It figures…

It’s fire season. Yipeee.

Woke up this morning to the smell of smoke. Something had Jesse stirred up last night about 3am. I don’t know if it’s related.

I might have to run the A/C if the air quality continues to degrade. The daily dog walk will have to be curtailed. It’s clear skies, but there’s something in the air that’s irritating my nose.

I suspect this is from the Lake and Cable fires. The good news is that the Lake fire has had the mandatory evacuation lifted, now the area appears to be under evacuation warnings, and they’ve got some containment on the fire.

The bad news is that we’re early in the season, these fires are coming from a direction that hasn’t burned in a while and Silverwood Lake is just across the freeway. At least the fire crews have an ample supply of water from the lake to make air drops with.

Just saw a notice that Pacific Crest Trail has been closed until further notice due to the Lake Fire, I hope there are too many hikers up there, if so, they’re going to be miserable.

With the 4th of July weekend coming up I better get my evacuation kit in good order. There are always idiots that decide to set off fireworks up here on the 4th and as dry as everything is, it’s only going to take one moron to screw us all.

I’ll have to modify my plan to keep working on sanding the trim for today the dust combined with the particulates from the fires are not healthy.

Ahhh, The end of Pride month…

Articles have been appearing about large sponsors pulling out of Pride events all over the country. Almost unilaterally these articles blame Trump and his war on DEI.

The Atlantic put a predictably negative spin on it.

To boil it down, most articles imply that corporations are afraid to sponsor Pride events due to Trump. They seem to want to paint Trump as the boogyman. 

I think this is disingenuous and wrong. Many of these companies supported Pride through multiple Presidencies. Regan, Bush I & II, Clinton, Obama, Trump, & Biden.

During the Regan years I don’t think these companies supported Pride out of DEI policies, they supported them because A) There was money to be made, and B) It was the right thing to do.

Back in the day Pride was about basic civil rights, and visibility of people who literally were treated as second class citizens because of who they peopled their beds with.

When HIV started killing gay men, these companies stayed in the Pride events because it was right to shine a light on the problem. HIV was being ignored, insurance companies refused to pay for HIV care. Some insurance companies specifically excluded HIV care or hospitalization from their policies Others would cancel an individual’s coverage entirely if they tested positive for HIV.

Back then, gay people of all walks of life were being denied fundamental rights or services. Housing, Medical care, Jobs, loans, and myriad other things that everyone else enjoyed, simply because they chose to sleep with members of their own sex.

That was fundamentally wrong and Anti-American. 

One could make a case that today’s trans people experience similar oppression. I can maybe see their point. But, generally speaking, the LGB community of old weren’t trying to “Gay everyone”, they were simply demanding equal representation and rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights and Constitution.

Trans people cannot, under law, be discriminated against. They may face harsh words, or people who refuse to use arbitrary pronouns, but they have the same rights everyone else has. In other words, the very rights the old LGB movements fought for are granted without question to the Trans people of today.

The Atlantic says young people will lose rights. I’m not sure that I see their point or that what they’re printing is true. 

The Trans movement has gutted the LGB community. More and more “moderate” and even “liberal” gay people are walking away. The LGBTQIA+ whatever community is a confused and confusing mishmash of conflicting goals and seems to be mostly about rage & victimhood.

A Trans person these days will as quickly open up a screaming tirade on an LGB person as they will on anyone else who dares to question them.

They’ve become off-putting and simply too difficult to understand or deal with. It doesn’t help that so many Trans people have in recent years been mass shooters.

Sure, the LGB had Jeffery Dahmer but he was a rarity. He was a cannibal that also was gay, or perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, he was a very disturbed individual who was in desperate need of psychiatric help.

The point is, the trans movement has co-opted the LGB community to such an extent that normal gays are no longer interested. That means they’re not attending Pride, which means that the advertising benefit large corporations derived from being supportive, is diminishing too.

It always comes back to dollars.

Add to it, that most of America, including LGB people are sick and tired of the Trans activism, protests, & conflict, and it makes perfect sense that large corporations are pulling back.

What exactly can’t Trans people do? What rights don’t they have? Name something. Oh maybe you can make a case for a man who thinks he’s Trans to be in a women’s locker room.

The real question is should he be in that locker room waving his dick around at children?

If the answer is “yes” then all locker rooms and bathrooms should be co-ed and at that point who gives a shit?

Along that line of reasoning comes this reality. No-one man, woman, or “other,” can be offended if they’re in a bathroom, locker room, or designated changing area, and they see a dick, hairy chest, a pussy, or tits.

Everyone would be 100% equal and that’s the end of the story. A.K.A. the end of victimhood.

It also means that women will have to clean up after themselves in public restrooms. Because while men may piss on the floor around a urinal, women are traditionally much filthier in public restrooms. I know, I’ve cleaned bathrooms, and I’ll generally take cleaning a men’s room any day of the week.

Trans people have access to medical care, lots of insurance companies cover the hormone costs. The real problem seems to be that the Trans agenda is to transition people as early in life as they can.

That’s a problem.

In most states, someone under 21 can’t smoke, drink, get a tattoo, body piercing, or a host of other things they might like to do because they’re not old enough to make up their mind. They lack the maturity

By that logic, a child shouldn’t have the maturity to undergo gender re-assignment. Yet, the Trans activists push for it. So which is it? 

That’s not loss of rights, that’s something entirely different.

When a person is over 21, they’re welcome to start taking whatever hormone therapies, or undergo whatever surgeries they want. They’re adults, of age, and can make their own decisions.

Much of America seems to have concluded that the Trans issue is something else.

Not because of bigotry, although I’m sure it’s there.

When Trans activists are given copious ink bemoaning that straight men should sleep with them or they’re transphobic, something is wrong.

Most straight men want to have families. A trans person (M to F) isn’t capable of producing the necessary genetic components to satisfy a straight man’s desire for children. So straight men aren’t interested. I’d suggest that straight men aren’t so much transphobic as they are trans-disinterested.

They might go for a quick fuck, but they’re not likely to be interested in a long term relationship. Let’s face it a trans person generally has a lot more baggage than even the most spoiled gold digger woman, to boot.

At least with a gold digger, you know you’re likely to have some kids.

Then people will say, “Well, there are F to M Trans people.” Yep, but most straight men want a woman that looks like a woman, they’re not likely to get turned on by a woman who’s got more hair on their chest than a female gorilla. So that leaves the F to M Trans person sleeping with who?

I’ve seen a lot of them bemoaning that Gay men aren’t interested in them. Well, Duh! A gay man is interested in another man and that means a penis and a male mindset. F to M trans people in many cases don’t meet either requirement.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some straight men who are just gay enough, and some gay men who are just straight enough that F to M Trans people could find happiness.

In neither case, do the Trans people have less rights. They can get married, they might have issues with their ID or passports, but I think there’s existing legislation that allows for changing all ID documents.

I believe where the trouble occurs is when someone hasn’t done the precursor work going all the way back to their birth certificate. I don’t think I can renew my passport with a different gender and name without having the underlying paperwork in order first.

Is that an infringement on rights?

Or do these blocks exist to prevent creating false identities? If identity is no longer a stake in the ground, then why have documentation at all? Bank accounts? Mortgages? Rental Agreements? Retirement accounts? Jobs?

So demanding that you do the work, and alter all your ID to match your new gender isn’t a loss of rights, it’s about needing to work within a framework that ensures there are no complications in making sure an individual’s rights are preserved.

I think the overarching pull backs on the part of large corporations isn’t about DEI. It’s about dollars, and that the LGBT community has become the TRANS community. That’s a community that has become viewed very negatively by a large swath of America and indeed the world.

Even Gay bars had to reduce orders of Budweiser beer. Why? Because LGB people joined in the boycott. What does that say about the Trans?

I think corporations are pulling out of Pride because there’s no percentage in it. Pride has become synonymous with Trans activists.

We’re all tired of hearing Trans this and Trans that. Nobody cares anymore, and I for one look forward to Pride not being a cash cow for the HRC, Glaad, and all the other organizations who should have disbanded once their job was done.

Pride might need to go the way of the dinosaur.

I’m glad Pride month is over. I’d be fine with Pride month being cancelled entirely.

Maybe I’ll go out to Palm Springs in July to sample the prevailing opinion of gay men.

Gonna try this post again…

I’m wondering if I should get together with a few of my retired friends and create a recruiting company.

We’ve all got computers, management skills, we’ve all been hiring managers, and perhaps we could bring some much needed clarity and professionalism to recruiting.

Based on the recruiters and recruiting agencies I’ve interacted with over the past five years I’m of a mind that we could bring value to an industry that honestly feels like dealing with a bunch of used car salesmen. Dealing with recruiting firms shouldn’t make you feel like you’ve been slimed.

The latest interaction with a recruiter is a real winner. I went to the trouble of creating an interview scheduling template a few weeks ago. It’s worked fairly well although there have been a couple of bumps along the way. (Just a little fine tuning here and there plus sending a couple of feature requests to improve the product.)

For the latest winner, I forwarded the link when they sent the inevitable “What times are good for you for a phone call,” message. My schedule is generally open but there are some things that pop up in my calendar that make me unavailable.

The recruiter, sent back an email saying they couldn’t commit to a particular time and instead picked Monday from 8am to 3pm. Really?

Now we’ve got recruiters that think they’re cable repair people? Super unprofessional!

Why did they send me the question in the first place? If their schedule is so full they have to pick a range of times (essentially their entire workday,) then why didn’t they just say from the outset, “I’ll call you on Monday,”?

Were I to create a company, I think I’d call it “No BS recruiters” maybe “Naked Recruiting” with a tag line “We strip your Job Search process to the essentials“.

I’d structure the process with no cute pictures, no goofball psych testing, no DEI, and automatically choose “Decline to answer,” on all Race, Gender, or National origin questions. The only valid question is “Are you authorized to work in the United States, Will you require sponsorship in the future?”

I’ll bet between the people I know, we could stand up a recruiting business in less than a month. The long poles would be settling on some kind of CRM software and setting up secondary phone numbers on our phones. I’m pretty sure we could have phone numbers up & running in less than 4 hours. The CRM software might be a little more difficult. That’s just because we’d want something that didn’t cost an arm & a leg and that wasn’t providing features we didn’t want or need. In other words, something that worked and didn’t require a whole staff to maintain.

One thing I’d add would be AI evaluation of resumes to catch people who’ve lifted sections from other people’s resumes, then determine who really did what.

I’m talking about a process that would be totally merit based. Something that connected hiring folks, to folks needing to be hired, bypassing all the stupid shit.

Maybe just present resume images instead of forcing the prospective employee to redundantly fill out dumb boxes on a site, then fill out those same dumb boxes on the prospective employer’s site, (because why would there be any data transfer,) in addition to putting in all the work on their resume in the first place.

You know, OLD SCHOOL!

The job search process at this point is more complex than applying for a freaking security clearance. It’s easier to apply to run for Congress than to get through some of the job applications.

I’m talking about applications for simple jobs. Even retail an application these days is often a multipage form. In my first retail positions the test was essentially does the person have a pulse?

I’m curious about this phone interview on Monday. Based on the initial contact email I think this “recruiting” firm is really trying to sell me something and it’s not a job, it’s training to enter the IT field. 

If that’s the case, I’m just pissed off enough to send letters to the initial website that I applied on, better business bureau, Ken Paxton AG of Texas (the company is based in TX), and possibly to President Trump.

If a company is posting a job, then that’s it. They shouldn’t be trying to run some kind of bait and switch. That’s dishonest and begs the question; “Are these folks just trying to steal my identity?

Why Trump? Because as a businessman who’s trying to get this country’s economy really rolling again, he might see the threat.

What threat? That’s easy. If people are frustrated to the point that they give up entirely, and filling out a welfare form is easier than filling out a job application. America won’t have a roaring economy based on American workers, companies will be able to legitimately say they need foreign workers because all the Americans are on the dole.

For more than 25 years, I’ve said outright the abuse of the H1B1 system by Corporate America is tantamount to Treason.

And don’t even get me started on Presidents Bush.

Off the rails…

I was going to write a long post about how the job search is going. 

The post went completely off the rails and now sits in the “Drafts” bin with other similar posts.

Every once in a while, I’ll go back and dust one of these off, clean it up and post it.

The interesting thing is that some of these posts are still relevant sometimes years after I initially started them.

What does that say about my opinions? Does it say more about the repetitive nature of human behavior, or the cyclic nature of the latest trends?

Maybe it’s me telling myself, don’t get spun up over shit that’s just going to repeat, and that my problem is being impatient with humanity not learning a damn thing no matter how many times the lesson is repeated.

I’m in a mood!

Now that’s slick…

The question is, will people I need to use it, actually use it?

I’ve been using an application called FantastiCal for many years. Generally speaking I try to use the applications supplied in on my iPhone, Computer, and iPad. 

This application is different. When Apple. in their infinite wisdom de-coupled To-Dos from Calendar, I went looking for something different. Apple has since re-coupled To-Dos and Calendar.

FantastiCal did the job and exceeded my needs then, as the years have progressed, they’ve added features that are really slick.

They’ve always had “Natural Language” processing. In FantastiCal you can say something like “Dr. Appointment @ 3pm on July 25th” and FantastiCal will add that to your calendar. Moving appointments is also drag & drop. Being able to duplicate appointments is really handy if you’re having to do a follow-up visit.

For about the past year or two, FantastiCal has provided a method to allow people to request appointments with you. I’ve not used this ability until recently.

In the near future, I’m going to be working on a number of things that will require scheduling and I thought, “Why should I be entering appointments and details manually?”

So a few weeks ago I enabled that part of the system. Now, instead of say, a job recruiter asking me what my availability is for an interview, I can send them a link in a cover letter, and they can pick a time themselves. Hopefully they’ll use the link and help keep me on schedule.

After I’d set up the interview link, I thought why not use the same system for more general meetings?

The cool thing is that the system looks at all my calendars, the private ones, and those that involve more public facing things like interviews, then automatically blocks out times when there is a conflict. It doesn’t disclose what I’m doing, it simply doesn’t list time blocks that are otherwise allocated.

No-one needs to know I’m at the Doctor’s office, they only need to know that I’m not available.

There are a range of ways I can see using this. For example: You have to arrange some kind of home maintenance and the provider asks you use their web site to make the request. So I’m thinking, I’ll include a link showing my availability and allow the provider to just pick a time that works for them, then it will pop up in my calendar. It’s also possible to select times that you’re generally unavailable in the template, so if you’re habitual about walking the dog, or you’re always at a community center on a particular day, you can eliminate that block of time entirely from selection.

FantastiCal has matured this part of their system to the point that you can make a template that requires information when the other person is making the appointment request. “Do you have to be there?”, “Estimated cost”, “ Will the dog have to be inside or outside” etc. Then you can approve the appointment or propose something different if need be.

I’m going to try this out & see where it goes.

FantastiCal has a small learning curve. It took me a while to get things set up in a way that works for me.

Another cool thing is that it can store the information in a way that Apple Reminders and Apple Calendar is also updated. So that information isn’t lost in the event you lose your phone. It’s still available via iCloud.

Recently they’ve introduced a Windows version of the FantastiCal application. 

I haven’t used it, but it might provide an elegant bridge between Windows and iPhone / iPad so that you’re not having to look at multiple systems if you’re making appointments.

I like the FantastiCal method of displaying scheduling information better than the Apple Calendar & Reminders app too.

That being said, I like Apple Reminders for shopping lists. FantastiCal doesn’t do that quite as well.

Hope your day is productive.