Tag: Uncategorized

Seven

Write about your parents..

Kinda half-assign this one; my dad’s been gone six years next month. He spent 24 years as an Army officer. He’s now at Section 54, grave 5049 in Arlington National Cemetery.

His wife of nearly 40 years, my mother is still living. She’s living in the house they bought as he was retiring from the Army. The house is near the school where she’s worked for more than twenty years.

She left her home in south Landmass at the end of the Vietnam War to join her redirected Lieutenant husband in Japan. Before then, she’d never been east of Pensacola, or west of Houston.

For the next twenty-four years, she’d travel the globe with him, and rate his reprobate kids (the eldest one, for sure).

Today is her birthday; happy birthday, Mom. On Saturday, we’re headed to see her alma mater pay her daughter in-law’s school.

Do I have more to write about this, and her? Sure. At the same time, I’m not feeling particularly loquacious tonight. I actually almost forgot to write today after my latest medical adventure.

I did notice a few more date misalignments in my prompts. Thinking back, however, one of those might have been intentional. Regardless, tomorrow should be fun; vote for some candidates who don’t thrill me, and prep for my medical test on Wednesday.

I should probably at least start working on Wednesday’s entry tomorrow; I’ll be sedated, so I probably should finish before I leave for my appointment.

RICO

Not Suave, though.

The certification mafia is racketeering, pure and simple.

That said, I did “pass” my latest compelled purchase (of something I already held).

I am not at all amused by the whole process, or by the various four-letter companies for whom I was previously employed who should have been tracking this.

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.