Category: Work

So Much Tragedy…Where Is the Supreme Being?

Posted on by chappyshi

If you haven’t heard about the tragedy in Haiti, pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV.  It is a disaster of epic proportions in a country that was already in disastrous shape.  I feel for all those dead, injured, or otherwise impacted.

On the home front, a good friend of mine lost the offices of his business last night in a fire that burned them to the ground.  Also lost were his boat and the company mascot, a beautiful dog.  I hadn’t immediately thought of it but what that dog must have gone through as the building burned down around him but it had to have been hell on earth.  No one (that we know of) was there or hurt in the fire but then there was no one there to get the dog out either.

Since I helped with the installation of a computer-based surveillance system, I got a couple of calls from the fire investigator asking for anything I had from the system that could help with their investigation.  I was able to provide them some alerts that I got over the day that may or may not be of assistance.  Unfortunately, since the system the data was recorded on was in the office, the data isn’t readily, if it will ever be, available.

So where is the supreme being I ask and why do I ask?  I had not really thought about it until some do gooders came to my door right after I got off the phone with the investigator.  They were talking to people about the tragedy in Haiti and asking what we thought God had to do with it and why.  Perhaps they eventually were going to get around to asking for donations but I did not let it get that far.  I said I didn’t believe in a supreme being.

When asked why that was so, I said science was much more compelling than religion and that were there truly a supreme being overseeing us all, I couldn’t image that we should have so many tragedies befalling us.  I wish I had thought to mention my friend’s, his family’s, and his employee’s loss.  It sure is closer to home.

Personal Cellphones in the Workplace, Not!

Posted on by chappyshi

Someone wrote to the Washington Post Jobs section asking “Who Do You Call When Your Boss Bans Cellphones?”  Apparently the boss had not only outlawed personal cellphone usage at all times including getting alerts silently and during break times but also forbade using company landlines for personal use.  That is a bit excessive in my estimation.  I believe that an organization has a responsibility to make it’s employees available to their friends and families in emergencies.

I do believe in banning cell phone usage, not during break time though, and allowing use of company landlines for personal use in emergency situations.  I can’t think of any reason that phone usage should be verboten in personal/family emergencies.  Were cellphones used only in emergencies, I wouldn’t ban them either.  We all know however that cellphone use in the workplace is rampant and flagrant.  I bet most organizations could realize a 5  to 10 percent increase in productivity were cell phone usage to be banned.

Growing up as a child (oxymoron or impossibility???), I cannot remember a time that my mother called my dad at work or that my dad called home from work.  I am sure it happened  but those occurrences could in no way mirror the frequent instances of frivolous cell phone usage that I have seen in the work place.  On top of cell phone usage, corporate email is also blatantly abused for personal use.  At least, for the employee, that is not as visible to management and coworkers.

Fortunately, company landlines and corporate email can be monitored, abuse documented, and disciplinary action taken when warranted.  I know from personal experience in the workplace that too much time is wasted on personal business using cellphones, landlines, and email.  In an effort to trim telecom costs at a previous company, I found company cellphone users who were nighttime supervisors who racked up three times  the amount of minutes per month the site VP racked up.  Please reconcile for me why a night supervisor should need to spend an average of 100 minutes per shift on the telephone. Really, you don’t need to.  I know from  viewing the call records that those minutes were not used for business…

Disclaimer, I am in no way commenting on policies of any company I ever worked for.  Also, I am single, have no exes, and no children, so my experiences having to keep in touch with people are extremely limited compared to many others.  Nonetheless, we have done without the current modes of  instantaneous and constant communications for thousands of years.  What makes us sure that we have to have them now?

Memories and Melancholy

Posted on by chappyshi

I got a bit melancholy the other day as I was reading the travel section in the Washington Post.  For some reason, the article I was reading made me think about Canada and places I had been to there repeatedly due to work.  One place is St. Georges de Beauce in Quebec, another is old Quebec City, and the other is Toronto in Ontario.  St. Georges and Quebec City were places I went to for business and pleasure when I worked for Canam Steel and Toronto I went to for business while I was working for DDi…that was a pleasure also.

St. Georges is a fairly small town where Canam’s IT department was headquartered.  I remember fondly (not fondling) being entertained on the town by my Canadian coworkers.  At the end of  trip up there I would usually take a couple of personal days at my expense in old Quebec City.  It is probably not much harder to find an old world, read “European,” environment than Quebec City in North America expect perhaps for Montreal.

My favorite place to stay in old Quebec City is the Hotel Le Clos Saint Louis which is comprised of two old merged townhouses with a variety of accommodations that were always reasonably priced, especially, considering the location and included a free breakfast in the basement of the place, which kind of put me on edge, being in the basement that is.

I have a vague recollection of departing the place very early in the morning one time, waiting for my cab to the airport, and realizing I had left one of my bags in the foyer and already dropped off my key.  There was no one on the front desk that early and repeated attempts to roust someone via the door buzzer were futile.  I had no cell phone at the time but when the cabbie showed up we used his phone to call the hotel to no avail.  Meanwhile, I needed to get to the airport!  Finally, as desperation was peaking, some folks came walking out the door, I ran in, grabbed my bag, jumped in the cab, and made it to the airport on time.

Toronto has supposedly the largest immigrant population of any city in the world…over 50%.  That in and of itself meant good things to me.  I met people from all over the world and ate their food.  The remarkable friendliness and kindness of the immigrants made me question why there was so much strife and hatred in our world.  Toronto’s location on Lake Ontario, thankfully, makes up for it’s unbelievable flatness.  Best of all though were the friends I made at DDi Toronto.  We worked hard together, we had some good times, they had a birthday cake for me in the office one day, and I went out with a few folks who treated me to dinner that night.

So I am a bit sad thinking back.  I have been out of work for so long that I reflect back on the work relationships that so define our day to day existence.  They really did and continue to mean a lot to me.

Preparing for Chaos and Surviving on the Local Grid

Posted on by chappyshi

The August 9, 2009, Washington Post article “Apocalypse Later?  I’m Going Local Now,” by Doug Fine struck a nerve with me.   For six or nine months now, probably as long as I have been unemployed, the stock market crashed, health costs  escalated, and my savings dwindled, I have been thinking that I need to work on my survival skills including learning how to hunt for my own meat and raise my own vegetables.

These are just a couple skills out of many that one might need should we see a total breakdown of life as we now it.  Doug Fine addresses these issues quite well.  He lives on a ranch in New Mexico, and along with like-minded neighbors, is trying to attain a lifestyle in which he is self-sufficient as possible.  In his own words, “I’m examining my place in a hypothetical post-oil, post-consumer society 40 years in the future.”

This includes using solar power, getting milk from goats, growing his own produce (irrigated w/o electricity) or buying in locally, raising chickens for eggs, etc.  Doug talks of a society in which one barters for goods and services and ponders providing security for his family in the case of a breakdown of civil society.  His three year experiment in self-sufficiency has lead him to believe that “the only way I can become truly independent (a word I like even better is “indigenous”) is through incremental steps based in a local economy.”

I have some good friends in Vermont from whom  Doug Fine and those of us who have similar concerns about the eventual collapse of systems and supply chains could learn a lesson.  They have grown their own vegetables, hunted for meat, raised cows, chickens, goats, etc, to provide for food throughout the year.  They heat their home with a wood stove and have no AC’s.  They barter services such as vehicle and farm equipment repair and meat butchering and packaging for other services and goods.

They really have a head start on preparing for chaos and surviving on the “local” grid.

Where Eagles Dare

Posted on by chappyshi

I had a nice time last weekend.  I went down to Suffolk, VA, to see my sister Kim and her husband Don.  Being with Kim and Don was relaxing.  The trip down and the trip back were not.  On the way down I was talking calls from a company that wanted to interview me.  I took the first call  while I was trying to eat lunch and pack to head to Suffolk.  I had little time to spare, if any, but ended up on the phone talking to the HR guy for about 20 minutes.

He said he wanted me to talk with the guy whose position I was interviewing for.  Come to find out I had a window of about two hours to talk to the guy before he left at 4:00 PM never to return.  I found this out on the road.  I scheduled it so I could get off the highway to take a leak and talk to the dude.  I thought that we have a fairly good chat.  The HR dude called me back and scheduled an interview for early Monday afternoon.  More on that in the near future.

Friday night Don was late getting home.  He has a horrific commute from home in Suffolk to work in Williamsburg.  Kim made ricotta cheese filled shells blessed with marinara sauce.   We went ahead and hate since Don was running very late.

Saturday afternoon Kim and I headed off to the Chesapeake Arboretum to walk a bit and hopefully see some interesting flora and fauna but it was not tOo exciting.  It is still early in the spring though.  En route, we stopped at a bead store right near the Arboretum.  Kim makes jewelry and such out of the beads.  I never realized how big this hobby could be.

That evening, I had my first “Blue-ray” movie experience.  Kim and Don had recently bought a 46″ LCD TV and Blue-ray player.  We watched the first Harry Potter movie.  I could definitely tell the difference between the Blue-ray and a regular DVD.  As Don said, it almost looks 3-dimensional!  Combine that with a nice 5.1 music/theater system and you’ll never need to go to the theater again.

On Sunday, we all drove down to look at Don’s  house which he has been trying to sell but has been embroiled in a lawsuit filed by his former fiance so he had to take the property off the market.  He forgot his house keys so we couldn’t see the inside of the house but it is on a large piece of property far out in the country south of Virginia beach.  It looked nice from the outside.  Of note, it looks like the lawsuit will be dismissed and legal fees paid for by the former fiance.  Hopefully they have good luck selling the place.

From Don’s house we drove to the Norfolk Botanical Garden.  Things were a bit slow there, like the Arboretum, due to the time of year.  It was still nice to get outside, stretch my legs, work the knee out, and get some pictures of the plants that were flowering.  Additionally, there was a pair of nesting eagles in the garden that had two chicks hatched, one that day, and another egg in waiting.  You could see mama eagle from an observation tower but mostly only her head.  The best way to view the action is from the Eagle Cam.  All three eggs have now hatched.

View of the Garden HQ from the garden

Norfolk Botanical Garden

A random flower picture

Random Flower

A few more flower pictures from the Garden

Taxing Times, Class Inequities, and Ignominy

Posted on by chappyshi

Tom Daschle, “nominated to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services,” purportedly “did not pay more than $128,000 in taxes over three years,” according to the Washington Post article, Daschle Owed Back Taxes That Exceeded $128,000, dated 31 January, 2009. Will he get the job? Probably… loser. If you make enough money to screw up your tax filing by way more than I make in a year, get a frigging accountant.

In the same article the Washington Post reveals that “Timothy F. Geithner, who was chosen to run the Treasury Department, disclosed that he had not paid some taxes and subsequently paid $43,000 in taxes and penalties.” Will he get the job? Maybe… loser. See trailer above.

WTF? I had the IRS come after me last year because my Social Security number was wrong on an E-Trade account that I closed two years ago which was never worth more than $4000. That took me three or four phone calls to clear up. And for what…so I’d have a clean record for my upcoming Cabinet post nomination? Losers…

Cat’s Meow and Why I Really Have to Find a Job

Posted on by chappyshi

My cat Hamlet just will  not shut up.  If he is not meowing at me, he is roaring at something else unknown, doing his Tony the Tiger imitation.  He meows when he is hungry, meows when he wants me to go to bed so he can cuddle up to my overweight, warm body, and he meows when he thinks  I should get up,  even if all that means is that I am going to go back to bed to read.

I found something on the Internet that reflects my cat’s behavior almost exactly.  It is called “Rippling/Rolling Skin Syndrome.”  I never thought it possible that my cat was anything other than whacked, he is Korean, but there may be some some scientific basis for his behavior.  He is 18.  I just figured he was old.  Ironically, the article says the syndrome is most common with younger cats.  Unfortunately, he is also so deaf that I don’t think he even realizes how much noise he is making.

I thought it was bad when I was working and not home all the time.  Now that I am around so much more, it is making me even crazier.  If monetary needs and Hamlet don’t drive me back to the job market, nothing will.  I do have a couple of work arounds planned though.  I have three multi-day ski trips planned between now and the end of February so  at least I’ll get some respite before I start working again.

Work Cell Phoneless in Centreville

Posted on by chappyshi

There is a calm, uncertain feeling on one’s first day of unemployment, especially in the IT field.  You remember, in awe, what it was like before your first IT job or between IT jobs when you were not effectively “on call” all the time.  You get out of bed and reach for that ball and chain, your Blackberry, as you have every day for years…and realize it is not there anymore.

You start some coffee and putter around your abode picking at things thinking about what you could do with the place when you are not actively searching for work.  You think about those who you have left behind.  You know that the peacefulness will be short lived but also that you have to make the best of it even through the uncertainy of the job hunt.

You think maybe you can take some time to visit family or old friends.  You hope you can exercise every day, maybe lose some weight,  to get that routine entrenched before you start the daily grind again.  You pray that you can get two weeks of good skiing in before you start your new job because it might be a while before you get any more vacation time.

You know that the time will be fleeting…  You know you have bills to pay…  It still feels pretty good.