Blackmoor Vituperative

Taking inventory of my situation, here. Three times so far this year, I have been offered (or nearly offered) a full time job that I thought that I would enjoy and do well. In each case, I did or said something that resulted in the offer being rescinded.

1. I refused to submit to a humiliating medical test.
2. I questioned the current development process (or lack thereof).
3. I mentioned that I have a very, very small chance of getting a job with Henrico County in August.

This most recent instance was really discouraging. I had high hopes for that position. Having it yanked away at the last minute really put a dent in my normally sunny disposition. However, a few deep breaths and a couple of miles on the treadmill, and I am feeling a bit better. If someone hires me, or doesn’t, I am still who I am. I am a human being with the value and dignity that entails. I am not my job.

I wish that I could say that I have learned something, but in each case, I believe that I did the right thing. I do think that I should be a little more reticent. Telling the truth when asked is not the same thing as volunteering information that people do not want to hear. I should just plain listen more, and talk less. That’s a shortcoming of mine that I have been working on for a very long time.

P.S. I did make a mistake in the third, most recent time. When the job offer was rescinded, they offered to bring me on as a contractor. I should have just declined that, rather than haggling over price and resenting that they backed out of the job offer. Or, hell, just accepted the rate they offered and been grateful for the work. What am I, stupid? It was work! And who knows, it might have led to a full time position down the road. Ah, well. Live and learn.

The author of Hexographer, Joe, has revised the “lifetime” license of Hexographer so that it no longer self-destructs after one year. The flaws in the “free” and “one year” versions remain, however, so those should be avoided. However, if you like the software and feel it is worth paying for (and it certainly does seem worth paying for), the “lifetime license” now appears to be what it says it is: a lifetime license. I have updated my original Hexographer article to reflect the revised license terms.

I also bought the software.

I don’t want to get bitter
I don’t want to turn cruel
I don’t want to get old before I have to

I have been feeling sorry for myself the last couple of days. This song helps.

The song starts roughly at 1:45.

In case the YouTube video disappears, here is the original music video. I do not particularly like the video.

Karen Stone had packed up and gone home for the day when she got a call last week from the Plainfield, Conn., police department. Something about three fox heads sticking up outside of the storm grate….

According to Fandango, Kristen Stewart may replace Angelina Jolie as the token hot female assassin in ‘Wanted 2’, since Jolie passed on it.

First off, Angelina Jolie’s character died, messily. So how was that even an option? Did her character have a twin?

Second, Kristen Stewart makes Hayden Christensen look like a good actor by comparison. She is not a good actress, and she’s not particularly attractive.

Wanted does not need a sequel. It was a fun movie, it had closure, it’s done.

I could not be more be more surprised if a Chevy Volt fell out of the sky and into my living room: GM paid back its eight billion dollar loan.

Now, GM still owes the US taxpayers some $45 billion — most of GM’s stock is owned by us. And I still think the various bailouts were bad for the United States and, frankly, an abuse of government power. But to get anything back at all is a pleasant surprise.

My hat is off to you, GM. Well done.

I successfully completed the physical agility test. Yay! I was winded afterward, but not debilitated.

Waiting for the test was the hardest part. I felt like Will Smith in the beginning of Men In Black — surrounded by young, physically fit men and women, most of whom obviously had military experience. Except I am a doughy, forty-something computer geek instead of Will Smith.

After the physical agility test, I was interviewed briefly by Lt. Sears, the Animal Protection Supervisor. I liked him: he was professional, but friendly. Naturally, I blathered on more than I probably should have. I said two things in particular that I almost regret.

First, when were talking about why I would want to change careers from IT to Animal Protection (which is a genuine branch of law enforcement in Henrico County), I could not help but talk about the personal satisfaction I have felt when working on projects that I felt made the world a better place (the Partnership For Peace, supporting the US Coast Guard, creating web sites for the Mariners’ Museum, and so on). That sounds incredibly corny to me, and I am the one saying it. I am sure it sounds at least that corny to other people, and maybe even like I am blowing smoke. I wasn’t, but if I heard anyone else say what I said, I would assume they were just making it up to sound earnest and “socially aware”, or some such nonsense.

Second, when he mentioned that some people apply for both Animal Protection and the Police Department, I said that I did not apply to be a police officer because I did not feel it suited my temperament. What I meant was that I would not want to interact with criminals (or “suspects”) every day as my primary profession. Despite my veneer of cynicism, I basically think that people are good, and I would like to keep thinking that. I am not sure how well I would cope with seeing people at their worst, day after day. That’s what I meant. What I am afraid of is that it may have sounded like I was dismissing what Animal Protection does as not being “real” law enforcement. That’s not what I meant at all, but my experience is that people sometimes take offense when I do not mean to cause any. He also might have concluded that I am too averse to confrontation to be trusted with what is in fact a law enforcement position. There is some truth to that, I suppose — I do not want to seek out confrontation if it isn’t necessary. But I do not think that this is the same thing as being cowardly, which is what I am afraid he may have concluded from my comments.

Ah, well. It is what it is. I may not have phrased things as diplomatically as I would have liked, but I was honest, and if that excludes me from further consideration, then it does. There is only one open position, so my chances are pretty slim, anyway.

In the meantime, I have a packet of background forms to fill out that is nearly as thick as the stuff I had to submit to get a Secret clearance at Joint Forces Command. Now, what was my address in Fullerton, CA in 1986…?

TechRepublic has an article titled, “Five things I hate about corporate IT“. They did not list a single reason I would place in my own “top five”. So for your enjoyment, here are five things I dislike about corporate IT:

1) Micro-management of software.

A skilled worker is competent to choose her own tools. What matters is the end product, not the tool used to create it. Only in the field of IT does a man in a ill-tailored suit think he is competent to choose what tools other people are allowed to use.

2) Marching boldly into the 20th century.

If I have to use Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, or Lotus Notes ever again, it will be too soon. It’s 2010 — why are large companies still using office productivity software from 1990? And do not even get me started on people who intentionally use Windows servers, or web applications that only work with Internet Explorer.

3) Security through stupidity.

Controlling what web sites I visit has almost nothing to do with security. Preventing me from using SSH or sudo is the opposite of security. If I gamble on company time, fire me. If I sit and look at porn instead of doing my job, fire me. Crippling my internet access has only one consequence — it makes it more difficult to do the job you are paying me to do.

4) If they can’t see you working, you aren’t.

It’s 2010. Gasoline is expensive. Pollution is bad. Even the notoriously inefficient Federal government has policies in place to encourage telecommuting. So why do federal organizations like DECA and otherwise reasonably well-run companies like Royall & Company forbid Unix systems administrators from telecommuting? I will tell you why. In both cases, it is because management thinks that if they can’t SEE you working, then you aren’t working. Welcome to 1950.

5) Responsibility without authority.

As Information Technology has become a commodity, the people who support that commodity get less and less respect. We used to be experts. Now, we are just a line item in the budget next to “janitorial services”. We have responsibility without authority. We aren’t permitted to make decisions to ensure that systems are reliable (that exalted status belongs to the well-paid men in the ill-fitting suits), but we are held accountable when things break. We are told what we need to deliver when, after it has already been promised, even though no one ever asked us if that was a reasonable thing to promise. We are burdened with minimizing the consequences of the bad decisions made by others, trying to make silk purses out of sow’s ears.

TechRepublic has a question-and-answer thing they do. One of this week’s questions is from a young person in high school in New York, asking if going into software development would be a good idea.

I was getting ready to write a response explaining why I would not recommend any young person go into IT, particularly software development. I was going to talk about how things were back in the mid-1990s, when I started, and how they have changed.

And here is Jake Leone, who has written it for me.

Well, done, Jake. Well done.

So I was reading today that the Obamas pay $1.8 million in federal taxes. And I got to thinking, “Wow. They pay more than 45 times in taxes what an average American earns in a year.”

I know that a lot of people felt (and probably still feel) that Barack Obama, due to the ethnicity of his ancestors, was more in touch with them than the previous umpteen generations of rich old men who had been elected President of the United States. I questioned that perception at the time, and I still do. I just don’t think that someone whose taxes are 45 times what I earned last year has much in common with me, regardless of where his — or my — ancestors were born.

He did not grow up in downtown Newport News and get bussed a half-hour to a high school in what was then the nice part of town. He didn’t eat government cheese and get vaccine shots at the free clinic. He did not get a job at the shipyard straight out of high school.

I am not complaining. My life has been good, and I have few complaints. I’d rather be me than him, any day.

Nor am I criticizing the Obamas for being wealthy. I am sure they’ve worked their asses off to get where they are. Kudos to them. But I am not under the delusion that this President has anything more in common with me than any other ridiculously rich politician elected to high office.