No, my evals weren’t all positive, but I don’t expect them to be. My students for the most part were actually honest, which I do appreciate. :oP :o)

Keep in mind I’m in LAUSD, so my posts may be more relevant to teachers in LAUSD.

Q: Can I download a YouTube video to my computer to show in class later?
(Some background info on this question: All LAUSD schools block access on their networks to YouTube (and other sites). Even if you don’t have this problem, you may want to save a YouTube video in case you don’t want to rely on having internet connection during your lesson.)
A: Yes. There are several methods to save a YouTube video onto your hard drive, but this one is probably the most convenient and straightforward: http://www.zamzar.com (works for PC and Mac). Click the “Download Videos” tab. Enter the video URL, and the format of the video you’d like to download (try “.avi” if you’re not sure). Type in your e-mail address and hit the “Convert” button. You’ll be e-mailed a link, which you click to save the converted video file. The site has conversion tools for various other types of files. There are other sites that do the same or similar things.

Q: Can I “make” a PDF file?
A: Yes. Macs have this feature built in. If you try to print a file, there might be a “PDF” button somewhere. I don’t have access to a Mac right now so I’m not sure. For the PC, you can download and install free software: http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp. You’ll need to download/install both links on the left side of that page. Once you do that, you’ll be able to create a PDF file out of anything you would otherwise print to a printer. For example, if you’re in MS Word, you go to File => Print, and instead of selecting your usual printer, select “CutePDF Writer” (screenshot below). When you hit the “Print” button, you’ll get to choose the file name and location to where you’d like to save the PDF file.

With new adventures come new experiences, which means I learn more. And, since this site is about things I learn, that means more content! Woohoo! However, comics are still on hold because of laziness. :oP :o) Sorry!

I’m trying to find a job teaching either physics or computers at one of LAUSD’s high schools or middle schools. My first step is to find schools I’m interested in teaching at, then distribute my resumes to them. If you’re also doing the jobhunt thing, you may find some of the tips below helpful, even though you’re not applying for a teaching job in LAUSD.

This guide is geared toward beginner and intermediate computer users, but like my other guides, I try to include at least something for everyone. My goal now is to efficiently fax a personalized cover letter and resume to each school I’m interested in teaching at. Your goal may be different (”Huh? Fax?”), but again, you may still find some of my steps common with yours. Breaking it down, here’s an overview of the steps we’ll go through:

1. Create a list/database of places we’re applying to
2. Write a cover letter template
3. Merge the template with our database
4. Convert our documents to PDFs
5. Fax our cover letters and resumes

“Merge” is in bold because this is one of the key shortcuts we’ll be taking. To be honest, for this case I’m not sure you’ll save that much time going through all this, but the important thing is you’ll be learning new skills that may help you in the future. Let’s start.

The problem

Okay, just kidding about starting. First, let’s look at the problem. Assuming we’re sending a standard cover letter that includes the recipient’s name, title, school, address, and greeting line, we’ll be typing the same information into each cover letter we want to send. Then, we’ll have to print out each letter, sign them, find a fax machine, and sit by the fax machine punching in fax numbers and waiting for the letters to go through. If this is a fax machine we’re paying to use, we’re probably paying a lot.

So what do we do instead?

Create a list/database of places we’re applying to

You may think of this as a table or spreadsheet, but I’ll refer to it as a database. Basically we want a central resource with contact information of all the places we’re applying to. This needs to include the information we’ll be putting on each cover letter. I recommend using Excel, and create separate columns for school name, principal’s first name, principal’s last name, school street address, zip code, and fax number. Other options are to add each school as a contact in Outlook or to create a real database using Microsoft Access (advanced, possibly overkill).

Write a cover letter template

Using Microsoft Word, we’ll write our cover letter as we normally would. We can personalize the body of the letter according to the recipient later.

Merge the template with your database

Here’s the magic many people don’t know about. If you already know, good for you. Microsoft Word has a “mail merge” feature, where you can take entries from a database and plug the info into a template. For example, you can automatically create addressed envelopes by pointing Word to an Excel spreadsheet containing that information. No need to copy/paste fifty times for fifty recipients. I’m not going to teach you how to use the mail merge feature, but you can learn on your own with using Microsoft’s online mail merge tutorial.

Convert your documents to PDFs

Microsoft Word documents don’t appear consistently across everyone’s computers. However, PDFs do (more or less). To avoid unpredictable faxing results later (such as what was a one-page document on your computer end up as two pages over fax), we convert our Word documents (.doc) to PDFs. Even if we don’t fax our cover letter and resume, attaching the resume to an email as a PDF beats attaching it as a DOC (or goodness, the new DOCX).

“Um… cool… but… how do I do that?” You can “print” almost any document to PDF using the free, simple software, CutePDF Writer. Be sure to click “Free Download” and “Free Converter” on the left. You’ll need to install both.

Fax your cover letters and resumes

Unfortunately, this part costs money. If you have free access to a fax machine, then yay. Otherwise, another choice would be to go somewhere that charges you to fax things per page. The cost is often high, which is definitely what you don’t want, especially when you’re trying to blanket an entire district with your resume. :oP :o)

Instead, I went with TrustFax, which allows you to upload a document, type in the fax number, and the document gets sent as a fax. I’m not pushing this service in particular, but I’m just saying it’s one of the better services I found, and it worked for me. If you have better suggestions, please leave a comment!

There are different plans, but I went with the $9.95/month plan, that allows you to send 125 pages a month. If for each school you sent a fax cover page, a cover letter, and a resume, that’s three pages, so 41 schools. :oP :o) I would consider it just $9.95 flat since you’re only sending out your resume once, and most likely would not need this as a monthly service. Yes, it’s like $10, but compare that to your other options and if you think $10 is not worth it, then don’t do it.

“Wait wait… if it goes straight from the electronic version to fax, how do I get my signature on there?” It’s probably not a huge deal you don’t sign the thing, but if you want, you’ll have to do a bit of handiwork. I signed a blank paper, scanned it to a JPG, then inserted it into the Word document as part of the cover letter template. If you don’t know how to do all that, ask someone who does. :oP Don’t worry too much about the signature’s image quality, since sending the document through fax will degrade the quality of the whole thing anyway.

Why not email?

I initially considered going all electronic, and that might work with most other jobs. However, not all the schools provided email addresses, whereas LAUSD’s directory shows the fax numbers for all schools. I also figured the schools weren’t very on top of technology and still somewhat rely on faxes. Another option is to fax your documents and if you can find an email address, send them an email with your resume attached as a PDF.

Hey, that didn’t save me time

You might have noticed that even though you didn’t have to type the schools’ information into each cover letter, you still had to type it into the database, so how did the mail merge save you time? In that respect, it probably didn’t. However, I personally prefer having the schools’ contact info in one place anyway, so I don’t consider the time creating the database as time wasted. In addition, you can add more columns to your database to track other things, such as the date you faxed your resume, when/if you heard back from the school, possible interview dates, etc.

Again, if you didn’t know about the mail merge feature before, I felt this was a good time to learn and apply it since most likely it will come in handy in the future.

This isn’t necessarily the “best” way to get your resume out to schools, but it’s the way I chose to do it and I hope you found certain parts helpful. I’m also intentionally dealing with just resume distribution, as I know there’s much more one can do to get a teaching job in LAUSD, such as getting your foot in the door with substitute teaching jobs, or attending LAUSD’s job placement fairs. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment.

Ramit Sethi elaborates beautifully on this in his blog post “Your College is Not a Technical School“.

Think about your current priorities and where you’re committing your time. Are you doing things so you’ll be better?… or just so you’ll look better?

Still don’t know what I’m talking about? Ugh, fine. Okay you know when you need to go #2 and you’re at a public restroom and you poo and there’s some splashback of the toilet water that sometimes touches your butt? Ech… yeah.

I don’t understand… with all our modern science, you think there’d be a solution by now. Isn’t splashback some sort of health hazard? Think about it. The person who uses the toilet before you does their business. They flush… but how clean is that newly refilled water? I bet it’s not very clean. For heaven’s sake, sometimes you still see bits on the bottom… and I wouldn’t be surprised if some toilets miss entire logs here and there on the first try. Thus, I imagine there’s some pretty nasty bacteria in that water… and then to have that stuff splash back and hit us in the heiny. However, I’m no health expert/scientist, so I can’t say much about that stuff for certain.

At the very least, splashback feels icky. I think we can agree on that.

So… how do we minimize it?

The most simple and effective solution I know of: Place a toilet seat protector sheet in the bowl before you do your business.

You know those seat protector sheets dispensed in most public bathroom stalls? “First pull up, then pull down”? Grab one and toss it in the bowl. Try experimenting to see what’s more effective… folded, slightly crumpled, etc. The point is you want to change the behavior of the usual water surface by having the paper disrupt the typical splash patterns. The paper will “catch” the first few logs, if you will.

What about using toilet paper to cushion the fall instead? I’ve found the seat protectors work sufficiently compared to the layers and effort required with TP for similar results. This may be due to their shape being a broad sheet, plus their waxiness increasing their ability to hold together in their bowl.

This method may not eliminate all splashback, but I’d say about 90%. For something so simple, you get great results. That will have to do until science finds a solution for this problem that touches us on a personal level (literally).

What are your thoughts on splashback? If you have any other methods, please share them in the comments!

(Apparently someone keeps a blog about other poopy stuff.)

I set this up with the purpose of a school library catalog in mind, built from scratch from salvaged parts, so my instructions are for exactly that. However, this system can be used for many other things, such as a home media library, or equipment checkout system, and can be built in many ways as long as the heart of the system (OpenBiblio) is there.

This procedure is for someone at least somewhat familiar with Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (or “LAMP”). You should be familiar enough with the system to do basic application installations and take precautions such as disabling directory listing. If that’s not you, find someone who is.

Features

• Basic mixed media catalog (books, CDs, DVDs, etc), with bibliographic info and search
• Open public access catalog (OPAC)
• Easy barcode and call number label printing (on a standard printer)
• Circulation system, aka checkout system with database of library patrons, fines, book statuses, etc.
• Ability to lookup bibliographic information when inserting books (optional)

Sounds good? Of course it does. Let’s get crackin’…

Get a computer

The software will run on pretty much any junk PC, since the software really isn’t resource-intensive. I did this setup on a PIII 500MHz machine with 256MB of RAM and it ran just fine, even with 10-15 people simultaneously cataloging on it. Ask your friends for hand-me-downs, or worst case, buy something for uber cheap off Craigslist. You can also install everything on your current computer if you want to run an Apache/MySQL server on it (assuming you know what you’re doing).

Install LAMP

LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

Follow the LAMP Installation Walkthrough (using Ubuntu, a popular distribution of Linux recommended for beginners)

I recommend also installing PHPMyAdmin (listed as an optional step after setting the MySQL password).

Install OpenBiblio

OpenBiblio is the heart of the system, the “library software”, if you will. It’s a web application that runs on PHP/MySQL, and it has a quick and easy installation, very similar to WordPress.

Download OpenBiblio

Login to MySQL and follow the OpenBiblio installations instructions (install_instructions.html), beginning from step 5.

Install Lookup Addon (Optional)

The Lookup addon adds functionality to OpenBiblio by allowing you to lookup books from the Library of Congress database, or other library databases, and downloading their MARC (bibliographic) information.

Download Lookup if you know Linux pretty well and want bibliographic lookup capability: http://www.flos-inc.com/projects/ (”download Lookup files”). Refer to “lookup_install.txt” for installation instructions.

For step 2, your OpenBiblio MySQL data directory is most likely under “/var/lib/mysql/”. For example, if you named your OpenBiblio MySQL database “OpenBiblio” and you’re in the Lookup installation directory, you’d type “sudo mv cutter.* /var/lib/mysql/OpenBiblio“.

Install Z39.50 Search (part of Lookup installation)

This is a protocol required by the Lookup addon. This is where you need Linux know-how… something I don’t have. At this point, I don’t have much idea what’s going on, but try entering the commands and hope it somehow works. :oP :o)

1. Install PHP PEAR: sudo apt-get install php-pear
2. Install phpize: sudo apt-get install php5-dev
3. Download, uncompress, build, and install YAZ:
   cd /tmp
   wget http://ftp.indexdata.dk/pub/yaz/yaz-3.0.14.tar.gz
   tar -zxvf yaz-3.0.14.tar.gz
   cd yaz-3.0.14
   ./configure
   make
   sudo make install
   sudo pecl install yaz
4. Edit php.ini: Add the line “extension=yaz.so” to the end of the file. (sudo gedit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini)
5. Restart Apache: sudo etc/init.d/apache2 restart
6. Run a phpinfo() to verify there is a section on yaz (”YAZ Support: enabled”). If you don’t know what that means, just try the “Z39.50 Search” that should appear in OpenBiblio now and see if it works.

Results, woohoo!

Get a Barcode Scanner!! :oD

No library checkout system is complete without a barcode scanner. This may be the only purchase you need to make. Typical “gun”-looking scanners cost ~$100, but you can get a contact/swipey scanner for ~$15 (including shipping). The CueCat barcode scanner (pictured below) is available on eBay or www.cuecats.com. Make sure you purchase a modified version, or search for the simple mod instructions on Google. The CueCat is available in PS2 and USB.

Using and Maintaining the System

If you made it this far, I assume you can poke around and figure out how everything works. As for maintenance, I recommend periodically backing up the database by exporting it using PHPMyAdmin.

Here’s some documentation for your own use or for you to distribute. Please give credit where credit is due, and if you believe you can make improvements, please do so and drop me a note. :o)

Instructions for Use and Maintenance of Library Electronic Catalog (PDF)

Psshhh c’mon, man… that’s so cliche. :o|

I tried this one doing the “inking” in Illustrator, then the coloring in Photoshop. Mmm… I didn’t like that heheh. I still don’t have a really satisfactory way of drawing comics. I like the scalability of Illustrator but there are some things that are simpler in Photoshop… I’m no expert in either. :o\

Materials Needed

• (1) 1/4 sheet of standard (letter) paper
• (1) ~2″ piece of tape

Construction

1. With the quarter-sheet of paper oriented in “landscape” mode (as opposed to “portrait”), fold the sheet along its horizontal axis (the “long way”) and crease.
   
2. Fold the folded piece of paper along its vertical axis, like a book, and crease.
   
3. Again, fold the twice-folded piece of paper along its vertical axis, like a book, and crease.
   
4. Tape closed the opening opposite the “spine”.

To store your earbud cord

1. Slip your finger between the middle layers of paper and squeeze the sides to form an opening, forming a somewhat tube.
2. Thread the earbuds through the tube. This may need to be done one bud at a time.
   
3. Wrap the cord along the vertical axis, between the two earbuds, until you’ve reached the end of the cord.
4. Store the bundle in a place it won’t be jostled around too much.

Congratulations. You have a fully functional Poor Man’s Earbud Cord Wrap. Standard Edition.

Deluxe Edition

The Standard Edition is usually suitable enough to prevent tangling, and it usually stays wrapped if you’re storing the earbuds somewhere that doesn’t get tossed around too much. However, if you want to be baller and you have a pair of scissors and 15 seconds to spare, consider upgrading to the Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition makes sure the cord stays wrapped around the holder.

To upgrade, cut a small ~1/4″ slit in the “spine”, perpendicular to it, and a small “branch” slit off that so you can push out the “tab” to create a small hole, which I call the Cord Holder Hole.

After wrapping the cord around the holder, tuck a piece of the remaining cord into the Cord Holder Hole. As you can see, the Cord Holder Hole is a hole that holds cord. (That’s what she said.)

[Update]: Welcome Lifehacker readers! Be sure to check out my comics and subscribe to my RSS feed. If you’re interested in tips like the above, look through my other guides.

Yes. Yes, you do.

I assume you’re forced to flyer, you’ve got your stack of distributables, and you’re on Bruinwalk (if you’re at UCLA, otherwise your college equivalent of its flyering “gauntlet”). Suck it up and keep reading.

How NOT to Flyer

Flyering involves making an actual effort to hand out flyers. The typical attitude/excuse for sitting at the table instead of flyering (besides fear of rejection) is “if they’re really interested, they’ll approach me.” Think about it… how often does that happen? Number of flyers per hour you’ll hand out with that attitude: 0.75 (only because someone on Bruinwalk recognized you and stopped to chat and take a pity flyer… maybe.)

How to Flyer Like a Crazy Mofo

There are two keys to flyering like a crazy mofo:

• Make it personal.
• Be confident (or at least act confident)

Make it Personal

It’s easy ignoring someone spewing lines over a crowd. “Party this Saturday” or whatever. They’re not talking to you. You don’t care. You can ignore them. But.. say someone is looking right at you, establishing eye contact, clearly addressing you.. “Hey come out to our party this Saturday”… hey, they’re actually talking to you. The person flyering is much more likely to get a response, even if it’s a “no thanks” or a little head shake.

DO:

• Target individuals, not groups. Approach the individual as if you picked them out of the crowd and speak to them as if you were initiating a conversation.
• Flyer also between rush times when you can give passerbyers more individual attention. That’s also when a lot of people don’t bother to flyer since they figure there aren’t many people… fools.

Work the Approach: Don’t expect them to do any work. Most people avoid flyers, so what makes you think anyone would go through any trouble to obtain a flyer?

DO:

• Hold out the flyer conveniently close for them to grab without them having to exert extra labor. Yet you should not block their path or wave the flyer intrudingly close to them. That’s just rude and annoying.
• Make a little effort to physically approach them. Besides making it easier on them, I think if you have to go through a little trouble to take a step or two toward them, they might subconsciously feel obligated to return your favor and take the flyer.

Be Confident

CONFIDENCE. You’re not likely to take a flyer from someone who doesn’t seem like they believe in what they’re selling. Present your flyers not like “Umm… please take a flyer? Ow–.. my feelings.”.. but more like “YO B*%@H. Take a flyer cuz you know you wanna be part of this sh*%.. hellllz yeeeahhhh.” But don’t say that.

There’s always going to be those who intentionally avoid/ignore you (I used to be one). They keep walking, despite your hand being right in front of them. Oh they know you’re there. They hear you. They’re just too badass to even establish eye contact or decline politely. It happens. Move on.

There are those who never take flyers and a few who like to take flyers. This guide doesn’t guarantee 100% of the people you approach will take your flyer, but it helps maximize your effectiveness among the “undecided” crowd in between. With the right attitude and favorable conditions/material/cause, you can be a 100+/hr flyererer! :oD

Do YOU have strategies for flyering like a crazy mofo? Please share :o)

(A comic from Below the Mean):

There’s a post with some great advice on applying to a job you’re really interested in. The site’s focus is finance for young graduates, but really touches on the many aspects that make achieving your goals possible, such as eliminating barriers, starting early, and knowing you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room.

Read the article: How a pro does it — My friend Rachel made $1,000 an hour negotiating a new job