Politics: So Tired of the B.S.

I'm tired of the bs. The rhetoric on both sides of the political spectrum, has gotten so thick that I need boots to wade through it. And I'm learning towards getting some taller boots with a boat attached.

This week, the democrats had their national convention, to officially declare their candidate for President of the United States. The Republicans will do the same for their candidate next week. The reality is that both parties could do us all a favor and condense this all down to one day.
They wont do this though. This is their time to give some of the privileged few their chance to voice their feelings and/or to vent and/or to make themselves heard and seen in hopes of getting enough attention for future political ambitions. No serious discussion of the issues is done here. It's all cheerleading. It's all rhetoric. It's all lies, distortions, half-truths.

This week, Hillary Clinton spoke about her pet issues. She mentioned jobs being sent overseas, making it sound like it was Bush's fault. After all, everything is Bush's fault. The crowd lapped up her every word. The truth is, she was lying. It was her husband that signed into law the tax credits for companies like IBM to off-shore jobs. It wasn't George W. Bush. It was Bill Clinton.

Joe Biden, the running mate for Barak Obama, chose his own rants against McCain as well as the Bush Administration. It's not like some of the rants aren't deserved, but what Biden was doing was putting it on extra thick, with no serious imparting of the facts. It was all rhetoric again.
Biden had suggested that McCain was wrong because he was for keeping troops in Iraq, and now the Bush Administration as well as the Iraqi government as discussing a time table for troop redeployment. Biden suggests that he was right and that Obama was right, and that McCain was wrong. On the surface, that seems like a good argument. But wait a minute. According to this argument, Bush was right as well. However, lets go further into the issue. The whole reason there is any discussion by the Bush Administration or by the Iraqi government about troop redeployment, is because of the troop surge. McCain was for it. Biden was against it. Obama was against it. So in that line of thinking, Obama was wrong. Biden was wrong. Bush was right. McCain was right.
It all depends on how you look at it.

The bottom line is that we all wish that we hadn't gotten into the war to begin with. Everyone agrees with that. However, unlike Obama, Biden voted for the war. So how much credibility does he have in bringing up the issue?

And then there's Bill Clinton. Slick Willie was at his best again, doling out the soundbites. Anyone on the left lapped them up unquestioning. Everyone else were hoping for an enema.

Clinton suggests that just as it is suggested that Obama was too young and inexperienced to be president, that they had said the same thing about him; how much of an argument is that really? For one thing, Clinton had been a two-term governor. Obama hasn't. And, to tell the truth, Clinton did nothing to curb al Qaeda, and the result was no response regarding repeated attacks on Americans, including an attack on a US battle cruiser, the Cole.

Clinton points to his own foreign policy in dealing with tyrants, and the fact that he made peace agreements with countries like North Korea. However, he fails to point out that after the agreement, North Korea violated the deal in secret and were developing nuclear capability. So how affective was his policy? He calls the Bush policy a failed policy, but his certainly was no better.

And while we're talking about foreign policy, it was during the Clinton Administration that over 750,000 innocent civilians were murdered in Rwanda while the Clinton Administration sat by waiting for the UN to do something. The UN did nothing. In fact, the UN did have a few soldiers in Rwanda, but when the massacres went on, the UN (Belgian soldiers) ran away. The civilians were slaughtered. Do we really consider this to be a successful policy?

And Clinton points to the deficit. Yes, this is something I agree on. Bush spent worse than any Democrat (to date) had. However, if Obama gets all the things he says he wants, the spending will be even worse. So how could Clinton even suggest that this policy would be any different?
Clinton went on to talk about the tax cuts for the rich. What he was mostly talking about is the capital gains taxes. What he fails to mention is that the reduction in capital gains taxes is what boosted investment and helped the economy after it was slumping during the end of the Clinton years and into the Bush years. That slump was due to the failed dotcom era and little investor confidence in the tech sector. The cuts in capital gains provided additional revenue into our economy, as well as additional jobs that had been on the decline.

Hint.  This economy grows because of investment.  Investment brings capital into the economy.  Without it, there is recession.  The economy grows with capital, not with taxes.

Clinton went on to talk about the economy, which I agree could be better if not for Bush's spending out of control, but again, the democrats want to spend more. They want to take away the incentive to invest. They want to take away the incentive to create real jobs (not government jobs). And in addition, during the Bush years, the growth rate has still been a higher percentage above the overall economic output of the nation, in comparison to that of the Clinton years. So as bad as the Bush economic policy has been, Clinton's was worse and he knows it.

Clinton mentioned education as well as did Biden. Ted Kennedy mentioned it briefly as well. The thing is, none of them pointed out that Bush spent more on education than any president previously (including Clinton). In addition, Bush not only gave Sen. Kennedy the education bill that he wanted, but even gave him additional funding for it. And to hear them talk, it's not enough. If true, then they're failures too and certainly a part of the problem.

Several of the speakers mentioned the torturing of prisoners, eluding to prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. These are men that would kill Americans if given the chance. Some have already killed Americans. These politicians seem very concerned about the rights of these men, but show no concern for the rights and well-being of unborn babies in this country. They're not even on the radar because it's not politically correct.And to be truthful, was McCain not one of the Senators opposed to torture? So how serious is this discussion really?

The purpose of these speeches, for the most part, was to fire up the audience and to get them excited about being at the convention. However, the real purpose of the convention was to tally the delegate votes to determine who the candidate would be, and we knew before the convention who that would be. Did we not?

AT&T gave millions of dollars to the democrats (to the republicans too). In return, (including a vote by Barak Obama who at first was opposed), they voted to keep telecom companies from being sued if they had co-operated with government investigations regarding wire taps. Is this the kind of change this candidate speaks of? It seems that he has become what he has been preaching against. He has catered to the privileged few who have the money to buy from government what they want.

The truth is that neither party leaders really understand the average person on the street and what we want in a government. They are both selling us out as far as our economic and territorial sovereignty. Neither show any concern for the average working man in this country. They just talk about it.

When Obama was running for the Senate, he got organized labor's support because he said that he'd renegociate NAFTA. After he got into office, the subject has never been mentioned again. Is this the sign of a man that represents change? If its a change in what he'll do versus what he'll promise in order to get a vote, then yes, it's change. Is it good for the country? No.
The truth is that in every election, these guys just want to get elected. They talk about a few key issues that they feel people are interested in. These include the military (if we're at war), education, the economy, civil rights, the environment, etc. And to tell the truth, the environment is only an issue on election years. The rest of the time, it's business as usual. If you don't believe me, start watching your typical liberal and what cars they drive, how they drive, and what they're really concerned about as far as air pollution, global climate change, natural resources, etc. You'll see that it's just an issue to "talk" about but in reality, only a few people really care enough to live what they say.

There are probably people in both parties that actually care about one or more of these subjects, but they typically have a different approach to solving these problems, or they have a different priorities on which problems should be solved first (and how much money should be spent). For the most part, this is little difference between the leaders of both parties, as these are politicians first, party second and American's third. (I could say elite American third, and American citizen fourth). That's their priorities.

The Republicans will have their convention next week. I have no reason to believe that the rhetoric will be any different. I have lost hope that it will.

Where are the statesmen (and women)?

Soundbites Rule / Solutions Fall On Deaf Ears

Soundbites rule nowadays. Politicians only care about getting elected or re-elected. No real solutions are pursued.

Goals without plans are just wishes.

Obama used a soundbite from T.Boone Pickens recently, in discussion the energy problem and oil. He quoted Pickens as saying "Drilling isn't the answer" and then proceeded to demonize anyone that suggests that we should have more domestic drilling. This is the perfect example of the soundbite, because the audience nodded their heads in agreement, even though the fact is that he intentionally misquoted Pickens.

What Pickens actually said is "Drilling alone, isn't the answer". In an interview after the Obama speech, Pickens made a point to re-iterate his original statements, and to clarify that he feels that every reasonable avenue of energy exploration should be pursued, but that any one solution is not a solution at all. That's what he said, but that's not a soundbite. Soundbites get easy votes. Explanations fall on deaf ears.

Soundbites make people smile. The win elections. They don't solve problems.

Wouldn't it be nice to get a politician that didn't care about being re-elected? Of course, these aren't politicians. They're called statesmen. It's really hard for a statesman to be elected, because people want soundbites. They want some simple little blurb that makes them feel better, and that makes them feel smarter and/or more virtuous than people they disagree with. Feelings don't provide solutions. They never have. They never will.

Ungrateful (So-Called Adult) Children

I thought my wife and I were alone, but we're not. The more we compare notes and read what other parents' experiences are, we realize that we're not the only ones with an ungrateful adult child. Isn't that an oxymoron? Adult child? Of course it is, but it is an accurate description, nonetheless.

Today we were given yet another account of a young woman who's parents are in an almost constant state of woe for the past couple of years. It seems to get worse for them, not better.

First, this young woman is living with this guy that wont work, and has told her from the very beginning that he will "never" marry her. He says that he "doesn't believe in it". Evidently, he doesn't believe in supporting his family either, because he'll barely keep a job.
Recently, he had minor surgery while by all accounts, he should be back to work within a week. Instead, he is riding this gravy train for all it's worth and is staying off work for three weeks. And this is three weeks that he will not be bringing in a paycheck for this young woman, and their infant child. He doesn't care. If he can't pay the rent or feed the family, the grand parents will have to chip in like they've been chipping in for the last couple of years.
Last month, their phone bill was over $200 and was in arears, so the phone service was cut off. To get it back on, the grand parents paid, and this month, there's another $200 bill.

In addition, this young couple has had transportation issues, and so the parents lent them a car, and even filled the tank with gasoline for them (you do know what gasoline prices are right now?).
Well when told this over the phone, this young woman said to her mom, "On your way over here, could you stop and get us a large pizza with everything on it?"

When is enough enough?
These people are not wealthy people. They are strapped for cash but are helping their daughter, who has an infant child and is living with this deadbeat that wont support them. They're providing them a car and even filled the gas tank and was bringing the car over to them; and yet it wasn't enough. I couldn't believe she had the gall to ask for a large pizza to be brought over.

When you're poor and living on a budget, you buy groceries and cook and eat at home as much as possible. This is crazy.

Well, upon getting home, I began to reflect on these ungrateful kids. I did a google search, just out of curiousity, and I was amazed at the number of parents that are having to put up with ungrateful adult kids. There's even a whole discussion group for it (at http://www.eons.com/groups/topic/849237-one-out-of-the-bunch).

I'm not going to say that we feel lucky after hearing about what these other people are going through. It tends to make me angry that we're having to put up with (in our own home) the abuse that we do from our own grown child. However, being a parent, you have to ignore the anger adn the disgust, and figure out a way to be a parent; not to coddle, but to motivate. We have made our son's life too comfortable and he is abusing us. We're cutting that off, and I urge every parent of an ungrateful adult child to do the same.

Next Generation: Why So Spoiled?

I'm trying to figure out what is wrong with the next generation? Is this a right of passage when you hit the age of 50? It seems that my parents must've had this same question. What is wrong with our kids?
The reason I'm having this question, is that my wife and I work very hard and sacrifice in order to have what we have. We believe we have provided a good example for our son, but it wouldn't appear so by his behavior. He seems lazy with no interest in working to better himself or to provide for a family in the future. He has none of the values and virtues that my wife and I have tried to provide by example. What have we done wrong?
Our son has told us, more than once, that he does not intend to work as hard as we do. I could buy this if he were born and raised as a rich kid. He was not. So how does he think he's going to get by in the world, if not by his own labor? Does he think the grand universe out there is just going to bring him frankincense and myrrh?
And it's not just our son. We have seen many kids his age saying the same things about their parents. They are not interested in working and sacrificing the way that their parents did. They like the comforts and privilege that those labors provide, but they don't seem to be motivated to actually do the work, and they have no concept of sacrifice. How did so many parents go wrong? How did we go wrong?
I look at how our country got where it is today. Despite a low approval around the world, there are still more people trying very hard to move here from other places in the world, so we must be doing something right here. We must still be a good place to live. So how did this country get this way? It seems to me that the answer is the hard work and sacrifice of those that went before us.
I know that our forefathers weren't perfect, and that not all were truly virtuous, but still, the general concept of being an American, working hard and providing a better life for yourself and your family, is still the American Dream. It is still an admirable goal, and the goal is still within reach of those willing to put out the effort and sacrifice, even for those of the lower incomes of our society. If you want it bad enough, you can have it.
My wife and I do work hard. We haven't treated ourselves to a vacation or anything like that in several years. It's time overdue, but we've been working towards the goal of getting our dream home built. If we were rich, we'd just hire it done and pay for it all. If we were the type to want immediate gratification and unwilling to work hard and sacrifice and be patient, we'd just get a loan for house we couldn't afford (like many people, and figure we'd get bailed out when our day of reconning came). We didn't do that. We chose to build as much as possible on our own, and pay as we go. We're not rich and so our house is not quite even halfway built. It's probably a 3-year project. When it's done, my wife and I will take a vacation.
We are focused.
Our son isn't interested in working. He wants the vacations. He wants the comforts. He wants the luxuries, but isn't willing to put out the effort for even a small portion of his standard of living. You'd honestly believe that he must've been the son of a multi-millionaire, because he seems to have no concept of work and sacrifice.
So what did we do wrong? I'm not comletely sure because I've seen other people who work hard and their kids are much worse than our's. Compared to them, our son is a real do-it-yourselfer.
As I right this, the small dog yard that we have, which is smaller than the standard yard at a home in the city, is a foot high in grass and weeds. One of the few chores we have for our son, he has repeatedly put off and not done. He seems to feel that his primary daily chore is to feed himself. He wont even get up until 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and we keep wondering how you can seriously be looking for a job when you refuse to change this schedule.
My wife and I have decided to give him the boot at the end of the month, with no choice. Maybe if life is uncomfortable enough, he'll finally get his nose to the grindstone, at least enough to pay rent and pay for groceries. The car he's driving is one that we're going to have to give him, because he never would budget and save for one, and to move away from us and get to work, he'll need some kind of transportation. So we'll sign it over to him, because we can't trust that he'll actually insure it. If left in our names, we'd be sued if he had an accident. So he's being rewarded for being lazy, but at the same time, kicking him out is a significant financial savings for us each month. I'm sorry it came to this. Why couldn't he have worked? Why couldn't he have done even one thing that would've shown an attempt at changing his ways? Why wouldn't he work to at least pay car insurance?
It's not like he's 14 years old and we're asking too much. He's 29 years old. Why is 29 too young to be expected to be an adult? How old do you have to be before growing up? I don't get it.
One thing is clear to me. If the next generation is this spoiled and unmotivated, the nation is in trouble. The pioneer spirit of our forefathers, that got us this far, isn't in the next generation. The American pop culture has been "pussified" (if that's not a word, it is now).

Adventures in Micro-Blogging

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.

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?

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.