apotter's blog

It is week 7, and we have spent this week editing and proofreading our draft which we turned in on Monday. Again, all of our communication has been by e-mail. Google Docs made editing and revising our white paper a breeze. I am a lot more comfortable with Google Docs and working over the internet with others as a team. For our final draft, we each took a run through and proof read the white paper - then resaved the paper as Rev1, Rev2, and so on. This method proved very beneficial, and we could see what had been changed and how much better the paper began to look.

Group 3 has decided to do the white paper on Google Docs and the possible use for Subaru of Indiana Automotive, Inc. We have discussed many of the possibilities of Google Docs and it's benefits and uses at Subaru. I am currently doing an internship at Subaru this Summer so I am exploring uses and brainstorming.

White papers, to me, are reports/summaries of a subject or idea where basic to advanced information is shared to the reader. White papers can be read as a whole or read in chunks (reading only what the reader is interested in learning). The idea of white papers is new to me although I have experience with certain sections. For example, the introduction and the executive overview type sections are all extremely similar to what everyone has experience writing for lab reports, book summaries, etc.

[I have posted this under our group's wiki as well.]
CNET Networks, Inc. 2008
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9732473-2.html

So far, for project 3, my group has contacted each other. We are struggling with figuring out how we will break the project up. My group, group 3, will primarily contact each other and work through parts of the project via e-mail. It will be different and interesting doing a group project through e-mail. Thank you!

I have attached a draft of my resume and cover letter. Please critique these!!! Thank you!

The readings about cover letters were similar to the readings about resumes - most of the information I had already heard or known about, but there were a couple of new items that will be helpful. One particular item that I found interesting was that you can apply for a job, even if you have none of the requirements for it. There have been numerous times where I passed on applying for a job, that I would have loved or been great for, just because I did not meet or have all of the requirements. It makes sense to go ahead and apply anyway, but it is still hard to do and feel confident about.

I have attached my T letter. I will be appying for a job that I found on Career Builder. The job title is 'manufacturing engineer.' I would be applying for this job if I was closer to graduation. It is with a tier 1 automotive supplier, and I have spent three semester with Toyota and this Summer with Subaru. My experiences parallel this job and its requirements well. The T letter process is a bit strange just because I have never done it before. It definitely helps though, and it is nice to list things out that you would normally have to come up with during an interview.

I guess the most interesting reading from the list of "Read _________"' 's was the "A Glimpse and a Hook" segment. I actually found it very interesting to get a feel for what goes through the resume reader's mind. It was a bit strange that the reader (or the author of the reading) googled the person's name that was on the resume - I found that strange, but hey maybe people actually do that. It was definitely true that they glanced at the companies noted on the resume and asked themselves, "do I know this company?" I do that also when I proof read resumes.

The Yakima Raptor bike rack is a solid piece of bicycle hardware and makes for easy, convenient transport of any road bike or mountain bike. Mounting the rack to a vehicle and then throwing a bike on it are not as simple at first. It took me a while to get used to all the steps required to keep everything screwed in tight and sturdy. This is why I chose to write instructions for the rack. My fiancé volunteered to do the usability test. She has been biking many times with me before but never actually used my bike rack; that has always been my part of packing up for a trip.