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Hi, Kevin--
Sorry I've taken so long to reply to your Apr. 9 message, but neither your response (nor my original post) showed up in my digest mailings. I just saw it in the archives.
Re: learning new tools & skills while getting paid for every hour worked...
>Oh, you buy the tools, with your own money and teach
yourself... on whose hours? What? You mean you fudge the books so that you can charge general learning time to some poor company's project?
I don't advocate fudging the books. I'm usually able to learn tools on company time, WHILE being productive. On one of my early tech writing assignments a supervisor who was impressed with my writing & training skills said, "Why don't you work with Michele on the online help?" So I became a competent Robohelp user while producing good work for the client *and* getting paid.
Obviously this won't always be practical, but I've been able to do it more than once.
Sometimes I've spent a lot of time at home learning an application, and I didn't get paid for those hours. But, hey, I wanted to add Adobe Acrobat, HTML, Framemaker, etc., to my bag of tricks anyhow, so it was no big sacrifice.
One client agreed to pay me my hourly rate when I went to a training class, and the agency agreed to pay the tuition! (I left the assignment before taking advantage of the deal, but it would have been a win-win-win, because if I'd gone to the class I would have stuck around long enough to put the learning to good use for the client.)
I worked 2-1/2 months of unpaid overtime in one year as a full-time employee. No way have I ever had to spend that much unpaid time learning new technologies in one year as a contractor.
>Do "dang furriners" still *need* green cards?
I know nothing about that, but here's a URL that purports to offer answers to Canada-to-U.S. immigration questions: http://www.grasmick.com/canimfaq.htm
As with all legal matters, of course, you'll need to double- and triple-check this information, but maybe that will give you a start.
Good luck!
---
Tom Campbell
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"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
--Mark Twain
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