Category: Modern problems

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I got practically nothing done yesterday

But I did manage to pick up a shiny new set of trial contact lenses.

“I CAN SEE!”

My eyes have been changing about every year, to year & a half, and that bites the big one.

It’s just another reminder that I’m getting old. As if looking in the mirror isn’t enough of a reminder!

I started the day pretty normally and then went to run just a couple of errands which turned into more errands and rapidly spun into a fur ball of stuff that I needed to get done but that took a lot longer than I thought it would.

No complaints, just one of those things that seems to happen with some frequency.

Recently, I was having a conversation about the narcissism of Twitter. In point of fact all social media is about narcissism. I include blogging in that wide brush stroke as well.

After all who cares that you’re at a particular restaurant or store? Who really cares that you’re having a good or bad day aside, from perhaps your mother or spouse?

And lets be real, who really cares about your opinion?

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Yeah, I’m sure that’s a somewhat sobering slap in the face to a lot of folks who claim to be “addicted” to social media.

Even knowing all this, we still cast our opinions and daily events onto the digital stream, for all the world to read and judge.

I still write blogs that people sometimes read. I still occasionally tweet my opinion out into the world.

Sometimes people find those blogs or comments funny and other times, not so much.

The point is none of us should be taking any of this social media stuff seriously. My opinions are like everyone else’s, plentiful and in the end, to be taken with a block of salt.

A little narcissistic introspection isn’t a bad thing.

Just remember to look critically at yourself when you look into the mirror.

 

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Finally got tired of the Russian sites attacking my websites

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I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to block an entire country from my sites. But I really felt like a had no choice.

My web site(s) were being attacked almost constantly. I decided that I no longer wanted to maintain an endless list of individually denied ip addresses. 

After 1500 it’s just too much to manage especially when you have to keep adding addresses.

I hated to lock out those folks who might actually enjoy my content, there simply wasn’t any other way to deal with the situation. 

How do you tell the good from the bad? The attackers, or bandwidth stealers from the guy in Moscow who reads and gets a laugh from stuff I say?

China is another country that is almost always hammering on my sites. 

They’re about to suffer the same fate as The Russian Federation.

Now I’m off to write some other stuff, perhaps a short story.

It’s one of those days for me, Squirrel!

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His journey to the dark side is complete!

My friend who’s a new iPhone, iPad user has in fact taken quite well to the conversion.

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How do I know this?

A running conversation through airports across the nation. via iMessage; Messages sent at oh dark thirty (his time) from his iPhone. 

And the final proof!

A status email sent this morning that ended; “sent from my iPad”

Muhahahahahahaha!

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Welcome to the dark side my friend.

You’ll enjoy the products and I’m sure that more Apple devices are in your future.

Your expression when I showed you what an iPad and Apple TV could do together, told me you’ll have a couple within the month. That didn’t even include my showing you how to manage porn.

I also suspect that you will replace your Windows computer with a Mac of some kind. It’s inevitable.

I love it when not only do I convert someone, I’m especially gratified when they take to the conversion like ducks to water!

Now if we can just get you over that pesky data cap fear.

 

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Gotta love a good Tweet War

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While I was waiting to see the dentist on Monday, I saw a venomous tweet directed at an acquaintance. 

I thought “Wow, was it really necessary for that lady to call him a douchebag?”

I sent him a message that read “I see you’re making friends again.” 

I figured he’d laugh, and he did. 

What I wasn’t expecting was the venom from this lady who describes herself as a “balanced liberal” directed at me.

I suppose my levity wasn’t appreciated by her I ignored her.

My bud sent back greetings and said not to pay attention to her she did this kind of thing all the time.

I said OK.

Next thing I knew she was firing off all kinds of comments. Culminating in her, calling me an uneducated, hillbilly, redneck.

And threatening to report me to Twitter because my bud, said she was a bigot on par with the Aryan nation.

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I said she was an insult to the Aryan nation. And she called me a racist, uneducated, hillbilly. 

I responded that she’d misunderstood.

Since the Aryans dogma (albieit hateful) was at least consistent and her dogma was inconsistent she would therefore be a insult to them.

After all if you’re going to insult someone you should be clear about it.

Then she got really nasty!

I was laughing, she was entertaining while I waited to have my teeth drilled.

She threatened to report me again and my Bud did it for her. I told her that If I ended up in the twitter gulag I’d be joining a long line of good people who’d been sent to the corn field. 

Then I came up with this,

I sent;

“I find your characterization of my hillbilly kin as somehow “Less Than” in comparison, tantamount to HATE SPEECH and that I’d happily go toe to toe with you with the Twitter judges.”

Suddenly she was gone!

I figured I could use her own rules couldn’t I?

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As I understand Hate Speech, it’s speech that seeks to selectively call, imply or compare a group of people to something negative.

Usually the term hate speech is applied to negative comments about specific ethnicities. More often than not these groups are non European, but sexual preferences are also included in legal protections.

It occurred to me that so called “Hillbillies” might be considered a distinct ethnic group. As such they should be afforded protections against hate speech. One might also extend the definition to occupants of so called “Flyover States”.

Hey why not? 

Thiz means that the negative attacks on Conservatives, Republicans, or people of Faith, so common on Twitter can, and should cause the Gulagging of the liberals who so quickly and easily fling epithets and hateful comments toward these groups.

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After all what’s good for one group should be equally applied to other groups!

I’m totally egalitarian about it.

I’m thinking I’ll try to get the next Liberal that attacks me gulaged using this argument. It might be an interesting test of Twitters fairness policies.

Worst case scenario I’ll end up silenced and that will give me a reason to bail on Twitter altogether.

God! I must be really bored!

LOL

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Working on reworking my resume

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How do you take a 30 year career and convert it to a blipvert?

Blipvert is a reference to a movie called Max Headroom where a new form of advertisement in a slightly dystopian future was blasted into the general populations brains. The problem was that at some point the bombardment would cause your head to explode.

My resume is dated, to be sure. I’ve been looking at articles and suggestions about generating the attention necessary to get your resume past an idiot HR person and into the hands of an actual hiring manager.

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Apparently you need to create a resume that caters to the short attention span, so prevalent in todays young people.

I was wondering if I could create a Twitter version that might actually be read.

Exp Technical SQA prsn, no threat to your job, looking for employment. HMU if pos avail pay needed = min wge or better. Amer Citzn, Ntv Eng

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Blast it out to every single corporation with a Twitter account. Who knows, It might actually work. Maybe I could get my 15 minutes of fame and cash in like the Kardashians.

I’m half serious.

The problem is that my resume is, uh, diverse.

Hey it’s not my fault, the 80’s and 90’s were  tumultuous time in the high tech industry.

It’s not like today when everything is like the Linkin Park song “When they come for me”

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Part of the lyrics say “Everybody wants the next thing to be just like the first.”

What that means to technology is that more and more of the tech has all the originality and creativeness of building a toaster.

The diversity of my resume is seen as a demerit not a plus. Rather than an HR person looking at it and saying “Gee, this guys has been in the industry since the beginning and has done quite a bit they look at it and say why has this guy been at so many companies?

They don’t think about the mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies, and “leading edge” technologies that fell by the way side.

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Most of the HR people today are barely in their 20s and they have zero clue about life pre cell phone or iPod. Most of them never consider that a lot of the technology surrounding them wasn’t in existence 20 years ago. They have no sense of history and even less interest in learning about it.

There are three contract positions on my resume that illustrate my point elegantly.

Ameriquest Mortgage, Washington Mutual bank, and Countrywide Mortgage

Yep, I worked for all three of them and they are all gone now.

Here’s some more:

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Kentek Information Systems, Peerless Systems, Konica Business Technologies, BlueKite.com, Splash Technologies

Kentek is gone and has been for a while. Peerless is still limping along, where they once had a floor and 1/2 of a building in El Segundo the last I heard they were down to just a few offices. Konica merged or was purchased by Minolta and while the office still exists it’s not the development office it once was. BlueKite.com, GONE! in a particularly ugly way, as is Splash. The remainder of Splash was absorbed by one of their competitors.

I’ve got more…

Suffice it to say that unless someone is printing a score card there is no way a 20 something HR person could come close to understanding what the business was like, or the reason that someone like myself would have such and extensive resume.

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Especially when they’re looking for the cheapest newbie out of college they can lay their hands on.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that but sometimes experienced people just want to work and they don’t care so much about climbing the corporate ladder or the money. We just want to do good work, and live our lives, and leave the ladder climbing and Machiavellian machinations to the young.

I’ve been in management, I’ve been a real manager and a manager in name only. I’m not looking for that career path right now.

If I was offered a management position where I was really a manager and not one in name only, I’d consider it.

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I don’t want to have the title and simply be the scape goat for someone above me that’s calling the shots but serving up their “Managers” when things go badly.

I’ve been there, done that and I have the T-shirt.

Of course none of this is something one could or should say in an interview. Honesty is strictly forbidden when dealing with an HR child.

Depending on the hiring manager you could get away with saying to them.

Note, the manager would have to be a guy and he’d have to be a stand up kind of guy.

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There are perhaps a few women who could take it in the spirit in which it was said, but they’d have to be from Australia, or New Zealand.

You know places where pragmatism, a “can do” attitude, and common sense are still preferred over political correctness or the fear of hurting someones feelings.

Yeah, I said it!

If I were young enough or wealthy enough, I’d try to move to Australia or New Zealand and become a citizen. I miss the days here in America when having a common sense approach at your company would get you raises and promotions.

I’d love to find a place to work in the world where that philosophy was still the norm instead of the exception.

I can dream can’t I?