Category: Personal

It’s a new year and time for some changes …

Posted on By Andrew Comeau
It’s a new year and time for some changes …

Listen to this post or continue reading below. (Audio provided by ElevenLabs.) This site has seen a lot of changes since I first started it in March 2000, just as I have. It started out as Drewslair.com, a purely personal website where I talked about some of my tech work and did a bit of…

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Featured, Personal, Services, Site Info

On Success …

Posted on By Andrew Comeau

This is my latest Ice Breaker speech that I delivered to the Early Bird Ocala Toastmasters group on November 3, 2018.  Toastmasters is a great way to develop your public speaking and leadership skills and there’s probably at least one group in your local area.  Check out ToastMasters.org for more information on the club and where you can find it in your area.

What is success?

You can tell a lot about a person by how they answer that and whether they are actually trying to achieve their definition of success. Not everyone defines it personally for themselves.

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Careers, Personal

The Accidental Teacher

Posted on By Andrew Comeau

The following is the text from my speech to the Ocala Early Bird Toastmasters on May 19, 2018.  

My name is Andrew Comeau and I am … a public school teacher?

I say it that way because It’s been a study in irony for me. If you told me just a couple years ago that I’d be teaching a nighttime programming class for vocational students, I’d have laughed. When others suggested I should be a teacher, I said it wasn’t for me.

Then when I was told that a new programming course was needed in Ocala and I had the choice of designing and teaching it myself or hoping someone else did it well, I automatically said Yes.

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Careers, Education, Personal

Unplugging to Reconnect – The Technology Sabbath

Posted on By Andrew Comeau 1 Comment on Unplugging to Reconnect – The Technology Sabbath

Update – August 2024

Ironically, I thought this article would be a good test for NotebookLM’s new Audio Overview podcast feature. You can check out the podcast based on this article and other sources or move straight on to the article below.

This A.I.-generated podcast was created using NotebookLM based on information provided in this and other pages. The content has been reviewed and approved as an accurate reflection of the ideas in this article.

It Started With a Game …

By now, you’re probably familiar with Pokemon Go, the game where people search for Pokemon characters around town with their smartphones. In 2015, I played a forerunner of this game called Ingress. The basic idea was the same – run around town accessing game spots, collect digital items, compete with other players for territory, etc..

At first, the game seemed like a great idea. I figured it would get me out for some desperately needed exercise and it did. I found out some of my favorite walking routes had a bunch of game spots I could access while  walking and I was out there at 6 a.m. every morning … willingly! It was a miracle!

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Articles, Personal

On unpaid overtime …

Posted on By Andrew Comeau

From TheCodist.com ….

Why I Don’t Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

From the article …

“In many countries working overtime is unusual and unpaid overtime is rare or may even be illegal. People value having a life outside of work and the thought of slaving away for their employer for nothing is unimaginably stupid to them. Yet we in the US (and in many parts of Asia as well) often think nothing of it.”

A few years ago, I left a company where my boss actually told us that the company felt it could ask us to work as many hours as necessary because we were salaried. He also said that if we weren’t working overtime, we weren’t busy. At the same time, the department maintained a time logging system and procedures that made it so painful to declare hours that it virtually ensured the records wouldn’t be complete.

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Careers, Personal
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