situation into another and I was so desperate I didn't see the bad situation until I got there, so I left. I finished up my masters and interviewed all over greater Boston. Small nonprofits or charities told me I too much experience and education to be their assistant, not enough experience to be their director and they had nothing else. Large agencies told me I was a generalist from a small agency and they needed more specific experience. It was a nightmare. I had no luck trying to cross over into marketing or PR in corporate either, even secretarial stuff. Also during this time, I volunteered for a small agency run by the homeless and formerly homeless and did a little freelance work for a small literacy agency but the money was getting tight to say the least.
I widened my job search and took my masters off my resume. Through another chance of fate, I had to drop off a resume to a former colleague at an agency where there was a posting and so I kept my interview with the Attorney General's Office (AGO). To my surprise, they called and offered me a job as a legal assistant/secretary that same day. I waivered but then accepted it. The move from charity/nonprofit to public service worked for me -- I'll be there five years in Feb. 2003. Also I went back to school in 2000 and got my paralegal education. Now I'm a paralegal and just transferred back to my old division. And the adventure continues...
: )
Best career going !!
Howdy:
Just coming up to 23 years as a career firefighter.. Currently holding down the Deputy Fire Chiefs position.
Murray
G'day Murray and welcome to A2K - stay around and have some fun
Currently a software developer. Before that, I used to be a high school tutor/teacher. Before that, I was a security guard at a hospital (there was a lot of beautiful young nurses at the place
Before that, web developer. Before that, I had a couple of manual labour or minimum wage jobs.
Welcome to Able2Know! :-D
Retired more or less, never had a real job. Spent my life earning a good living in film and television as a film editor. It was more social than coal face.
I'm the engineer on a gas compression / dehydration plant in the middle of the Gulf. The job was a lot better 11 years ago before everyone had computers on their desks. Then we actually had time to go out into the plant and do some real work. Now there are computers hooked up to the network everywhere. The bosses spend all day long dreaming up new status reports to fill out, and half my time is needed to do them. What's worse, they've spawned a whole crop of young engineers here who think they can do the whole job from sitting in the office and never go into the plant.
I qualify for early retirement in 1041 days. My dream is to go back to school and finally earn that degree in history.
From 1st to last:
Machinist, High speed equipment mechanic, Recording Engineer, Record Producer, Live Sound Engineer, Recording Studio Manager, Video Engineer/Editor, currently employed as a Software Engineer, specializing in video/audio applications for the Broadcast industry.
primarily i run illegal booze into the indian reservations in the southwest, occasionally do some gun running to central and south american freedom fighters. its a living.
Painter, exhibiting in various galleries up and down the country, teaching art to adults and working part time as a medical secretary to keep the money coming in regularly!
I did my fine art degree at university as a mature student whilst working as a medical secretary and juggling family committments - graduated in 2000.
Aims: to give up any work not related to art 'cos I'm making enough from my painting/teaching.
In high school I worked for the Democratic Party collecting donations from people and organizations who had already pledged. I then moved on to a very nice department store, then to an insurance agency and then to training as a flight attendant for TWA, based in San Francisco, starting in 1964. That lasted for three years, then came a move to Missouri where I worked as a ticketing agent for a small commuter airline.
When I got pregnant, I quit working and remained a stay at home mom for several years. I started doing volunteer work as a tutor and, through that, was offered a paying job with a startup program for children with problems in school who weren't in need of professional help. I loved that job and had it for three years until the grant ran out.
When I found out that my mother had inoperable cancer, I had her stay with us for several months until her death. After that, I was a realtor for a few years, but couldn't stand all the yuppies who were consumed in their search for the absolutely perfect bedroom suite. I became very tired of people who defined themselves by the amount of square footage in their houses.
My most fulfilling job was doing volunteer work for an agency for people with developmental disabilities. That included serving on the board of directors and producing a cable tv program on which clients discussed their jobs and how training had helped them develop new work skills. They also talked about living in the community, socializing with their childhood friends, doing volunteer work and leading productive lives. They compared that to their experience of having lived in institutions and having no hope for a normal life. They never failed to inspire me and to make me realize that most of them led more productive lives than many so-called normal people.
Now I'm sort of retired and giving serious consideration to a move to Colorado.
Helicopter Pilot/Instructer Pilot (Army)
Carpenter
School Psychologist
Educational Specialist
Middle and Senior Management Trainer
Director of Training (Tenn Training Academy for state employees)
Treatment Manager (Juvenile Detention facility)
Retired
Photoshop Jockey and have small graphics business
Keeper of the Dogs (4 bassets and a wolfhound)
