Category: General

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There are advantages to driving a nice car

As long as it’s under warranty!

The most Obvious is that hey, It’s a nice car…

When you have it in for service you usually get a nice loaner. 

If something goes wrong with the service… You get to keep the nice loaner until they get yours sorted out. It’s no big deal unless you happen to be in the middle of a move. Then things get dicy. 

That’s the situation I found myself in. My car needed a software update. Apparently, that didn’t go so well. The irony isn’t lost on me, since software has been my bread & butter for a long time.If anyone is going to have something go wrong during a software update it’s me.

The dealership told me they’d need my car for another day, they apologized and said they hoped this wouldn’t be an inconvenience.  Normally it wouldn’t be. But I told them that I’d planned to make a run with some moving boxes up to my house a hundred miles away and now my schedule would be thrown off. Bingo! No more milage limitation, and the loaner has greater cargo capacity, so I loaded it up.

BoxesI’ve got most of the small goods out of the apartment now. Yippee! What’s left at the apartment can end up in a storage container in the storage unit until I decide what to do next.

The obvious exceptions would be kitchen & bathroom items (very few), the bedding, the TV and some small electronic items. 

Now… to find an inexpensive storage facility. That’s proving to be a challenge, some of these storage units could easily be livable. A/C, convenient bathroom, security, and most of all, peace and quiet. If I was willing to pay for it, I could have a place nice enough to use as a place to do some writing. My computer battery will last 10 hours and God knows, there’d be few distractions.

Coffee would be a problem though.

I don’t need all that, I just need a place to store furniture and two small appliances.

That’s my mission today, secure storage and then down to the apartment and probably picking up the car. Then tossing more un-necessary stuff out of the apartment. After that it’s reserving a truck and scheduling the move. If I do this right I’ll be able to leave and never look back.

There’s something comforting about that.

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I really need to get a real job again

The past three years have been a bit of a waste. Don’t get me wrong, income is a good thing. The problem with income where all you do is tread water, is that you’re not pushing the ball forward.

office politics KnivesWhen I joined the most recent company I thought it was an entry path to Software QA (my primary career) in the medical field (new territory). Unfortunately, the company tends to silo each of its departments very heavily. The HR department doesn’t really look at the employees as assets, they only think of employees as components that are replaceable as was so vividly demonstrated.

My Career arc is funny. Not haha, but strange, when I started out many years ago, I had technical aptitude, and the ability to repair machines that some people described as uncanny. Not surprising since generally I like machines better than I like people and so I had an understanding of machines that I still don’t have with people.

I carried a tool kit in those early days, and moved gradually, as I was able, into positions of greater responsibility. I’ve worked a lot of jobs in the technical industry gradually moving up the corporate ladder and accumulating a lot of experience and knowledge.

Problem is, a lot of corporations don’t really like that kind of employee. It’s tough to silo someone like that. Folks like me tend to just fix a problem, we don’t worry too much about coloring outside the lines. We’re dedicated to the mission, getting the product out the door, and we figure the toes we step on will be bandaged, and the paperwork can be finished up after the launch party while we’re counting our bonuses.

In most situations this worked very well. The old saying “The proof is in the pudding” won out. Then sometime in late ‘80s it started to change. The workplace became more political and forgiveness was harder to come by, especially if your decision was glaringly the correct one.

It wasn’t that big a worry for me because there was enough “old guard” management who appreciated someone who not only would make a decision to move things forward, but who would also stand behind that decision and take the hit if things went wrong.

By the late ‘90s political machinations were so entrenched in technical corporations that making an independent decision was tantamount to corporate espionage. In some cases it was worse. This was especially true if you happened to step on middle management’s toes. 

Organizational politics by noman ghalib 2 638There seemed to be a trend toward vendetta, and loss of sight about getting the job done. People spent more time covering their asses, and currying favor, than they did actually working. Those who sat quietly doing their jobs were forgotten and almost never acknowledged for their contribution.

The only time these folks were acknowledged is when they needed time off for medical procedures, or to tend to family business. Then, their request was subjected to a bureaucratic nightmare of discussion and rules & regulations.

It didn’t matter how many years they’d worked in silence or how many weeks of unused vacation time they had, or that they’d never asked for time off… after making a request they were on the radar and were considered a “problem”. Often, “business needs” was used as an excuse to deny the employee’s request. This left the employee in a difficult position of quitting their job to meet medical or familial obligations or ignoring those obligations altogether. 

The political machinations only got worse throughout the ‘00s. 

At some point in the 2000’s I decided that I wanted something different and that I wanted to contribute to our country’s well being. In the mid 2000’s I found a job that paid a bit less and was a lot further from my home in the defense industry.

Generally speaking, I loved it. There were frustrations to be sure. But as long as I could avoid the politics that were growing like a malicious weed, I was a happy camper. I was fortunate to have a couple of bosses that thought their job was to insulate their employees from the endless bullshit or the politics so that the employees could get the job done.

Under their umbrella, I could just work, be productive, and happy.

Political cartoon corporate greedThat changed after the 2008 election. Then, there was no protection from politics. Because the US govt. started switching funding on and off. A lot of great people lost their jobs through no fault of their own, because our politicians loved playing games with each other and gave no thought to unintended consequences.

That led me to unemployment and experience with agism coupled with full blown corporate politics and this rather strange philosophy that regardless of your experience if you’d not completed college you couldn’t possibly know anything. Or that whatever you knew wasn’t relevant to the job you were applying for even if the job requirements were exactly the same as the position you’d previous occupied.

At my most recent employer, there were a lot of people about my age who experienced the same bias I had, and who’d taken this job to get a foot in the door. What we didn’t know was how different things had become, or that the company was going to doom us to a “boxed in” position where the only options were suck it up, or leave. 

As we learned that hard lesson, we began to start looking elsewhere and many of us found other positions, though in the San Diego area there aren’t many positions to be had for experienced older workers. The pay scale for those available positions is representative of a two class system. (Obscenely high, or barely scraping by.) With the cost of living in the area, many of my former coworkers  have relocated, just as I’m doing. (I do hope someone remembers to secure San Onofre before the last “old guys” leave or are forced out.)

I think a lot of my former coworkers realized they’d made a mistake before they were out of their training classes. I know I did, but like “Old guys” we figured it was a mistake that could be corrected after we’d paid our dues. Turns out we were all operating under old rules that no longer apply in the Corporate America of today.

I’ve decided that I’m going to chalk this experience up to, “The School of hard knocks” and I’m going to focus my attention on getting a job in the defense industry. At least there, people are more results oriented and appreciative of someone that will make a decision, take action, and move the ball forward.

I’ll be looking over other positions and will apply to those that pay well and are also within my experience base. But my focus will be on defense jobs, I really need to work someplace where I fit.

My next challenge is getting my former company to send the check to a valid address or better yet do what they say they’re going to do in the exit paperwork. Then I need to re-establish my access to ADP for my tax records (yeah, looks like they turned that off).

I just want to close the book on this whole wasted time, and move forward.

I suspect that dealing with the company’s HR department is going to be as difficult as they can possibly make it. It’s been their modus operandi for the past three years, it’s unreasonable to expect anything different now.

So it’s off to have the car serviced, then back to packing for the move.

Wish me luck, and as always have a good day.

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Moving Sucks!

I hate it, I hate it bad. 

Because I hate it, I tend to procrastinate. I wish I had a magic wand, or a transporter.

I’d like to just make everything disappear from one location and reappear in another. I know, who wouldn’t? I’m no different than anyone else about moving.

That’s what I’m doing now… Procrastinating. I have stuff that I should be packing, but I’m not into it. I’ve tossed a bunch of stuff, there’s more to toss. Not that I’m a packrat but there is more stuff to get rid of simply because there’s no reason to keep it, or move it.

I think I have enough bins to take care of all the little stuff

Now it’s about sorting and boxing.

Then It’s just about arranging transportation, disassembly, and loading.

Groceries are almost depleted, so everything is moving to schedule, except, of course the actual packing…

I hate moving….

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Don’t know if you’ve noticed

I’m blogging more. 

I think it’s that I’m not having to stay in idiot mode 8 – 10 hours a day.

I’m a week away from the company and I’m starting to think and create again. I’m still not sleeping well but each night is getting a little better.

I’m starting to feel a bit more normal and while I’m still kind of blue about not working and scared about the future and paying bills. At least I’m more “Me”.

I had to lobotomize myself every day in order to maintain control over my emotions and refrain from actually telling someone what I really thought.

Devil 05Here are some of the top things I’d thought while dealing with whiny customers who wanted to rely on the victim card;

“Aren’t you precious”

“If you and you spouse both have this illness, why the fuck did you breed? How are you surprised that all four of your children have the same illness? Adopt! For fucks sake.”

“You might have better luck solving your problem by arranging bones in a pentagram on the floor and slaughtering a chicken. Probably won’t solve your problem but at least you’ll have something ready for dinner.”

“Okay, if you’re done being a victim, shall we solve your problem?”

“Given the way you just explained your problem, it’s obvious you haven’t a clue about how the device works or for that matter, how your illness works.”

“God! I’m sorry I’m circumventing Darwinism.”

“This is not magic, this is technology and it obeys a finite set of rules. What you have just described would only be possible in an alternate dimension. I don’t provide support to inter-dimensional beings.”

“No sir, that four digit number is not a serial number. A four digit number can only represent 9,999 units There are a lot more idiots than that using this product.”

“No ma’m I’m not minimizing your concern for your child. I do have serious questions about your intellect and fitness to be a parent.”

“Nope, I don’t give a shit that you’re pregnant, I didn’t put that bun in your oven and based on your behavior during this phone call I wouldn’t fuck you with a rancid donkey dick. I expect my women to be paragons of civility & virtue outside the bedroom, and whores inside the bedroom. You appear to be a bitch all the time. OH, and by the way… Use of this product is contraindicated during pregnancy.” Devil cover

Thankfully, I managed to maintain my control. Otherwise my tenure would have been significantly shorter. That being said, perhaps brutal truth would have been more helpful in the long run.

In retrospect, it’s probably a damn good thing I didn’t go into medicine. My bedside manner would have been off-putting.

As it is, the few times in my life when I’ve provided technical support… (Essentially the same thing; listening to people bitch and whine,) I wasn’t very good at it.

It’s good to be un-lobotomized 24/7 again. It also feels really good to let the evil flow. It does beg a question.

Is it more evil to tell the brutal truth, or more evil to obfuscate an obvious truth?

Humm, gotta think about that one.

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Accomplished at least one thing…

I cleaned up the jungle that the yard had become.

All the water this year really made a difference in the plants in the yard. Mother Nature was working overtime to reclaim my little patch of land.

There’s still a lot to do, but the majority of the mess has been beaten back. I wish I’d taken before and after pictures but I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I filled all the bins with clippings.

While I was working outside, I kept smelling a dead animal, but couldn’t find it. This morning I found where the smell is coming from. It’s the back deck, and I’m going to have to dig to get to the carcass. Joy! I don’t have the time to deal with it today, and whatever has died did so at least a week or more ago. It will be just as dead when I come back up here.

My sinuses are beating the hell out of me right now. I guess there was enough pollen left in the plants to wad me up for at least the next couple of days.

Heading back to the apartment today so that I can pack some more and make arrangements to get out of San Diego. 

I spent some time on the job search front. I don’t have a lot of faith in this process, but I’m going through the motions nonetheless.

I do hope to get some writing done because it makes me feel better.

Maybe I’ll do that tonight after the drive and chores of the day are complete.