Thursday, January 5, 2012

Yes, You Can Get Sober On Facebook: Put It In Timeline

Many have documented the widespread use of Facebook while intoxicated, but those who make New Year’s resolutions to sober up go uncounted.
A submenu in timeline provides a convenient way to commemorate recovery from addiction,especially when the privacy settings are rigged to limit visibility to likeminded folks.
The international organization with the greatest success in helping people overcome addictions has “a tradition of anonymity at the level of press, radio and film.”
That policy has had individual members of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step recovery groups guessing about what to do with respect to Facebook, especially given the widespread misunderstanding of the privacy settings on the site.
These organizations refrain from maintaining official pages and groups on the site, but individual members tend to post status updates about recovery milestones.

Now the new timeline profile includes a simple way to mark one’s sobriety date, which recovering alcoholics and addicts often regard as a second birthday.
Privacy settings can limit visibility of this life event so as to respect anonymity — while Facebook’s smart lists don’t detect whether friends are members of 12-step organizations, one can manually configure a list consisting of contacts from just such a group.
To post a sobriety date, head for the area where you input a status update on a profile page, then click on the third link to the right, labeled “life event.”
That pulls down a menu from which you’ll want to select “health and wellness.”
Clicking on that pulls out another set of options to the right.
They include “overcame an illness” and “quit a habit,” which could function as ways to commemorate a recovery milestone if you don’t mind having either of those labels.
To use your own words to describe your milestone, such as “sobriety date,”  click on “other life event.”
The set of fields that come up include date, name of the event, location and “who with.”

Facebook announces 2012 Hacker Cup

Summary: Facebook today announced 2012 Hacker Cup. Registration is now open. The contest begins this month and ends two months later, with multiple rounds of elimination as well as various prizes.

Facebook today announced open registration for its second annual Hacker Cup, an annual algorithmic programming contest open to engineers from around the world. Programmers will be judged on accuracy and speed as they race to solve algorithmic problems to advance through up to five rounds of programming challenges. The winner will receive the title World Champion for Facebook’s 2012 Hacker Cup.
The competition will start with a 72-hour Qualification Round on January 20 at 4:00 PM PST. It will end on January 23 at 4:00 PM PST. All registered competitors will be presented with three problems. Every competitor who correctly solves at least one problem will advance to Online Round 1.
Online Round 1 will last 24 hours from January 28 at 10:00 AM PT to January 29 at 10:00 AM PT. To advance to Online Round 2, participants must solve at least one problem correctly. If more than 500 people solve at least one problem correctly, then the top 500 participants will advance, as well as everyone else who answered the same number of questions correctly as the 500th-place contestant.
Online Round 2 will last three hours from February 4 at 1:00 PM PT to February 4 at 4:00 PM PT. The competitors will have three hours to solve the presented problem sets. The top-scoring 100 participants from Online Round 2 will receive an official Hacker Cup t-shirt and will be notified via e-mail that they have advanced to Online Round 3.
Online Round 3 will last three hours from February 11 at 1:00 PM PT to February 11 at 4:00 PM PT. The 100 competitors will have three hours to solve the presented problem sets. The top-scoring 25 competitors from Online Round 3 will be notified via e-mail that they have advanced to the final round at Facebook, and the company will fly them out to its headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
If you’re not from the US, you should know finalists will be responsible for obtaining their own entry visa before arrival in the country. Facebook will reimburse the finalist for any visa application fee and up to $100 USD in travel expenses incurred in obtaining the visa, but the company will not reimburse any fees or expenses related to obtaining a passport.
The final round of competition will be on March 17. Prizes will include cash and “other awesome goodies.” More specifically, the first prize is $5,000 USD, title as world champion, and the honor of being immortalized on the Hacker Cup trophy. The remaining prizes are as follows: $2,000 for second place, $1,000 for third, $100 for fourth through 25th, and “awesome t-shirts” for the top 100 hackers coming out of the second online round.
If you want to try the problems from last year’s qualification round, you can check them out here: Problems. More details and announcements will be posted at facebook.com/hackercup. You may also want to take a look at the FAQ as well as the Terms & Conditions.
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Thursday, December 29, 2011

Coordinating Tastes With Your Dorm Mate


Coordinating tastes with a college roommate can present many challenges and you may feel after speaking with them that their tastes and yours will add up to a decorating nightmare. Many people try to work along with their college roommate even before they meet face to face to try and create a pleasing living space for both parties while others create one living space that is designed in two different motifs. This can make for a chaotic living space and can also add up to many duplicate items in this small room.
It is ideal to attempt to coordinate your dorm stuff with your roommate from the outset to create some sort of cohesive living space. In order to do this you must first stop looking at the ways in which you and your roommate's tastes are different and start looking at those things which you have in common. Even if these items are small, like a single pattern or color scheme that is a fabulous place to begin with when shopping for dorm decor merchandise.
Naturally, creating an aesthetically pleasing environment doesn't mean that each of you has to forgo those things that you love or that bring out your individual style. It simply means that you have to have a common thread throughout the room that helps to bring all the dorm essentials together and make the entire room seem cohesive. It is even best to be certain that you don't make your college bedding items at least somewhat different. Matching exactly every item in the room won't permit for each of you to express your own style and instead picking a color of commonality will be a much better plan.
If you and your roommate don't live nearby to each other, the internet can be a wonderful resource to help you bounce ideas off of each other and to coordinate items that will look good together in the same room. Perhaps you will also want to order items from the same dorm supply company in order to make sure that the colors will coincide well with one another. Even just one common color can help to tie together different styles and personalities and create a nice, comfortable living space for both parties.
Working along with your roommate to create a college checklist will help you to save space by avoiding duplication as well as save money. Together you can create a room that is functional and has everything you both need without a lot of extra clutter that will simply get in your way.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Starting College Means You Must Be Organized


Getting ready to go away to school is a very exciting time. It is a time of mounting excitement and also of much preparation. In order to make sure that you cover all the bases and have everything you need for this adventure you will most definitely want to make sure that you have a thorough and complete college checklist in order.
Making a checklist is not just something that you just sit down and do, it is something that you should begin at the end of your senior year of high school in preparation for your after high school experience. Initially you will very likely wind up placing specific items on the list like perhaps college bedding items that you have located online or some school supplies, a laptop, maybe even personal care items. Over time however, other things will come to your attention and these are equally as important. Adding to the list over time will help to ensure that you don't forget any of the essentials.
Those students who begin preparing ahead of time usually have a much easier transition because they are not only physically prepared to go away to school but they are also mentally prepared for this new phase of life. They have come ready and have carefully planned out not only their college class schedule and degree program but have also laid out their dorm room in their head with all necessary dorm supplies accounted for.
Being sure your ducks are in a row might even include exploring their housing alternatives, locating an on campus work-study program, or a local part time job to help them bring in some additional income. Students who are well prepared will more than likely succeed in this next phase of life and for many this is their first step to adulthood, so it is an important and necessary process.
When developing a college checklist it is a good idea to make sure and seek some help in putting the list together. By pooling online resources, as well as talking with your parents and other college students, you should be able to put together a comprehensive and complete list of all the items you will need to ensure a smooth and productive transition. College life will be so much less complicated if you have a well supplied and organized dorm room that can aid you to stay productive and focused thus making for a victorious transition.

Friday, December 16, 2011

What Will A College Degree Get Me?


With the economic state that the country is currently in, many high school seniors are asking themselves if getting a college degree will benefit them. At one time getting your college degree mean finding a job in your field and ensuring that position for many years to come. On top of job security it also meant that you would be making more money in that field and that you would move up the corporate ladder much faster than someone else in the company that did not have a degree.
During the last couple of years we have witnessed a great increase in the unemployment status of this country. The majority of these individuals are those that worked hard through college with the hopes of obtaining a secure employment and steady advancement. These individual found themselves at a disadvantage, however, when companies were looking to downsize and reduce expenditures. They were let go and replaced with new individuals for lower salaries. This left the college graduates to take the lower income positions that they were over qualified for just so they could bring home a paycheck. Each month when these men and women make a payment on their student loans they question if it was even worth it.
Even though this is how things may have turned over the past few years it is still a wise choice to seek a higher education. Things are going to turn back around and when they do you will be the one that companies are fighting over. When you have a college degree you appear more professional, you have a better looking resume and you are more attractive to businesses than someone that does not have a degree.
Higher education not only provides an individual with an opportunity to get ahead but also with the higher thought process to get a job and keep a job. When it comes to getting a higher education of course it is best to choose a field and then plow forward but it is also important to obtain whatever financial assistance you can from the government as well as to make sure that you find ways to keep the cost of your college education way down.
When you leave college you so not want to have more student loans then you can afford. A college degree is something that should be capitalized on, not something that you need to work to pay off and get a second job just to pay your other monthly bills. You don't want to have to pay for that degree when you are retiring at 65, after all the whole reason you got the degree was so that you can get ahead in the world not get further behind.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

How to Become a Pharmacist This Year


With today's economy having a career where you are able to support you and your family is important and the health industry is growing by leaps and bounds month after month. That is why a lot of people are choosing to get into a career as a pharmacist and earning a pharmacy degree. If you want to know how to be a pharmacist you will have to go to pharmacy, but many people to not start the conventional way with all the pharmacy school requirements. Some people choose to undergo an internship while earning their Pharmacy degree.
The Education and Training of a Pharmacist
The education requirements for a pharmacist can be fairly strict. If you want to become a pharmacist today, you will most likely be required to obtain a PharmD or a doctorate of pharmacy. Before you can start a four year pharmacy program you will need to meet the pharmacy school requirements by having completed you undergraduate course work which is usually a two year program and passing the PCAT exam which is an entrance exam for pharmaceutical studies. The course work that you will be studying when you choose to learn how to become a pharmacist will be chemistry, anatomy, physics, biology and physiology. You may also be required to undergo a series of internships to meet pharmacy school requirements.
The Job of a Pharmacist
The job of a pharmacist can be a very rewarding job and you will interact with people to be able to provide them with service they need. A pharmacist job consists of dispensing medicines that people need as well as giving advice and having knowledge of what medicines do and the reactions that they can have on a person. Your job as a pharmacist will be to watch closely what patients take and be aware of potential problems that may be a doctor has made when prescribing medicine. In a family practice or a drug store you may also commonly give advice to people on everyday pharmaceutical needs.
The Salary of a Pharmacist
One of the best things about being a pharmacist is the stable career and pharmacist salary. While it is a high paying high end medical career with a salary around $100,000.00 or $50.00 per hour, it can be repetitive and you can expect to be doing the same thing for a lone time, but if helping people with their needs is something that you like to do it may be the perfect job for you with a pharmacist salary to compensate you.
How Long does it Take to Become a Pharmacist?
Depending on the route you choose, it will typically take around six to eight years to get a doctorate degree in pharmacy. It's important to note that the education requirements for pharmacists are precise and will require a student who is dedicated and hardworking. The best way to speed up time to completion would be to take more relevant courses during your undergraduate studies, in addition to getting training and internships in the field of Pharmacy.
A pharmacist's job can be both rewarding and demanding. It is very tempting to pursue a career in this field, after learning about a pharmacist's salary. Once you understand the education requirements for a pharmacist, it is easy to plan out a course of study. You can also enhance your studies with internships, work placements, and other related experiences in Pharmacy. You may also wish to visit our website with more information on how to become a pharmacist.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Best Career Choices for Women


Whether you knew what you wanted to be when you grew up, or you still have not decided on a major, choosing a career path is an incredibly important decision. Yes, it is true that you can make a career change later on if you decide your current one is not right for you. But if you waste the first years of your professional life bouncing from job to job with no real idea of what you want to do, then that means you have used up valuable time to establish yourself in a good, solid career. Being aware of the options out there, especially for women, is important in your search for a career path. It is especially important to know what kinds of career choices are best for women. Whatever you choose, going to a top college will help you to succeed in your future career.
Aerospace Engineer
Some women may not see themselves working on anything related to space, but there are definitely others who would love a career like this. If you have ever seen the movie "Apollo 13," then you have been exposed to the basics of what an aerospace engineer does for a living. Within aerospace engineering, there are 2 fields: aeronautical engineering (which deals with aircraft that do not traverse to outer space) and astronautical engineering (which deals with aircraft that do go into outer space). Whichever you choose, aerospace engineering can be an excellent field for women.
Anthropologist
Are you interested in the origins of humankind? Anthropology may be for you. Anthropologists work on uncovering the various characteristics and customs that make up our human race, especially from years past. There are 4 main fields of anthropology in which you can get involved: cultural (or socio-cultural) anthropology, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, and physical (or biological) anthropology. These fields tend to speak for themselves, especially archaeology, but you should do research on each one to see which fits you best.
Computer Programmer
Being a tech-savvy woman can get you a great job as a computer programmer. Computer programming involves working within the source code of a computer program. If you know much about writing and testing code, you should look into this career and see how it suits you. Understanding how to design and debug the source code of a program is also part of the job. Basically, coding means that you are working on a set of instructions for computers so that they will perform specific operations. If this sounds like something that interests you, look into computer programming classes and jobs.
Surgeon
Women doctors have taken over the medical industry, and that is a very good thing. There used to be a time when the only reason women worked in a hospital was because they were nurses. Learning how to cut people open may sound morbid to some and fascinating to others. Surgeons do a great service for the health of millions of people every day, and if you are not squeamish about blood or bodily functions, being a surgeon may be your path. Medicine can be a very rewarding career.