I thought I'd jot a few lines down regarding something that I've been experimenting with. The term is micro-blogging. Blogging itself is fairly new to a lot of people, but micro-blogging is even more foreign to a lot of people. Micro-blogging is like blogging, except that it's very brief status messages or thoughts that you can contain within a 140 character message. Micro-blogging sites are popping up everywhere and have become very popular. Twitter.com and identi.ca are two of the biggies.
I never thought I'd get into blogging, much less micro-blogging. When I first saw what micro-blogging was, I thought "what a waste of time". But then I experimented and found some value. From a community perspective, it feels good to be able to keep up with what friends (or acquaintances) are doing on a moment to moment basis. Twitter and identi.ca, as well as most of the other micro-blog sites, provide almost instantaneous updates. So you make an update, and then whenever someone "following" you (or subscribed to your 'feed') updates their browser window, they see your most recent update.
Since there are so many micro-blogging sites, I think it's a bit early to tell which one is going to take off. Which one will end up being the "VHS" of the industry. To hedge my bets, I looked around and found an assortment of tools for updating multiple micro-blogging sites. Currently, I'm working with ping.fm as well as hellotxt.com. I'm not sure which one I really like, but I do like the features that both are trying to provide.
What these sites do is allow you to post one time, and they take your message, and post to all of your micro-blogging sites. So from one point, I can type my quick little message, click on the "Send" button and the message gets sent out to Twitter, identi.ca, hi5.com, Facebook, Myspace, pownce, linkedin, plaxo, plurk, brightkite, beemood, and a few other sites.
About the only trouble is that from time to time, these micro-blog sites might be down or "constipated" for a few seconds, and so the message might not actually get posted to Twitter or one of your other sites, but typically will be posted to most. What I like about hellotxt currently, is that it tells you if it failed on any, which gives you the opportunity to repost only to that one if you wish. Overall, I like ping.fm better, but I like that one feature of hellotxt enough to continue using it.
I haven't found a site that monitors all of the micro-blog sites for me yet, but hellotxt makes an attempt to monitor a few. I currently tend to just monitor twitter for now, because that's the site that most of my friends are on, but identi.ca is growing in popularity and a few of my friends are moving over to it.
And of course, there's still the myspace and facebook folks, so my updates (140 characters or less) go there as well.
Will I do this micro-blogging long-term? I don't know, but for now, I think it's kinda cool to be able to keep up with what some of my friends are doing during the day. Some of these folks I haven't seen in years, but I can still keep up with their day to day activities.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
When good jobs go bad
I've often wondered how to account for a bad job on a resume. You have to show that you worked there and had that experience, but feel awkward about showing that for concern that interviews (and screeners) at job prospects will wonder why you spent only a short time at a particular employer.
Companies have bad employees from time to time and that's okay, but how does an employee reflect that he had a bad employer? I've never been able to figure that one out.
I once had a great employer, I thought, who hired me and gave me a chance to get back into useful programming, as opposed to the niche that I'd gotten myself into for a number of years, of which there was no market for. This employer let me work there, although I was getting paid entry-level pay, for the same work that others in the company were getting almost 50% more for. Still, I was grateful. When I got enough experience to apply for a better job, I took it. My employer initially accepted this, but later he was resentful of me and sent me hateful e-mails, saying that I had "recruited" from his staff. I didn't know it at the time, but he'd had some turnover after I left. It was a small shop. Who was I going to recruit? He was one of the programmers. We had another programmer in California. I wasn't going to be able to recruit him. And then there was another programmer that had already indicated that he was leaving, before I announced that I was leaving. So who did I recruit? I never found this out, but I felt awkward having this company on my resume for fear of what this guy might say about me. A crafty screener would only have to ask "would you hire this guy again" to be given an answer of "no" and that would be the end of my job chances. So I couldn't put this company on my resume, although I'd done a good job there and they were a good employer for all I knew the whole time that I was there.
Recently, I worked at an agency for the State of Oklahoma. I didn't realize it when I took the job, but it was going to be "the job from hell". How could I reflect that on a resume, and account that it was a bad employer, not that I was a bad employee?
When I took that job, I just knew the people I was working with seemed to be nice people. My interviewers were wonderful, I thought. Both were a couple of nice ladies who I felt I would get along with well, and I felt it wouldn't hurt to be working for a state agency at a time when the job market seemed in flux. Working with a company that had a set budget seemed like a good idea, and the benefits were reasonably good.
Well, the first thing I found out was that the project I was working on was somewhat covert. It was a project to replace another system that never worked right. The other system costed approximately $8 million and never quite did what it should've done. However, upon further investigation, I found that a majority of the reason it didn't do what it should was that they didn't have good data; because the system didn't validate data when it was entered, and people doing data entry just entered data the fastest way they could with no regard for accuracy or the ability for usability.
And it appeared that the reason they didn't have validation was because someone in management requested that it be removed.
So another effort was going on to replace this system. This created a political conflict within the agency because we were an effort off from the IT group, and so the IT group hated us and would provide us little or no support. On top of that, the original group that had started this replacement system had all left. None of them were really programmers. They were network engineers that had done a good job prototyping the initial system, but didn't really know how to develop a full-blown system, and the people put in charge of running the project, because it wasn't a part of IT, didn't really have a clue of how to run an IT project. They didn't know how software development was done. The people put in charge of this project (paid for with state tax payer dollars) were good at being parole officers and dealing with offenders, they never quite understood why things work the way they work in a software development lifecycle. We couldn't get real nailed down requirements, and the initial replacement system was so poorly documented and designed (for lack of direction) that it got scrapped (unbeknownst to the bosses in OKC) and a replacement replacement system (to be a replacement for the $8 million system) was embarked upon.
In good faith, we were doing well, but under pressure to deliver a finished system. The replacement system had been a three year effort when I started the company. Within a couple of months, we were under a strict deadline to have the full system delivered within another couple of months, as if our replacement for the replacement system had been going on for 3 years. It had been going on for maybe 3 weeks. So I should've known then that it was time to look for another job, but I didnt' want to be seen as a "job hopper" and just felt that I needed to put in some extra hours, not get stressed out, and just get the job done. I'd worked under adverse conditions in the past (over a 30 year period), and so I didn't see this as anything more than a challenge. It could be fun, I thought.
Well, the demands became ridiculous. We were given little direction for what needed to be done. We were developing a system that we knew very little about what the process was, and the people to ask were rarely there. When they were they, they didn't want to go over requirements. It was something they wanted to avoid. We did the best we could, with what little we had. There were 3 programmers and a project manager. She, the project manager, was a fish out of water. She meant well, but had no experience at running an enterprise software development effort. All of her previous experience had been in game development, which she seemed well suited at, but she didn't know a thing about how databases work, or how to get functional requirements from SMEs (subject matter experts), or how to understand the problems developers would have in meeting a schedule and turning those requirements into functional logic that would produce the finished system. She knew games.
One of our programmers had a "melt down" and went on a cursing tyraid about "working for idiots". I found out later that this wasn't his first time. This time, he was asked to resign. He later said that this was the best thing that ever happened to him. He went elsewhere making much more money, and seemed happier. And he didn't seem to go on any more tyrauds either.
Next, I felt pressure. I knew nothing about SQL Server Reporting Services at the time, and told them that in my job interview, but I suddenly had to become an expert overnight. There was a big pressure to have about 30 working reports for management, even though we didn't even have a system that had data tables yet, that these reports would run from? How can you create reports when you don't have data? I never could get our leader to understand this. I got frustrated. The reports were never acceptable to her. She wouldn't tell me how to gather the data that she wanted. I did what I thought would work, but I wasn't the SME, she was, but she was never around to get the answers, and the PM was no help.
I did the best job I could do. I struggled and got the reports, and then the day before the deadline, she finally got around to reviewing the reports and decided that they weren't working right. So she threw a fit. I felt enormous stress. It wasn't good for my health. Upon repeated interruptions while I was still trying to fix what she didn't like, I finally had to tell the PM that I could only work on one thing at a time, and that these logic changes were complicated and that if I were stressed anymore, I might just decide that none of it were worth it and just leave. I'd had it.
Well, I expressed this twice in a two week period, and so the big boss let me know that she wasn't pleased with me. Well, after getting it all to work and more time went by, I finally decided to give my notice. I was too stressed out. I wanted to work on building my house full time (see http://www.freewebs.com/stocktonunderground) and that my wife agreed that it would be worth it for me to be under less stress and just get work done on the house. My wife saw me not sleeping at night. I was so stressed out that it was affecting my health; and nothing I did at work was ever good enough.
I kept thinking that maybe it was my fault and that I could've handled it better, but I was so glad to be over that job. Well, 4 months later, I just had lunch with the remaining programmer. Actually, he is no longer remaining. He turned in his resignation last Friday. He was frustrated with things, just as the guy that went on the tyraid. He just didnt' cuss them out like that guy did.
It seems that from the time I left 4 months ago, the boss was gone for 2 of those months, and then she returned for a few days and then went on a vacation for a week or so. After that, she was gone to meetings in OKC or anywhere but the office. The PM had committed to an additional system, and a deadline of two weeks, without even checking with Steve (the programmer) first. It was around the 19th of the month, and the system was due at the end of the month. During that period, they spent a week in OKC in training, but it was training for what the PM wanted, not what Steve had requested. The deadline didn't get pushed back either.
There were approximately 8 screens of which 6 were done by Steve, and 2 were done by the PM and a junior programmer they'd hired. At the final week, Steve put in over 80 hours to get that system in. His 6 screens worked. the other 2 didn't. That was beyond his control. The PM decided that she wanted to "pretty up" the screens, and so she did that the night before the deadline. What she did was treat them as a WYSIWYG concept, with no regards for these being software systems. At the end, she found out they didn't work, and so Steve was called in at 7:30 (he'd been at the office til 3:30 that morning) and told "get your butt up here because we've got a problem". Well, the data-sources had been removed. That's why it didn't work. The PM had done it again, as she'd done multiple times in the past (even when I was still there), and she still didn't get it.
Steve fixed the problem, but the boss was still furious because those final 2 screens didn't work. Steve had done 6 of the 8, and it was his fault that the system didn't work. Steve was publicly humiliated and derated in the office. He was the only guy there. He later told me that he'll never work for a woman again. I think that's a bit strong. I'm not against working for a woman again, but I am against working for someone that doesn't know how software is developed. I'll never do that again.
Steve has taken a job already. He starts August 4th at a company where I knew a few of the people working there. It's a good employer and he'll be making more money.
Steve and I (as well as Joe who left before us) have a problem of how to report this employer on a resume. You want to account for your time, but how do you report a bad employer? Employers report bad employees, and I'm sure none of the 3 of us will be seen as "rehireable" at that company. So we're the bad employees the way they're going to tell it. How does an employee, that does everything right that he can, state that he had a bad employer, without appearing to have "sour grapes" and/or being unprofessional? Looking back, it seems like there's a trend. None of the original programmers were there. Joe left. I left. Steve left. At some point, it can't all be the programmers' fault. There has to be a common denominator that indicates the source of the real problem.
Anyway, I'm struggling with this. I still like the lady that I worked for there. Maybe she was just dealing with stress from her boss, who was quite demanding. There were stories in the office about how extreme that lady in OKC could be, and to tell you quite honestly, that woman would never have been allowed to get away with some of the things she got away with in a state agency. If it were the private sector, she'd have been fired decades earlier. I like my boss though and it troubled me to see how things went when Steve left. I wanted it to work out for all of them; for them to deliver the system, meeting expectations and all have continued careers working for the state.
How do Steve, Joe or I, list this employer on our resume, and document how things were, so that if screeners do contact that agency and find that we're listed as "no rehire" that there's a logical explanation to back up our view that we were not bad employees?
Companies have bad employees from time to time and that's okay, but how does an employee reflect that he had a bad employer? I've never been able to figure that one out.
I once had a great employer, I thought, who hired me and gave me a chance to get back into useful programming, as opposed to the niche that I'd gotten myself into for a number of years, of which there was no market for. This employer let me work there, although I was getting paid entry-level pay, for the same work that others in the company were getting almost 50% more for. Still, I was grateful. When I got enough experience to apply for a better job, I took it. My employer initially accepted this, but later he was resentful of me and sent me hateful e-mails, saying that I had "recruited" from his staff. I didn't know it at the time, but he'd had some turnover after I left. It was a small shop. Who was I going to recruit? He was one of the programmers. We had another programmer in California. I wasn't going to be able to recruit him. And then there was another programmer that had already indicated that he was leaving, before I announced that I was leaving. So who did I recruit? I never found this out, but I felt awkward having this company on my resume for fear of what this guy might say about me. A crafty screener would only have to ask "would you hire this guy again" to be given an answer of "no" and that would be the end of my job chances. So I couldn't put this company on my resume, although I'd done a good job there and they were a good employer for all I knew the whole time that I was there.
Recently, I worked at an agency for the State of Oklahoma. I didn't realize it when I took the job, but it was going to be "the job from hell". How could I reflect that on a resume, and account that it was a bad employer, not that I was a bad employee?
When I took that job, I just knew the people I was working with seemed to be nice people. My interviewers were wonderful, I thought. Both were a couple of nice ladies who I felt I would get along with well, and I felt it wouldn't hurt to be working for a state agency at a time when the job market seemed in flux. Working with a company that had a set budget seemed like a good idea, and the benefits were reasonably good.
Well, the first thing I found out was that the project I was working on was somewhat covert. It was a project to replace another system that never worked right. The other system costed approximately $8 million and never quite did what it should've done. However, upon further investigation, I found that a majority of the reason it didn't do what it should was that they didn't have good data; because the system didn't validate data when it was entered, and people doing data entry just entered data the fastest way they could with no regard for accuracy or the ability for usability.
And it appeared that the reason they didn't have validation was because someone in management requested that it be removed.
So another effort was going on to replace this system. This created a political conflict within the agency because we were an effort off from the IT group, and so the IT group hated us and would provide us little or no support. On top of that, the original group that had started this replacement system had all left. None of them were really programmers. They were network engineers that had done a good job prototyping the initial system, but didn't really know how to develop a full-blown system, and the people put in charge of running the project, because it wasn't a part of IT, didn't really have a clue of how to run an IT project. They didn't know how software development was done. The people put in charge of this project (paid for with state tax payer dollars) were good at being parole officers and dealing with offenders, they never quite understood why things work the way they work in a software development lifecycle. We couldn't get real nailed down requirements, and the initial replacement system was so poorly documented and designed (for lack of direction) that it got scrapped (unbeknownst to the bosses in OKC) and a replacement replacement system (to be a replacement for the $8 million system) was embarked upon.
In good faith, we were doing well, but under pressure to deliver a finished system. The replacement system had been a three year effort when I started the company. Within a couple of months, we were under a strict deadline to have the full system delivered within another couple of months, as if our replacement for the replacement system had been going on for 3 years. It had been going on for maybe 3 weeks. So I should've known then that it was time to look for another job, but I didnt' want to be seen as a "job hopper" and just felt that I needed to put in some extra hours, not get stressed out, and just get the job done. I'd worked under adverse conditions in the past (over a 30 year period), and so I didn't see this as anything more than a challenge. It could be fun, I thought.
Well, the demands became ridiculous. We were given little direction for what needed to be done. We were developing a system that we knew very little about what the process was, and the people to ask were rarely there. When they were they, they didn't want to go over requirements. It was something they wanted to avoid. We did the best we could, with what little we had. There were 3 programmers and a project manager. She, the project manager, was a fish out of water. She meant well, but had no experience at running an enterprise software development effort. All of her previous experience had been in game development, which she seemed well suited at, but she didn't know a thing about how databases work, or how to get functional requirements from SMEs (subject matter experts), or how to understand the problems developers would have in meeting a schedule and turning those requirements into functional logic that would produce the finished system. She knew games.
One of our programmers had a "melt down" and went on a cursing tyraid about "working for idiots". I found out later that this wasn't his first time. This time, he was asked to resign. He later said that this was the best thing that ever happened to him. He went elsewhere making much more money, and seemed happier. And he didn't seem to go on any more tyrauds either.
Next, I felt pressure. I knew nothing about SQL Server Reporting Services at the time, and told them that in my job interview, but I suddenly had to become an expert overnight. There was a big pressure to have about 30 working reports for management, even though we didn't even have a system that had data tables yet, that these reports would run from? How can you create reports when you don't have data? I never could get our leader to understand this. I got frustrated. The reports were never acceptable to her. She wouldn't tell me how to gather the data that she wanted. I did what I thought would work, but I wasn't the SME, she was, but she was never around to get the answers, and the PM was no help.
I did the best job I could do. I struggled and got the reports, and then the day before the deadline, she finally got around to reviewing the reports and decided that they weren't working right. So she threw a fit. I felt enormous stress. It wasn't good for my health. Upon repeated interruptions while I was still trying to fix what she didn't like, I finally had to tell the PM that I could only work on one thing at a time, and that these logic changes were complicated and that if I were stressed anymore, I might just decide that none of it were worth it and just leave. I'd had it.
Well, I expressed this twice in a two week period, and so the big boss let me know that she wasn't pleased with me. Well, after getting it all to work and more time went by, I finally decided to give my notice. I was too stressed out. I wanted to work on building my house full time (see http://www.freewebs.com/stocktonunderground) and that my wife agreed that it would be worth it for me to be under less stress and just get work done on the house. My wife saw me not sleeping at night. I was so stressed out that it was affecting my health; and nothing I did at work was ever good enough.
I kept thinking that maybe it was my fault and that I could've handled it better, but I was so glad to be over that job. Well, 4 months later, I just had lunch with the remaining programmer. Actually, he is no longer remaining. He turned in his resignation last Friday. He was frustrated with things, just as the guy that went on the tyraid. He just didnt' cuss them out like that guy did.
It seems that from the time I left 4 months ago, the boss was gone for 2 of those months, and then she returned for a few days and then went on a vacation for a week or so. After that, she was gone to meetings in OKC or anywhere but the office. The PM had committed to an additional system, and a deadline of two weeks, without even checking with Steve (the programmer) first. It was around the 19th of the month, and the system was due at the end of the month. During that period, they spent a week in OKC in training, but it was training for what the PM wanted, not what Steve had requested. The deadline didn't get pushed back either.
There were approximately 8 screens of which 6 were done by Steve, and 2 were done by the PM and a junior programmer they'd hired. At the final week, Steve put in over 80 hours to get that system in. His 6 screens worked. the other 2 didn't. That was beyond his control. The PM decided that she wanted to "pretty up" the screens, and so she did that the night before the deadline. What she did was treat them as a WYSIWYG concept, with no regards for these being software systems. At the end, she found out they didn't work, and so Steve was called in at 7:30 (he'd been at the office til 3:30 that morning) and told "get your butt up here because we've got a problem". Well, the data-sources had been removed. That's why it didn't work. The PM had done it again, as she'd done multiple times in the past (even when I was still there), and she still didn't get it.
Steve fixed the problem, but the boss was still furious because those final 2 screens didn't work. Steve had done 6 of the 8, and it was his fault that the system didn't work. Steve was publicly humiliated and derated in the office. He was the only guy there. He later told me that he'll never work for a woman again. I think that's a bit strong. I'm not against working for a woman again, but I am against working for someone that doesn't know how software is developed. I'll never do that again.
Steve has taken a job already. He starts August 4th at a company where I knew a few of the people working there. It's a good employer and he'll be making more money.
Steve and I (as well as Joe who left before us) have a problem of how to report this employer on a resume. You want to account for your time, but how do you report a bad employer? Employers report bad employees, and I'm sure none of the 3 of us will be seen as "rehireable" at that company. So we're the bad employees the way they're going to tell it. How does an employee, that does everything right that he can, state that he had a bad employer, without appearing to have "sour grapes" and/or being unprofessional? Looking back, it seems like there's a trend. None of the original programmers were there. Joe left. I left. Steve left. At some point, it can't all be the programmers' fault. There has to be a common denominator that indicates the source of the real problem.
Anyway, I'm struggling with this. I still like the lady that I worked for there. Maybe she was just dealing with stress from her boss, who was quite demanding. There were stories in the office about how extreme that lady in OKC could be, and to tell you quite honestly, that woman would never have been allowed to get away with some of the things she got away with in a state agency. If it were the private sector, she'd have been fired decades earlier. I like my boss though and it troubled me to see how things went when Steve left. I wanted it to work out for all of them; for them to deliver the system, meeting expectations and all have continued careers working for the state.
How do Steve, Joe or I, list this employer on our resume, and document how things were, so that if screeners do contact that agency and find that we're listed as "no rehire" that there's a logical explanation to back up our view that we were not bad employees?
Friday, July 18, 2008
I need a vacation ...
There was a time in my life when I didn't know what a vacation was. I'd never really had much of a vacation, because when I was a kid, I was from a poor working class family, and we just didn't do vacations.My dad worked in construction, and so when he wasn't working, he was unemployed. During that time was not the time to be spending money on stuff other than bills and rent. So there were no vacations, but I had heard about them from other kids.As an adult, I finally got to go on a vacation with some friends of mine and that hooked me. Prior to that, I put in 60 to 80 hour weeks on the job and rarely took time off (because had no vacations). Even lost PTO when it wouldn't roll over any longer.That one vacation ruined me though. From then on, I knew what I was missing and have sought out vacations from time to time ever since.Since the year 2000, I haven't taken a lot of vacations. There was a job change, and then several years of hard times, but then we became prosperous again, but then we were on a mission to build a house. So that has occupied my time.I don't really remember the last time I was on a real vacation. I've had a day or two off work from time to time, but that was usually do spend on personal business.We've had visits with the in-laws once a year, but I drive all that time and so it's not what I really think of as a vacation. Nonetheless, it's a break from the routine, and so it feels good to me. I miss it.I don't know when it will be, but I'm really, really, really, really wanting a vacation.and I mean it in a really bad way.I want to return to New Orleans. We haven't been since the year before Katrina. The French Quarter is fine and the cabins at Bayou Segnette State Park (across the river from the French Quarter) are just fine. So we want to return for 3 or 4 days, maybe visiting a plantation or two in the area, as we've done in the past.I'd like to go to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore some day, and my wife recommends Yellowstone. I haven't been to any of these.There's the amish country in Pennsylvania. My wife was raised Mennonite and so we have an interest in amish country, as well as I think it would just be a nice place to go photograph.I'm really longing for a vacation.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Testing, one, 2 tree
This is just a test from ping.fm, to see how it writes to wordpress. I've got it set up to feed serveral blogs and micro-blog social networking sites.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
The Big Bailouts are a rip-off to the common man
I am more and more frustrated with the bailouts. First, we (via the Federal Reserve, who made the dollars in my pocket and your's less valuable in order to) bail out the big failing banks. We shored them up because we were told that it would hurt the entire country if we didn't. That's bogus and we all know it.Next, the democrats used this as an opportunity to buy votes, bailing out people defaulting on their mortgages. However, those mortgages were mostly yuppies buying houses way beyond what they could reasonably afford. They gambled and lost, getting caught by the rising rates of the adjustable rate mortgages. They knew these were adjustable rates. What part of adjustable did they really not understand?So these bailouts and now the Indy Mac and Freddie Mac bailouts. When will it end?Here's the truth. The execs that ran these big banks and financial groups, were paid millions of dollars in bonuses for the decades, while they were making irresponsible risks. They gambled and failed and why should we bail them out?It seems that when they fail, they share the losses with the citizens, but when they profit, they don't share.And democrats or republicans, it doesn't matter who is in control of Congress, because they always make sure this keeps happening.It goes on locally too. Locally, we had a group of rich guys that started a company called Great Plains Airlines. It was a dumb and risky idea, but it was their money and they could do what they wanted. The thing is, they got the City of Tulsa to put up the guarantees through a large financial institution.Well, Great Plains folded. From the beginning, they never even attempted the markets that they were charted to go after, and so it was no surprise that they failed.So they lost money, but the city and the financial institution were left holding the bag. In order to pay the financial institution, naming rights to our new arena were awarded. These usually go for over $30 million, but it was a bargain basement price because of what was owed in the Great Plains deal.Now, only recently, the mayor of the city pulled a backdoor secret deal (it seems so) with a deadline of only 48 hours, and came up with emergency money to pay the bank their $8 million.Wait a minute! Didn't they get naming rights? That should've been payment. Now the citizens are left holding the bag. And the city really had no legal responsibilities, but they pulled a deal with no time for city councelors to contest it. It went through, and the citizens foot the $8 million bill.If Great Plains had profited, nothing would've been shared with the citizens, but the losses, oh, they'll share that with the citizens.Time and time we see this sort of thing go on. It happens at the top and it happens in the bottom levels of government. The reason it happens is that the citizens aren't paying attention, and the ones in control and the big money interests know it.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
No-Touch Icing
I know that no-touch icing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icing_(ice_hockey) was instituted in the NHL (and other leagues) as a measure to reduce injuries, but the unintended side effect, in my opinion, is that it rewards lazy skaters and teams.
Supposedly, no-touch icing was sold as a way to speed up games. But it doesn't, and the linesmen still have to skate the length of the rink to get the puck, plus there's the stoppage of play.
Injuries occur in a lot of games, and if the leagues were really concerned about injuries, they do something about head injuries. The no-touch icing is little threat to those, the most being leg or ankle injuries from racing into the boards.
I could probably stomach the no-touch icing if it were waived off if it was clear that the defenceman could've gotten the puck or even stopped it, but intentionally allowed it to go by so that icing would occur. In this instance, it seems to me that this is an intentional stoppage of play, similar in action (and certainly the result) of a goalie sending the puck over the glass. It stops the play, and to avoid this, a penalty is dealt to the goalie to stop this stoppage. Intentionally allowing the puck to get by, is just as wrong and certainly sucks the life out of a game, as a goalie knocking the puck over the glass to stop the play and interrupt a possible scoring opportunity.
I have seen the reaction by a number of fans, and we all agree that even though the intentions of the rule were noble, that the practice of no-touch icing has sucked the life and excitement out of hockey games, and it rewards lazy defencemen and lazy teams in general.
In my opinion, if the puck is fired to the opposite end of the ice, and the offensive skater is fast enough to get by the defenceman and beat him to the puck, then he deserves the scoring opportunity.
Supposedly, no-touch icing was sold as a way to speed up games. But it doesn't, and the linesmen still have to skate the length of the rink to get the puck, plus there's the stoppage of play.
Injuries occur in a lot of games, and if the leagues were really concerned about injuries, they do something about head injuries. The no-touch icing is little threat to those, the most being leg or ankle injuries from racing into the boards.
I could probably stomach the no-touch icing if it were waived off if it was clear that the defenceman could've gotten the puck or even stopped it, but intentionally allowed it to go by so that icing would occur. In this instance, it seems to me that this is an intentional stoppage of play, similar in action (and certainly the result) of a goalie sending the puck over the glass. It stops the play, and to avoid this, a penalty is dealt to the goalie to stop this stoppage. Intentionally allowing the puck to get by, is just as wrong and certainly sucks the life out of a game, as a goalie knocking the puck over the glass to stop the play and interrupt a possible scoring opportunity.
I have seen the reaction by a number of fans, and we all agree that even though the intentions of the rule were noble, that the practice of no-touch icing has sucked the life and excitement out of hockey games, and it rewards lazy defencemen and lazy teams in general.
In my opinion, if the puck is fired to the opposite end of the ice, and the offensive skater is fast enough to get by the defenceman and beat him to the puck, then he deserves the scoring opportunity.
People Who Wrongly Park In Handicapped Parking
It happens more and more frequently that I see people that walk just as good, if not better than I do, who park in parking spots designated for the handicapped. These have got to be some of the most selfish people on the face of the earth. When their car is parked there, someone that needs that parking slot has to park in a less convenient spot. It's not right.
It also seems that some selfish people out there believe that even though they themselves are not in a wheelchair or need a cane, that if they have a family member in a wheelchair, that this gives them an excuse to use handicapped parking, again either missing, or not caring that someone else is possibly suffering because of their inconsiderate behavior. It's not the wheelchair sticker hanging from the rear view mirror that makes it okay. If you don't need a wheelchair or cane, then the spirit of the rule is being violated.
I used to not see this very often, but I'm seeing it almost every day now.
It also seems that some selfish people out there believe that even though they themselves are not in a wheelchair or need a cane, that if they have a family member in a wheelchair, that this gives them an excuse to use handicapped parking, again either missing, or not caring that someone else is possibly suffering because of their inconsiderate behavior. It's not the wheelchair sticker hanging from the rear view mirror that makes it okay. If you don't need a wheelchair or cane, then the spirit of the rule is being violated.
I used to not see this very often, but I'm seeing it almost every day now.
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