Meetings

Meetings - The Practical Alternative to Work

Via Fillyjonk's Progress

Blithe spirit

Uniberp reports from the Midwest:

I am leaving the company I work for at the end of the year, and in the intervening time I am trying to keep good relations there.

It is a somewhat absurd and flattering situation, where I am required to scan in through the door 3 days a week, but have no real duties. 

I can't help myself, though. I listen to a 10am daily meeting, but when it turns into a technical soapbox with various managers simultaneously skirting blame and taking credit for getting through the day's snafus, I feel the urge to tweak them and speak up. Yesterday I interrupted and asked them to confirm that the problem was "Issue A", and when confirmed, I cautioned them not to conflate  that with "Issue B"  although I did not use the word conflate because none of them know what that means. It cleared up the conversation and the next steps were settled in the next 2 sentences by my 2 compadre techs who are generally too timid or jaded to speak up in these bureaucratic feedlots.

The VP does not like to hear me speak since I announced I was leaving. My butting into a conversation with clarity confounds his efficiency model.

It was a really good tweak.

It's a miserable environment, with regular large layoffs, and people admittedly scared for their jobs. The cube farm appears to me most similar to an egg farm, with all the chickens in their cages straining their buttholes to produce an egg for the master so they don't go into the stew. Or maybe that's just me feeling superior. So I find a far flung conference room in the giant and 80% empty modern suburban office building on campus. I should try another building, although the scan report may show an anomaly. I don't know why I care about that. It must be habit. 

To make my drive to the office worthwhile I consolidate my errands, and 2 days a week for the past couple weeks I've gone to Middle School at 12:45 to 'help' with the 5th and 6th period art classes. It is the most engaging thing I've done in years, basically just sitting with 7th-8th graders doing clay ceramics projects. My mere hulking presence seems to exert a calming effect on a sometimes disruptive group of brats. I hope to be going there regularly. It is an unbelievable contrast to the chicken coop. The time flies at school, whereas at the office it's just grim death.

I get to work with clay and follow quite clear and supportive instructions from the teacher. Again, a massive contrast.

It could all be a delusion, that enjoying myself like this is just a downward spiral into ... what? Like I haven't been there several times before.

blithe: adjective

showing a casual and cheerful indifference considered to be callous or improper.

(I never knew is had a "callous" denotation. I've been called that, but I hope we are generally known as polite.)

Turning the Dial

Backyard Faucet

Turning the knob on the faucet in the back yard. I've got a sprinkler going on a tree that's got some kind of problem, and maybe a little extra water will help. Anyway, I've got the faucet dialed in to where the water is going far enough but it isn't going too far. Now I look at the knob so I can remember what position it is in, so tomorrow when I come out here again I'll know how much to turn the knob and I won't have to fiddle-fart around with it. So I look at the knob and I see that there is all kinds of stuff in the center. There's the rusty nut and the shaft it is threaded onto. Behind the knob there is a little round aluminum plate with some writing on it. But nothing stands out, and there is noting fixed to mark it against, so I'll just have to remember to turn it 7/8 of half of a turn, which is like turning the knob so the bump that is currently at the top is half way between where the bump at the bottom is now and the bump just to the left. If you look at the knob as a compass and say north is at the top, then we want to be pointing to southwest by south. If the knob had six bumps we could look at it like a clock face, but it has eight bumps, not six, so we won't.

For sprinkling the tree, 7/16 of a turn is probably good enough, but if it was a more sensitive operation, like tuning in a radio or turning the feed screw on a lathe, you're going to want something better. Radios and machine tools have dials calibrated to whatever accuracy you like*. You could get around dials for high precision equipment by gearing down the dial to the point where it was one complete turn for every hash mark on the direct drive dial. That way you don't have to look at the dial, you just count the number of turns of the dial / crank / knob.

*the phrase 'you like' is kind of loaded. If what you like is commonly available, it's no big deal, but if you want something out of the ordinary, you can have it, you just have to pay for it, and custom stuff is expensive because you not only need someone who can do the work, you also need someone who is willing. Most people are looking for steady work. It's the unusual person who will take on custom jobs. Now you could say that building contractors are always doing custom work, but their options are limited to the materials they are familiar working with.

Lunch

A couple items we talked about at lunch today.

Tires

Golden Goodyear Tire

Cousin John tells us that he got 100,000 miles out of a set of Goodyear 6-ply tires on his aging Toyota 4-Runner. I recalled that I got 80,000 miles out of the Goodyear Wranglers that came with my Dodge Dakota when it was new. Never had tires that lasted so long before or since. Never had a car that lasted that long either, so maybe it's not a fair comparison. Still, it says something for Goodyear.

Working

IAman tells us his kids want to hear stories about the jobs he has had. He can't understand why, to him they were mostly pretty miserable. Perhaps they were miserable because he was poorly paid, but never mind, he worked at some odd jobs, like uranium mining in Colorado and shipping out out an oil tanker.

This reminds me of a story told by a doctor at my first job out of high school. I had a job as a machinist trainee in the radiology department at OSU Hospital in Columbus Ohio. The doctor was known for being frugal - he hung up his old tea bags to dry so he could reuse them. One day he tells us about his first job as an immigrant kid in New York City or Chicago, some big place. For some reason I thought it was in the 1920s, but it may have been as late at 1945, given that he was a doctor and I'm guessing about 40 years old. Anyway his first job is in a jigsaw puzzle factory. They load the uncut puzzles into a machine that cuts them into puzzles all at one blow. The puzzles, still all assembled, go down a conveyor belt to our doctor where he catches them as they come off the end and guides them onto a stack of cut puzzles. All day long, bent over, catching these fragile collection of cardboard bits and setting them down. If he screwed up and dropped one, he got to stay after work and put them back together. He got so familiar with these puzzles that it was easier for him to assemble them from the back. He knew the shape of all the pieces and looking at the back he didn't have the picture to distract him.

I was making $2.25 an hour at that job, which was a heck of lot more than my cousin John was getting at his first job. He got a job washing dishes when he was in high school where they paid him 75 cents an hours. This was 1965-1970. He was living at home in Longview Washington and I was living in the big city paying big city rent, so he was probably coming out ahead.

Travel

Kids these days seem to think nothing of flying 500 or 1000 miles, or across the country to see some friends for day or two. I can probably count the number of airline flights I have made on my fingers. Each one was a pretty big deal. I did drive all over the country when I was in my 20s, so I guess I had a bit of the travel bug. But gas was 30 cents a gallon and airlines were regulated, so I guess that explains that. I never much cared for flying and the thought of flying now repels me. All this business of standing in line and then being cooped up in tin can with no place you can stretch your legs has no appeal. I still like driving though. The price of gas would have to go to $10 a gallon before it would give me pause. The way inflation is going I wouldn't be surprised if it got there within five years.

P.S. I went looking for some pictures of puzzle production. I didn't find any that kept the puzzle intact, but I did find this one and it's pretty nuts. One guy talks about how a puzzle will hold together just after the 2:40 mark.

How America's Largest Puzzle Factory Makes 2 Million Puzzles A Month
Business Insider

Industrial Basket Weaving

Flexure joystick for Xbox (with 3D printed compliant mechanisms)
Akaki Kuumeri

At lunch yesterday, my nephew was wondering what to do and I somewhat facetiously suggested industrial basket weaving. This popped into my head because the other day I was telling my daughter about a story I read some time ago about baskets. It goes something like this:

An enterprising guy from California is down in Mexico on vacation and he happens across a man making and selling wicker baskets in the local market. He asks the price and the man tells him 'one dollar', which he thinks is a deal so he buys the basket. When he returns home he tells some friends about this fabulous basket he bought for a dollar. His friends all agree it's a heck of a deal, so he goes back to Mexico to strike a deal with the basket maker. He tells the basket maker he would like to buy a thousand baskets, and wants to know how much he would charge. Based on his experience with mass production in the United States, he is expecting a price reduction. He is very surprised when the basket man tells him the price for such a large quantity would be ten dollars for each basket. When he inquires as to why the price would be so high, the basket man tells him that the overhead for his personal basket making operation is minimal, but if he were to attempt a big order he certainly would not be able to do it all himself, he would have to hire people and buy materials and rent a building for the people to work in, all of which are going to drive the price up. I do have one basket I can sell you for one dollar. Would you like to buy it?

Figuring out what to do when you are young can be very difficult. There is all kinds of work you can do, some work pays more, some of it is easy, some of it is boring. So you want to find something where the reward will be enough to keep your head above water and hopefully will be enough that you will eventually be able to afford a boat so you don't have to keep dog paddling to survive.

But that is only one aspect of the work-a-day world. You want something that will engage your brain, boredom is a killer, and only you can decide that. What one person finds boring might suit someone else admirably, and what another person finds fascinating you may find ridiculous. Then there is the working environment. If you are an agreeable person you don't want to be working with a bunch of toxic people, you are better off working with people you can get along with. But some people thrive on conflict, throw them into a pot of toxic people and they might really enjoy themselves. 

So it pays to know something about yourself, and you probably won't really know that until you've been out about for a few years. Try a few things, see how it goes.

Back to yesterday's lunch, in response to my remark, Dennis suggested flexures which brings us the video at the top.

Previous post about flexures.

Work

A hired reader reads to cigar makers hard at work in Cuban cigar factory, ca. 1900-1910.

Trying to get some painting done at John's house and I realized everybody likes to paint but hardly anybody does it because all the prep work and clean up are a real pain, which got me to thinking about work in general.

One of the big motivations for automation is that it eliminates drudgery, but that is just a fantasy they tell us to disguise the real reason which is to cut costs.

There are several aspects of working that can affect how you feel about your job. There are the people you work with, how physically demanding it is, whether it makes any sense and, or course, how much you get paid. Good pay can compensate for a multitude of petty aggravations. Pleasant co-workers can likewise compensate for low pay.

There have always been armies of workers doing repetitive tasks. That's how you get things done. You break down a complex procedure into a series of simple tasks. Each task can be quickly taught to a single person. Get everyone trained on their appointed task and the whole organization can start producing useful goods.

People (women, mostly) were weaving cloth by hand for thousands of years before the introduction of automatic looms. Because they worked in close proximity to each other, and because they had been doing this work for so long it only required a small portion of their brain, they could converse with the other women working nearby, which might explain why women seem to talk more than men.

We had a housekeeper a while back who did great work. I came across her a couple of times while she was working and she was talking up a storm. On her cellphone. With earbuds. I wouldn't be surprised if she turned on her cell phone when she she started work and let it run all day long.

Cigar rolling is big business in Cuba. There would be dozens of people sitting at benches rolling cigers. Then there would be one person appointed to be the reader. He would sit in a tall chair and read the newspaper to the people who were working. From the pictures I've seen, it looks like it was mostly men. Funny, that.

My problems with work stemmed from two problems: low pay and boredom. As long as I was learning something, any amount of pay was fine, but once I had learned enough about the job, then pay became an issue, which usually meant finding another job. I think that might be why I gravitated to computers. I had learned all I wanted to about mechanical machinery, but computers offered endless complexity.

Work A Day World

I picked up a temporary job and it looks like it's going to be interfering with my goofing off, so there may not be as many postings for the next few weeks.

What's going to happen?

I have a phrase I love to trot out whenever somebody asks me about something that hasn't happened yet. I assume the manner of a fortune teller and tell them "The future is cloudy, I cannot see." Maybe there is some witch doctor in my blood. So the economy still sucks, and the outlook doesn't look too good, neither. Are you hopeful? Do you see light at the end of the tunnel? Or we facing a black abyss of gloom and despair? Is it black or hope? Or maybe a black hope? Oooooh! I made a funny.

Anyway California Bob has a few words to say on the subject:

I too feel no good can come from this, but that has been my disappointing and unprofitable posture for 20 years now.

More recently, I "anticipated" the housing and stock bubbles, and sold off a lot of stock -- in 2006, thus missing out on the best 2 years of the run-up. Similar I sold a bunch in August, missing out on the last 2 months.

I think things look toppy now too. Specifically:

-Banks, typically, will drag their feet admitting bad assets and commercial real estate problems; suspect they'll start to grudgingly address reality in the fourth quarter and take huge write-downs at year end.

-Real estate seems fraught with land-mines of oversupply, Alt-A resets, shadow inventories, commercial defaults.

-Will consumer discretionary rebound? Seems like a handful will be shopping at Tiffany, and the rest of us will be at WalMart, counting out our pennies for discount bread. This morning, Johnson & Johnson showed weakness even in staples.

-Stock rally seems based on liquidity, not underlying business/economic prospects. Lots of liquidity, flight from dollar.

Question: What is behind "dollar weakness?" If it is oversupply of dollars, why aren't those dollars flooding into the economy, driving up prices? If it is fear of instability of the government, why are gov't bonds rallying, and why aren't the stock markets plummeting? I think the answer is, all the liquidity has gone directly into stocks and bonds -- in others words, another investment bubble.

The only things I feel comfortable about are:

-YUM Brands, and to a lesser extent, McDonald's -- emerging market growth, and weak dollar should help earnings.

-Emerging market generally, specifically China -- I don't think anything is going to stop the organic growth there.

So what defensive measures are you taking to prepare?

YUM brands owns a bunch of fast food outlets. Previously California Bob compared them to the western world's commissaries. If your time counts for anything, fast food is almost cheaper than cooking at home. I suspect they count on selling you soda pop to make any money, but they do sell a lot of it. I wonder if the SEC is going to give me any grief about posting this.

Anyway, I wrote this in response:

Not quite an oversupply of dollars, more of an overconcentration of dollars in the hands of people who only want to make more money, so they look around for "good investments". Instead of investing in a business, they invest in whatever pyramid scheme promises the greatest returns regardless of the underlying foundation. Of course, that's what got us where we are, but we have a whole generation of investment people who grew up with that mind set and that's all they know.

I think we need a 20 hour work week. That would double the number of jobs. Of course some people would be working 4 jobs instead of 2, but you know, they might be able to get by with 3 jobs instead of 4. Businesses won't like it, especially if they have to pay benefits, but if it is universal, and they all have to play by the same rules it might work. Hourly wages would have to come down to pay for the additional benefits and overhead. But how many people would really like a 20 hour work week? I know I would.

P.S. Is overconcentration a word? A search on Google turns up several instances of it, and several of a hyphenated version: over-concentration. It's not in the dictionary. I think it is a word. It looks like a word, it smells like a word. I think it's a word.

Morons In Charge

A friend of mine gave me a lead on a contract programming job involving Ruby on Rails and Apache. I spent a day playing with Ruby once, and I have never dealt with Apache, so I don't expect to hear from these clowns. Here's what I think of this job.

This job description is absurd. It's like they want an architect to draw them a picture of a house, but he can only use crayons, and, oh, by the way, the house has to be crooked. And don't forget that you can only use three shades of red.

Ruby On Rails is supposed to be this wonderful programming tool that would enable anyone to whip out a fancy user interface program in minutes. Anyone familiar with Ruby and who also had half a brain could put together a program to do this job in a day.

Since this appears to be a trivial task, and since they are asking for an outsider to do the work, all their Ruby programmers must be busy working on some critical project, or they are all busy going to meetings and talking about how great Ruby is.

Making the flow charts took more effort than writing the actual program would take. Never mind that the flow charts contain big fat errors.

They want to use Apache servers to handle the transfer of the code? Isn't Apache supposed to be some high performance web server program? Why would you need a separate instance of Apache for each each programming station?

Anyone, enough idiot bashing. These guys obviously need someone on retainer they can call to fix their problems. A full time employee may be more than they want, but they need someone versed in what they are doing.

I could do the job, but I would need a month to get up to speed on Ruby and another month to get up to speed on Apache, and a day to do the actual work. And probably another month to hold their hand and get the download stations working smoothly.

Portland Linux/Unix Group Meeting

Hal Polmeranz of Deer Run Associates in Eugene came up to give his presentation:

Intro to Digital Forensics
(aka Groveling Through File Systems)

This comes under the heading of what to do if your computer systems has been compromised. The typical concern is some unauthorized person gaining access to your computer system and wreaking havoc.

The fact that we are talking about it at all means that there are security holes in Linux systems. They may not be as plentiful or as well known as the ones in computer systems running Microsoft Windows, but they are there. On the other hand, he is only one in his shop of twenty odd people that works on Linux systems. All the others work on Windows systems.

While your interest no doubt lies with your computer system, where security becomes important is at the commercial internet web server farms, where there may be dozens or even hundreds of computer systems, all connected to the web, all containing data that needs to be protected from corruption and/or unauthorized access.

"Unauthorized access" can be done for any number of reasons. One of the most common is spammers trying to co-opt computers to send out more spam (unsolicited e-mail). Others may be industrial spies or just common criminals looking for useful information, disgruntled former employees looking for revenge, vandals looking to trash something, or just pranksters getting their kicks by getting past your security.

Hal started out with generalized blandishments about about not changing the state of the compromised system. Basically this means pulling the plug. The problem is that what is going on in RAM in the computer is happening much too fast for a person to follow. While you might be catch sight of some unauthorized process in the act, most attacks will write something to the disk. And anything you do while the computer is still running is going to cause data to be written to the disk, possibly overwriting evidence of tampering. Even an orderly shut-down will write some data to the disk. Pull the plug and then make a copy of disk using another machine. Do not boot from the disk from the compromised machine.

One trick that can make your life a little easier is if you have empty space on your disk that is larger than the whole compromised disk. You can copy an image of the entire disk into a file. You can then mount it as though it was a real disk. This saves you from having to buy and connect another disk to your system, though with the rapidly increasing size of disks it may a toss up as to which disk is going to be bigger, yours or the suspect target disk.

Once you have made a copy of the disk from the compromised system, then the real computer geek work begins. In case you haven't noticed, computer disks are big these days. You can buy a terabyte of storage for under a $100. So just looking around for some useful information is going to have the results of buying a lottery ticket: a waste of time. To that end there are some tools (computer programs) that can be used to locate files that have been tampered with. In order to use the tools, it helps to have some understanding about how the data is arranged, or in programmer's parlance, structured.

Computers store all data on disks as binary. A disk contains basically just a long string of ones and zeros. How you interpret that binary data determines whether you can retrieve any useful information. Binary data can be interpreted as words or numbers or code or, for our purposes, as pointers to other places on the disk. Yes, pointers are just numbers, but the are special numbers because they are key to making sense of all the rest of the data on the disk.

Most of Hal's presentation, and the most interesting part, was about the various tools and techniques used to figure out what had happened. What was changed? What was deleted? What was added? Any one of these things, if done at the right place could cause irreparable harm. This is why computer security has gotten to be such a big issue.

It was a pretty dry, technical discussion until a couple of hiccups triggered an avalanche of laughter. The hilarity threatened to snowball out of control, but somehow we got our selves under control. Geeks, I think, may in general be would a little too tight. Just a knick in our armor and we come unglued.

All this was like a trip down memory lane for me. Fifteen or twenty years ago I wrote a a couple of tools for recovering data from damaged disks. It wasn't a security issue then. Something had corrupted the data on a customer's disk, and I went in to try and recover it for them. Failure to make back up copies of their important data was the root cause of the problem, but it gave me an interesting technical challenge. In both cases (I think there were only two) I was able to retrieve some data, though in one case it left the customer with about a hundred unnamed files they were going to have to sort through to find their lost information.

The meeting was held at FAB 86-01 on the PSU campus. Out here in Hillsboro, a Fab is a monstrous factory where computer chips are fabricated. Downtown at PSU, FAB refers to the "Fourth Avenue Building". The meeting was actually next door in the "City Development Center" which has this sign in front:

Update January 2017 replaced missing image.

Job Hunt

Letter from Anytown, USA:

I realized my new job hunt is not a project to find satisfying work, but rather a game to try to trick people into hiring me.

It became clear after a recent interview. I schlepped down to (some-other-town) to this fancy biotech firm. I didn't like it very much -- kind of pretentious, open-space offices (no privacy), and the bosses seemed real demanding. Nonetheless I thought I had a good shot at the job.

Well, I never heard back, and my reaction was, I got really mad. And my next impulse was to start scouring the ads for someone I COULD trick into hiring me.

This doesn't seem healthy.

During my sabbatical I tried to gain some clarity into what I might "want to do." But I realized I'm doing it: relaxing, keeping up with the news, cooking, doing odd projects, reading, and fiddling with the stock market.

So I guess I'm just a person who is unmotivated and has no vision, but who needs income, and will have to posture and compromise to get something that pays.

I think this describes most workers. But for most people, satisfaction is achieved by buying houses and TV's and clothes and trinkets. So for these people, the work/money contract is satisfactory.

The whole employment exercise affirms this: the emphasis is on trickery -- how to dress, how to banter, the "right" questions to ask -- basically how to manipulate everything you need to, in order to get an offer.

Many employers, too, seem to perversely demand conformity in interviews -- they only want certain pat responses and questions. Which indicates they aren't really interested in your answers, but rather your ability to conform and internalize routine.

Have a great day!

I think that last line is sarcasm. (No! Not really! Is it?)

Capital & Labor

I took the family to Iowa a couple of weeks ago for my nephew Joe's wedding. The held the wedding and the reception in the lobby of the newly restored Orpheum Theater. I look at this place, or any other old, ornate, edifice, and I wonder why don't we build buildings like this anymore? The answer always comes back that it costs too much. Now, how can that be? Our country is richer than ever, we have all this fancy schmancy hi-tech equipment at our beck and call, and all we can build is tilt up concrete boxes and glass sided office buildings? Something is wrong with this picture.

Baker

I was talking to my Uncle Ed a few years ago before he passed away and he was talking about his early years in the baking business. He would change jobs at the drop of a hat. It could be something as little as he didn't like the way the boss looked at him that morning, or even for no reason at all, he would walk out at lunch and not look back. Of course, he told me, back in those days (the 40's and 50's) you could walk across the street and get another job.

One of the things you hear on the news and sometimes see in police dramas on TV (and I hear about from my wife), is people worried about their jobs or careers. This is a sad state of affairs. Maybe it comes from being married, but I think it is more about the times we live in. People put up with a whole lot more (horse manure) from their bosses these days than they used to. Everybody is worried about their stupid job. This is a really rotten situation.

So I am trying to figure out why things are like they are and not like they were? Why can't we afford to build fancy buildings anymore? Why is everyone so concerned about losing their job now? What has changed in the last 100 years?

One thing is productivity, or efficiency, which led to a real increase in wages for a quite a while. Hasn't been true for the last 20 or 30 years, but for most of the 20th century in America, it was. Better tools, better materials, better training, better planning allow people to get more done, which means they can earn more money.

Problem with more money is people like to spend it. Instead of saving for a rainy day they go out and buy the new ski boat or house or vacation. If you had socked away half of what you brought home for the last, say, five years, how upset would you be about possibly losing your job? It might not be good, but it wouldn't be an eff-ing disaster like it is for most people.

Of course, you have to be careful where you sock that money away. There are always people looking to make off with your money. Right now I don't know that there are really any safe places to store your money. Saving accounts are not much better than stuffing your cash under your mattress. Stocks are always iffy, as has been recently demonstrated. US Government I-Bonds, maybe. I've got my money in mutual funds and I took a big hit this fall. I think maybe the way to deal with this is hope for the best and expect for the worst. That way if anything short of disaster happens, you are still happy.

Update December 2016 replaced missing image.

Age Liberation

I was talking to my cousin Saturday night and he pointed out that it is probably my age that is keeping me from getting hired. Once I heard this, I felt much better. It would explain why I haven't been hired. I have had numerous interviews over the last year and most of them I thought went pretty well, but I have yet to land a job. Of course I suspected that my age could be a problem, but somehow I did not think it would be. I mean how do you get 20 years of experience without getting older? If they did not want someone old, they should have read the flipping resume.

If this is indeed the case, it at least helps explain some of the dumb-sh** questions I would get at interviews. Things like "have you ever driven a green '63 Chevy?". Well, yes, I have driven Chevys, and I am pretty sure one of them was a '63. But was it a GREEN '63 Chevy? Well, no, actually, I don't think it was. Oh, well, OBVIOUSLY you are not qualified for this job. We need someone who has experience driving green '63 Chevys.

Of course, the questions were never actually about cars or their color, but they were similar in function. They did not want to hire me, and they needed to put an X in the "does not meet requirement" box.

Anyway, I am 57 years old, so feel free to exclude me from consideration for employment. However, if you want someone who really knows how computers work and can make the most recalcitrant beasts jump through the required hoops, give me a call. I would be glad to talk to you about how I can help you with your problems.

Communicate

Or rather, the failure to do so. The most famous in my mind is the scene from Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman and Strother Martin as the warden:


Last week we had a demonstration in Luann:

A while back I had a very surprising experience on the telephone. My wife was talking to her best friend on the phone. I needed to give her friend some information. My wife hands me the phone and I hear Susan talking away. I say "Susan". No effect, she is still talking to Anne, even though Anne isn't on the phone anymore. I try again. Still no effect. I try once more but she still does not hear me. I give up and give the phone back to my wife.

Last night I was talking to my son about finances. Things like how much it costs to maintain our household, how much it costs to go to college, and of more immediate interest, why I don't have a job. He brings up American Beauty and how Kevin Spacey gets a job at flipping burgers because he wants the lowest level of responsibility.

I mention that my problem may be that I am shooting too low. On a scale of technical competence I rate ten out of ten. However, technical competence is not everything, and my people skills may not be so good. My son tells me I have all the charisma of a rock. He may have been exaggerating, but perhaps not. I have heard similar comments from other people before.

I can talk to one person at a time very well. I do not do so well with a group. My family is a good example. Their conversations just fly. One comment follows another. By the time I have registered that one person has finished and I could start talking, someone else is already speaking. I do better at Thursday lunch, but only because my friends make allowances for me. I think I do okay at interviews because it is a formal setting and people are polite, but my slow response times may be hurting me.

Since I have been so dissatisfied with the management at all the places I have worked, I am thinking maybe that is where I should be looking for a job. More work for me. Hmmph.

Update November 2015. Replace the missing Luann comic. I think I got the right one.

If it sounds too good to true . . .

. . . it probably is, and it was. I had a phone interview with Cognex last week. It sounded like the perfect job, and I sounded like the perfect guy for the job. The manager was going on about how there is very little in the way of politics, they don't have any trouble getting any of the equipment they need. It's a real engineering firm doing real work for a real company that is actually making products, selling them and making money doing it.


When we finished up I thought he said he wanted me to come in for an interview this week just to see if I would be compatible with the people who are already working there, you know, before he went ahead with hiring me.

Well, I a week went by and I didn't hear anything, so I called my HR (Human Resources) contact at the main office in Boston and inquired. No response. So I called the manager and the HR person this morning and I finally got a response. Manager has decided not to proceed.

Well, thanks for letting me know. (That's sarcasm, just in case you were wondering).

I beginning to wonder if I am in right line of work. Maybe I should write a book complaining about what's wrong with the American business establishment. That sort of thing seems to sell really well in America. Side effect of freedom of speech, maybe? Dictators get tired of hearing it, so they outlaw it. Can't do that here.

Stay tuned for my startling (or would "sweeping" be better?) expose on the pervasive H-1B corruption infecting our nation.

Leviton

Clowns, I'm dealing with clowns. I was supposed to have an interview with Leviton tomorrow morning. I get a call from the agency yesterday, they want to know if I can start as a contractor today. Well, sure, I guess so, I don't have anything else pressing going on. Seems the last contractor they had in there had a "family emergency" and had to leave in a hurry. So we go through a bunch of phone tag and I talk to their technical guy for 30 minutes about data structures and syntax and interrupts and message passing and several other arcane embedded programming topics. So now I'm waiting around to find out if I am really supposed to go in today or not. Tech guy goes into a meeting and doesn't come out. Everybody else involved (agent, Leviton HR) go home. Kiss this project goodby.

No call this morning. I finally call the agent to find out what's going on, or rather to complain about being jerked around. While I'm on the phone she get's a call from Ginelle, Leviton HR. Turns out the tech guy that interviewed me is upset that he already interviewed me once before. He didn't realize it until he talked to me, recognized my voice. He had my name, but he didn't recognize that and HR didn't complain.

OK, here's what bugs me. I interviewed once before with this guy FIVE months ago, and he is looking to fill the spot RIGHT NOW and he's irritated that he interviewed me before? What is this? How am I supposed to know this was the same position? I have worked on projects that did not take three months, much less five, and I am supposed to know this is the same job? If he wanted to avoid this, why didn't he use the same agency as last time? Why did he use a different agency? What is the matter with these people?

If they are hiring for the long term, witness their preference to discard me because I interviewed with them once before, then why do they need someone to start TODAY? Stupid.

They are a funny company. They brought in the manager's pet pick for this job to interview with people, and everyone who interviewed him hated him. He was a condenscending, sneering, jerk. Technically he was great, but he put everyone off, so they didn't hire him.

All this makes me wonder if the BS might be extra deep, and the previous contractor left because he was fed up with it. I think there is some kind political war going on between a pointy-haired boss and the geeks.

So I don't know if I am supposed to go in for an interview for a regular full-time position tomorrow or not.

Note: It is now two months later. It has taken me this long to getting around to sanitizing this story.

Update December 2016 replaced missing pictures.

The Continuing Job Search

Job search activity was high the last couple of days. I got an email Thursday morning from an agency and the first thing he asks is if I have talked to anyone else from his agency yet. Whaaaat? Why are you asking me, for Pete's sake, it's your agency, don't YOU know? But I don't say any of that, he just wants a copy of my resume, so I send it to him. A little while later he calls on the phone and he asks that same question about whether he is the first one to talk to me. I'm thinking my email has gotten delayed in some internet vortex and he doesn't have it yet. No, I haven't talked to anyone else at your agency. He does this thing where he will talk normally, but periodically he will cough, or laugh or something and he gets really LOUD for a few seconds, so loud that I have to slide the phone away from my ear. In a little bit, he subsides, and we go back to normal. It's really annoying. On top of that he keeps me on the phone for half an hour talking about nothing. I put up with it because, well, I'm being courteous. He is trying to find a job for me. If he is successful he will get a big fat commission, but that's okay. I'll have a job, which is the whole point of all these shenanigans. So I let him ramble.

A little while later I get another email from the same agency and I realize, oh! The first email was from a different guy. So I forward their emails to each other and let them sort it out. The guy I talk to claims to have won out, so I send him a copy of my resume. Should have had him get it from the first guy. What a bunch of clowns.

Dealing with all this makes me late for my Thursday lunch, and since I have to take my son to the doctor later that afternoon, I blow off lunch. One hour a day on the freeway is enough. I don't really need two hours of it.

Meanwhile I have an email from another agency. We end up exchanging a dozen messages over the next day and a half, and it looks like I might have an actual face-to-face interview with a local company next week. I had a phone interview with this outfit a few months ago which I thought went rather well, but I never heard back, so I thought that was the end of it. But now they are back. I wonder why that is. Anyway, we are trying to set up a meeting time and I tell them Tuesday or Wednesday would be good, and what do they do? They want to meet on Thursday morning, which means that if it is any kind of interview at all it is very liable to cut into my lunch hour. I already missed Thursday lunch this week. Twice in a row and I am liable to be in the doghouse. Cretins.

Thursday afternoon I get an email from yet another agency. I try to call him back, but their voice mail system cuts off half way through his greeting. Criminently, you would think a business that depends on phones as much as these do would have a decent voice mail system. I finally get in touch with him on Friday morning. We have a nice chat. This is the fourth person I have talked to from this agency over the last year.

Thursday evening I get a call from a friend of mine. Seems his employer is having serious problems with a new product. Seems none of the new people understand the basic concepts involved. No, that's not fair. They probably do, but things being the way they are, they are having a hard time applying their knowledge. Anyway, my mother always said "if you cannot say anything nice, do not say anything at all". I have probably said too much already. My friend wanted to know if I was available to help them out. That's cool, it's nice to know that at least your friends will still vouch for you.

Friday afternoon I get a call from Microsoft in Redmond which was totally unexpected. I chat with a guy with a rather thick accent for 30 minutes about a possible job. He quizzes me about assembly language for the ARM processor. I have never worked on one, but I have been around the block a couple of times and I am able to deduce what this bit of code is supposed to do. When we are done I find out he is from Korea. The accent sounded Asian, but I would never have guessed Korea. But then I haven't talked to many people from Korea.

Also Friday I get a call from my lawn man (!?) and he has a name for me. I follow up on it. Turns out the guy is involved in a line of work very similar to my own. He does not need my help at the moment, but it never hurts to have another contact.

Update December 2016 replaced missing pictures.

Video Buzzwords

First, some acronyms:
API Application Programming Interface
CPU Central Processing Unit
DXVA DirectX Video Acceleration
GPU Graphics Processing Unit

DXVA is a Microsoft API designed to allow the decoding of a video data stream to be offloaded to the GPU instead of having the CPU do all the work.

DirectX is an old Microsoft API designed to allow programs direct access to the video hardware. It was developed in response to the demand for higher performance for video games.

GPU is typically found on the video controller card, or in some cases (known as intergrated graphics) on the motherboard.

Depending on the algorithm (or type of encoding) used to encode the video signal, there may be great deal of processing that needs to be done before the data can be used to generate a frame for display. This is done in a pipeline manner, where one process does the first step and then hands the data off to the next process for the next step, and so on until the data is ready for display.

With higher resolution displays, there is more data that needs to be processed for each frame. Modern GPU's are approaching CPU's processing power, and in certain applications, surpassing them. The aim of DXVA is to harness some of this processing power for the decoding and so free up the CPU for other tasks.

However, not all GPU's are created equal. DXVA aims to smooth over this disparity by substituting software processes (running on the CPU) for any decoding processes that are not available on the current GPU.

MPEG2 is the standard used for movies on DVD's, amongst other things. VC-1 and H.264 are competing standards. VC-1 comes from Microsoft. They are used on HD & BluRay DVD's.

Codecs are encoders/decoders. They can be hardware or software. The encoder takes an incoming stream of data and process it in some manner for transmission to another site. The decoder receives this transmitted stream of data and "decodes" it so that it can be read, or viewed, by the recipient.

The algorithm, or standard, for the encoding can be done for any number of purposes:

• to ensure more reliable transmission (fewer errors)
• to compress the data (use less bandwidth)
• encrypt the data so only the intended recipient can read it.

For video, compression is generally the highest priority. Once upon a time Andy (Grove) wanted a killer app, i.e. an application program that everyone wanted that would require faster and more powerful CPU's. ProShare was the first foray into this. It was a little premature, but now that the internet tubes are bigger, the demand for processor power is outstripping what even Intel can supply.

Update December 2016 replaced missing picture.

Looking for a Job

I got an automated email from Tektronix this morning with a list of half a dozen software engineering positions. When I checked on them, they were all in Singapore or Bangalore (India). The last time this happened, I went to their website and set my preferences to let them know I was only interested in jobs in the US. That worked for a bit. The last few emails I received listed jobs in Richardson, Texas. I am not interested in moving to Texas, at least not this week. But now we are back to China and India. Does not speak well for Tek's competence.

I applied for a bunch of jobs on Intel's website over the last month or so. I haven't heard diddly from them, not that I really expected to. A week or so ago I was looking on craigslist for jobs, and I found one from Intel. I thought this was a little odd, so I went ahead and sent them an email. I figured the ad was placed by a manager who was fed up with dealing with their internal HR department. Turns out it was placed by the HR department. I should have known better to than to think Intel would allow someone with an independent streak to exercise any initiative.

I had three phone interviews with outfits in Seattle last week. Two were for contracting jobs with Microsoft in Redmond. That was a little weird: interviewing with my arch-nemesis. I was kind of pumped about it for a while. My daughter starts at the University of Washington in the Fall and they charge an eighteen thousand dollar annual premium for non-residents. For that kind of money, I could move to Washington and establish residence there. Even become a micro-serf.

Looking at the ads, I see the same positions coming up over and over. Sometimes they are just a couple of weeks old, but reposted with new dates to make them look fresh. Sometimes they are several months old. Maybe they hired someone and they didn't work out.

Some of these job requirements are quite absurd. I see ads for people who are expert in that companies exclusive technology. The only people who are going to be expert in it are people who have worked there before. If that's what you want, look them up and give them a call. Don't bother the rest of us. I see ads for people who are expert in everything under the sun. Those people don't exist. These are the same ads that you see floating around for months on end. Methinks they don't really want to hire anyone. So why do they post ads? Politics of some sort, I suppose.

Update December 2016 replaced missing picture.

Windows is Wonderful, Part 9488

I had two phone interviews with Microsoft yesterday afternoon. Friday my daughter announced her decision to attend the University of Washington, which requires an $18,000 annual premium for out of state students. So I spent the weekend scouring the web for jobs in the Seattle area. Monday I got a call from a recruiter at Volt Technical Services in Redmond and yesterday I had not one, but two phone interviews.

It will be a couple of days before I hear anything about either one, so let's not get our hopes up. But it's still a little weird. I put quite a bit more effort into looking for a job in Seattle than I ever put into looking for a job in Portland, and then I get a request for phone interviews from my arch-nemesis in the computer business. The arch-nemesis thing is strictly a one way perception. This is the first time they have even acknowledged my existence. Kind of like attacking a brick wall on my part.

Seattle has it's attractions. It's my boyhood home. It has Puget Sound with all the shipping. It has Boeing. It's a much bigger city with all that entails. The University is bigger and the campus is much fancier than the University of Oregon. Of course, all this is superficial, and it may turn out to not be any fun at all (if I even get a job up there).

I am pretty tired of Hillsboro though. There still isn't a decent restaurant here. Well there are some passable restaurants over on 185th, which are technically in Hillsboro, but are actually more part of Beaverton. And they are five miles away and they are all corporate franchise chains.

I do have some friends that I will miss (if I end up moving), but I suspect I might meet some smart people at Microsoft (supposing I were to actually get a job there).

And I have been looking for a job in the Portland area. I have sent the same resume out to several places and I have not heard squat. Okay, I had an interview with an agency a couple of weeks ago, and I got an email from another agency yesterday, so something might pop, but it's still slim pickings. I haven't heard boo from any of the two dozen jobs I applied for at Intel, so fooey on them. Let's go to Seattle.