Happy Thanksgiving

I want to wish you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving (well, for those of you who celebrate it). For those members of the armed services serving overseas, my thoughts and prayers are with you. For anyone else who has to work on Thanksgiving, my sympathies. *lol* I can laugh because I would have been among you, had I not been downsized. ^_^;

Me Eye!

Well, just got back from the ophthalmologist office. Looks like I had a minor abrasion of the cornea, likely due to my eye being open while I slept OR opening my eye when I woke up this morning and the pillow case touching my eyeball. Fortunately, this is a minor thing and should be completely healed in 48-hours.

Whew! While I wasn't too worried, there was always a chance that there was something serious going on with my eye. Thankfully, that was not the case (and yes, I was thanking God profoundly for being so kind to me in this regard). ^_^

Interesting thing about my visit to the ophthalmologist is that the facility is pretty large. I gather they do just about everything that can be done with an eyeball there and considering the size of the place, I believe it. Pretty impressive all the way around.

Now that I'm getting older, I guess I should get my eyes checked once a year (or so) just to make sure they are still functioning within normal parameters. ^_^;

Yikes! My Eye!

Man, I woke up with a little surprise this morning -- my left eye is now has blurry, double-vision and it is pretty troublesome. I hope it is something temporary but it would figure that as soon as I have no medical insurance, a medical issue comes up. *chuckle*

We'll see what happens but if it doesn't clear up soon, I'll have to see an eye doctor about this. I've done some looking on the Internet and it is possible I may need a hard contact for my left eye in the end. I'm going to wish for this to self-correct, especially since it makes being on the computer a nuisance.

Drug Experiments with Spiders

I think this video speaks for itself. ^_^



Thanks Paul for sharing it. ^_^

And So Another Chapter Ends

As expected, I am now officially unemployed. It happened about an hour ago when my boss came in to do the official stuff. Even earlier tonight when I told Savage Piper that I wouldn't be in come Wednesday night (I expected to be called on my day off to come in and be let go), he didn't think it would come down to that. As such, we made a little bet. He lost (and I wants my TokyoJoe's ^_~ ). So now comes an end to this chapter in my life.

I look back over the six years and while The Company has to be one of the poorest run corporations in the world (which is saying something, considering I worked for WorldCom once upon a time), I will say that once I became an ETE, I was paid what I was worth. While that won't stop me from needing to vent from time to time, it does mean that I always go above and beyond the call of duty when needed. No matter what I do, I always do the job I'm paid for, but one can always go an extra mile when one is paid well for what one does. For the last ~3.4 years, I have to say I've been paid well.

I'll miss all my co-workers, especially my final crew -- Taco's Rule, Savage Piper, and Red Baron. There's always a good chance of seeing them here or there and a better one of "seeing" them online. It would be nice to catch the next Starfest with Lepidus too (who went to the sunny side), but we'll see how things go. ^_^;

To my fellow comrades who got cut (The King, Billie, Race Car, KC, and anyone else let go tomorrow or the following days), I wish you guys the best in your job searches. The word "change" was overused during the political campain which makes our current "change" in situation reveal that the word has as many negative posibilities as positive ones. However, all we can do (as my old boss Jimmy used to tell me) is take our bag of lemons and make lemonade.

To everyone else still at The Company who might read this, good luck to you as well. Feel free to write at any time.

Three Months...Maybe Not

Today marks the 3-month point to when my ETE term expires. Hopefully, I can have three more months to save money so that if I don't get one of these other two jobs in the Company come January (when hiring should begin again), I have plenty of money to survive for a while without a job. However, I don't expect to go another three months. I expect to be laid off the week of Thanksgiving.

It is sad to see how many accounts are just leaving the Company. Those that aren't leaving, the Company is desperate to send to India or Brazil, even when it is illegal to do so (for which they got nailed, though it is a "simple mistake" officially). The accounts that were supposed come to replace our losses now won't be here until January at the earliest. Thus, my manager has to get rid of a lot of people. With only three months left on my ETE, I figure I'm one of the perfect choices to be let go.

But I'm not alone here. More and more people are going to be let go before Christmas in other departments. Eventually, the "showcase" and "mission critial" command center will have almost no one in here. In 2002, this room would have been full as would the other two major command centers in our building and two small command centers. A/o December 1, only one major command center will remain, and it will be all but empty. Management claims that "something" will be in here. We figure they'll put manikins in here, or hire day laborers to pretend to be working on something. ^_~

If I'm let go after next week, I'll start looking seriously at where I want to go from here. If I'm let go in three months, I will hopefully have some clue as to what I want to do. If I'm picked in the meantime, sobeit. No matter what, I have to remember to look to the Lord and not to myself. ^_^

Cats Being Cats

With my recently keeping my parents' cat, I couldn't help but smile when I saw this picture from an anonymous Japanese uploader.

There's No Money in the Training Budget

We have this fairly large account called "Big Road Bank" (BRB). The account has been with The Company for a number of years, but the new executives in charge of things there have decided that they do not wish to outsource their work. Thus, they have begun to transition servers and support slowly back in-house to be completed by 2010. No problems thus far.

The Company is clearly not happy about losing such a big account, so as BRB begins transitioning the account in-house, The Company is desperately trying to get the account to India so that they can maximize their profits for the last year it is around. Thus, a big chunk of our work is leaving us to go to India for now. The Company wants us to train the Indians to do our job. However, there is a caviot -- there is no money to train them.

What?

For other accounts that The Company rushes to get to India or Brazil, two things happen. Initially, members from the offshore team come to the U.S. for two weeks to start learning to do the jobs. Then a couple of people from the U.S. head to India or Brazil for a week or two to insure things are up and running smoothly. This helps minimize the impact to the customer for the transition.

So, how do we train Indians with no training budget?

"Oh, you use our Instant Messaging tool. They log into your ticketing system and work all BRB tickets. You will be in a chat with them and they will pester you with tons of questions about the same things over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. That's the best way."

Because Indians do not operate without a tight script or flowchart, we have increased our ticket count. Why? Because whereas we in the U.S. know that a CPU running high, paging rates, or other "who cares" alerts can be sat on until we see the problem go away, India does not do that. These servers are supported by other teams so the tickets have to be sent there. The System Admins or other support people see these worthless SEV 3 tickets (which BRB won't get rid of) and immediately close them as "server working as normal" even if the conditions that caused the alert have not stopped. That means that we get another alert and another ticket whereas before, we would sit on the ticket and monitor until things returned to normal.

Further, because the Indians are so "by the book" oriented, they give us constant updates.

"We see ticket in the queue."
"We open ticket in the queue."
"We see this is SEV 3 ticket for Oracle to look at."
"We transfer ticket to Oracle Support."
"Ticket is transfered."
"We are waiting for another ticket."

It is interesting that as The Company continues to rapidly send stuff to India and Brazil, conditions continue to degrade that make it a cost savings for The Company. The Brazilian folks have proven to be pretty dumb when it comes to IT/IS work (not all, but most) so The Company is sending more and more work to India instead. However, the Indians are expecting more and more money (how dare they?), so much so that the projections we are told is that by 2013, it will cost the same to work stuff out of India as it does out of the U.S. If thats true, this is a huge waste of time and energy for what will ammount to a very small cost savings in the end.

Well, who am I other than a worker bee who tries to do the best job he can, only to have the executive bees make a right mess of things for their own 6-figure cost-cutting bonuses?

Five Myths About the Great Depression

The Wall Street Journal Online has an interesting article about some myths regarding the Great Depression. Some of this I already knew (such as President Hoover being a liberal Republican and that government policies to "help" people actually caused more problems) but some was new to me. In many ways, I can see the U.S. heading down the same road today because our view of history sadly starts from the time of our first memories. Anything before that is just stuff that happened to other people (assuming it is accurately taught).

Sheeze, I'm Glad It's Over

I am glad the election is finally over. Sadly, in a very short time, the politicians will begin campaigns for the 2010 election because frankly, it has just about become a case where all they do is work to stay in power and that disgusts me.

Still, for a little while, no more phone calls telling me how firefighters, police, and teachers will be silenced if certain amendments pass (amendments, which frankly actually help people who don't wish to have anything to do with a union but are forced to by union thug rules and laws), no more calls telling me to vote for this or vote against that, period. Sweet, sweet, relief.

I am amazed by my state though. People who've lived in Colorado for years (this includes a lot of liberals and Democrats) complain bitterly about how Californians are wrecking our state. Immigrant Californians come to Colorado to flee the absolute mess of higher taxes and everything else that goes on over there. These two groups then come together and begin electing the same kinds of leaders and passing the same kinds of ballot initiatives that caused the mess in California that they both complain about in the first place. What the smeg is up with that kind of thinking?

Anyway, I figure that our country is in for another Jimmy Carter time, and that's not good. We'll see what happens though.

"Thriller" Video 25 Years Old

It was yesterday apparently, but in honor of the Michael Jackson video, I give the Indian version with Buffalax subtitles. ^_^