Career Cruising

http://www.careercruising.com/ is a great website. It helps anyone find a suitable career. Suitable as is customized to fit the likes, dislikes and skills of a person. If you're a student not knowing yet which direction you want to go, or an adult that's still not sure of what they really want to do for a living or someone needing or wanting a change of career, this website will help you figure things out. It might show you things you already knew or totally surprise you with career paths you wouldn't have even thought about.

I never saw myself a teacher type of person but last year I was working as a teacher aid (classroom assistant). It was very different to the other hands on, physically active jobs that I've previously had. But I got into this job and found it was a great position to be in. I had varied tasks, from sitting and watching to showing and teaching and it was really fun. I would definitely do this job again, but I wouldn't make it my lifetime career. It just doesn't fulfill enough of my needs. I found this out by answering all of the questions on the careercruising.com website. My closest career match was Crafts person (someone making a living from selling their handmade crafts) and that is so true. If I liked sales and retail more this would be something for me, but I really dislike doing the marketing and selling, it puts a damper on my mood to craft. My dream careers lay more in the skilled trades and arts & design world, like Model Making or Jewelry Design & Repair.

It was a very helpful website and I'm going to advise and help people (who are unsure of their career) find the right path for them.

December 8th, 2009

Today at the cap site I first updated the St. Isidore de Bellevue website. You may now view the community news letter at http://www.stisidoredebellevue.com/ .
The webtrain session about career cruising was also interesting. I had almost forgotten about that service. I had signed up for it earlier this year or about 1 year ago when I was working for the school in town here. It was quite interesting to see what careers suited me after I had answered all the questionaires. I think I will be redoing the questionaire, because our likes and dislikes sometimes change as do our interests, skills and goals, so I'm curious to find out if there are some new careers that apply to me.

This is also my 3rd blog of the day. I was so busy in the past week that I didn't get the chance to share my days' experience with you. I've been trying all afternoon to upload some pictures to the computer to share with you my Christmas Decor... but I couldn't get it to work and couldn't get the drivers to install, and I couldn't find the CD that came with this old camera, so next time I'll try a different camera. Hopefully that'll work.

Service Canada sends someone to town here every 2nd tuesday of the month. So today a new lady came to assist people that needed help with government services. It turned out to be someone I went to school with, I hadn't seen her in AGES! Anyways...she sets up her lap top and portable printer in the room behind me. I helped her hook up to the Internet with one of our Cables and later helped her print out the dates for the next time she comes. So I guess I'll be seeing her on the 2nd tuesday of the upcoming months, untill she goes on maternity leave.

We are also starting to plan the January News Letter, trying to come up with a new name too. since most of us are taking some time off between christmas and new years.

So we have alot of work to do before the Holidays really start.

Put your nose to the grind stone and give it your all to then relax and have fun with family and friends during Christmas.

Getting into the Christmas Spirit

Getting into the Christmas Spirit has been a little tough this year,

there was no snow, it didn't feel like winter and I was just too busy with my 3 jobs. But then sometimes you just have to get things done, like decorating, baking, shopping and stuff like that.

So I started with the decorating last week here at our CAP site.

The room behind me is a fair size room where there are banquets, gatherings, art displays and more social activities.

The manager asked if I could take care of the decorations. Well I just jumped at the opportunity. I love decorating and making things look nice and it's a great way to get into the holiday spirit.

Wednesday evening until Friday afternoon, I was all into the X-Mas Decor. I started by pulling out all the boxes I could find that had Christmas in or on it. I wanted to see what I all had to work with, so I could make a plan of what could be used and where. I found lots of that green life-like garland with lights in them only to find out that almost 1/2 the lights didn't work. But never fail, I found some extra bulbs and went courageously on to try to fix them. Towards the end of the 3rd long L-O-N-G piece of garland, I was starting to get frustrated and fed up of switching little tiny bulbs. I must say, it didn't go so bad but if someone saw me working on those lights, they would've thought I was a little loopy. But hey, I had the Christmas carols going on the stereo, had my Santa hat on and it was all good. Friday afternoon I cleaned up the decorations that weren't used and set up some table and chairs for a Christmas supper party that a group of 20 had reserved.

It turned out beautiful, I felt so proud and the feedback was very positive. I felt like I had done my part to bring some Christmas Cheer to this place and to the people who visited the Center.

And the Holiday Spirit continues to spread

with a smile & warm greetings from the heart.

Photo slide show

Photo slide shows are fun to look at and fun to make, as long as you know the basics of working with a slide show maker, like Microsoft Power Point. In November I had someone ask me to help them make a Photo Slide Show for the dad's 50th birthday. They wanted to have lots of pictures to show highlights of his life, from childhood to young adulthood, to parent to grandparent.

So with the brand new photocopier/scanner machine that the Francophone center BDS got for the Bellevue Cultural Center, we were able to mass scan photos, crop and save them using IrfanView and then add them to slides in Microsoft Power Point.

I think the longest process is scanning and making the pictures ready to put into the slide show. I've been using IrfanView for about 10 years now. I find that it's quick & easy to use, you download it for FREE from http://www.irfanview.com/. I showed my MOM how to use it and that's all she uses to edit her photos (and she's got TONS of them).

After cropping and resizing the pictures and saving them all to a folder, the really fun part starts. Making it PRETTY!

There are pre-made themes that are applied automatically to all the slides, we picked a suitable one and went with that to make it easier. You can also create your own theme and apply it to all slides or switch it up as you go. This process takes more time and experience though. I find the easiest way to add photos is to have the folder open in a separate window and then dragging the photos (one or more at a time) into the slide. We also added some effects to the photos, like a shadow or a border. Together we made 100 pages of photo slides to represent his life with family and friends and his fun and hobbies.

I also went to the 50th birthday party for a quick hello and Happy Birthday, and the family really enjoyed the slide show. It made me feel really good to have been able to give them a gift in this way.

December 1st, 2009

So today is the first day of December, there's no snow and barely any Christmas decorations up. Where's the Christmas spirit? Did the Grinch take it away? Or is Christmas just late this year... like everything else.

But today we are printing the December news letter for our Francophone region and it's all Christmasy! Yay, we're only 1 day late. (supposed to have been done before december)

I also helped a few poeple make photocopies this morning.
so I had a couple people come today.
It's a nice day today.