Tag: Modern Problems

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You know, I don’t think it’s that that people don’t want to work

I think it’s that people are sick and tired of the endless bullshit that comes from trying to get a job.

I’ve talked to people who’ve had five interviews and hadn’t met the hiring manager yet. There are others that say they’ve had to explain their technical chops to recruiters, and then to the company HR, and then got to a video interview composed of people from every department except the one that they were going to be working in. In that interview they got to re-explain their technical abilities to people who had no clue what the job title was.

I read of one programmer who asked, “Will I be interacting with the accounting department on this project?” When he was told, “No,” he followed up with, “Then why are two of the 5 interviewers in this room from accounting?

It’s not just about having to fill out a 50 page job application where your’e cutting a pasting everything from your resume into the prescribed little boxes. And then having to submit your resume with the 50 page application. It’s about the complete disrespect that’s shown during a phone interview or zoom interview by people not having read either of the documents.

Technical people tend to cut straight line to a solution and don’t waste a lot of time getting from point A to point B.

There are also a lot of HR and recruiters who play the whole bait and switch game. No I don’t want to accept a 6 month (onSite) contract on a technical support desk, when I applied for a programming position.

No I’m not interested in a salary that is half of what I stated that I needed, with the possibility of overtime.

I love that the recruiter told me, “You’ll be making your requested salary when you consider the OT.”  Uh no that’s not how it works. If the company decides to cut the OT then I’m not making enough to pay my bills. The recruiter said, “Oh you don’t have to worry about that! Most people complain that there’s too much OT and they have no time to do anything.”

The poor girl just didn’t understand that the company sounded like a shit show right from the start. Of course, the Corporate web site said, “We have a commitment to work life balance.” Uh Yeah! I can see that ever so clearly.

A buddy told me about an interviewer that couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to take a management slot instead of the position he’d applied for.

His answer was pretty straight forward. “I’ve done management, I want to spend time with my kids right now. I just want a job that pays the bills, is low stress, only has occasional overtime, and that I can go home at quitting time without worrying about people, resources, and budgets.”

The interviewer just couldn’t get it through her head. She literally kept talking in circles trying to get him to agree to take the management position. The kicker was that the management position only paid 2K per year more than the slot he applied for.

Eventually my buddy terminated the interview telling the interviewer that he was no longer interested in working for her company. She literally started screeching at him for wasting her time.

He told me it was one of those times when he missed the satisfaction of slamming the phone receiver down, especially since it was a zoom call. He substituted closing his laptop while she was berating him red-faced on the screen. He said it was strangely satisfying hearing her muffled screams from the closed laptop. He said he could have simply hit disconnect, but he really wanted to make the point, by closing the laptop screen she could see what was happening.

I’ll have to remember that for the future. I think my buddy may have come up with the phone slam equivalent for Zoom calls!

I’m still annoyed and amused by the hiring manager that pushed for a phone interview even though I told her I had a conflict because I was participating in an online collaboration meeting with my current employer. My participation was text chat only. She simply wouldn’t take “No” for an answer and I let her badger me into doing the interview. So during the call that she forced, She heard me typing a reply to one of my coworkers and immediately started yelling about how I wasn’t prepared for the interview and was obviously looking up information about the questions she was asking. I explained yet AGAIN that I was participating in a meeting and that I was answering a coworker’s question.

Nope! She went off on me and I thought, “I wouldn’t work for this person or her company! I’d rather stay right where I was. Better to drive daily 90 miles one way through LA traffic than to work for someone like her.”

I told her as politely as I could, “Goodbye,” and disconnected. She called me back telling me that it was unprofessional to hang up on her!  I was well past my boiling point, “I asked what part of goodbye didn’t you understand? What part of I’m not going to be screamed at by someone that I don’t know, don’t work for and have no desire to ever meet in person, don’t you get?” I repeated, “Good Bye” and disconnected a second time. She called back to continue berating me.

I remember sitting there wondering what the hell? I hung up, blocked the number and went back to my meeting.

Later in the day I wrote a letter to the HR department of her company. I called out her harassment and offered to send them my phone log as evidence of her repeated calls. I further requested that they flush my application, and resume from their system. I have not applied to that company in the 10 years since.

They’re 25 miles from my home. At the time I knew 2 of their VPs and one of them had walked my resume into the company. I told them both about my experience with this particular manager. As of now, I know absolutely no-one who works for this company. The VP who’d walked my resume in, had been promoted to Director, but left the company a year or two later saying the place had become a shit show of egos and political bullshit.

He’s at Microsoft now.

I’ve had a couple of interviews where a hiring manager was grilling me for proprietary information about a previous employer throughout the interview. They’ve both been Chinese and refused to give up on the subject. The employer they zero in on is a defense contractor I worked for 8 years ago. Any information I might have is long since irrelevant and none of their business in any case. I’m not going to divulge anything about that time in my life except the employment verification number for them to call.

What these people don’t seem to get is that when they get all demanding and particularly if they seem to posses information about the project or projects I worked on, I’m going to call the security number and report that they’re asking inappropriate questions and have details they shouldn’t have. I’ll let the security people deal with these Foreign Nationals asking about confidential projects.It’s no skin off my nose to drop a dime on them.

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No Apple, It’s not you. It’s me

See, I have this personality flaw. I expect shit to work consistently and reliably.

I’ve got 3 pairs of HomePod speakers in this house. 4 HomePod Mini’s and 2 of the standard HomePods. I’ve got an iPad, and iPhone, a watch, 2 Apple TVs, AirPod Pros, Oh and my MacBook Pro.

On the matter of the MacBook Pro, this is my old computer because my new one was stolen while I was trying to return it to you because it was defective right out of the box.

Of Course, YOU Apple, can’t be bothered to help me out. And because your guy in sales had me flush everything and reset the computer to factory conditions, I can’t even track the machine to whoever stole it. I could have, had you not told me the procedure was to make sure the computer was wiped and disconnected from my account… So Thanks a TON!

FedEx screwed me, and Dollar General (The FedEx drop-off point) screwed me so now I’m paying for a computer that I don’t have and I’m sure the fucker that stole it is just happy as hell to have a dumb white fuck paying for their fly computer. Given that they’re probably listening to nothing but RAP I doubt they’ll notice that the sound quality is shit until the audio shuts down completely or the computer shorts out completely and burns their home down. (Hopefully with them trapped inside.)

The police say they have no evidence that the computer was stolen they’re just listing it as a missing package so I can’t even file a proper police report.

Okay, I get it nobody is at fault. Except of course the fucker that stole the damn package. Oh and by the way I’m pretty sure I know exactly who the person is. It was the person who “Scanned” the package but somehow that scan didn’t actually get recorded by FedEx. But without proof I can’t make allegations.

So I’ll suck it up, pay for the damn computer, and continue to use my old machine. You know, the one that almost immediately went from 6 hours of battery life down to 3 hours of battery life after your wonderful OS upgrade called Monterey… Yeah, Thanks for that.

Before you go into the bullshit about batteries having a limited lifespan. Yeah, I know that. So why does the battery still say it’s got 94% of its charge capacity, and is in good health? Why did the battery drain begin literally the day after the Monterey upgrade?

The thing is, I’d probably be able to let it go except you Apple keep getting in my face. HomePods randomly report they’re not available. Then after considerable screwing around with them they magically come back. The Big HomePods reported yesterday that they weren’t on the same network as my iPhone. Wrong! The Router said the iPhone and HomePods had ip addresses and were pingable on the network.

Turns out… only one of the HomePods had a problem but since they’re a paired set well, the only way to sort it out was to ungroup them, then reset the one that was complaining and then regroup them.

This after the same set of HomePods asking me 3 days running for the passwords to my apple accounts and both of them working just fine as the sound system for the AppleTV while I was watching movies. Oh and just as a point, these HomePods had been set up from the phone they said wasn’t on the same network. Oddly, the other HomePod minis on the same network where fully functional.

Today, I thought I’d put a TV show on my computer while I was doing some other stuff. You’d think this wouldn’t be a problem except that the Apple library doesn’t show the second season of the TV show but Apple TV+ does.

My Archer collection is horribly screwed up, apparently because I had the temerity to purchase a multi season bundle. Not ONE of the episodes in that bundle has ever indicated that it’s been played, so if I wanted to watch I had to search through and remember what I’d already seen.

It gets better! I’m watching the show that I wanted to watch after finding it in AppleTV+ “up next”. I’m using my office HomePod Mini’s for sound and for no apparent reason, the right speaker simply shuts off.

The speaker is on the network, the router shows it talking to someone. But all the audio is coming through the left speaker. It was working just fine, nothing changed in the configuration other than time passing.

Restart the computer, power down the HomePods power up again, and things worked for 5 minutes, then boom, the right speaker is off again. What’s really cool is that if I touch the right speaker’s interface it starts playing music. While the left speaker is still playing the audio from the TV show. So much for them being a stereo pair!

Just FYI Apple this kind of shit is exactly why I dumped Windows and PCs.

Either be broken, don’t work at all, or work as advertised. I swear to God I unplug or reset at least one HomePod once a week because it suddenly says it can’t connect to the internet, or it’s taking too long to contact a device on the network, or it’s forgotten a password, or, or, or, or.

The point is, all of this crap just happens randomly. I’m not changing network settings. I’m not changing passwords. I’m just walking into the house or the room and shit mysteriously isn’t working.

The Homekit application on the phone is next to useless. The HomeKit on the computer is worse and that’s frankly inexcusable. You’ve got all the competing power of the MacBook at your disposal for diagnostic capabilities and you send the user to their iPhone or iPad for help that is nothing more than mental masturbation that literally has never solved a HomeKit or HomePod problem.

Instead you leave the user guessing about what could possibly be the trouble. Additionally, your support pages are next to useless because they provide no answers, and often not even decent steps to troubleshoot.

So Apple it’s not you. It’s the phase of the moon, sunspots, the router, the internet connection, or anything that doesn’t point to you having put out shitty software.

Just once it would be fucking nice to hear you admit you have a problem.

Here’s a thought… Stop dicking around with gender confused narcissists, and filling diversity quotas, and do us all a favor.

Hire people that can do the job. You know, good software engineers, and testing people.

By the way I’m probably not going to be buying another Apple Watch. I’ve discovered that I prefer a watch that works without recharging and at $1000 for one of your ruggedized watches. I’d rather wait a few years and spend $6000 on a nice Omega.

I’m probably not going to upgrade my iPad and I’m not likely to be buying a new iPhone in the near future.

As to buying a new Apple MacBook Pro… Well, I’ve already purchased one of those, even though apparently I donated it to some thieving motherfucker at your direction. I’ve reported that serial number to you Apple as stolen and had some expectation that when that SN popped up on the network you’d maybe report it to the Police.

That hope is fading fast.

So if Apple won’t report stolen equipment to the Police and is no longer interested in producing equipment “That Just Works” I am really having a hard time seeing why I should pay a premium price for Apple products.

In this world, perhaps it make more sense to just buy the same shit that everyone else has and replace it when it’s a year old, stolen, broken, or comes in a new color.

(Like Apple did with the HomePod minis last year… Nothing new except a color change, really Apple? Is that all you’ve got left?)

How’s that going to work for your Green Agenda? Apple can recycle their stuff all day long but if fewer folks are buying their products it’s not going to matter much is it?

I can buy a new android phone for $99 at Walmart and throw it away next year. I could do that for 10 years and just start to come up on the price of an iPhone.

$300 for a Windows Laptop and it’s the same equation.

$69 for an Alexa, or whatever and I still have the same shitty performance, connectivity to my smart house, and a speaker.

That’s going to do a lot of landfills good across the country isn’t it?

So no Apple it’s not you. I’m just tired of paying a premium price for mediocrity.

Believe me Apple you’ve become mediocre.

Now where did I put those speakers that I can plug directly into my USB Hub?

Maybe I’ll put one of these HomePod minis in the kitchen and another one in the garage. No point in expecting them to work as stereo speakers is there?

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I’m getting more Retro

God knows there’s a lot of convenience having our schedules on our phones and all of our contacts and “ToDo” lists in the cloud. Our online calendars make sure that no matter where we are, we can add a doctor, or car service appointment or know when our next meeting is.

I’ll admit it’s really nice and for many years now I’ve relied almost exclusively on these modern conveniences.

I’ve noticed that my handwriting has gone absolutely to hell. My handwriting was never beautiful either cursive or printed. Both looked like I’d strangled a palsy stricken chicken then dipped it’s feet in ink. My writing was so bad even doctors had a tough time reading it.

Now days, my writing is worse. Much worse! I’d bet that a future Archaeologist, upon discovering anything of mine that was handwritten, would assume they’d discovered another type of writing for which there was no Rosetta Stone.

I’d been aware of the degradation for many years. Last year it all came to a head when I’d written some notes during a phone call and found that I couldn’t read them an hour later.

At the time I was annoyed at myself. After ten or twenty minutes I was able to decode my chicken scratch and make sense of it. The problem wasn’t spelling it was formation of the characters themselves. I immediately recognized the problem as one of fine motor skills.

Without actually writing by hand, I’d begun to loose fine motor skills, not due to any malady, but due to lack of use. I proved this hypothesis by writing large on a piece of paper, then scaling the size of the characters down to fit in a single ruled line. (And yes, I was wearing my glasses!)

For those of you old enough to remember learning to write letters in grade school this is why all of us, as children started out with paper ruled in 2” lines. It wasn’t that our vision was terrible, it was that we needed the space to train the fine motor control in our hands.

I’d also noticed some other effects of the loss of fine motor control. Chief among these was soldering . I used to be able to solder the finest circuits by hand. If I made a repair on a board, you had to look really hard to see it. Cold Solder joints? Not on my work!

Now… Not so much.

A year ago, recognizing the problem and its cause, I dusted off my old Franklin Planner. I cleaned out the 10 year old notes and calendar, then wondered if Franklin Planners could still be purchased.

A quick web search reassured me that Franklins were in fact, still a thing. There wasn’t nearly as wide an array of page designs as there once was, but Monticello, (an old favorite) was still available. I placed an order and was pleasantly surprised when the package arrived two days later.

So I began writing by hand again. My penmanship has improved over time as a result. (I’m still not going to win any awards!)

I still receive digital Calendar invites and my household still uses common shared ToDo lists. But I transcribe the Calendar invites into my Franklin. Yes, this is redundant but it keeps pushing the ball forward on improving my penmanship.

Now when I’m on the phone scheduling something I’m noting it in my Franklin daily notes. I’ll add the event to the Franklin first, then move it to the Online Calendar if needed.

Admittedly, it’s hard to switch back to Paper and Pen. Digital services are cloyingly seductive. I’m willing to eschew the ease and convenience in trade for penmanship.

Another benefit of the trade is that my soldering ability is coming back. It’s not the quality it used to be, that’s something you acquire by doing it 8 hours a day 5 days a week. But it’s improved to the point that I’m not ashamed of anyone seeing my work.

This year’s Franklin refill arrived Monday. It’s not the old standby “Monticello” this one is something new. It’s clean and elegant with a bit less visual “weight” on the page. I noticed when I placed my order that there was a larger number of design variations on the Franklin web site.

I wonder if more people like myself are going “Retro” as a way to keep old skills?

As I mulled this over, an article notification popped up on the phone about a sitting congressman being served a warrant by the FBI for his phone.

According to the article, The congressman was traveling with his family and all the FBI wanted was his phone, this struck me as odd. Then I recalled that almost every “High Profile” FBI search and seizure over the past few years has also included seizing the person’s phone.

Thinking about it, I realized of course they’d want his phone. His phone would have a log of all his calls and their duration. The FBI would have access to all of his private text messages including those between him and his wife or children. His entire Calendar would be available as would his contact list. The phone would even have a GPS log of places that he’d been recently.

That single device provided the FBI with anything and everything the FBI could want and it’s 1000 times better than the old McCarthy era tactics which required your friends or colleagues to serve you up. Your contact list could provide the FBI with 100 or more additional people to investigate due to “guilt by association”.

I rarely have more than 100 contacts in my phone. I just don’t interact with that many people. Folks I haven’t heard from in a year or so… I delete. My Calendar, Text Messages, Photos, and ToDo list are another matter. There are literally years of data in those systems. The GPS issue isn’t much of a problem because I delete that log whenever I think about it.

I wondered, “Why don’t people execute a remote wipe of their phones when the FBI seizes them?” (I would just for spite!)

All of this got me to thinking. Will the handwritten word and perhaps day planners experience a renaissance?

I find myself wondering if it is time to move my data out of the cloud. Is it time to memorize important phone numbers and addresses again? Does Thomas Brothers still make their excellent Thomas Guides?

I’m not guilty of anything, I’m not likely to have my phone seized by the FBI. It’s a matter of privacy and principal. Why make it easy for them, or for any other 3 letter department of whatever?

It occurs to me that true protection of privacy is only possible if everything is in your brain. Anything and everything put on the ‘net lives forever. Has it come to the point that the only way to ensure our privacy is to disconnect?

The FBI these days looks more like an enemy of the people and the enforcement arm of a socialist/communist government than law enforcement.

That is a chilling thought. Perhaps my switching back to writing on actual paper in my day planner is a good thing.

I can burn the day planner. I can write notes that only mean something to me in it. I can refuse to decode those cryptic notes. I can choose to not clearly recall details, I can invoke the fifth amendment.

My digital devices, not so much. They can only do as they’re commanded. My devices have no concept of Constitutional Rights and no ability to determine if they should obey valid commands or not. (I’m not even sure that I’d want them to have that ability) There are some things only a human mind can, or should do.

Have the powerful little bricks in our pockets become a liability? I was reminded of Blade Runner.

Will someone in the near future be visiting Apple and having an exchange like this:

Rachael: It seems you feel our work is not a benefit to the public.
Deckard: Replicants are like any other machine – they’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re a benefit, it’s not my problem

I’m going to be thinking about stuff like this for a while. In the meantime, I’m going to be using my Franklin a lot more.