Sam's received some good comments with regard to employment.
I'd like to add one more point, one which leaped out at me
when I first saw his posting:

"Spelling counts."

When I see misuse of capitalization, poor structure and
misspelled words, I visualize a person who's at least poorly
organized, and quite possibly poorly educated. This is not
necessarily true; many talented, capable people are poor
spellers. The talented, capable, *successful* people also
know that their message will never get across without some
attention to the picky details.

One of our otherwise brilliant programmers had a recurring
problem with bugs in new software products. While structurally
sound, the code contained occasional misspellings of variable
names, which resulted in some rather arcane errors. This had
a direct effect on net productivity, since time-to-market isn't
just development alone....the product has to work, too!

In your quest for fame and riches, get a broad education. Don't
ignore those facets that may seem irrelevant to a technologist.
I spend more of my time communicating than I do actually
designing, and I'm nominally a full-time designer. Especially in
an era of email, the ability to communicate clearly in written
form is crucial to your success, and the rest of the world will
judge you on your written word, absent any other measure of your
skills.

iss like, nOt so kool if peepl cant unerstannd what yer riting
cuz ya kent spel gud. An Like comma's, and stuff, ar like rilly
usefull ya no?

Study hard!
Mark G. Forbes, R & D Engineer  |  Acres Gaming, Inc.    (541) 766-2515
KC7LZD                          |  815 NW 9th Street     (541) 753-7524 fax
forbesm@peak.org                |  Corvallis, OR 97330
http://www.peak.org/~forbesm
mforbes@acresgaming.com

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing
about."
---Anomalous