Profile For Keith J.

Keith,

I'm in a similar situation. I've been self employed for the last 5 years and wondering the same thing. I'll be interested in hearing how things go for you.

Brett: As always, great insightful input. Thanks. I guess I'll start pulling together all of my 1040s from the last few years and making copies!

Hi Daniel,

I haven't started the process yet (for other reasons, it will probably be some months before I would be ready) so unfortunately I have nothing to share. But it sounds like your situation is slightly different since I'm not claiming any type of employment since my last job. The tax record thing is interesting, there are a couple years for which I didn't even file because I had no income or withholdings, but now I'm thinking it might be a good idea to file retroactively for those years just to have complete records. Anyway, I suppose I should call some recruiters and see what they say about my situation.

Anyway, good luck, and let us know what happens.

- K.

Actually, I hadn't thought of that. The main reason I want them visible is so that people know they exist in the first place. Putting them inside of each topic instead of on the main page might just do the trick! Great idea! I'll have to ponder that a bit.

Well, like I mentioned, I don't think it's that bad the way it is so if you decide to leave it that way I think it will work.

Yeah, I wrote the code myself. I've gotten to where I can't stand trying to customize pre-packaged software anymore. A lot of times it's so much nicer to start from scratch and build something exactly the way you want it from the ground up. There are a number of features I haven't built into it yet but it's getting the job done the way it is.

Yeah, nice job. I don't have a lot of experience with forums, but I imagine it's a lot easier to have it the way you want if you write it yourself, assuming you have the time and skills. What is the back end stuff written in?

A whil;e back I volunteered to help out a forum where I'm member, and they use vbulletin software, so I have some experience with that and with php. But I'm mostly a programmer and I never liked having to do the front end design stuff.

Nice feature. I know a lot of questions get asked over and over on forums because people don't like to spend the time to search old topics, so that should help.

I do think the tag "buttons" make the topic list page harder to read, although it's not too bad. I was going to suggest that you put them at the bottom of each topic page, but I guess it's nice to be able to see the tags for a topic without having to go to in and read it. Could they be links with smaller text? Then they would tend to stay on one line instead of having topics with more tags take up more room. But I guess a lot of people use smart phones or other small screen devices these days, so the larger size probably works better with those.

BTW, what software do you use for this forum, is it all custom code?

Congratulations Kathy.

I'm curious, what are the usual reasons that people get sent home?

My question is, why would a company encourage people to lease if they're likely to get in to that situation? That can't be good for the company either.

Thanks Scott, that's a good point. I had thought about it and decided I wanted to go to a non-company sponsored school so I was worried that I would go through it all and end up with no chance of being hired. But I guess it's worth applying for company sponsored training instead of giving up on the idea.

Hi all, I'm another new person thinking about a second career as a driver. I've read some of the threads here and I know people with work history problems are usually told that it's a problem, but there may be ways around it. But I thought I'd put mine out there and see what people have to say.

Anyway, my problem is that I have no work history. Well, that's not quite true - I worked as a software developer for 20 years, then just decided one day to walk away from it, and I haven't worked since (6 years now). So I suppose I could describe myself as "retired", although I never intended for it to be permanent. Anyway, the obvious question is how big of a problem is it? If the issue is that companies will look at it and say "this lazy so and so obviously doesn't want to work", well, I can understand that, and even though I know I'd be a good employee, I guess there's no way around that except to find some other job and maybe try again in a few years.

On the other hand, if the issue is just that it looks suspicious because I might be trying to hide what I was doing, then that's still a bit of a problem because I'm a loner with literally no friends or acquaintances, but I might be able to come up with people who know what I was doing during the time in question.

Any advice or opinions?