The ramblings of an invisible non-entity

Friends and supporters

2007-12-13T16:35:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-21T21:46:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

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.

Bow Bugs

2006-03-12T21:05:00.000-08:00

All my kids played violin when they were very small. Their teachers told them they must practice every day because if they left their bow in the nice dark case for too long, bow bugs would get in and eat the bow.
Bow bugs. Yeah Right. That ranks right up there with the tooth fairy. Except for one of my kids decided after freshman year that he'd had enough of the viola and put it away. About a year later, someone needed to borrow a bow and I knew there was a perfectly good bow with the viola. So I took it out and discovered, to my shock, that the majority of the bow hairs were severed as neatly as if someone had cut them with a razor blade. I asked all the kids who cut the viola bow hair and why. They were all dumbfounded. My kids do dumb things like kick tortilla chips under their beds and then wonder why they get mice, or forget their wet laundry in the washer, but this didn't really seem like anything any of them would do for any reason.

It turns out that there really are bow bugs. They're called anthrenus museorum. I already knew you should ideally store unused stringed instruments and bows in the open, but with a big family it just seemed safer in the case. You learn something every day.

A Tribute To Grainne

2006-03-05T14:27:00.000-08:00

When I was a lot younger I shared a flat with three other girls in a fashionable but dilapidated historical Dublin neighborhood. This was years and years before the Celtic tiger had even begun to roar. Ireland was a quiet provincial backwater in those days; jobs were nearly nonexistent and what there were were poorly paid. Our flat on Anglesea Road, was on the same street where Brendan Behan had lived. But the magnificent old Georgian house had been crudely partitioned into flats. Any fixtures of value had been removed and replaced with cheap and flimsy. The heat was regulated to only be on in the evenings, and it cost 50p of a pre Euro Irish punt to heat the water for a bath. There were two bedrooms, the smaller of which I shared with Grainne. The other girls, both from Co. Tipperary, were named Liz and Eilish and it seems they knew each other from their school days. Grainne was from Mullingar, and had come to the big smoke to be rich and famous. Liz and Eilish were sensible gals. Liz had a civil service job at the DMV, and Eilish was a young university lecturer in economics or something totally sensible. Grainne was only 18 or 19 years old, a big sturdy freckled Irish country girl with a mop of shockingly red hair, whom John, Liz's fella, referred to as the Mullingar heifer. The Irish gals were a little dubious of having a Yank share their quarters. Grainne was my biggest advocate. After all, she reasoned, I came from a lot closer to Hollywood than she did (and somehow that was a positive thing.) And it couldn't be disputed that I did have a steady source of income and seemed unlikely to bring a parade of drunken chaps into the flat, so I was chosen to be the fourth roommate.

Grainne had landed a job upon arriving in Dublin in the typing pool at Radio Telefish Erin. She was sure that within a week or two someone at the radio station would recognize her talent, and put her on the air, and her career would be launched. When that didn't happen immediately, she decided that the thing to do was to attach herself to a man with power and influence. Of course such men didn't hang out in the typing pool; no... far from that. You had to find out what pubs they went to and make yourself available after hours, according to Grainne. Grainne was magnanimous too: she was utterly confident she could snag me a man too. I once went on one of her hunting trips with her just for the "crack." Since I was obviously clueless, Grainne plotted that she'd do all the snagging; and once she'd had her pick I could take the one that was left. I sat alone in a dark corner of the pub soaking up Guinness while Grainne flitted about the place tirelessly looking for an opening. When I had had all the Guinness an eight and a half stoner could hold I could see that Grainne hadn't snagged anything in a whole evening of flirting. As far as I could tell there wasn't anything worth snagging in the whole joint anyway.
So we went home and had a cup of tea, and Grainne expressed quite strongly the view that she had been badly misled-- obviously we had not been at the "right" pub. I was dubious that such a place existed, but I kept my opinion to myself.

Grainne had a penchant for thinking large, but not thoroughly. She decided once that she would cook a gourmet feast at the flat, I guess, for this man, whoever he was, before she had even found him. So she went out and bought a couple of cornish game hens. I'm pretty sure Grainne had no idea what to do with a cornish game hen. But that was far from the least of her worries. She busied herself with the pub scene, sure her savior would walk in the door, be smitten with her, and accompany her to the flat for a light ripaste. Liz & Elish had gone down the country for the weekend, and I had gone to spend a pleasant weekend up in Malahide with my friend Jane. On Sunday afternoon I happened to meet up with Liz and Eilish at the bus stop in the center of the city and we all went together towards our digs. A pong greeted us when we entered the flat. Grainne's game hens had been hastily stashed on a shelf on Friday, and without refrigeration (not that we didn't have a fridge, mind you!) by Sunday afternoon they were busily poisoning the air. I'm the one who ended up sweeping the reeking mess into the dustbin and removing it from the dwelling. Apparently that sort of implicated me by default until about midnight when Grainne showed up wondering what had happened to her supplies.

Alas for Grainne, her employment with RTE lasted but a short time. It is possible that she couldn't type to begin with, or was so distracted by her quest for her man, that her performance dipped to below abysmal and she got sacked. It is also entirely possible that she annoyed someone pretty badly. But cost effectiveness of a worker was a foreign idea to the Irish in those days. If a company had money (which RTE most surely did,) they rarely sacked anyone. My guess is Grainne got tired of the whole thing and simply stopped going. That guy who wrote the screenplay of "Office Space" probably got the idea from Grainne.

And so..... Grainne went on the dole. They didn't ask too many questions in those days in Ireland when you went on the dole, as their recordkeeping was hopelessly byzantine. As a condition of collecting the dole, Grainne was supposed to be looking for a job. Alas... the jobs she could have got--a youngster with no discernible skills--were pedestrian, and Mr. Wonderful wouldn't be there. She took to sleeping late, and what's worse, not paying the rent. Our greasy landlord, Mr. Woods, with his yucky polyester shirts, was not flexible about rent payment. So Liz and Eilish and I chipped in for a few weeks for Grainne's share but eventually Grainne was politely invited to go elsewhere, and was quickly replaced by a very sensible young woman from Cork.

None of us kept a tight line to Grainne, but Ireland is a small place. Grainne the drama queen persisted for quite some time in her fantasy about Prince Charming in the form of a rich not-too-old-or-nasty-looking gentleman who would buy her a pint, and from there all would fall into place and he would sweep her off to a high life. Some time after I left Ireland, it all became too much for Grainne, and one evening she washed a whole bottle of sleeping pills down with a slug of whiskey and never woke up.

Liz and Elish went on to prosper in good health, and I reunited with them many years later. As we reminisced about the old times, we couldn't help but remember Grainne with a bittersweet tear. Maybe if she'd just gone to America.... or gotten some sense....

Out on the street again?

2006-02-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

My bosses ran out of money. So I'm out of a job. It was a fun ride. If they ever go public with the site I'll edit this blog and put the url here. I'm proud of it. I'd love to show it off. But it's still hidden behind a NDA.... and I'm on the street again.

Here's the scoop: I am not a kid nor am I entry level. I am no longer "re-entering the work force." Been there. Done that. I am no longer willing to do scut work for shit pay to "prove myself", "get my foot in the door" or whatever. It's not worth the aggro to have some 30-year old who couldn't find his own asshole in a diarrhea shit fit acting like he knows more than me and telling me to do stupid things. If I suggest better methods, I'm insubordinate. If I do the stupid things like I'm told and keep my mouth shut then I get the heat for it when it fucks up. Fuck it, people could keep me believing that I need to prove myself over and fucking over just because I'm "mature" (euphemism for beyond it??) and I'd be stuck at the bottom forever. I have proved myself in spades with my recent employer and if people can't see past the fact that I am a "mature female not your average developer demographic" then nothing I could show them or say would convince them otherwise and all they would want to do would be exploit my ummmm.... cultural disadvantage anyway. I am quite content to pursue my own interests for the next 2-3 months and see how it goes with my soon to be former employer. I enjoyed working for those guys. I wish them every success. Meanwhile, owning my own little fledgling biz (that needs serious attention) suits me and could make us a decent little passive income if we can just get 5 or 6 steady clients. I have a good business partner who knows all the movers and shakers in this little burg where I live. As for my soon to be former employer... If me being gone doesn't shock the founders of that company into kicking some butt, then they're finished anyway, they just blew quite a lot of money for nothing, and they'll wish me well and I can still put their little project on my resume. If they do kick some butt I believe that their idea will take off. I believe their top secret cool idea has great potential but it takes more than a good idea to make money. They have indicated that if they ever get serious capital into their business they will want me back. It's really up to them just how badly they want it to happen. They spent about 1/3 of their startup cash on me. For me that amount would be a CAN'T fail. But I am in an economically depressed part of the USA. and they're not. that's why they internally "outsourced" the work to me. So I can't tell just how much of a subjective financial risk they took and how much they're willing to just blow. The other unknown from where I stand just how much work they are willing or able to do in addition to risking the capital.

I don't think having a bit of ego or slightly higher expectations will hurt me in the overall scheme of things at this point. If my "attitude" keeps me from getting a job in the short term, you can bet your ass it's a job where they want someone they can feed shit to and it would just be a load of aggro. I don't plan to make a show of attitude in my next round of job hunting. But if I smell any shit, I will just say NO. In this life you kind of get what you expect to get. If you act like a submissive puppy, expecting and willing to eat all flavors and textures of shit, then shit you will get. I've had my lifetimes quota. For maybe the second time in my life I didn't get shit from this job. Amazing! I got used to not eating shit and I'm not EVER going go back to eating it.

And I'll end this with a question.... Why do so many people put dominating other people ahead of their employers' mission statement? They take a perfectly capable employee and force feed them shit, and fuck them every way tiltwise such that there is no way that person can be effective at their job. Woopee. They "prove" that this person never should have been hired. They're the alpha dog. Productivity suffers. The victim is the one who gets fired.... or laid off at best. And why are the people who cause this never the ones that get sacked?

Back in da saddle

2005-12-29T22:45:00.000-08:00

Nonny is employed again.....
that's why you haven't heard much from me lately.
Nonny loves her new job. I get to work remote from home, set my own hours, am paid
decent and, more importantly, treated decent. It's all cloak and dagger stuff at moment, but
we will launch soon (I hope) and if we don't it won't be because of me. Then I'll wax eloquent
about it.

Doctors and pills

2005-07-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

My random rant about the pharmaceutical industry and the whole medical system in general is that they're not truly accountable. My mom has been suffering for months. She goes to her local doctor and (OK she's a silly scared little old lady that doesn't matter much I guess) he says here try this. Now you or I could easily tolerate a dose of but mom's system is delicate and she's severely underweight. Even OTC stuff is a disaster. You or I take a dose of milk of magnesia, OK we get a slight case of the trots, and think nothing of it. It takes her two days to recover from that. Well guess what. It didn't work. Does that doctor give a shit about my poor little mom? Ha! Meanwhile...She has to wait and wait for each of these Dr. appointments. They suggest one thing or the other and shoo her out the door. They write a prescription and shoo her out the door. Next. There is absolutely no follow up. Now I know my mom is not always lucid but she deserves a scientific treatment plan, where they keep trying stuff and adjusting her diet/meds until they get a combination she can digest and eliminate without all these effects. She keeps thinking it's something she's doing. She wants to think that, but I'm inclined to believe the system is just malfunctioning. She is a control freak like me. As long as she can convince herself that there must be something she can *DO* to fix it, she is in control.

I digress. That's my mom, what got me thinking about all this. But I wish wish wish wish
that doctors and drug companies had a money back plan. If the doctor fails to help you you only pay half. If the prescription drug fails to help you you get ALL your money back and the doctor who prescribed it would get nicked as well. That would sober them up REAL quick.
Other businesses have such a policy. I mean, if I get a bad haircut from my hairdresser, they'll fix it free within 7 days. If I buy something from a store and it fails to do what it says it will do I can return it.

And another thing... surely it should be doable to make national registry of prescriptions so that a person cant go to six different doctors and get six different scripts for vioxx. We're such a drug based society. How do we expect our kids to stay off recreational drugs when 2 of every 3 adults is on some kind of serious long term prescription meds!!!

bugmenot

2005-06-30T17:33:00.000-07:00

If you don't know what bugmenot is, maybe I shouldn't tell you, but what the hell.
No one reads my blog anyway. So what difference does it make.

The premise of bugmenot is that you shouldn't have to register for anything
free on the internet. Their pet peeve is the new york times but extends to
include any site that provides free information. So, someone
registers at the NYT site, then they share the nick/pass in the bugmenot database.
Then anyone who is looking at a website that requires registration can look it up in bugmenot and
get the shared log/pass until someone (maybe the site owner) finds out and cancels the
account. Of course someone will just put another log/pass in a popular site. Really
popular sites could even brag about how many different bugmenots they've had.
But I digress.

The premise of bugmenot is "information should be, wants to be free,
and you shouldn't have to part with any personal information to get it."

Yah, information is free. There are great big piles of it all over
the internet. Good, bad, spam, academic, bullshit, ads, politically
motivated, true, false, slander, libel, clear, and murky, and just plain drivel. You can wallow
in that all day, never knowing if any of it is correct, up-to-date,
or even makes any sense.

But... suppose someone has organized a bunch of good current information
up in a database, cleaned up the writing, separated the truth from the fiction,
and made it very convenient for you to find whatever you want.

They have provided added value. The NY Times for example, just by being the
NYT, sort of carries an endorsement on anything they publish. Plus we believe
they adhere to some sort of journalistic standards and can basically back up
anything they write. That's why we read it. That's why people have PAID to read it for
decades. So why now should it suddenly be free?

A lot of registration sites don't ask for much more than a moniker & email, and
they have (or should have) a privacy policy promising that they'll never sell it. A lot of
free sites are ad-supported. Free sites need to be able to target their ads to stay in business.
Oh right, the same people who do bugmenot, probably think there shouldn't be any ads
either. So just how do they think that all this good info is gonna be built and updated? By nice people
who just do it to be nice? The web is littered with abandoned sites that started that way. But the nice people got tired of it, or got busy making a living.

Websites that allow posting have a legitimate reason to need people to register,
even if they're free sites. If you don't know why, just try allowing anonymous postings
on a BB. Your BB will soon be flooded with every kind of spam you can imagine.

The really interesting thing about bugmenot is that it's used by internet savvy people
with good high paying jobs. But those folks (I guess) seem to think that people who
provide free info shouldn't be able to make a living. And bugmenot specifically says oh we won't provide passwords for sites that are actually "selling" anything. Soooooo..... Sites that provide anything free are getting screwed, so they are moving bit by bit to selling what they previously gave free including information.

Right BUGMENOT. That's really what you wanted, isn't it!!!

Scriptlance

2005-06-30T10:38:00.000-07:00

just for fun I signed up at scriptlance. (http://www.scriptlance.com) So now I get to waste my time reading emails about these projects.
I have questions: How can doing ANYTHING for $5 generate any income for anyone. The overhead of just your time to check your emails and set up the job would surely cost more than that. Yet I see a lot of little jobs bid at $5. by newbies I guess hoping to lowball, treat it as a loss leader and get the gig so they can get a notch in their belt. It seems like you could get a bunch of your friends to sign up and award you fake projects with fake pay (I mean like you pay it back) and you could get a rep that way. Well if there is always some newbie willing to bid the job for $5, how can anyone ever expect to be paid reasonably for any work done through there. Secondly some of these projects are so poorly specified that it's hard to say whether it's a 30 minute job or a three week job. So you see bids for $20 and $30 and they say can be done. Well duh, ANYTHING, well OK, pretty much ANYTHING, can be done.
Thirdly, there's some premium service you can buy from scriptlance, like makes you privvy first and some other advantages. My experience with these premium sites is that's what they're really trying to sell, and they give out only tantalizing crumbs to people who don't sign up for the premium. But it's not very well explained anyway. You can't ever see anything on the project message boards, they seem to be private conversations between the bidder & the job guy, so why do they even post them. And half the jobs that come through are "private" you can't even see a description of it unless you're "invited."

So maybe someone who makes a big go of scriptlance can come through here and explain how one can break into the in-group. Oh, wait, no, that probably won't happen either. If I were sucking good bucks through the teat of script lance I would probably bogart how I did it, wouldn't want to share that pie.
Point is, I can't find much serious discussion about how effective it is, but my sense is it's a few making a killing at the expense and inconvenience of the many.

Unfortunately (remember I am nemo) very few people read MY blog, so I don't expect any comments. I sure would like to know what other scripters and script-hirers REALLY think.

Some consolation

2005-05-27T19:51:00.000-07:00

My good friend Mark, in Missoula Montana, said something to me that I will never forget. I was, y'know, highly under-employed at the time, like I still am, and I was on my way to a reunion. I was uneasy about going, sure that everybody there would be well, y'know.... "successful" because the non-successful ones probably wouldn't go. I had other powerful emotional reasons to make the long journey back to a place where I used to be, besides just seeing those people or I would not have gone myself to expose my lack of so called worldly "success" in front of them anyway.

Mark said, "hey you know, those successful people would trade places with you in a heartbeat. You look awesome. Most people our age are physically pretty pathetic." I thought about what he said. He had a point.

I was just looking at myself in the mirror the other day. I actually do look pretty goddamn awesome. My body is my #1 asset. I honor it as a creation of my God by keeping it clean inside and out, nourished with good chow, and fit. So it's not just superficial. Oh sure, something usually aches, the knee, the back or what-not, but I weigh what I weighed at 18, I routinely run 7 miles, I can do a full ustrasana, everything is functioning adequately... ya know.

When I went to this reunion, I discovered a curious thing. With one notable exception, the women in the group were no more "successful" than I was, at least not on their own. Some had married money, and some had not. And I must say, every last one of those women was HOT, I'd say they were on a par with myself. The men had not fared so well physically. Some had broadened considerably in girth, and there was evidence that some of the boys habitually drowned their stresses. Some had done well financially, some had not.

I am glad I went to that reunion. We spent the evening swapping stories, and I found that each of these people, with whom I'd shared something 20 years ago, had come along in some way as a human being, and that in that group, so-called success took a back seat to the memories we'd all shared from when we were all young. I wound up being glad I'd splurged and taken the trip down memory lane.
# posted by Nonny Nemo @ 7:49 PM

Tech Republic Post.

2005-05-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

There was a post in my Tech Republic stuff today. Here it is:

'IS IT AN INDUSTRY ONLY FOR THE YOUNG?

FEATURED DISCUSSION: AGEISM? GOOD IDEA?
TechRepublic member ROBB is advocating a controversial hiring practice:
"Do we really want to have old geeks in our industry?... The oldies
struggle to keep up with change... They prattle on about how important
understanding DOS is, when no-one gives a toss about DOS anymore and
90% of current IT folk don't even know what it is! If you were
interviewing a candidate for a job in network technical support, would
you employ a 55 year old? Truthfully please! It is for the
young...isn't it?"
http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?c=169001-26402483&brand=techrepublic&ds=5'

ROBB eh?

I know that's what they're all thinking. ROBB at least is honest
but I strongly suspect ROBB is a figment made up by Techrepublic
just to get some action. And "prattle" is not a word young people
would typically have at the tip of their vocab. But Robb is a brit
so maybe that's a difference.

Interestingly enough the link didn't work when I tried to follow it to
view the storm that that would inevitably arise.
Can anyone be so clueless as to actually
say such a thing in public.

Well the link was restored. Turns out my suspicions were correct.
Although Robb apparently is a real person, the posting is in fact a shill.
Robb replied to the torrent of responses (virtually of which said duh what an asshole--
age is an asset), look what he said:

"Hi Everyone,

My name is Robb and I wrote the topic 'Ageism? Good Idea?'.

I wrote this topic to provoke debate about a very important issue in our industry.

I am 55 years old and many of you will have egg on your faces over that bit of knowledge. I have been in the IT industry for more than 15 years and I am now a sage-like soul who now teaches IT technologies to people who want to work in my industry. One of the questions that they ask me, is "Can I get a job at my age in IT?". Because the majority of my students are military Resettlement folk, they are over 35 (in most cases). I always calm their fears by telling them just how tolerant we IT folk are and how age is a real asset. But, to be truthful, I am not sure that this is correct.

To Test this I made myself 'unemployed' and applied for 100 IT jobs. I wrote out a 'proper' CV/Resume and placed my current photograph on it. I stated my age and my qualifications correctly and I also made sure that any referees I stated would respond. Out of the 100 vacancies that I applied for over a two month period I did not received ANY offers of an interview.

I then changed my age and placed a photo of myself taken when I was 30 years old, on the CV. I sent the CV to around 25 companies (some of the original 100 too!) and have received 12 offers of interview and one direct offer of a job. 3 offers came form three of the original companies that did not respond to my 'truthful' CV.

This was not a scientific piece of research, I know that. But I believe that despite the laws about ageism and so on, in my country (UK) and in the USA, the fact remains that ageism is practiced, if not blatently, then in the minds of many of us.

I was intersted to note the many responses to my original article. May I thank all of those who took the time to respond.

I plan to take this issue further, but right now I have to start to earn a living again.

Does anyone have any vacancies?

Best regards - Happy Trails

Robb"

Am I good at spotting a fake or what?? So we have a disconnect here: If the IT industry really is so fucking tolerant as all these posters claim, and as Robb himself was claiming to his students, how come his 55-year old persona scored ZERO interviews? and he nearly batted 50% when he lied about his age? Answer: the people who answered the posting were self-selected, and passionate about the issue. The ones doing the discrimination aren't passionate about it. They make assumptions and generalizations and they didn't hire the guy because he doesn't know "".

2005-03-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

2005-03-15T17:21:00.000-08:00

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

Losin da job

2005-03-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

Heheh. those google guys who post a tiny little bit of knowledge about google that might harm google in some tiny insignificant way to their BLOGS, which apparently everyone on the fecking PLANET reads, and so they get their asses kicked for it. Hehehe. I got it all over them. I mean like feck, I could post fecking TOP SECRET classified war on terror documents RIGHT here if I knew any, and NO ONE WOULD GIVE the slightest rip. As I said earlier I shoulda been a spy. Not only would no one care, no one would even NOTICE it. If I posted TOP SECRET classified government data right here today in this bloggie NO ONE would believe it was for real. I'd have a sell job just to make people believe the possibility that perhaps a nemo even had such information in their possession.

Anyway I was laid off from my job in January and the given reason was financial reasons. Yeh, the co. wasn't doing so good and the main reason for that IMHO was that the boss was putting off making decisions and had too much heart and not enough of his brain in the operation. Was I producing a lot? Well not so's my boss could see. His lack of solid decisions kinda got me into firefighting mode on a day to day basis. All the good experiments I thought up on my own were left on my home computer. I was very concerned that I would not be perceived as being productive. I wanted to rewrite from the ground up... you always do better the second time. Or in this case not, since I didn't build that rube goldberg I was forced to maintain in the first place. But to do that you have to go off to a cave for a while, during which, nothing much happens, which is specially difficult in this short attention span web world where everybody wants everything free and they want it now. If my boss had asked me before ditching me if there was any unfinished business he should know about I would have given it all to him. I liked the guy. He wasn't a bad guy. Feck I mean heck, he was a software guy. He should of known this stuff. Well he didn't ask, so I didn't volunteer it. I guess he never thought of the possibility that there could be any--that someone like me (presumed incompetent until proven otherwise because I don't go around trumpeting, though why people hire someone that they think that of is BEYOND me.... guess they don't think very highly of their own co, (??) OK now I will get off the tangent) might actually be cooking up something cool in the background. The verb "might" applies to the original subject "someone like me" in case the reader (that will be me again hehe) fails to parse the previous sentence.

I am actually happy to be not working there any more. The pay was so-so degenerating to crappy when you consider that there were absolutely no bennies. I am doing my own stuff now , I am my own boss, and it suits me. Because I happen to have a great deal of confidence in my employee. And that makes the employee (me) feel GOOD and do their BEST work. And I would truly rather do my BEST work for someone I care about and make soda can recycler or typical musician pay than cash a crappy paycheck every two weeks and be stuck playing some damn game.

Knock wood I stay healthy and don't need major medical any time soon.

2005-03-11T09:21:00.000-08:00

Well I'm at da bloggin again.

2005-03-11T09:17:00.000-08:00

I was tryin to set up an account at audioblogger as part of my Friday "think outside o da box" paradigm,
but it just croakie. Well second time's a charm. woopeee .. Okie Dokie, lessee if it worked.

my server

2004-10-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

Last March my friend Chris and I built this screaming server with SATA drives and a flaming dual LAN with one side GigEth. I could not have put it together without Chris. That's where he excels and I suck. He also gave me advice on what components to get. I had just gotten paid from a fat (if short-lived) contract and I was dying to build my fantasy box. Well at that time there were no prebuilt Linux kernels that had SATA built in. Of course about 8 days after me and Quentin spent hours tweaking around building a kernel with SATA support built-in (hasto be, since the thing BOOTS off the SATA's) and also getting around some gotchas with the NVidia chipset, a new prebuilt kernel came out with SATA built in. Of course now it's everywhere. (Oct, as we speak). I got fed up with that server just sitting doing nothing. So I put it in a colo. and I'm just gonna let them install their favorite distro and make it work. Software wise, it will just be a workhorse, nothing fancy or cool. Chris is gonna put all his domains on it. If I can just generate a handful of domains, they can pay for my share of the colo. Any more and it's gravy. and I'll have my website on a screamin server that's way more up to date than the one it's on now. And I only have to share it with a few local mostly low traffic domains. And if they or I get popular, I think the box can handle the load. It beats the knickers off the rackspace crappola servers that my boss uses for his backup machines. If I'm really good I'll get my boss to locate his entire rack here. The colo will love me for that.

I'm pumped. Thank you Chris for kicking my butt.
This is what non-entities think about. As if you care.

workin...

2004-10-09T14:44:00.000-07:00

Woo hoo. This invisible non-entity got a job. Web backend. Perfect. I love it. Celebrate with me.
Leave me a comment of congratulations. (Yeah right.) Except I have to spend a lot of time dealing with the users. So it leaves less for web backend. But what do I care. I am getting paid for it. Woohoo.

Boy am I invisible

2004-10-09T14:35:00.001-07:00

I think there's a flashing neon sign that hovers over my head. It is visible to everybody but me.
It flashes the message: "Ignore this person." I'm just after busting my butt to make an update web
page for the members of an organization I belong to. The idea being, they can input their info
especially their email. Then someone else can come along and say email the list. If someone's
email changes they update it. Garrr. So we don't have to drag these big reply to lists around, and
garrrr.... someone always misses it because their email changed, or the sender of the mail had an incomplete list, or whatever. So.... Guess how many people came on and updated, besides me: one--
the person who's been bugging me to change this 'n' that on the website. Oh but of course
I'm invisible. and of course I couldnt' possibly do anything useful. Self fulfilling prophecy. Well, it will only be useful if people use it. which it appears they won't, because I (who couldn't possibly do anything useful) made it. So I guess they are right, *I* couldn't possibly do anything useful.

Back in the days

2004-06-18T14:11:00.000-07:00

There are some people that are just naturally gregarious and love being around other people and more power to them. Others find it difficult to sort through all the mixed messages people give them or find other people in general to be annoying or even terrifying.

There used to be a place for that second kind of people. Librarian, bookstore owner, computer programmer, outdoorsey jobs where you're alone a lot, lab technician, well technicians in general. There were behind the scenes people everywhere who were perfectly happy to just do their work quietly and get paid for it.

Now everybody's gotta be entertaining in order to make the first sieving. If you don't pump that interviewer's hand and baldly stare him/her in the eye it makes no difference whether you can do the job or not. You'll lose out to the competitor who can manipulate people emotionally.

This is wrong. It takes energy for that kind of gregariousness. Assuming that on average people have about the same amount of energy, simple math will tell you that the energy spent on making sure the network is good, making sure you get recognition for your work, making sure to grease the wheels, knowing who to grease, knowing exactly what kind of joke you can tell your boss, etc. is energy taken away from the work itself. I'm not saying every non gregarious person should avoid teamwork. I'm just saying that if each member of the team knows what their job is, and feels fine to simply ask without any one upsmanship or game playing, if he/she needs some information, as well as provide it to others when appropriate, the team works a lot better.

Too many teams are really folks jockeying for positions. There is bogarting, seeing who can be in the right place at the right time for the boss to notice, individual career strategy, finger pointing, back scratching and/or stabbing. Problem is, there's very little option to choose not to play. If you don't play, you will be assumed to be up to something. If you just spit forth the truth without any embellishment or wordspin to make sure you look good, you'll look bad by comparison, and you'll be the first one to get a pink slip.

This is the message that's being hammered over and over. What it's doing is turning the workplace into one incredibly complicated game, in which major work is not valued as much as the ability to make other people believe you're doing major work. This is particularly a problem in the knowledge work field.

I mean if you worked on an assembly line, you could say I attached 2500 cup nuts today, or I cut out 500 left sleeves and even if you were unattractive and surly they couldn't really argue with your output statistics. An invisible non-entity could quietly do quite well at this type of thing. They don't care in a factory whether you're visible or not, as long as you mill out piston shafts within their tolerance...

But how do you measure knowledge output when it's generated by a lot of people together? It seems to be quite a bit the matter of the squeaky wheel. And I would put forth that many of the giants in any knowledge work are standing upon the heads of invisible non-entities, and that by themselves they're utterly useless.

And bosses need to realize this. Because now they think they're taking the jobs that used to be held by invisible non-entities and outsourcing them to India. so they don't have to pay so much. And so they are turning their rock solid feet into crumbly clay. and the man with the heavy golden head and the feet of clay crashed hard.

I shoulda been a spy

2004-06-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

I missed my calling in life, I think. I shoulda gone into industrial espionage.
Remember that movie about the English chap who got himself a Russian mail order bride who didn't speak English, only she really did? Or that story about the Chinese house boys in the American embassy who were supposed to just be barely bright enough to serve tea. Such invisible non-entities as these pass through the lives of big important people unnoticed. Or even if it isn't the language thing it's the status thing. Have you ever confided in a complete stranger of low status just because you presume they can't do anything with the information.

This is one of the ways I know that I'm an invisible non-entity. Sometimes big important people whom I run across are just bursting with some knowledge but they can't share it with any other big important people because they know that the other big important people are just as ruthless as they are and might use the knowledge to gain some advantage. They presume that I can't or won't, and so they tell me.

And so I know a lot of things about a lot of people. And they're mostly right about me not using the knowledge to screw them over. How would I do that? By spreading it around? Consider the source. The other big important people would probably assume I was making it up. So I keep my mouth shut. I'm very good at that.

I should have been an industrial spy. I could get an id badge and a clipboard and look like I had some kind of job checking the fittings on the flobbermeister stamper machine or something. No one would ask me any questions. I already have spied on several local businesses. The easiest way is to just call them up and ask them whatever you want to know. I got one local business to tell me what equipment was best, where to get it, how much it cost, how they break down the pricing for their services, who their best customers are and how much they turn over per job. I guess a non-entity is recognizable even over the phone.

We'll explore some day how you get to be an invisible non-entity. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to be. At least I will probably never be the target of a hit man.

Being in the hospital

2004-06-18T09:42:00.000-07:00

A very close family member just had major surgery. It got me thinkin about
hospitals and death and dying and such. Like suppose Bill Gates was in that
hospital. I'm sure they'd be all over him. They might be all over him so much that they'd forget about the invisible non-entity in the next room. Maybe the non-entity's beepy thing would go off and they'd be so busy mugging for the paparrazzi that they wouldn't notice. And so, the non entity dies the same way they lived. No one notices.

Gettin' a Job

2004-06-13T21:06:00.001-07:00

I want to get a job. I have a degree. I even have a Masters Degree. Guess what--in computer science and not last year. Damn. The world is doing a real good job making me feel worthless. Utterly worthless. But what else can an invisible non-entity be?

OK so I go get some Cisco certifications. Update the old skills, they say. Woop-de-doo. Them certs and $3.50 will get me a nice hot latte. Cisco doesn't give a RIP. (haha. in-joke.)

Gawd jobs are so effin' specialized now. We want someone who knows GoLive. Not Dreamweaver. Like there's no commonality? We want MS SQL. Not mySQL. Like they don't have more in common than different? Like somebody who really KNOWS SQL is gonna have any trouble makin the jump? I pontificate the following: some yutz who studied their MS SQL notes and got that cert is less valuable than someone who REALLY GROKS relational databases and never touched MS SQL. In a week the GROKKIN guy will be running circles around the little cert guy.

But HR people don't get this. They want to check off their little boxes. And of course, I couldn't possibly know anything. I'm an invisible non-entity, remember?

Hey I like this blog. It's not like a forum where people will jump all down my throat. This is MY blog, and I'm pretty much talkin to myself.

Well good. But of course you don't care. And you never read this. Why would you?
Good night.

Little Singing Girl

2004-06-13T20:23:00.000-07:00

I wrote these lyrics many years ago. At that time I was the mom of three young children. I felt like the world was a cold, sterile, uncaring place. Little did I know how warm and fuzzy things were then compared to now. The protagonist in the song just can't understand how people can be so indifferent. She is me.

I guess I don't have to worry about copyright, eh? No one is going to read this anyway. And even if they did, this is me writing this already. Nothing I do could ever have any commercial value. At least not for me. So no one will probably even bother to steal these. But just in case you steal this, it is actually copyrighted and registered with a TX form. So if you have any hopes of making money off this (derisive laugh) you better share it with me. Hey, even invisible non-entities can fantasize...

Anyway here ya go with the lyrics:

Little singing girl,
The wind is playing through her baby hair;
Little singing girl,
Hopping up and down the bottom stair;
She sings because she's happy
She doesn't understand
Ah, my little singing girl. (repeat)

Little singing girl,
Her voice is ringing out so strong and clear;
Little singing girl,
The mocking echoes tell her no one's there to hear;
Everyone's so busy;
She doesn't understand
Ah, my little singing girl. (repeat)

Little singing girl,
I see her playing in her garden below;
Little singing girl,
She's only playing that her seeds will grow;
She planted on the pavement;
She doesn't understand.
Ah, my little singing girl. (repeat)

Little singing girl,
Her face is frozen in an icy stare;
Little singing girl,
The spring is coming but she doesn't seem to care
She sings to hide the pain inside
She'll never understand
Ah, my little singing girl. (repeat)

Well, I may just fire up ABC and even post a leadsheet of this someday.