Category: Technology

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Huh? Google contractors unionizing?

Google logoWell it’s about damn time!

Generally, I don’t go for Unions. But after decades of seeing the kinds of excesses those at the top of tech companies engage in, I can’t say I’m surprised.

Tech companies have gotten away with figurative murder for years. They’d hire people, work them into the ground, then fire them when they’d burned ‘em out. They’ve on more than one occasion, forced the worker they were going to fire to train their H1B1 replacements, knowing they could work the H1B1s like slaves, and have no repercussions. But during this time We had a president saying H1B1 workers and migrant workers were doing jobs that Americans wouldn’t do. That was bullshit then, and now it looks like the bullshit will be exposed.

For the worker it’s not just about the constant job hunt. For the laid off workers it’s about having resumes with a string of jobs that ultimately hurt their long term prospects to find gainful employment. As HR departments and “Talent Placement” agencies started making statements in interviews like, “You’ve had a lot of positions over the years,” without factoring in the context. It made reliable hard working people suddenly less employable.

Facebook emblemHR and Talent agents will deny that contract work or multiple layoffs have any bearing, but the reality of what they do, versus what they say couldn’t be more different.

Google’s motto used to be “Don’t be evil” I have no idea what their motto is now; “Be Super Evil?” It’s not just Google, it’s Facebook, Twitter, and the plethora of other tech companies whose sole aim is to use and control people in almost any way possible.

I welcome unions in the technical field today. Twenty years ago I would have been against them. In my most recent employment, in addition to the absolute control the supervisors had over each employee, many of them were fond of saying, “Do you want to keep your job?” or something similar.

The implied threat being that they’d find a way to fire you for no reason at all. It could be that they simply decided they didn’t like you.

management slavedriver.pngIt had nothing to so with your abilities or your performance. They’d find something. They’d rely on inaccurate metrics, write you up over 10 second late return to your desk from a break or lunch,  or say that you spent too much time with a customer. They’d find a way, then screw you. And you’d have no recourse. This was as an employee of the company. I can’t imagine what it would be like for someone who was just a temp contractor.

Middle Management and above all drove Teslas, high end BMWs, Mercedes, Jaguars, or Audis. The average terrified worker came to work in some kind of beater that was barely running, belching oily smoke and obviously in need of significant repair for which they had neither the time or money.

Middle Management and above were always on vacations. The workers couldn’t get time off approved. My final paycheck included over a month of unused vacation time. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to take a vacation, it was because for 3 solid years every single vacation request was denied. “For Business Reasons“

I’m not into the bullshit philosophy that everyone should have the same everything… But when you have this kind of disparity and simultaneously the “upper class” delights in tormenting, terrorizing, and generally fucking with lower echelon workers, Well the next logical conclusion, aside from multiple lawsuits that the workers can’t afford to pursue, is an overarching protection mechanism like unions.

The Technology Industry has finally matured. Now they’ve reached the same point that the Steel & Textile industries reached 100 years ago. Yet for all their “Forward Thinking” they’ve made the same mistakes and committed the same atrocities. I guess it’s human nature, those in power will inevitably abuse that power, and eventually the subjects of that power will rise up against oppression.

Maybe I’m still steamed about the layoff. Maybe I’m pissed off that where I worked I was told I could move to another department after I learned the product (A lie). Maybe it’s just that I’ve had a belly full of abusive, arrogant, shitheads. Maybe it’s a combination of all of the above. But today, right now, I say unionize the whole damn tech industry. That might change over the coming months or years. But for right now…

Google, Facebook, Tech companies etc… You assholes have made your beds. Now you’re going to get the dry angry vengeance ass fucking you so richly deserve. 

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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.

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Well isn’t this a nifty thing?

Caldigit ts3plus us20 ts3 thunderbolt 3 docking 1385844Albeit somewhat expensive…

With the new computer comes new connection issues. In the 7 years since my MacBook Air was born, Apple converted to a different connection method. The computer industry approved and introduced USB-C.

This is a FAST directionless connection that provides power, video, Hard Drive connectivity, Ethernet, and a host of other connection possibilities. In short, it’s neat.

BUT… what do you do with all your old devices? The plugs are incompatible and for those of us that like SD cards for photography and lose that nifty SD card port on the sides of our computers now, you’re kinda stuck using old USB.

You need little adapter thingies and lots of little adapter thingies are a pain in the ass.

Not to mention that your sleek new hotness of a computer looks like it’s got some kind of fungus with all the adapter thingies plugged in.

Unless… you pick up a hub. I’ve done a fair amount of shopping for hubs. A lot of it I’d done long before my MacBook Air died. I’d figured that if I ended up with some kind of new hotness, I’d get a hub and the hub I’d get was the CalDigit.

This nifty piece of technology allows me to connect everything all at once and charge my computer at the same time with a single cable.

It’s got an SD slot, USB ports, audio in, and out, optical out, Ethernet, and several USB-C ports to allow connection of newer devices.

You can even charge devices from the USB ports just like you always did and since the adapter that runs the hub is also the power source for the computer, you don’t need to buy another power adapter (As I had in the past). I always had one adapter in the backpack and one on the desk at home.  Now, all I have to do is plug my computer in to the hub and we’re good to go. I can keep the original power adapter in the backpack.

My old superdrive CD burner, and my little 1 TB backup drives all mount normally and well it’s a clean elegant system.

As soon as I get my desk cleaned up I’ll take a picture so you can see what the setup looks like when I’m home.

CalDigit did a nice job matching the Space Gray color of The TS3Plus to my MacBook Pro and the device’s enclosure is aluminum to help with heat dissipation.

I like not having to replace all my old hardware all at once just because I got a new computer.

Which is not to say that I’m not going to be consolidating data since I can connect all the hard drives at once and I can also do the same with the memory sticks that I seem to accumulate.

So if the change to USB-C is holding you back for fear of losing compatibility, Fear not… But open your checkbook.

This little jewel costs $300.

But replacing all your storage devices would cost you a lot more than that in hardware and time moving data.

Just food for thought.

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Well, I’m sold on USB-C

I like the connector, and I like the speed.

Screen Shot 2019 08 23 at 10 04 29 PMI just transferred 44.5 GB to my zippy new 4 TB drive in about 10 minutes. Don’t know exactly but I was surprised with the “Ding” that said everything was finished.

I had a 3 TB drive that died a couple of years ago. I didn’t replace it because I never got around to it. This one is fast and it’s quiet.

I like keeping local backups of documents and photos just because in the event of one of the primary backups failing, I still have the ability to reconstruct my computer. It was that redundancy that allowed me to bring this new computer up even with partially corrupted backups.

This little device is a WD. It’s a tiny little thing not solid state but cheap rotational storage is a good thing.

I had to get out of the house today. I had no plans other than to check the pricing of phones (for the other half) Best Buy’s price was discounted but Apple Refurb has better pricing and the phone is backed directly by Apple.

I think that’s where the purchase will be made.

However, always a shopper I saw the drive sitting on the shelf for $100 and thought, “Huh, that works for me.”

So I’m transferring stuff to it as fast as my evil little fingers will allow.

I did a few of my favorite things today. Saw a different view, washed & dried the car by hand, shopped a bit. There are some other things I’d like to have done, but I’m saving that for another day.

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For those of you that can’t afford or don’t want to pay Adobe…

Affinity logo 190920160826Might I suggest the Affinity line of products?

Back a while ago, Adobe moved to a completely Cloud based paradigm. This offers a lot of very nice features not the least of which is that All Adobe products are available, and fully updated all the time. This is subscription dependent, nonetheless it’s very nice. 

It’s also very expensive for the small business who may or may not need to use the Creative Suite products only occasionally. Yes, you can turn the subscription on & off as needed and you still have access to view files created in Adobe products just not edit them if for instance you were to pay the monthly fee only as needed. This is a expensive option for individuals or small businesses, especially if you’re just an occasional user.

So being in the individual / Small business class of users I started looking for an alternative.

Typicality,  I use the big three. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign. So I started looking for replacements. I found Affinity.  

I tried their Photo application. It was nice, a bit different from Photoshop and it’s in the differences that there was some of frustration. If you’re used to Photoshop, you tend to reach for tools that are present but not available in the habitual way that you’re going to grab them. 

The frustration is short-lived and as you adapt to the changes they’re not as jarring. So stay patient and don’t try to transition on a high pressure project. (You’ll make yourself crazy… I speak from experience!)

Then I tried Designer. This is Affinity’s response to Illustrator. Again, there was a level of frustration transitioning.  But it was short-lived, once again it was the differences between the applications that I stumbled over. 

Most recently, Affinity released Publisher, an answer to InDesign.

I’m still learning this one. Thus far I’ve been pleased. Again, there are differences but perhaps because of my previous experiences with Affinity’s other applications or just the layout of tools It’s not been a big frustration. Either way, using Affinity’s Publisher I’ve been able to turn out a couple of projects with a minimum of headaches.

The applications work well, They open Adobe native files and can save, import, and export, into a variety of formats as you’d expect, and they’re relatively inexpensive. Photo, and Designer work on Mac, and my iPad. Publisher, for the time being is running on the Mac but I’ve not seen it for the iPad yet.

Affinity produces Windows versions of their applications as well.

They’re generally smaller than the Adobe equivalents. An added perk for me is that they don’t spatter support and utility files all over your drive. So if space is at a premium on your drive, Affinity may provide you with some relief in that area too.

I can tell you, saving 50+ dollars a month adds up.

Based on the stability and functionality I’m seeing from Affinity I’m going to be retiring my old Creative Suite.