Friday, May 11, 2012

The Ten Happiest Jobs - Forbes - why IT jobs are hated?

I've found recently the following article:
The Ten Happiest Jobs - Forbes

What can be for some people suprising, ont the list of the most hated jobs are many IT jobs: web developer, technical specialist, IT director... Because of high salary this jobs are seen by many as the dream job, however for this big money a high price is to be paid.

This jobs are very stressful and you spend usually the whole day sitting at the desk and starring at the screen, which is both disastrous for health and eyes. IT specialists are usually very creative people, which wish to create something new and important, and unfortunatelly most of IT jobs is doing task which requires copypasterism and reading documentation about magic switches in someone's magic framework that doing something creative and innovative. This is mostly visible in web frameworks, where there are very many things written and most of the job is configuring and modifying someone's job. DB developers are in better position.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Exporting contacts to gmail


Google claims Gmail can import contacts from various programs, which is working because they accept 'various common names' for data fields. However, when I've wanted to import contacts from Excel spreadsheet, I've found out that it isn't as easy as it should.

I've named fields according to 'common sense' notation: first name, last name, name, e-mail, phone. E-mail got imported, name also, but other fields where added to 'notes'. I've tried to google out to which names the import react but I've found no tip. It seems that Google simply have implemented support for various popular formats, so if you want to prepare your own CVS file, you should apply to one of this formats. I've gone this way, using Gmail contacts export format. E-mail fields is named "E-Mail 1 - Value", phone - "Phone 1 - Value" (you can use numbers from 1 to 3). Additionally you need to specify e-mail and phone type: "Mobile" for cellular phone, "Other" for other, "Home" for 'home' email.

First I've formatted in such way the phone and it got imported. But when I've formatted e-mail, e-mail got imported, but not the phone. What was the cause? I was specifying value first, then type, and it seems google's import mechanism needs a bit stricter format. So finally, the works-for-me solution was:
  • Given Name - the first name
  • Family Name - the surname
  • Name - the displayed name
  • E-Mail 1 - Type - "Home" (or "Other")
  • E-Mail 1 - Value - e-mail
  • Phone 1 - Type - "Mobile"
  • Phone 1 - Value - phone number
  • Notes - additional info about contact