Friends and supporters

Invisible nonentities have a rather painful inability to garner support/interest. Maybe it only seems that way to them, but I think not.
Here's my perception: Let's say a non-invisible person opens a business selling some upscale item that no one really NEEDS, say, expensive wine. They urge everyone they meet to support them, check out their place whatever. So a huge number of people visit the shop and buy an expensive bottle of wine that they wouldn't have bought otherwise. It's like the non invisible just exude vibes that make people that aren't even really their friends want to join what ever they're doing, support them and even emulate them. Let's say the non invisible person posts some earth shattering news on their MySpace, such as "I let a really foul fart this morning." Without even asking, they will get comments back, such as "Oh was it one of those sulfurous ones?" and then another "friend" will say "or maybe it invokes the essence of rotting cabbage?" This can carry on for days. Now comes the invisible person. Let's say they ask people to do something really difficult, time consuming, and costly like (OH MY GAWD HERE IT COMES......) leaving a quick comment on a website. Not asking them to spend $40 for a bottle of wine. But the invisible person gets only maybe a couple family members to do it, maybe their employees or current contractors or people angling for a job if they have anyone like that around, and maybe 1 or two of their best best friends. It's not about the WHAT--we've already established that the WHAT is trival. It's about REMEMBERING it in the first place, and if they remember or get reminded then it all boils down to WHO. Here's how everyone else's thinking goes when it's an invisible non entity in question and if it even crosses their mind at all: "I don't give a rats ass good or bad about HIM/HER. Why should I lift a finger (literally) for HIM/HER.... no one is looking I'm not gonna, NAH." If it were a "cool" person in question it wouldn't be that thought process-- The person is so cool they make an impression no need for them to worry about being forgotten. They have the ability to make a huge number of people think: "I WANT to be wherever they are, here I am .... OMG they let a FART, I just have to say something about it and maybe this cool person will realize that I'm alive." So there you have it.

Mr. Rob Birdwell

Mr. Birdwell gets his blog to pop from a feed in a URL under his own domain by writing some
glue code. Mr. Birdwell is a C# guy and he runs on the .NET platform but I don't think that's strictly necessary. I'm pretty sure you can do it in PHP as well and I would like to find out how. I wonder if there is a blog API. It has been a while since I posted here on blogspot.
This blog is pretty random, but I might try a more focused one, like to document what's going on in TixRUs. Hmmmm... I might cut all the rants out of my other blog and delete it and make a new one
for TixRUs. Hmmmm...

Why I left a solid job with a good company

I landed one of those jobs everyone wants. With a big company that wasn't a couple of guys in a basement that were going to run out of money or evaporate or have the owner go capricious and fire the good half the staff and keep the slackers. I only lasted 5 months at it. I was gonna give it a year. Great facility with a reasonable in-house cafeteria and workout facilities, good co-workers, and a good boss, as far as his bossing powers would go. Unfortunately this company is so huge that there were multiple layers of bosses and my boss didn't control policy. The work wasn't that awful, really. It's not exactly what I went to college to do, but .... ah well. The base pay wasn't that great but the company offered much better job security than others in the same game. At least they said so. Then they turned around and had a 5% layoff. I bet you're thinking I got laid off. Nope. I didn't. I was in a business critical job function. When any member of our team was out sick or anything, we all felt it. I was never out sick the whole time I was there. I don't get sick.

I left because the job was turning me into a dead-eyed corporate drone. I had nearly an hour commute each way, each day. There arent that many jobs in my field in my little burg. So already I'm spending 25% more time than anyone else. Oh I learned some Portuguese on my commute but still I was strapped down in my car. Then at work I was strapped down to a chair, and strapped into a fixed schedule. There were challenges of the job and I like a challenge, but when something is broken and I can't fix it it is frustrating and exhausting and tedious to do the same repetious and klunky workarounds over and over. If I had been willing to spend extra time after work in the place I might have eventually been able to rig up something once they got us some hardware, but I wasnt willing to wait. My family life was suffering. My daughter needed me several times and I just wasn't there for her. There were some games we could play to win "points" and improve our "job performance" but I found them to be a game. I did my best to stay healthy by working out in the gym there but I felt it was a losing battle. Also my little hobby business was going to tank with me only tending to it as time permitted and I actually enjoy that quite a bit. And I was getting in very little music.

So I quit, I feel so much better. I don't miss going there. I don't even really miss the paycheque since when I was working I didn't have time to spend anything. I miss the companionship of the team a little. I really had a hard time caring about the work, since the company obviously didn't think our workflow was very important I could see myself heading for disengagement. I like to be in control, and I like to feel like I'm building something useful. Job satisfaction is critical to me. And being good at what I do is also.

I felt a little bad for leaving them in the lurch. I won't be that easy to replace. It will be hard for my boss to find a person with similar skills who isn't already doing something better. But you gotta do what's best for you.
I'm through with jobs for now. I am an engineer and I don't want to do some related thing like admin or support, which seems to be what I can get being "mature" and all. I'm full time at my hobby business, which is picking up. It's in the black... Who knows maybe I can eventually turn it into a living. Anyway my resume really looks job hoppy now though I'm sure I could justify leaving this last job because of the commute. If I had been satisfied with the job and the work I would have made the commute work. I would have pitched in with my son who lives down there and gotten him a better place that I could stay at comfortably. or something.

Rachmaninov All Night Vigil

I just finished performing the Rachmaninov all night vigil. What an amazing piece of work.
What a geninus old Sergei was. I never thought I'd be singing a solid hour a capella in old church slavonic--a language I really don't know much about. Indeed it was never intended to be used in ordinary worship. Who could possibly dominate it? Maybe a highly trained cathedral choir in a big city. Besides, I found out from a visiting Russian scholar that the Old Believer Russian colony near here finds polyphony not only distasteful, but actually more like an abomination. I'm glad Sergei was not one of them. He uses harmony in a different way than the square Germanic hymns we're used to. Lots of 6/4 chords and the progressions are sometimes surprising.

How can I describe this music? you have got to hear it. As soon as some mp3's come back I will put some on the website of Corvallis Repertory Singers

Wow! Someone loves me

I went to a job fair. It was for all one company. I've been to those things before... people eyeing eachother from both sides of the table. The job seekers are trying to sniff out the "good" jobs and the people offering the "bad" jobs are trying to sniff out just how desparate the seekers are. Well, somebody has to do the "bad" jobs, but I really think it should be interns. So there was some sniffing around, I'm thinking yeh I could do these jobs but would I really want to and I bet they pay crap. And they're thinking oh god not another overqualified techie. We don't need magadolicious software design skills here, all we really need is someone to take duplicate addresses out of our database. On the other hand, the overqualified techies don't have to be spoon fed every little thing so we'd really prefer them if we can get them to work for this birdseed we're putting out.

Anyway I was in yet another line, and some of the guys who weren't getting many takers at their tables were triaging the line, and when one of them got to me he took one look at my resume and pulled me to the front of the line. He liked me. I liked him. And so I went through a series of interviews and I may just get offered this job. I guess I have to accept that I won't get one of the really cool megapaying engineering jobs ever again. That's the price I pay for taking the "Mommy" detour. This job pays about 60% in adjusted dollars of what I was earning when I left the workforce to be a mommy. But it has possibilities for upward motion and it would require a few brain cells, especially at first. So we shall see.

My Choir

I conduct a community choir on Monday nights. We are a broad spectrum in age... our youngest member is 4 months old!! and I don't even know who our oldest is or how old. Like most USA choirs we have more women than men. We range from highly educated to laborers, we tend to lean a little on the liberal side politically, though I have taken pains to make sure that the organization does not take a partisan stand on any issue, and we have members who have pretty conservative views on certain issues. We are not a church choir although we do meet at the Unitarian church. I got talked into sort of taking over and rejuvenating an old hippy-days choir that had been falling apart at the seams about three years ago. But I didn't want to have one of those groups of tired fifty + somethings that have singalongs where they drone Blowin in the wind and old Pete Seeger songs flat ONE...MORE...TIME. I agreed to do it only if part of the stated charter of the group was to develop musically and to get a diverse repertoire including some classical. We perform at old folks homes and community events mostly, and occasionally give the Unitarian church choir a break and pay the Unitarians back for allowing us to use their facility. Just recently we have begun meeting in the church sanctuary, which is a much better rehearsal space than the long tunnel like RE wing where we used to meet. As we have grown, we have also been able to pay a professional accompanist, which frees me to focus on the music. I had a crash course in conducting a couple years ago but most of my knowledge of it is simple OJT. I myself sing in the Corvallis Repertory Singers, http://corvallisrepertorysingers.org, which is always a joyful, high energy experiece. Not only do I love singing in CRS, but I shamelessly choral drills, warmups, methods and other techniques from our director, Dr. Steven Zielke, and try them out on my choir. Steve has been an inspiration to me. Corvallis Community Choir may never be the Mormon tabernacle choir, but we have fun, and I am privileged to enable a large number of people to enjoy singing and making music together.

Puppies

I have become the "mom" of two adorable Chocolate Lab-Griffon puppies. My daughter begged and begged.... she'd do anything.... all the work, except when she's at school. Ha! After a week, she's welching, she needs reminding. I don't think so. Turns out she only really likes the puppies when they're sleeping. (because when they're awake, they are.... well, you know.... PUPPIES who like to eat cat poop and slip under fences and destroy house plants and jump on you and mouth you.) They're cute, of course, when they're sleeping, but actually, sleeping puppies are kinda boring to me. Brother. What have I let myself into? I hope they grow up to be good dogs to take to the woods on a run. Picture as soon as I charge the camera.