[Apple](http://apple.com) shipped their latest (iPhone)[http://apple.com/iphone] software update, version 2.1, with fixes for several customer complaints including poor battery life. I applied the update last night and was rewarded with something I haven’t seen in quite awhile: a nearly full battery in the morning.

The update includes fixes for many other things like email handling, dropped calls, signal strength display and security fixes. One big issue for me was the phone’s responsiveness when searching contacts or switching “states” from home screen to contacts. There always seemed to be a large delay, a long as three seconds, when making the switch from one state to another, before the UI would allow me to interact. This had become a constant frustration and with the new software update, it’s completely disappeared.

I’ll post in a few days about call quality to see if it’s really changed.

It’s 8AM and I’m enjoying the last few days of vacation. I can call it vacation now because I can finally relax after signing offer letters and a stack of other paperwork last night. Interesting differences between a big company and a small company:

* Paperwork! There’s more paperwork but it’s useful and written well, clearly enough to help me make sense of my new obligations.
* Healthcare is better and less expensive and it becomes effective on Monday when I start.
* I don’t have to front my own money on behalf of the company. With daZZee, if I wanted to take a client to lunch, it was my money going out the door and sometimes as long as 45 days before I got it back. With CenturyTel, it’s a company credit card paying for the meal.
* There’s a company car for business travel and each car has a gas card in the glove compartment
* There’s a 401(k) saving plan *and* a pension.

From my friend Jason Buchanan via IM session:

> the other day the BBQ grill ran out of propane and I had forgotten that we were going to have steaks. so I hauled out one of my cast iron skillets and got it hot and put a big blob of butter in the skillet. my wife thought I was nuts but I explained to her that in french cooking everything (especially meat) is cooked in a skillet (on stove) with butter. she didn’t know how a filet and a sirloin strip would taste being cooked that way. I told her you could fry human shit in butter and it would taste good.

I start my new job at CenturyTel in Branson on September 15, one month after [daZZee](http://dazzee.com) shut down in Springfield. All that’s left to do is sign the offer letter and pass the “whiz quiz” and I go back to the working life.

Thanks to everyone who helped with prayer, advice, cash, food and even free workouts. Most will never know just how deeply we were touched by your generosity.

I’ve learned a few technical lessons while being without gainful employment. Technical people fall in to two broad categories: hardware geeks and software geeks. The more specific your knowledge is within those bounds, the greater your pay and the smaller the job pool. View the following in that light:

* Learn a broad skill from the other discipline. I’m a “hardware” guy, but I also know some basic skills within procedural programming. While I’m not an expert, I could hack something together with Perl or even PHP, but I found that if I’d known Javascript, I would have been better off finding part-time work. From the software side, a programmer would have an easy time finding temp work as a PC technician if they took the time to get a couple of simple certs like the CompTIA A+ or even Network+.

* There are more programming jobs out there than hardware jobs. Hardware maintenance and design is rapidly becoming a commodity skill. Higher-end design, say something that involves multiple cities, sites, security and network priorities still commands good pay and progressional respect. If you’re in a hardware-based job (network admin) then you need to ask yourself “what’s next”. The days of fast networks, defacto standardization of IP and the Cisco juggernaut have made the network admin job almost too easy.

* Software geeks should know three scripting or procedural language and one object-oriented language. For example, for a web developer it might be javascript, perl, PHP and Ruby. For a traditonal application developer it could be javascript, Java, Python and Objective-C. Pick your favorites–I’m not saying these examples are the ones to follow. Bonus points if you know Smalltalk or Lua.

* Don’t study for the job you have, study for the one you want. A few certifications are good, too many are bad so if your’re studying to be a CCIE, then you need to have an idea of the job you’re trying to get before you start down that road. If you’re a CCIE at a company that has no need for that knowledge, then you’ll become a liability. You’re overqualified for your job, no possibility for career advancement and your boss will likely be wondering if you’re heading out the door to the next place.

* If you’re not willing to move to a “top tier” tech city, then don’t become a “top tier” geek. Some software companies will tolerate remote talent, but most want their teams working together, eating pizza and losing sleep within 10 feet of each other for weeks at a time.

In the next post, we’ll talk about the businesses end of your career.