According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average person holds eleven jobs in her lifetime. I’m on my third just since grad school; if you add in the ones after high school (a series of receptionist gigs I sucked at) and during college (more of the same, with a sysadmin graveyard shift in the mix), I’m probably over the 11 mark already. It’s given me plenty of experience not just in doing my jobs, but in starting them as well. Below are tips I’ve learned from my experiences and from others’ that I hope can help you too:

• Come prepared. You want to hit the ground running, so learn a bit on your own before you get there. Look around for books, articles, and blogs on your new employer (or your new industry). Ask your future boss to recommend more.
• First day? Show up on time. Notice I say “on time,” not “early.” You might be inclined to arrive ahead of schedule, but you’ll only throw off the first-day schedule of HR, office tour, and paperwork. Speaking of paperwork, bring everything with you they’ll need to process your employment (ID and social security card), payment (blank check), and ID badge (big smile). Dress a little more nicely than you would for a normal workday. If it’s a casual office, you can break out the patched jeans tomorrow.
• Get a mentor. If your company has an official mentorship program, take advantage of it. If not, make your own: Find someone you can take to lunch and coffee and ask all the dumb and gossipy questions you want, someone who will answer you honestly and discreetly. I recommend you find a mentor outside your department—best to keep the hairy stuff away from the people you work closely with.
• Don’t talk too much. We’ve all been in meetings with that one person who won’t shut up: he talks when he has nothing substantive to add and asks questions to show how smart he is. Don’t be that person. There’s a temptation, when you’re new, to show that you can contribute, but if you’re not actually contributing, keep quiet.
• Be eager, but not too eager. This is a tough one. You want to take on every project that comes your way at first. You don’t have to, and you shouldn’t. If you overextend yourself, you’ll wind up behind and overwhelmed. Better to go smaller at first, set reasonable expectations and then exceed them.

How many jobs have you had? What do you do when you start a new job? Do you have any tips to add?

When thinking about the latest gadgets, you consider, among other things, whether the cool features are worth the price, right? But some of those features make it so convenient to keep spending money that it drives the price up beyond what you might have considered.

We’re not really gadget heads in my house. Usually not worth the money to have the latest thing, we figure. Still, my husband recently acquired an iPad, and I was an early Kindle adopter back in 2008.

Admittedly, I bought my kindle out of wrath one day, when my 45-minute train commute was delayed by over two hours. I was grumpy, hungry, and so not in the mood for whatever tech-heavy computer science book I had brought with me. During the drawn-out conclusion of a long, cranky day, I wanted to read about shopaholics or vampires or something. So when I (eventually) got home that night, I ponied up the $400, figuring it was worth it in my—and, frankly, my husband’s—sanity.

Both the kindle and iPad in our house have found sneaky ways to get our money, though. They make it so easy! On the kindle, you search the bookstore just as you do on Amazon. Find a book you like? Click “purchase” and it appears. Oh, but there’s a bestseller you’ve been wanting to read. And one that’s relevant to you work, so, really, you need that one. Before you know it, that’s $30 down the drain.

Likewise, the iPad, even though it has many free apps, enables you to spend money without blinking an eye. My husband is addicted to a game called Duel: Blade & Magic, which was free. But he can upgrade his armor or buy a pet for a buck, and it’s all hooked up to his iTunes account. Easy.

In time, I’m quite sure, we will arrive at a day when you can simply think about a book or a game and, boom, its digital self is in your hot little hands. I might be doomed.

Are you a gadget head? Have you encountered these easy-spending conveniences? How have you handled them?

If you’ve been in science and technology for a while, you know how our conferences look. In my experience, conferences are done by rote: Panels, poster sessions, paper presentations, small-group breakouts. Awkward lunchtime conversations with near-strangers, relaxed happy-hour conversations with your new best friends, and coffee that runs out the next morning when you still need it. But what truly distinguishes scientific conferences—to me, anyway—is the sharp demonstration that we really do work in a male-dominated field.

Academic or industry, tech or science, every old plenary session in every old convention center or hotel meeting room is replete with men. Of course they are. Our conferences reflect our industry, and with only approximately 23% of computer science bachelor’s degrees going to women, it’s not surprising that so few of us are represented as attendees, speakers, and session leaders.

There are exceptions, though, among them the Aspiration Nonprofit Software Development Summit, which I attended for the first time this year. The summit brings together developers, nonprofit staffers, and volunteers working on the intersection of technology and social justice.

I’m not sure of the exact gender spread, but there were certainly far more women than you typically see at a technology conference. An unconference with many sessions scheduled on the fly, women stepped up to lead discussions, present projects, and give reports.

My first realization that this experience would be atypical came right after registration, during the most awkward part of any conference: drinking coffee and awkwardly introducing yourself to strangers. Despite the protestations of my inner introvert, I struck up conversations with five or six people, including four women. A coincidence? A random clustering of women in one corner? A sweep of the room told me otherwise. The women were all over the place.

Does greater representation of women change a conference? It does for me. It’s encouraging to see so many women at any tech-related event. What do you think?