Category: General

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Unusual weather for So Cal

It’s cold and wet here.

We’ve been having really strange cold fronts wandering down from the north. It’s rained here for the past two days and there is snow in the upper elevations.

Snow in May, not completely unheard of here but rare.

I’m guessing that the ski resorts in the local area are pretty happy about it since they get to stay open a little longer.

There are those that say this is a result of climate change and OMG it’s all the Humans fault.
Maybe, but I tend to think that while we should be responsible and do all we can AS we can to minimize our impact on the planet. I’m also not convinced that the changes we’re seeing are anything other than part of a normal cycle.

After all much of human history has existed between ice ages. We know that the world has been much colder and also much warmer than it is currently.

I’d bet that if you were to ask a geologist he wouldn’t be able to tell you if we were going into another ice age or if we were going into another warming phase. Which is why no doubt the terms changed of the past several years.

Think about it, less than 10 years ago all we heard about was global warming, and how the world was going to be a desert. Now it’s Climate Change, because no-one can say for sure which direction we’re heading in.

For my part, I’m going to just try to enjoy the weather, I get so bored with “Its another perfect day in Southern California”…

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I’m in a strange place

It’s a place I’ve been in for a number of years, if not most of my life. But right here and now I have an opportunity to choose a different direction.

I just don’t fit.

Since I’ve been off work for a couple weeks now, I’ve been considering what to do next, and where to go from this point in my life. (I suppose this is part of the normal decompression process.)

Trouble is that I’ve always been a bit of an individual and frankly feel uncomfortable in most of the places that I’d traditionally be pigeonholed.

For example I’ve got this really conservative bent. But I’m just not conservative ENOUGH to feel comfortable in the Republican party and I suspect that the Tea Party may be pretty much the same. (I’m still checking…on that one.)

I’m not comfortable as a liberal although I do have some liberal leanings.

However in general being around a high percentage of liberals will eventually irritate me until I’m just PISSED off.

For example, bin Ladens’ death, For me it was like OOOORRRAAAHHH! Leave scorched Earth behind. For my liberal friends it was like Oh now why did the kill him and what about the other people in the compound? Should the children and wives have been exposed to that kind of violence?

GRRRRRRRRRR!!!

I’ve not ever been comfortable in religion. For someone that thinks like I do, religion is at minimum mildly confusing and at maximum downright OPPRESSIVE.

I just can’t consolidate ME with the fire and brimstone I was raised around in the South. Even the much more moderate religious leanings of the Episcopal and United Church of Christ leave me feeling vaguely unsettled.

It’s not that I don’t believe in a creator, it’s how Man interprets that creator and then attempts to impose that interpretation on others.

Why you may ask am I thinking about all this?

Well, the company that I was working for, I joined because I naively believed I could contribute to the good in the world.

Yes it was a defense contractor, but what I was working on was something that would protect our troops, not necessarily kill our enemies. (not that I particularly have a problem killing our enemies)

Ok, maybe that’s hair splitting but I wasn’t creating particle beam weapons or figuring out how to bombard specific targets on the planet with asteroids.

The point is I wanted to and still do want to do good with my knowledge and skills. If I have to work for somebody, then I’d really like to contribute something back to society.

So I’d been thinking about working in the public service sector. But That’s when I run up against the not fitting problem. It seems that many of these jobs are heavily, (Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, Tea Party, ACLU, Non-Profit, etc.) I’m not terribly sure how or if its possible to break into one of these areas.

I’m concerned about wasting another block of time working in a situation that is inherently not compatible with who I am.

I’ve thought about working in the gay community, but then I REALLY don’t fit. (I have a lot to say about the Many, Many, Many, ways that I don’t fit there, but that’s a posting for another time.)

For those of you that have Sirius-XM, there’s a radio station called Out-Q. Lets just say… I’m 180 degrees and several THOUSAND lightyears from what those people are, or what they think is important.

So as I said, where to from here?

I’ve been working on a list of possibilities

Artist – Many people seem to think I have something special when it comes to photography.

Writer – I do have a fertile imagination and am working on a book now.

Computer Geek – Been doing that most of my adult life.

Bar Tender – I think I’d like it. Have little idea about what’s involved.

Escort – I’m probably well past my “Sell By date”

I also just read a posting on a friends blog about being authentic in our lives. His posting resonated with me. I really need to do something that is more about who I really am and find joy in that. Of course the question is … can I get paid for being who I really am??

Then I read the edgy husband post here and thought yeah, I get what he’s saying too. Made me ask, have I been unavailable to myself in my life? Hummmm, Maybe I should pay attention this could be a message.

Before I get all wrapped around the existential axle, I’m heading out to run the weed whacker and then work out.

Like most men, accomplishments make me feel better and clear my head.

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Cellphone strangeness

I’m a happy T-mobile Customer. But over the past 2 weeks I’ve been having dropped calls here at home. This is very strange and it wasn’t until this morning that I remembered why it seemed strangely familiar.
Let me step back a bit so that you see where I’m at with this.

I was a happy Cingular customer. I had a family plan, tons of roll-over minutes, great service (even here in the mountains), and a bill that I could budget around. In short life was good on the phone front.

Then AT&T bought Cingular and things continued along for a while so I was still a happy customer. However, as AT&T began absorbing the Cingular network, and integrating the two networks into one the service went to hell in pretty short order.

First there were problems with dead areas that hadn’t existed before.

Next there were people I simply couldn’t call using my cell phone (These were folks that were on the AT&T network).

These calls, when placed gave you a fast busy signal or that annoying bee de beep “The number you have dialed is incorrect please check the number and dial again“. But dialing the same number from a land line phone, or from another cell carrier got you a ring, and you were able to speak to the party you’d dialed.

Then there was my best friend, who until the day I left AT&T for T-Mobile, I couldn’t talk to for more than 8 minutes per call.

Yes folks, 8 minutes from the time the call was placed until the call was disconnected. You could set your watch by it. Funniest thing about this one is that He was also a Cingular -> AT&T conversion.

Through all of this, there were dropped calls, incomplete calls even calls where you reached someone but you’d been routed to a completely wrong number.

The best was me dialing someone in the 310 area code and actually getting someone in the 317 area code.

Yep I dialed a number in LA and got the same number in Indiana. Oh and before you jump to the conclusion that I’d misdialed, this is a friend of mine and he’s on speed dial. When I punched redial I got the buddy in LA.

AT&Ts response to all of this was everything from flat out denial that there was anything wrong to “there is something wrong with your phone“, to the attitude of “Clearly Mr Customer you don’t know how to use your phone.” All said in that lovely and almost unintelligible singsong accent we’ve all come to know and love, attached to someone that has no clue what we’re talking about.


Yes sir I understand your concern. Yes sir your phone isn’t working. Is the phone turned on? Yes sir I understand your concern. Have you used your phone before? You know you have to push the buttons to dial… Yes sir I understand your concern….. 90 minutes of that and you want to throw the phone against the wall and go back to smoke signals!

I know that I wasn’t alone. Thousands of people if not millions had to deal daily with the inconvenience and disappointment of having had Cingular which worked very well and then being saddled against their will, with what was and still is shitty service from AT&T.

I stayed with AT&T for several years after the merger. I had more roll-over minutes than god. I had an iPhone which I lost in a house fire. I replaced the iPhone with a Blackberry and was more or less satisfied.

Until I needed to make a change in my telephone plan and AT&T made 60% of my banked roll-over minutes disappear. And then AT&T told me “by the way, since you’ve changed your plan minutes you’re now subject to our new data plan rates too.”

The whole point of me changing the amount of plan minutes was that I wasn’t using as many per month and the roll-over minutes were accumulating at an insane rate.

I was trying to cut my expenditure on the cell phone bill and by the time all was said & done, AT&T had fucked me and actually shoved the monthly bill over $250.00 a month. When began the call to make the changes the bill was $199.00 and the ever so helpful scumbag in Bangalore or wherever just followed their script without actually mentioning what these changes were going to do, despite the fact that I told him what my purpose in calling was.

So after I got the first AT&T RAPE bill, I went shopping.

T-Mobile was selling a great plan and their phones worked much better than my AT&T shit.

40 minutes after I walked into a T-Mobile Store, I walked out with a shiny new 3G Slide, my same phone number, a reasonable bill, and an unlimited data plan. I even PAID the AT&T bastards a premium to exit their fucking contract.

Flash forward a year or so and AT&T is supposedly buying T-Mobile. WELL, FUCK ME Runnin!

However, that merger is a year and congressional hearings away. RIGHT?

So why then, am I suddenly having problems with my T-Mobile phone dropping calls? It just seems a little too familiar.


Makes me wonder just a bit…

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What part of this don’t they understand?

In anticipation of loosing my job, I recently updated my resume on one of the big web search sites.

Within the site there is a field that says “Available Date” in that field I wrote 06/30/2011. That seems fairly straight forward don’t you think?

So WHY am I being bombarded with emails and phone calls describing “Immediate” openings? The  most annoying come from Indian (dot, not feather) headhunting agencies.

Frankly these “opportunity” emails are badly written, (Doesn’t India still have a British based education system?) and the voice mails were completely unintelligible.

I have some problems with these offshore headhunter agencies.

First, these people have no idea about the distances involved. The last “opportunity” was in San Francisco and was gasp! a 3 month gig.

So let me get this straight, these people think it’s reasonable for me to give notice, move 400 miles to San Francisco, rent an apartment, and work with no benefits for 3 months for less than a 1/4 of what I’m making now?

That is preferable to staying with my current employer taking my full pay, getting a severance package, and being eligible for unemployment if I need it HOW? I don’t have a business management degree, but common sense says hold onto what you have.

About 6 months ago out of the blue I got a call during my daily commute. This one was straight from Bangalore the young lady was very polite and explained a lovely opportunity.

She wanted me to be at the interview the next day and I was thinking ok what the heck? I knew my current job was probably going to come to an end, so I say sure whats the address? She very precisely gave me the company name and the address. The kicker was that the company in question was in Maine.

I asked her to repeat the state thinking I’d misheard. Nope! She wanted me to interview in Maine @ 8 am local time the next day. I asked if she had access to a map of the United States. She said she did, I asked her to locate Southern California she did, then I directed her to Maine. She found the state and said “Well it’s not too far is it?” I said no, only about 3000 miles… This also was a short term contract with no insurance. Needless to say I suggested she narrow her search to the North Eastern part of the United States.

I have other colleagues that have similar experiences. In general my colleagues and I are not responding to emails and phone calls from these folks.

It’s just too difficult to work with them and they seem to have an attitude that they’re doing you this great favor. Hey, we know the score… the headhunter places us, charges the company at least double for our services and pockets the difference.

When was the last time a prostitute thought her pimp was doing her a favor?
 When my colleagues and I say we’re not interested, many of these folks get really nasty. I was told, “This is why America is failing.” when I declined a 4 week contract in Chicago for $35 an hour.

Don’t take this wrong, for a real opportunity I’d relocate and I might even relocate for a sort term contract of say 6 months in another state. It would give me an opportunity to figure out if I liked the area well enough to consider moving there. But I’m not going to relocate for a 1, 2, or 3 month contract.

Perhaps I’ll reconsider when I’m actually unemployed but I don’t think so. First and foremost, I try to run my life like a business. As such I’m going to look at any opportunity from a “how does this benefit me?” position.

It’s nice to know that I’m apparently marketable, but I do wish that people would read the entire profile.

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Politeness

There was a a worker that showed up a while back.

I’ll give him 10 out of 10 for being on time.

But I’ll subtract 4 points for parking his truck across the driveway so that my vehicles were blocked in the garage.

This is not the first time I’ve seen this phenomena. Another worker did the same thing when he came up to evaluate my house for a big-screen TV / sound system install. He pulled up in a Volkswagen Bug and parked squarely in the middle of the driveway even though he knew I was meeting him at the house… I ended up having to park in the neighbors drive.

Mind you the drive way to my house is 2.5 cars wide. So why do these people think they can park diagonally?

I’ve seen the same thing at the BMW dealership. Someone will just stop in the service drive and go into the parts counter to make a purchase. This is the only drive OUT of the service area and people that are picking up their cars or their loaners cannot leave. Additionally, any of the mechanics who need to test drive a car are held up too.

So I find myself asking WHY?

Did courtesy, and politeness get tossed out during the rise of Political correctness?

Follow me here, if it’s inappropriate to hold a door for a lady, because you might offend that lady implying that she’s incapable of opening the door for herself, does it follow that folks in general narrow their focus to their own little worlds?

Why is it now just as “reasonable” for people to cut in front of you in line at the grocery store as it is for them to cut you off on the freeway? What is happening to us as a people and nation?

I wonder about these kinds of things. Of course I have too much time to think sitting on Southern California freeways so that may be part of the problem.

Is it that folks are so focused on their own little view of the world that they become oblivious to the other people in the world around them?

I’m constantly amazed and dismayed at how carelessly rude people are to each other and how surprised they are if someone points out their rudeness.

I’d like to see little ‘ol ladies and grandmothers shaking their fingers at people and reminding folks about the benefits and virtues of being polite and courteous.

The worker moved his truck and was most apologetic when I pointed out that not only had he blocked me in the garage… but that he’d have more room if my car WASN’T in the garage where he needed to work.

The TV installer people… well they lost the sale of the entertainment system and the 1500 bucks they were going to make installing it. Not because of his parking… but because the guy didn’t have a clue about the equipment or options that were available for that equipment. I couldn’t see paying these guys top dollar to install stuff, if I was going to have to be supervising the installation at every stage. Ultimately it took me an afternoon to install the system and I saved myself the $$$.

But I thanked them for their time…