Category: EDD

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That’s it! I want to get the HELL out of California!

In addition to all of the absolute bullshit that is California…

Traffic, Lockdowns, Abridgment of rights, Water shortages, Electricity Shortages, $500 Auto Registration Fees, Incompetence of the State Government and all the state’s government offices, State waste of tax dollars. Complete lack of planning, Crime, Outrageous Property Taxes, Outrageous Gas prices .55 on every gallon of gas really? Shitty roads, Outrageous State Income Taxes, and on and on and on…

I mean, pick literally any subject and then look to California to see how to do it exactly wrong.

I hate this place and everything about it.

There was a time when the benefits outweighed the hassle. That time is long gone.

This is a losing proposition any way you cut it.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some good people here and even some good Representatives in the Legislature. The problem is there are too few people with any common sense and those numbers apparently are dwindling.

The straw that has broken this camels back is EDD.

I don’t think there’s ever been a more incompetent government entity short of perhaps the last of the Roman Empire, maybe King George III’s tax collectors or court.

First EDD screwed up their modernization of their computer systems. They contracted with, and hired a bunch more people to actually do the work. Apparently the work not only didn’t get done, but they bought a shit ton of equipment that sat in its boxes until the warranties expired. Then the equipment sat for another few years until it was literally obsolete and had to be scrapped.

They were completely unprepared for the number of unemployment claims that were being filed when the pandemic hit. How did they address this? By putting more people on the phones supposedly to answer phone calls, which of course still didn’t get answered.

Oh yeah, there were hearings and excuses and in the end, after the uproar died down nothing was done. No heads rolled, and EDD went right back to its usual incompetent self.

They screwed up who was being paid during the pandemic. Turns out they paid a lot of people that perhaps weren’t eligible for benefits.

What? You mean they threw taxpayers dollars at people that shouldn’t have received benefits??? Yep… in at least the hundreds of millions of dollars range if not billions.

Now, EDD is sending out stupid emails that demand the people who received benefits prove they were eligible to receive those benefits and they’re threatening to charge 30% penalties on those benefits.

But of course the email they send you provides links to the EDD website that frankly is a hot steaming pile of shit. So even if you want to comply with their demand the odds are you can’t since the site sucks so bad.

Just connecting to their web site makes me and my computer morons. The intellect draining capacity of California’s EDD site should be harnessed and used to combat hackers and cyberterrorists the world over.

Come to think of it, the EDD site could be used as a firewall. It’s amazing at creating endless loops of login after login.

The funny parts of EDD’s demands are that they seem to think; A) The criminals who gamed the system are going to send documentation. B) That they’re going to get the money they threw away back from criminals who gamed the system.

Hey California EDD, NEWSFLASH Those people are in the wind and you’re not going to find them!

D’Oh!

But for people who had legitimate claims. We’re having to jump through hoops to clean up EDD’s fuckup.

When you talk to EDD they predictably absolve themselves of responsibility by saying the Federal Government is who is requesting this information.

That is probably true, however EDD should have all the data. They should not be asking for tax returns. After all if EDD approved a person for unemployment benefits that presumes that EDD knows who your previous employer was and verified that you were eligible for benefits in the first place. RIGHT?

It gets better, the EDD representatives are apparently unsure what exact documents you need to provide. Do you need to provide the entirety of your tax returns or just a copy of the W2 or will pages from your California Tax return suffice? They’re not sure.

“It’s the Federal Government that’s asking, it goes into a computer to determine if the document is right…“

Uh huh.

Having spent some time working for a Federal contractor, I can tell you that the Feds are pretty damn specific about what they want to see.

But wait, there’s more! EDD told a representative from a legislator’s office yesterday that they’d called me, (they did). I wasn’t available to take their call so they went to voice mail. This same person told the same legislative representative that they’d left a voice mail, (they did not). I sent screen shots proving the point to the legislators representative. So I have a little bit of a trust issue with EDD.

I have a real problem with providing EDD documents of this sensitive nature.

They’re incompetent, they’ve reported at least one data breach if I recall correctly. I’ve caught them literally lying to a California Legislator’s office.

Given their incompetence and Laissez-faire attitude about what they seem to need I’m concerned that by providing these documents in an electronic format I’m just setting myself up for identity theft.

After all what better hacking target than an organization with a proven track record of stupidity? Just imagine all the wonderful identities that will suddenly be available for the picking.

EDD appears to be auditing the citizens. EDD needs to be audited by a totally independent source. Maybe a group of accountants from Texas or Florida? Someone who’s not likely to sweep things under the carpet in the interest of not embarrassing California.

They made this mess. Why should the citizens be hassled, threatened, or further annoyed to help them clean it up?

I believe, California’s corruption and incompetence goes from the top all the way down to the local level.

I’m sick of it.

Voting is pointless because the people who’ve created this fucked up system greatly outnumber the people in this state who demand fiscal responsibility.

With that realization, I choose to work to get my ass out of here.

Even if that means divorce after 33 years and leaving the house and everything else behind. Honestly at this point I’m thinking about cutting my losses and doing anything to be free of this third world shit hole.

At least in another state I might have a shot at a job where I don’t have to worry about skin color quotas and layer upon layer of politically correct bullshit!

Fuck California!

p.s. In case you had any doubt… I’m not in a very good mood today.

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Triggered, First thing in the morning! Yeah!

After years of working in corporate America, there are a few things that really trigger me.

One of those things is Emails with the words, “Mandatory”, “Comply”, “You Must”, “Required”, and my favorite is “Compliance is Mandatory”.

You see, these words or phrases never herald good news for any employee.

The term; “Mandatory Overtime” Only occurs in corporate email in the Summer when you’re planning a vacation, or in Fall/Winter before Thanksgiving or Christmas. That’s been my experience, your milage will vary.

Much like COVID’s 10 days to slow the spread there’s always a time component. Corporations always start with 30 days but all the employees know that’s complete bullshit. Whatever failures in planning that led to “Mandatory Overtime” in the first place are cumulative failures that cannot be resolved in 30 days and are much more likely to require 90 to 120 days.

But the HR department and management in general, lie in hopes of not having a bunch of people simply walk off the job.

Invariably Paid Time Off will be impacted and your employer will be looking for some kind of proof that you have a trip planned or are going in for surgery. The last company I worked for even added penalties if you were sick during Mandatory Overtime. They also had one guy drop dead at his desk because he was so terrified of losing his job, he neglected to seek medical assistance for a heart attack. Instead, he drove to work and died at his desk. Did the company relent? Hell NO! There were also miscellaneous people who went out on stress leave never to return.

If you’re a salaried employee, mandatory overtime actually reduces your hourly wage because you get no bonus or incentive to put in those hours. Usually, salaried employees don’t have enough “time in position” to benefit from stock options either. So even if the company succeeds due to salaried employees accepting their reduction in pay, there isn’t any long term benefit to them. But the executives see huge bonuses, and get plenty of accolades, even though they weren’t included in the “Mandatory Overtime” edict.

Having been in exactly the position above more times than I can count. The word “mandatory” has become a triggering word to me.

Over the years, “Comply”, “Compliance”, and “Must” have also become triggers for similar reasons.

“You must comply with the new standard”, means that you as an employee will have to set aside time to attend training. Often that time is supposed to be given to the company during some kind “lunch and learn” but the truth is you’re still working even though you’re not technically on the clock. After all, “this new training is for your benefit,” uh right…

If the training is from HR, it’s not for your benefit, it’s so the company can cover their ass.

Training of this type often includes: Sexual Harassment Training, New policies, (I assume new pronoun usage these days), Cheapening of Insurance, or Workplace Safety.

All of these sound like great things, until you read the fine print when you sign that you’ve taken the “Training”. 99% of my experience is that HR is making modifications to the terms of your employment and providing a mechanism that allows any perceived slight to be grounds for termination. Couple that with so called “Zero Tolerance Policies” and well being a white male… You’re screwed!

HR is not the employee’s friend and hasn’t been for decades.

Which leads me to my triggering this morning.

The California EDD sent an email that says in part;

“Urgent: You Must Verify Your Employment or Self-Employment for Your PUA Claim“

“Even though your Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits have ended, federal rules require you to provide documentation to prove that you were, or planned to be, self-employed or employed at some point between 01/01/2019 and 11/15/2020.”

They start the email by SHOUTING my name because apparently, the state of California doesn’t know how to use lower case.

They direct me to the State of California’s shitty website which is always a pain in the ass to log into, and is in fact, such a pain in the ass that I stopped using it, opting instead for snail mail.

Triggered though I am, I’m curious to know what the hell EDD is talking about and what kind of documentation they’re asking for, so I try to log in anyway. Don’t they already have all that documentation? It should be in their files.

The login inevitably fails and I’m locked out of the account for an hour. What’s new? EDD couldn’t program their way out of a one bit puzzle.

In this particular case it also looks like they’ve changed or updated their login page and are now showing me a security picture of a die and a comment that says 1997 Chevy.

This leads me to wonder if the login is fucked up or if someone has been playing around at stealing my account. Neither would surprise me with California EDD.

As an aside, I’ve applied to work for California EDD on several occasions since it’s obvious they could use someone testing their shitty software. They, like every single other potential employer, promptly ignored my application.

Honestly, at this point I’d be happy with a response from any potential employer that said literally, “Fuck off you piece of shit!” At least then I’d know where I stood.

While EDD was sending me money, I felt compelled to respond to their shit. Technically since they were paying me, I considered myself an employee. But now that they’re not sending me money, and I’m still unemployed…

I’m much less inclined to go out of my way to deal with them.

I’ll wait another 30 minutes and try again. If I still am unable to log into the web site I’ll have to decide to ignore them, or contact my state representative’s office. In the past the representative’s office has been the only way to make headway with the EDD.

I hate having to involve them in this bullshit but I may have no choice.

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Why is everything a battle?

bangheadhere.jpegLately, it feels like I’m spending all my time either fighting or preparing to fight.

I’ve been banging my head against the wall for the past 12 months attempting to find a new job. Then just as unemployment insurance ran out we’re in lockdown.

Care to guess what that does to your job search?

Then Congress and the President say they’re extending unemployment benefits and sending a stimulus check. 

Great I think. I’ll be able to go on for a little while longer. Well, you’d think that, but I’ve not gotten a stimulus check and the Unemployment people haven’t gotten their shit together yet either.

In practical terms, this means that I’ve gotten two more battles added to my plate. One is getting the IRS website to accept my banking information which they had on file and have had for years, but their site said they didn’t have any information. 

Uhhh, wrong! You fuckers know exactly where to send the bill and exactly how to harass me at a whim. Now when it comes to you having to pay… Suddenly you can’t find my information? I call Bullshit!

On the plus side, I got them sorted out this morning.

One battle won.

Next, on to the unemployment folks. Their website is even worse than the IRS. It looks like something out of the ‘70s. In truth it probably is. Although the site says that it’s implemented the changes to allow for the extension and application for the Coronavirus relief funding when you go through their merry-go-round of links you end up at the same place that tells you you’re not eligible.

“Oh you have to use Chrome, to access the site.” 

Great so you’re telling me that I have to download a browser from the evil empire that Google has become, to allow being tracked, and hacked, and having 2 instances of googlesoftwareupdateagent running on my computer even when Chrome ISN’T running.

It’s also quite interesting that while these bits of software are running I see an uptick in network communication that is continuous.

Just what are these “Agents” doing? Why are there two instances sucking up my computer resources? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the question. I haven’t opened the code to analyze what this agent actually does, but I don’t think its what the name implies.

ReallyI have to have Chrome? Why? Could it be that your H1B1 programmers don’t know that adherence to HTML standards actually allows compatibility with multiple browsers? Or was it that they just had to use some little snippet of code that they could only get from Google? Instead of one of the myriad open source distributors

I download the wonder that is Google Chrome go back through the merry-go-round and guess what? I still can’t access the page that allows me to fill in the information to get the FEDERALLY FUNDED package. 

Gee thanks you California EDD dunderheads.

Battle number two – Lost for the moment!

Next Battle is the case of the missing check from the insurance company over the car. The check was issued and sent to the BMW Dealer. That check triggered a number of attempts on the part of the BMW dealer to reopen the insurance claim and ask for more money. WRONG! Sorry but that isn’t happening, I’ve seen to it.

Add to it that the BMW dealership underlings weren’t returning phone calls.  A strongly worded letter was sent to the one man at the dealership that runs by old world standards. I shouldn’t have had to involve him, but when all normal channels fail, you reach out to folks you know.

He responded this morning letting me know that he’d forwarded the letter to the right person over at the body shop. I’m expecting a call later in the week. It’s going to take the manager of the body shop some time to un-peel this onion. His underlings made a hell of a mess in their accounting and documentation.

Battle number three, indeterminate win/loss but it’s worth fighting because it’s over a grand that I’m owed.

Then on to battle number four.

The job search, and I’m back to banging my head against the wall.

At least it’s warm and pretty and I’m sitting on the back deck with a nice view.

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insurance! ARRRRGGGGHHHH!

Okay, 

So we all know we have to have insurance, be it auto, home, rental, or health.

The problem is, that insurance costs keep going up and the quality of their services keeps going down.

Case(s) in point. 

The miserly manner in which unemployment insurance, that we’re forced to pay for is administered. In California, they literally have a don’t call us… we’ll call you, policy. The only way to reach them is via their web page. Then they’ll call you if they feel like it, when they feel like it, and god help you if you’re unable to answer the call. You know it’s bad form to interrupt a job interview to answer a call from EDD. But you’re going to pay for your insolence… 

I recently got a quote from a healthcare provider for $795 per month. SAY WHAT?

That’s more per month than any single doctor’s visit including labs and prescriptions. A single month of insurance costs $100 more than my yearly prescription cost. I see a Doctor only once a year typically. My prescription cost has dropped since I am paying over the counter.

Yeah, figure that one out… the cost of my prescription over the counter is less than what I’d paid when I had insurance.

Doing the math, why in the living hell would I pay that kind of money?

Well here is a possible explanation.

It’s simply to make us, you know, we the people, totally dependent on some kind of government entity. Under Covered California I’d pay $77.00 per month for the same damn coverage.

The State picking up the remainder of the cost. If I go on Medi-cal then I have full coverage at no cost. Of course, the moment I get a job, or I make over a certain amount of money, Medi-cal disappears and I’m back to paying under Covered California.

This, during a time when My unemployment check isn’t covering anything more than the bare basics. Thank god I put some money away otherwise I’d already be homeless, jobless, carless, and living on the streets of San Diego, LA, or San Francisco.

But the point is this; What is the real fucking cost to insure me? You know damn well that California isn’t paying $718 a month. I’m not worth it to them. I’m the wrong fucking color and speak the wrong language.

But obviously the State is using this mechanism to create dependency on their supposed largess. I’m not generally a conspiracy theory kind of guy. There are things that make me wonder though.

In this case I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the state is paying something. They’ll call it “Negotiated” but there is no negotiation involved. I think the more likely case is that there has been some back room bullshit where the State (meaning from a federal level all the way down to the State government has figured out that they can create and maintain a dedicated pool of voters for one party or the other.

If everyone is dependent on some kind of subsidy then voters will vote for whoever is going to give them the most. Or rather, whoever promises the most.

Medicare for example is totally protected by a rather substantial voter block and a pack of lobbyists. But it’s the tax payers that foot the bill.

I’m not suggesting that we flush Medicare, what I am saying is that it’s a sacred cow and any politician can swing that voting block their way by promising, not only to protect Medicare, but also to expand the coverage.

Consequently, medical costs go up, prescription costs go up, and the care remains the same or substandard. This creates yet another opportunity for the insurance companies to fleece the people with supplemental care policies. These policies tap into the retirement checks of our elder population and manage to literally screw retirees until they die.

The insurance companies get richer, and the average person gets poorer.

Auto insurance is starting to follow the same model. Increasing administrative costs, leading to increasing costs of repair. The cost of parts to repair your vehicle (the RAW cost) probably hasn’t increased by the same factor as the cost to insure our cars.

But the administrative costs, the repeated phone calls, the repeated appraisals on the damage, etc are driving up the cost to repair our cars. 

This has led to a philosophy on the part of the repair facilities of “Your Insurance will cover it” leading to jacked up costs and the Customer being caught in the middle.

The insurance company doesn’t want to pay, the repair facility want’s to clear your car off their lot and nobody can do anything until some appraiser gets their ass out to look at the damage. But even after the appraiser hauls their ass out tot he repair facility, they lowball the cost, and the customer ends up making multiple calls to bitch about the appraisal. 

Eventually, after enough phone calls,  the insurance company relents and approves the cost of the repairs. But meanwhile the car has been sitting on the repair lot for weeks, limiting the ability of the repair facility to turn over vehicles. This directly impacts the repair facilities bottom line.

Make no mistake, the repair facility is also paying for a variety of insurance and if they’re not making money, they can’t add employees which in turn add to the amount of insurance they can pay. 

This leads more and more people to just pay for the repairs on their own, and yet they’re still paying the insurance companies for coverage that they’re not using. 

And another branch of the insurance industry gets richer.

Like ticks on a dog, they get fatter and fatter and once the dog manages to scratch them off, then the insurance company poor mouths it, telling us all how the costs are are increasing and they need another rate increase.

What any insurance company is saying when they increase our rates is really, “We need to increase our profits.”

Like many parasites, the insurance companies are heading toward a level of un-sustainability, In living systems, this culminates in fatality for the host.

In America with insurance, we have government subsidies prior to the host death. Personally, I think we need to send a message to all of the insurance companies.

I think we all need to find a way to stop sending payments to organizations who have forgotten that they work for us and exist at our suffrage.

Dry up the insurance companies income for a couple of months and see if they don’t start singing a different tune.

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Annoying Software…

You know back in the day computers were supposed to make things better, more efficient, faster. They were supposed to make a better world…

Jump to 2019

I just spent an hour having to rename paycheck stubs from ADP. There’s a nifty little “Download” button that will allow you to download you paycheck stub. But there’s no provision for downloading a few or ALL your paycheck stubs where they have some kind of coherent name. By the time I’d downloaded all the paychecks I had 90 files named “Ajax-XXX”.

Completely useless, if you’re looking for information from a particular paycheck or wanting to group paychecks by year. The download routine could easily have said, “Pay Statement yyyymmdd”. Yeah that wouldn’t tell you which company but at least you’d know the time period of the statement without opening it. How about allowing a complete download of all pay statements at once instead of forcing the user to click download on each one? 

In point of fact the only filename that ADP sends is Ajax, my computer added the -XXX since it knew that I probably didn’t want to overwrite the original Ajax file with each subsequent Ajax file which would have left me with only 1 file containing the last statement I looked at.

Most bank statements, credit card statements, and any other statements you download do the same thing. Instead of writing a few more lines of code that make the filenames useful, the programmers leave you with crappy, meaningless filenames that you have to rename.

How about Chase Credit Statement YYYYMMDD, or Goldman Sachs 401K and a date, Edison YYYYMMDD. 

And while I know in America we write our dates Month/day/year. For the purposes of sorting filenames with a computer, using yearmonthday makes a lot more sense. If you do it the American way you’ll end up with all the April statements form multiple years clumped together.

It’s just lazy thoughtless programming.

Then there’re the companies that create overarching management software to control their suite of programs. (You know who you are) at first glance this seems like a good idea and could in fact be a good idea, EXCEPT that this management software allows you to modify or remove one application in the suite, then without warning goes off and deletes half a dozen other applications in the background. Then you go back to put the bit of the suite that you actually wanted to keep back on your computer and find that you can’t. Why? because said company downloads their “New improved lemon scented” application manager to your computer while you were deleting the application you no longer use. And NOW they want to to sign up for their subscription service.

Ahem. NO!

After careful evaluation, I used their new application manager to delete their entire suite of products in favor of cheaper, faster, and smaller products from another vendor that does the same thing, better!

I’ve had this little scenario play out three times over the past week. I’m not amused.

The reason that the paycheck stubs were so in my face is because of filing out the unemployment insurance forms online. EDD knew who I worked for and for how long, they displayed that information when I finally got logged into their system.

So why did EDD want me to manually calculate and disclose to them my quarterly income. Which I had to download the checkstubs to calculate. If EDD already had access to the payroll information why couldn’t their computers just calculate the quarterly information for the last 3 years? I thought that was what computers are supposed to do.  Was it some kind of test? Was it one of those stupid laws designed to catch criminals, that never work because the criminals know better than I what to disclose to make things look right and what information to withhold?  And therefore since I just answered the questions as they were asked did I just screw myself by answering honestly?

I personally think that unemployment should kick in and be started by the employer. It should be turned off automatically when you’ve used up your allotment or when you start a new job.  It should be simple, seamless, and efficient.  Why do we have people jumping through hoops answering questions that various entities already have the answers to?

But EDD goes above and beyond with their fabulous software. For reasons that I couldn’t figure out, I had to resubmit the same page, The one dealing with the quarterly earnings calculations 3 times. And with each resubmission request the system would blank all the data I’d plugged in. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to screen capture that page before I pressed submit. 

That meant that all I had to do was re-enter the information repeatedly, instead of recalculate the information.

I’m sure that there are folks who’ve had to do it all over again and again because hey, the expectation is that the EDD web page would take the information properly the first time.

These are some of the things that Software Testers (at least the Manual Testers) normally catch. This is why manual and automated testing should work hand in hand. It’s also why you only release software after real users have had a crack at it. Real users do stuff that you never anticipate and uncover interesting bugs.

So all you automated testing folks keep at it and keep delivering software that does annoying things that you never anticipated. 

Live it up, But not on my dime, I’ll get rid of software that’s glitchy faster than superman.