I just read a post over at Slashdot that got me thinking. It said: "I want to hear from readers who have quit jobs or turned down offered jobs because it was not what they wanted to do. Why did you do it? Was it ethics, ambition, pride, or disgust? And how did it turn out? Did you get to do what you wanted to do, are you still looking, or did you come back begging for another chance?"

I’ve never quit a job for those reasons, though there are a few I had where I probably should have. I’m just a loyal dog, what can I say? But I have turned down jobs. Most notably, while I was waiting on pins and needles to hear if I landed this dream job I have now with The Meetings Group, I was offered a technical editor position with a computer company. The salary was more than three times what this job paid, but I would have had to commute 45 minutes, work in a cube farm, and deal day in and day out with material that did not, as my mother-in-law would say, "float my boat." So I held out for what I really wanted, and thankfully, I got it. No regrets whatsoever.

I’d love to hear your stories (you can comment anonymously, if you like, by not filling in the top fields in the comments box).

Wow, this is really something–but what exactly to make of it, I’m not sure. Southwest Airlines has come up with a new program it calls "Ding," which will let you download a little icon that will ding whenever the airline has a hot sale going on so you won’t miss out on any great deals.

While it could end up saving you some money, I don’t see anywhere that you can customize it (maybe you can and I just didn’t find that part of it). If you could ask to be alerted just for flights from Manchester, N.H., to Las Vegas on a certain date, sure, that’d be great. But not to have the thing dinging all the time for deals you could never take.

Well, the big cheeses at Microsoft seem to like it, anyway, according to the Scobleizer.

Wow, this is really something–but what exactly to make of it, I’m not sure. Southwest Airlines has come up with a new program it calls "Ding," which will let you download a little icon that will ding whenever the airline has a hot sale going on so you won’t miss out on any great deals.

While it could end up saving you some money, I don’t see anywhere that you can customize it (maybe you can and I just didn’t find that part of it). If you could ask to be alerted just for flights from Manchester, N.H., to Las Vegas on a certain date, sure, that’d be great. But not to have the thing dinging all the time for deals you could never take.

Well, the big cheeses at Microsoft seem to like it, anyway, according to the Scobleizer.

The U.S. Supreme court heard arguments yesterday on whether the ADA extends to cruise ships that call at U.S. ports. Here is a link to an article about it in the New York Times (free registration req’d). While I think it’s a crying shame that all countries don’t require facilities to accommodate people with disabilities, I have to agree with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is quoted in the article as saying: "You are in effect saying, ‘The U.S. rules the world.’ No matter what the other ports say, U.S. law is going to govern."

It’s a difficult argument,though, nothing cut-and-dried about it. And there’s also the money factor: U.S. Cruise lines save huge amounts of money by flagging their ships under foreign countries. On the flip side, it would cost them huge amounts of money to retrofit to make their ships ADA-compliant. I’ll be watching to see how this one plays out–and how it ends up affecting cruise meetings.