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Snowy Monday

Today is a Federal holiday (thanks Presidents of the United States), so I don’t have to take leave I don’t have (thanks, MS).

Tomorrow, OTOH, and maybe Wednesday, too, are different stories.

Extra time, bad weather, and a lack of football, have provided me some time to think about a lot of things.

First, does anyone remember Apple’s Think Different campaign, which started around the time of Jobs’ return? To me, the first part of that slogan is important, operative. Maybe I’m old-fashioned that way.

Secondly, I’ve been struggling with the whole concept of “reducing customer confusion.” Somehow, that’s replacing the tired “customer value” in sales pitches. I heard it featured in an ad in a competing industry the other day. It continues in this advertiser’s spots, and it really bothers me.

Why?

I get the impression that “reducing customer confusion” is code for selling-the-customer-expensive-shit-he-doesn’t-want-or-need.

the customer is confused why you’d offer multiple price levels? So, offer fewere, and make sure the remaining offerings are more expensive!

*sigh*

Furthermore, you explicitly refrain from showing the customer what he actually does need, keeping him ignorant. You’re the expert, so whatever you recommend must be right, right?

Desire for simplicity

There’s a lot of days when I wish I could live like a normal human. I’d probably been going too hard, and my body seriously revolted against that a couple of weeks ago. As I’ve tried to get back on an even keel, I’ve struggled getting things right. Obviously, I did something wrong, because I’m out of work again, today, with muscles randomly cramping up.

But, with that, I decided not to subject myself to the unpleasantness that is work today. After the problems I had a few weeks ago, it’s better that I just not risk things when I’m having problems.

So, what to do…. Well, exciting stuff like 401K rollovers. And long for having a NetBSD environment to play around with again. This sums it up pretty well. Since 757.org went to the dark side that is loonix, I’ve been missing it.

Pfft.

What else can I do until I can get home this afternoon?

Shmoocon 2015 from afar part deux

Streamed this, notsomuch because I have a thing for girls named “Sarah,” but because the topic sounded interesting.

I understand where she’s going with her focus on employment subsequent to the programmers’ undergrad studies. Still, I’m a bit skeptical, considering what I’ve seen the past few years.

Because there’s so much broken code out in the wild, managers don’t seem at all interested in actually deploying anything that’d really fix the problems. Whether that reluctance is because change would require documentation rework, or because the application used busted-ass proprietary nonsense in the past is unimportant. “I’ve been doing this a long time.”

Ummhmm.

So much of what I see lately is simply maintenance on fundamentally broken systems; security has to be an afterthought. Nobody understands what it is that the systems or the code they run are supposed to do. Just keep them running exactly as they always have.

Fixing the undergraduate curriculum isn’t going to fix that. I don’t know what will, really.

NoJoMo 30

The end. Please free-write about what you’ve done this month, and the past year.

This month was going okay until I see a FB this morning that a friend with MS from the OD days had lost her husband unexpectedly. There’s just nothing I can say, really.

I don’t know that there’s a good way to describe this year, either. Things began with some hope of normalcy, albeit almost no money. I went to Shmoocon. Listened, wrote, participated. Got home, tried to enjoy the rest of a long weekend, went to work, and got laid off. This was after I went to Shmoocon following assurances that funding for my position was good through the rest of the year. I have no words for the people and companies responsible.

I still have a lot of things to offer, a lot of things I can do. Being cooped up in an office every day isn’t really one of those things. Considering that I’ve now finished this, writing is one of them.

I actually did take advantage of a “Black Friday” deal, in hopes of getting closer to that goal. Yesterday, for “Small Business Saturday,” I went and spent money at three local small businesses.

Yes, it was stuff I probably normally would have bought, anyway. A haircut and beard trim. Stuff from the pharmacy. A locally-brewed beer while I waited for dessert to-go.

Still, it’s a conscious rejection of cookie-cutter suburbia. I can’t think of a football game that’d make me want to stay at $wing_chain_restaurant longer. Barely-edible wings. Lousy beer. Sports. Yep, that’s the place for me!

My wife and I, as she’s been working on a paper about corporate finance shenanigans, have been discussing the excesses of Wall Street. The Occupy kids never quiet got it; Wall Street’s excesses were largely and the behest of their parents’ fund managers. Being able to keep investments in smaller companies offers so many possibilities. Not only to make money on those investments, but to support companies who act responsibly, and share the investors’ values.

Instead of meandering too much, I think I’m going to cut things off here. Four years of NoJoMo finished. A second Movember finished, and I’ll be keeping it through Christmas.

NoJoMo 25

Describe your travel plans for the next few months. Is there any destination you’re really excited about? Any you’re dreading?

I currently have no firm travel plans over the next couple of months. If I somehow manage to score a Shmoocon ticket, I will go to DC for that, and likely take my wife with me.

Otherwise, there’s nothing.

I don’t know why I asked if there was a dread-worthy trip. October seems like last year to me, now. Maybe dreading funeral trips for relatives who weren’t doing well at the time. Who knows?

At the same time, it feels like I’ve been on the road for months, now. I sleep at my mother’s place the night before I’m at my office, then figure out how to get home on nights when I don’t have work the next day.

For the money I’m earning, I couldn’t more strongly recommend against it.

The preceding missive was written as decompression, but it’s still true for the most part.

How the fuck did I wind up like I am? I don’t think I did anything wrong, but I clearly didn’t suck up to the right criminals. So I get cast aside, only to be drawn back in for a pittance.

It’s fine; I’m not the one in Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison.

Even more, I can be proud of the things I’ve done.

NoJoMo 24

Write a bit about why you’ve chosen to write this (and past) years. How many years have you been at it? Art you satisfied with what you’ve written this year? In past years?

I’ve chosen to write, because I think the physical act of doing it keeps me on schedule. With so few things in my life actually being in sync at this point, thi sis something. the concept of a “normal day” has eluded me, completely.

And I’m a bit okay wiht that. I really don’t ever want to get into a routine wiht what I’m doing now; this shit sucks,

Maybe it’s slightly hypocritical of me to say that, when what I’m trying to ram down unwilling throats at work is standardization. I also want to measure how long it takes someone to run through those procedures, and how many errors they make along the way.That’s doubly-threatening. First, that anyone would dare analyze what people are doing to do their jobs is taken as an affront. That they’re being critical because of process tedious

But I keep doing it because it will give me a small sense of accomplishment when I’m finished. What did you do this November? Oh, I grew a beard, and wrote every single day. I also didn’t outright quit a job I loathe. And you?

“We know the requirements.”
So fucking write them down. (And do you have a tapeworm?)

Sealing your fate, there, guy.

I apologize for the rambling. As I said yesterday, I’m really past my breaking point. I could whine about it being unfair, etc., but I won’t. At the end of the day..the sun goes down in the West. And I can look at myself in the mirror, in spite of my failing eyesight.

NoJoMo 23

Last weekend before the short week. For fellow U-S Americans, this is essentially a three-day week. Do you have any big plans for the remainder of week before tryphtophan poisoning?

As I recycled old memes in the prompt… (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/miss-teen-usa-south-carolina)

No, I’m not going to South Carolina, though I do have family there, and have been a few times.

So, what have I done this weekend? Pretty much exactly what I said I was going to do.

The next three days, I will try to continue doing the work I’ve been doing. I’m hoping for some clarity about what’s going on; big changes are afoot. I don’t think a lot of people understand them.

The bottom line is I’m still the FNG. The entrenched staff still haven’t wrapped their heads around how things are going to change. “It’s a customer requirement!!1!” Okay, who signed off on it. “Just do it.” To quote one of my wife’s songs, “fuck you very very much.”

To put it succinctly, I know different ways to do the things you want to do, but I can’t do it within the ball of dysfunction you’ve given me to work in. Yes, Agent Fleming, I know I shouldn’t end a sentence in a preposition.

In short, I’m really at my breaking point, don’t undestand what’s taking so long for something else, and am unwilling to do anything untoward — to GTFO of my current situation, or to make people happy by doing what I know, and can show, is wrong.

Maybe I’m a sucker.

NoJoMo 22

November 22nd is a big day for a graying segment of the population; calculate your age for that particularly bad day in Dallas, and describe the most important President of your lifetime.

I was -16 when Kennedy was assassinated. So, biologically, half of me existed. The other half wouldn’t be produced until years later. The current President was only a year old. This has little significance for probably the majority of Americans today. It’ll be less and less relevant as time goes on.

As for the most important President of my lifetime, I keep going back to George HW Bush. More and more I realize how little the Boomer Presidents have actually done for the country. The political unpopularity of some of the smart fiscal things he did, along with the “little Admiral,” cost him re-election in 1992, unfortunately. I actually work with people now who were born after he was President.

The more I see, the more disgusted I get, lately.

NoJoMo 21

What are your plans for the evening following what was surely a long week? Are you satisfied with how the year went?

This week was interrupted for me by the doctor’s appointment on Tuesday. No work, because I had to be near home for that.

Plans for the weekend.

Tonight:
1. Figure out how to get home after work.
2. Take pills
3. Get home
4. Drink aperitif.
5. Cook steak. (I’ve been informed that I am doing this tonight, so…)
6. Eat steak/drink beer.
7. Drink digestif/watch TV.
8. Husbandly duties. 🙂
9. Sleep.

The weekends sort of allow me to recuperate. The stupid burns so fucking much sometimes.

I finally got what I was working on to work. Sorta. After peeling back twenty year-old layers of brokenness.

“Do what the customer wants.”

Uh, the customer doesn’t want to get into trouble, and if you just fucking do what the customer wants, he’s going to get in trouble.

Apologies for the aside. I have no idea what I’m going to be doing Saturday, other than hitting the wine store to buy something for Thanksgiving dinner. The annual downtown lighting ceremony is that night, so I don’t think we want to be out and about. Not that I ever want to be out and about anymore, but….

And I didn’t have the part about how my year went drafted as the day passed. But, is there a more concise way of saying, “Fuck no?”

NoJoMo 20

Now that you’re two-thirds of the way through, write about whatever you’d like. Will you finish this year? When have you done this previously?

You know, there’s not a lot I really want to say right now. That’s probably okay considering how few reads I’m getting. My opinion is rather unimportant, I suppose.

Most of my coworkers are confused by my facial hair this month. One of the senior NCOs did get it, however. “Movember!”

So, what else… Writing, I normally throw things into a draft message, which I can access from anywhere, and never send. If it accidentally does get sent, it goes to another of my email addresses. Not that I’m particularly trying to hide what I write (obviously, I wouldn’t be publishing it on my shitty blog, PB, if I was….), but the Intertubes are so locked down I don’t have much of a choice. I can type away as thoughts come to me.

Will I finish? Pretty sure I will, considering there’s only ten days left. I started doing this in 2010, right after I was diagnosed. Getting sick certainly helped me focus on writing again. I can sit back, shut my eyes, and pound out whatever I’m thinking. Please to be excusing the typos.

When I’ve gotte through each, I’ve felt a sense of accomplishment, I suppose. That I could still dedicate myself to something. As my health’s continued to deteriorate, that’s been important. I’m not ready to hang it all up. I think I still have places where I can contribute. Can I work like I did when I was in my twenties? No. Are there other things I prioritize? Certainly. Do I need a lot more rest than I used to? Absolutely.

And, obviously someone else thought so, too, today. I applied for a job last week. Twice referred, twice not. Nothing says sense like the Federal Government.

But I’ve written enough for today. Ten more to go.