Pay equality

Posted by Lizzie on Sep-5-2008

There’s a lot of talk about women’s issues this election cycle. Thanks to Hillary Clinton, and now Sarah Palin, we’re back in the spotlight. In that vein, Congress is pressing for a revote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which failed to pass previously. McCain has come out again it:

“I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what’s being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems,” the expected GOP presidential nominee told reporters. “This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system.”

I’ve recently engaged in a half-hearted IT job search - in anticipation of my eventual graduation from the Tech program. There seems to be a little available, but I’ve heard that women are not treated favorably in the IT industry. It would please me, and thousands of other women, tremendously if this actually became law. Would I know that my male counterparts were making more than me? Probably not. But this act would give me recourse should I find out about a pay discrepancy after the fact. As a woman hoping to work in a male-dominated field, I would feel just a little better knowing I had a safety net.

There was some talk that this law isn’t necessary. I beg to differ. I worked with a company (unrelated to the tech field) that cut me a mystery check. When I inquired to what the purpose of the check was, I was told that it was to make up for a pay difference between me and my male counterparts. I had no idea that the men were making that much more per hour than I was, but there was a lawsuit and the settlement agreement was that this company would pay the hourly difference to each female for whatever period of time they agreed to (I think it was 3 months, even though I’d been there for over a year at that point). I left that company not long afterward, but my eyes had been opened. The reasoning for the lower pay was that women are mothers and so are prone to miss work because of their sick children. Men, on the other hand, are more reliable and should be rewarded. Really?

At a time when a major political party has nominated a self-proclaimed “hockey mom” to be vice president, there should be no more “she should get less because she’s a mom”. This woman is seeking a job while parenting 5 children (and potentially helping parent a grandchild) so the reason listed above would apply to her and her pay should be cut significantly. Right? No. Wrong. Her husband will be able to tend to the children while she runs for office and he can tend to the children while she continues to govern Alaska (except that he’s got a full-time job plus an extra job on the side in the summer, but that’s not this issue). It’s only fair that the rest of American women enjoy the same equality in pay as the women who govern them.

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Some Basics

Posted by Lizzie under coding, tutorial

I’ve noticed around that some people don’t know how to use html in Blogger comments. Hopefully this tutorial will help with that.

Basic HTML

The code in brackets must surround the word or words that you want to format. So pay particular attention to the code in brackets. Make sure that all of your code has a closing bracket which is marked with a ” / “.

Hyperlink
<a href=”http://Put your link here”>Nice, short text</a>

*Notice the space between “a” and “href”. There are no other spaces in the code.
* Put <a href=” THEN copy and paste your entire url including the “http://” put it right after the quotes. Then put another set of quotes after your url. Finish with this : “>Nice, short text</a>

Bold
<strong>Put your text here</strong>

Italicized
<em>Put your text here</em>

This is as far as we need to go with this tutorial, because Blogger comments don’t accept any other tags (brackets). If you don’t know HTML and would like to learn a little more (for your own site, perhaps) you should visit W3schools, it’s free and easy.

BTW, that link looks like this coded:
<a href=”http://www.w3schools.com”>W3schools</a>

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Sep
02

Back to School

Posted by Lizzie under school

School’s started back up for me. I’ve changed my degree program to Bachelor’s of Science in Technology with a minor in Computer Technology. All of the classes I’ve taken so far qualify, so I don’t have to change anything else. I do have to take some more intense courses- trigonometry, for instance. That could be a little daunting. I don’t think I’m looking forward to that.

As it is I’m taking Introduction to Website Technology, General Psychology and Developmental Mathematics. I think that pretty much makes my plate full. I’m going to have to find a groove so that my grades don’t suffer. My goal is to be able to work from home and make some serious money doing it. That requires a degree. And a Technology degree will make me more money than anything else I’ve found so far. I’ll be able to pick up some independent contractor jobs and not have to leave the house to do it. That’ll be fantastic. Plus I love computers. I’m really looking forward to my computer forensic class. That will be really interesting, I think.

As it is, when I find my groove, I’ll write more. For now, it’ll come as time allows. Wish me luck.

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Aug
23

Online surveys

Posted by Lizzie under work from home

I’ve seen a lot of stuff around forums and on blogs about getting paid to do online surveys. People post their referrer links and brag about how much money they’ve made. Of course, I got curious. I’m a work-at-home mom trying to make some extra dough. And if I can do that between other gigs just by picking yes/no/maybe then I’m all for it.

So, I signed up for a couple. Surveysomething and Dollarsomething, I think. It was three but I can’t remember the third one. For the Surveysomething, they would send me these great offers. I could make money if I qualify (by answering a short survey). I did probably about twenty short qualification surveys, each consisting of about 5-10 minutes of my life. I qualified for ZERO. So, I finally unsubscribed. Don’t worry, though, I still get offers from them - even though I don’t want them. Isn’t that great?

The Dollarsomething was a little different. I signed in and was sent to an “offers” page. Here they had lists of surveys and what each one of them pays. It seemed simple enough. I did one initially, just to test the system. The next day I was 50¢ richer. And I was thrilled. Back I went to do a few more. I had an eye on the ones that paid a whole dollar. I did about 10 surveys. Let me tell you about these “surveys” before I go any further.

Each one of them asked the same questions. “Do you know how to lower your interest rates?” “Are you interested in a home based business?”. They were ALL yes/no questions pertaining to one ad or another. For 10 minutes you click the same questions reworded and decline the same invitations to sign up for this thing or that thing. Over and over and over. And if you don’t click ‘yes’ on something you find yourself trapped in an endless loop of CRAP. But I was persistent. I kept clicking no. I think about 20 minutes passed for one before I saw the sunlight again. Worth a dollar?? I don’t know.

You’ve reached the end. And every single one of these offers demands that you choose three search terms to view ads for before they’ll give you your “big winnings”. So, you pick three and you are forced to look through 5-8 pages of ads before you get to the end, where they try to trick you into getting back into the vortex and doing it all again.

Did I mention that I did that 10 times?

So, I followed the instructions, suffered through endless ads and asinine questions. Where’s my money? For the work I did I was paid…*drumroll*… 75¢. So, not only was my time WASTED, my computer infected with adware, and my spam box (on a throw away account) stuffed to the brim these idiots refused to believe I made the effort. I’ve come to the conclusion the people paying you for taking the “paid online survey” are probably the same people who make up the “paid online survey”. Unfortunately, too many people really believe this crap is good business and work really hard to scrape those pennies together.

The third one was like the first, but they unsubscribed me when I sent them the email asking for such. They could be legit, but I don’t know because I never qualified.

I say it’s not worth it. There are plenty of legitimate ways to make some pennies online. There’s no reason to develop carpal tunnel and blurry vision for these survey pennies. You’ll have to do too many of those “surveys” to even make it past the $10 mark. Pitiful.

They will get you to think you can make some money, but the real money is made through the referral links. Which means you have to con some poor people into jumping into a waste of time and effort. That’s just sad and, quite frankly, a tad disturbing. Someone made 5% of my $1.25 from Dollarsomething. Unfortunately she’s also lost my trust and esteem. The next time I see a link under her name I won’t click it, because she KNOWS what those surveys are like. But she chose to sugar coat it to con other people. For shame.

Now I know.

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