Rants from the John

I don't know what you heard about me.

2009-05-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

But you cant get a dollar outta me.
Cause I took the test and you see
I'm a Mother Fuckin PMP!

Sigh, one more political post, this is not supposed to be a political blog.

2009-03-06T08:08:00.001-08:00

Ok, I'm feeding my child and watching HLN as that is our new morning tradition. Two headlines in a quick 30 second blurb catch my eye.

Unemployment hits 25-year high
Jobless rate hits 8.1% in February as a record-high 12.5 million people are unemployed.

And

Obama to speak to police recruits about stimulus

Here's the thing, Obama is stumping to these recruits that the stimulas is a celebration and they are the results of that $$. That's all fine and dandy Mr. President. But, um. Are you seriously going to tout creating 25 jobs as a success on the very same day that we report we lost 651,000 jobs in February!!!! Are you really that dumb?

President Barack Obama, who often says his $787 billion economic stimulus
package will save or create millions of jobs, can point to at least 25 jobs
saved in Ohio's capital.

Also, This is picture is scary as hell, I've lost so much money I can not get out, so I'll just keep on swimming, keep on swimming!

Spit Cake Anyone?

2009-02-04T09:52:00.000-08:00

Guys,

You know you've done it.

You walk up to the urinal, you get ready to your business. You look down and there's a fresh new urinal cake. What do you do? You spit.

Today at work, I was followed into the bathroom by a coworker, not in a creepy way, we're were both just doing our business. I got the first urinal in the bathroom, he took the other one next door, a tiny partition wall from knee to shoulder was all that separated us from seeing way too much of each other, and it starts, out of my peripheral vision I see the guy start his business then start his target practice on the cake.

Spit, Spit, Spit, Spit, Spit. This guy is spitting at least as much as he's utilizing the urinal the proper way! Normally in this situation all one has to do is stare straight ahead and admire the tiled wall. Really strange people might actually look over the partition and say something truly stupid like, "Cold enough for ya" or the like. But this guy's too busy spitting to notice me and I'm trying desperately not to turn my head to him and ask him if he's enjoying his spit. I was left with nothing but to smile and laugh at the guy silently but I have to ask, because I've done it too, what is with a guy's fascination of spitting in a urinal?

23 Days of Debt Free

2009-01-30T11:21:00.001-08:00

So, Maddie and made it a whole 23 days before we took on more debt. (of course I'm deliberately not counting the Medical debt from Birth and from LeBonheur for Jaundice yet because we've not received the bill that says what we owe). I can not help but feel a little sad about this but we absolutely needed more space for the twins. Basically, with two kids in the converter seats backwards in a KIA Spectra, I could not drive the car, and neither Maddie or I could reach back and deal with the kids. So now we have the lunar module below. And I have to say, it's awesome. So much space, a nice ride, 5 star safety all around, and it's still cheap enough we could kill it this year. So currently my wife and I plan on rescreaming "We're debt Free!" in October.

ahem.....

2009-01-05T07:10:00.000-08:00

I've waited four long years and have paid over $108000 plus interest to say this.

I'M DEBT FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Disclaimer: I'm using the Debt Free but the Mortgage rule as a status of Debt Free.

Now I'm not meaning to sound like a braggart. This has truly been a long and arduous journey. I hope to inspire hope not jealousy in anyone who reads this. How did we do it? We found a plan that worked for us, modified it, and we stuck to it; well as best we could.

Let's take a look back at January 2005. I had just completed my first year at Shelby Systems after my graduation in 2004. Maddie had just graduated from Nursing School. Our household gross income just went from under 40k to just over 70k. We were officially DINK's (double income no kids) for the first time in our lives as well as officially married as we married in Nov. 2004 so we got our first Married Filed Jointly tax discount.
As far as debt goes, here's where we were:
Wedding and Honeymoon loan - 29.9% Interest - $6800 balance
Engagement Ring Loan - 16% Interest - $3000 balance
Car Loan - 8% Interest - $11250 balance
Visa - 5.9% Interest - $18500 balance
MasterCard - 7.99% - $8000 balance
Dell - 22% Interest - $2000 balance
My Student Loan - Variable (Ranged from 5 - 9% during life of loan)- $18500 balance
Maddie's Student Loan - Variable (Ranged from 3 - 9% during life of loan)- $40000 balance

I had always heard of Dave Ramsey's plan and was sort of following it in 2004, but the balances kept growing because we kept charging. The turn around point was really the Wedding and Honeymoon loan, which we did not really use until Nov 2004. Once you get a loan where you pay 2.5% a MONTH in interest, you vomit. You say enough is enough. You have an AHA moment, and you decide then and there that you are going to stop the insanity. Maddie took over expense tracking which is funny because Dave categorizes a couple as a Nerd and a free spirit, One is a numbers guy/gal and loves to budget, the other "does not have time" for a budget and loves to spend, I think Maddie and I can easily be both when we want too, but we actually both lean towards Nerd, and we looked more closely at Dave Ramsey's plan, and we started. We attacked the 29.9% monster first, then followed Dave Ramsey's baby step plan with Gazelle intensity. In 2005, we dedicated ourselves to grabbing as much Overtime we could, and we killed the wedding loan, Dell, the ring loan, and the majority of the Mastercard, We also closed on a house in Nov. 2005 and as a result "hurt" our snowball.
This is where the first get out of debt challenge occurs. We owed over 100k, we were working our asses off, I was working 55 hours a week, Maddie was working 48 hours a week. And we had just paid off ONLY approximately 15% of what we owed. On top of that, we just hurt our snowball because our housing expense basically doubled from around $600 rent to just under $1200 mortgage payment. This is where most peolple would have given up. I'm so thankful we did not.

A funny thing occurs when you work 55 hours a week on a bottom tier job. You get better skills and you get promoted; AND your skills are wanted by companies that pay more for skills than your current employer pays, and you job hop. In July 2006, I increased my income by 23k a year just becoming a contractor. Shelby had delayed a pay raise for so long, I sought employment elsewhere. That raise made mortgage payments easier and we were back to a strong snowball. In 2006, we killed the Mastercard, the car loan, and most of the Visa account. Then at the start of 2007, I job hopped again. My work as a contractor was so impressive to the person I was replacing that I was recruited to follow to LottoCone, I increased my income another 5k and we continued killing the debt. In 2007 we eliminated the rest of the Visa, and my student loan. Leaving 2008 and my wife's student loan as the sole recipient of our debt snowball.

2008 was a very strange year. I mentioned the challenge of fatigue at the end of 2006, when you are working your ass off and only paid down 15k and still owe 85K+ the snowball looks ridiculus. However, when you have kept the snowball throughout the years, and your income goes up, suddenly a 28k student loan remaining balance does not mean much when you are capable of $3500 - $5000 payments a month depending on the paychecks. That looks so insignificant that you start to dream up ways to use that snowball money in other ways. This was actually our second worse challege. I talked my wife into investing with part of the snowball instead of paying off her loan with the massive ball. I essentially took all of the traction we were making away. I could have posted this yop of debt free in April 2008, but I destroyed the snowball and added 8 more months of payments as a result. However, I'm not entirely disappointed as Maddie and I now have 2007 and 2008 Roth IRA contributions in an account to grow tax free. If I had to do it all over again, I'd stick to the snowball. Dave preaches "Financial Peace" and it took seeing the stress and arguments I created over investing versus Maddie's loan to see that "Financial Peace" is not just about getting out of debt, it's about doing things with your money in the least stressful way. I destroyed my wife's "Peace" in 2008. I should not have done that. I even asked her several times during the year if she wanted to stop investing, but she just wanted us to stick to a plan, it was not the most peaceful plan, but we invested in Roth IRA's and paid down her student loan during the year. Another hurdle we had to overcome in 2008 was becoming expectant parent's of twins. Not that the twins are a hurdle, but the eating out habit we began as a result of the twins was. We actually added about another $1500 in debt to the Visa, which we paid off in full on Jan 1st, 2009.

Now on Friday, we'll be 37 weeks (the week most twins are born) and I thank God that my wife was strong enough to stick with a financial plan with me and our children will come into this world in a family that is debt free and living with financial peace.... at least for now :)

Change I don't believe in.

2008-12-18T08:29:00.000-08:00

We're just a little over a month away for the the ObamaNation to begin. Obama won his presidency with a promise of change and reform. That promise brought out millions of people who have never voted before. They fell for that promise. I wonder how upset they'll be when nothing changes?

Let's just take a look at the cabinet:

Vice President: Joe Biden, 35 Years in Washington. That's THIRTY FIVE! He's been in the "System" longer than I've been alive. I predict not much change there.

Secretary of State: Hillary Clinton, 16 years in Washington as a First Lady and Congresswoman, Nothing changing there, has previously stated she would not meet with Hostile foreign leaders, just like Rice does, and generally agreed with the Bush administration with regards to most international affairs the last 8 years. See all of the youth that voted for the first time were in their ignorant tweens or even younger when Clinton was President. So they only have movies like Black Hawk Down to view the history of the Clinton administration internationally, but the truth is the US was pretty NOT well liked internationally when Bush took office. I predict her State to run pretty much just like the current State, no sit downs and veiled threats of aggression against hostile nations. So pretty much not much change there.

Secretary of Defense: Robert Gates, currently Bush's Secretary of Defense, not alot of change there.

Attorney General: Eric Holder, Legal Counsel for Obama's campaign, a little change there, Holder wants to close Git mo and reform the implementation of the Patriot Act specifically the wiretaps. Hmm how did Obama vote on the wiretap issue this Summer? However, Holder was Deputy Attorney General for the Clinton administration, so again, I'm questioning change there. If 20 Years of Clinton/Bush was the reason Hillary lost the presidential nomination to begin with, what is more Clinton administration going to do differently?

Secretary of Health and Human Services: Tom Daschle, been in Congress for 30 years, not alot of change there, one of the leading contributors to the Partisan arguing diatribe that Obama promised to abolish, so I predict very little change there. Will once again try to force social health care down the throat of Americans, I predict not alot of change from the Clinton Administrations try. Here's the thing members of the ObamaNation: There's currently around $150 TRILLION in liabilities if Social health care passes, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet the two richest Americans combined are worth what about 1 - 2 TRILLION. How are you going to pay for that liability, tax the rich?

Secretary of the Interior: Ken Salazar. 4 years in Washington, He might actually be some change, but he supported Bush's pick for the post he's taking over, and that was controversial, I can say that environmentalist organizations do not like this pick.

Secretary of the Treasury: Timothy Geithner, President of the Federal Reserve Bank. Has worked with hand in hand with Paulson during the global economic crisis, I predict little change there.

Secretary of Agriculture: Tom Vilsack, maybe that's change? I've never lived in a farm state, I've never educated myself enough. I can say he's got some environmentalist critisism.

Secretary of Commerce: Bill Richardson, NM Govenor, He was a huge Clinton supportor but got national attention for "defecting" to the Obama camp this Summer. I lived in NM for a while. He's also a govenor that want to legalize marajuana, now that's some change, not sure I believe in it though.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Shawn Dunnovan, Former Clinton Administration aid, lot's of change. Praised for his ability to get people in affordable homes. But since we're in the area of homes, have you seen the news recently about forcing affordable homes on the poor? Guess what administration caused the sub-prime mortgage problem? Here's a hint, it's not the Bush administration.

Unfilled cabinent spots to my knowledge: Still to come are announcements of Obama's selections to head the Central Intelligence Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the departments of energy, education, interior, labor, transportation and agriculture.

Shapiro just got tapped for the Head of the SEC. Change?

Sesame Street Obama Talk

2008-11-07T10:15:00.000-08:00

NBC Channel 5 had did a story yesterday on a Southaven Church's sermon on Sunday

I can not speak to if this gaffe was intentional, though I imagine it was, but I thought it was very funny. I immediately thought of the Sesame Street thing where one silhouette portrait says the word "Obama" and the silhouette on the right says "Nation". And as they continue saying the words the two words get together and form one word.
So Obama and Nation would be: "ObamaNation"

So the next four years of Socialistic government growth and higher taxes will henceforth be called "Abomination"

What REALLY scares me the next 4 years

2008-10-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

So. My democratic friend asked me the other day. "John what do you think of McCain now that Palin's on the ticket". I only answered with "It's still all about the taxes for me" with kind of a "I could care less" attitude.

That was really only half true and not completely honest. I have since thought about it and here's what I think. 1. It was a desperate gamble to get a bump. His analysts told him he had to gamble to win. He needed a more conservative ticket, but also appeal to the spurned Clinton women supporters. And for a month it worked, now Obama seems to be steadily moving towards his Presidency. Now theres PalinGate, and $150 billion in Pork that McCain voted for (which proves he's not going to do as he's campaigning). So what else do I think of the move. I think McCain said, "if I'm going to lose, at least I'll make history", so he became the first Republican nominee to have a female veep candidate. I honestly think it was McCain's white flag of surrender. Yes, he's going to campaign, yes he's going to fight and claw and kick and scream.... Well until the ignorant masses at his rallies start yelling "Obama is a terrorist!" and he'll have to quiet down.

So, why's it only half true: Well Here's a link to a Wall Street Journal article on Obama's "Tax Cuts" In it, it describes just how much a 2 income family of 4 in the Middle Class will save under his plan using all of the tax credits available (something Maddie and I will not be able to do). I've added the picture the article uses too. I'll not get too personal with how much Maddie and I make, but let's just say the right half of this picture is terrifying, and I'll have to pay more than that because I will not have some of the credits.

So, against all odds, against my candidate basically throwing in the white flag, I'll still choose not to vote for Obama's candidacy.

March Madness

2008-09-29T21:47:00.003-07:00

My Money's in Bank of America, so guess I'll cheer for them. What bracket is your favorite in?

New Monopoly Rules

2008-09-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

Just earned my first promotion, and other sobering thoughts.

2008-07-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

Well, nearly 4.5 years into my IT career and I've earned my first real true "promotion". I've gotten raises, I've left for more money. But this week was the first time I got promoted to a senior programmer spot. Now I'm LottoCone bonus eligible which feels good.

On the other hand, I'm gonna need every penny in the raise I got because of this:

First Year Twins cost.
Ongoing Costs
Daycare - 1250 a month (assuming High cost for 1 child might equal moderate cost for 2)
Cloth Diapers -19 a month (I assume this is washing machine cost or cost of buying diapers broken down over 12 months or both)
Wipes - 40 a month, Clothing - 50 a month? Savings for College - 400 a month (200 per month into an 529 per child) (yes I know this is a by choice thing), Medicine - FirstAid: 50 a month, Toiletries - 21 a month, Toys/books/media - 35 a month?
Subtotal of Ongoing Costs: $21,468
One time expenses:
2 infant car seats - $200, 1 Double Stroller - $159 (got this as a gift), 2 Pack n Plays - $160 , 2 Slings (hey daddy can sport a sling too) 120, 1 Diaper bag - 50, 1 Swing - 100
1 Bouncer/Bouncy Seat - 40 (assuming the twins like both, or else it's two swings like twinmom02), 1 Playmat/Gym - 50,
1 Crib - 230, 1 Changing Table - 120, 1 Bassinet - 100, 3 sets of basic bedding and blankets (taking the tip to put two on the crib) 192, 1 mobile - 30, 1 crib mattress - 99, 1 Baby monitor - 50, 1 set Bottles and nipples - 60, 2 high chairs - 200, 1 set of utensils - 13, 1 set of plates and bowls - 10, 1 set of cups and sippy cups - 21, 1 set of burping cloths - 20, 1 set of bottle brushes - 16, 2 sets of bibs - 24, Breast pump - 250 electrical, or 30 manual, Milk storage bags, breast pads, extra breast shields, ice packs: 73, Nursing bras - 75, Nursing pillow - 29, 2 baby towels with hoods - 16, 1 infant tub - 20, baby washcloths 10, baby nail clippers 3, childproofing supplies 43, 2 saftey gates 120, Diaper Pail - 25, Pacifiers - 8, Baby book - 25, Photos - 127.
Total one time charges: 2807
Total First year cost: 24,275

That number goes up to 33.6k if we're forced to pay 1k each child a month in daycare

THIS JUST IN, IRAQ had materials for WMD!

2008-07-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

Ruh Roh my democratic friends. "W" was right, Iraq had 550 tons of yellow cake uranium. The US just completed a secret mission to move the materials to Canada after a firm in Canada bought the materials from the Iraqi government.

US removes WMD materials from Iraq in 2008

Mr. Ramsey is RIGHT

2008-06-27T12:28:00.001-07:00

I had to borrow a theme from my friend's blog today. I just read an article from Dave Ramsey that I just had to share, it's just too inspiring to me and to much about what makes me a fiscal conservative. Here's the link to the original.

Here's the text.

A couple of weeks ago, I worked late like I sometimes need to do to run my business. It was a nice Tennessee summer evening, and I was enjoying the drive home. About 7:30, as I pulled to a stop light a few blocks from my office, I noticed a light on in the corner office of a friend’s office building. Through the twilight I could make out my friend’s silhouette as he bent over his desk. Being a fellow entrepreneur, I knew what he was doing.

He was looking over some receivables. Some turkey hadn’t paid him, and he was trying to make his accounts balance so he would have the cash to make it another day. In that instant, I had a flashback to some of the ridiculous statements I’ve been hearing on the talking-head news channels and from some individuals during this political year. And I’ll be honest—I instantly felt the heat of anger flow through my body.

Let me tell you why. You see, my friend who I saw working late—we’ll call him Henry—is a great guy. He’s what you want your son to grow up to be. He loves God, his country, his wife, and his kids. He didn’t have the academic advantage of attending a big-name university. Instead, he started installing heating and air systems as a grunt laborer after he graduated from high school. He was and is a very hard and diligent worker, and before long, the boss taught him the trade. But when he was 24, after 6 years of service, the company he was working for got into financial trouble and laid him off.

Henry still had his tools, so he bought an old pickup to haul around his materials and tools, and suddenly he was in business. He knew about heating and air-conditioning, but not about business, so he made a lot of mistakes.

He persisted. He took accounting and management at the community college to learn about business. He started reading books on business, HVAC, marriage, kids, God, and anything else someone he respected recommended. Today he is one of the best-read men I know. Soon, because of his fabulous service and fair prices, he developed a great reputation, and his little business began to grow.

Henry started 15 years ago, and now he has 17 employees whose families are fed because he does a great job. He is in church on Sunday and seldom misses his kids’ Little League games. Sometimes he has to miss a game because some poor soul has their AC go out in the 96-degree Tennessee summer heat, but Henry makes sure they are served. He is, by all standards, a good man. He is, by all standards, what makes America great.

Henry and I are friends, and so he asked me some financial questions last year. I learned in the process that his personal taxable income last year was $328,000. I smiled with pride for this 70-hour a week guy because he is living the dream.

At the stop light that evening, I also thought of another guy I know—and that is where the anger flash came from. We will call him John. While John does not have the same drive Henry has, I can say that he, too, is a good man.

John also graduated from high school and did not attend a big-name university. He went to work at a local factory 15 years ago. When 5:00pm comes around, John has probably already made it to his car in the parking lot. He comes in 5 minutes late, takes frequent breaks, and leaves 5 minutes early. However, to his credit, he is steady and works hard.

Over the years, due to his steadiness and seniority, he has worked his way up to about $75,000 per year in that same factory. He seldom misses his kid’s ballgames, but ...
... most nights you will find him in front of the TV where he has become an expert on “American Idol,” “The Biggest Loser,” and who got thrown off the island. When he is not in front of the TV, he spends a LOT of time and money bass fishing on our local lake. He never works over 40 hours a week and hasn’t read a non-fiction book since high school.

This is America, and there is nothing wrong with either set of choices. Nothing wrong, that is, until the politicians and socialists get involved ...

I have seen several elitist people on the talking-head channels make the statement lately that people making over $250,000 per year have a “moral imperative” to pay more in taxes to take care of the country’s problems. This is not only infuriating—it is economically, spiritually, and morally crazy!

Where in the world do these twits get off saying that Henry should be punished for his diligence? If you are John, where do you get off trying to take Henry’s hard-earned money away from him in the name of your misguided “fairness”? If you want to sit on the lake, drink beer, scratch your butt, and bass fish, that is perfectly fine with me. I am not against any of those activities and have engaged in some of them myself at one time or another. But you HAVE NO RIGHT to talk about “moral imperatives” about what other people have earned due to their diligence. That money is not yours! You want some money? Go earn some! Get up, leave the cave, kill something, and drag it home.

We are in a dangerous place in our country today. A segment of our population has decided that it is the government’s job to provide all of their protection, provision, and prosperity. This segment has figured out that government doesn’t have the money to give them everything they want, so somebody else has to pay for it. That is how the “politics of envy” was born. “Tax the rich” has become the mantra of the left, and this political season it has been falsely dubbed a “moral imperative.”

Ninety percent of America’s millionaires are first-generation rich. They are Henry. To tax them because you think it is a “moral imperative” is legalizing governmental theft from our brightest, most charitable, and most productive citizens.

If I can get a law passed that says you must surrender all your cars to the government because it is the “moral imperative” of anyone who owns cars to support the latest governmental program, that would be a violation of private property rights and simply morally wrong. This new “moral imperative” to redistribute wealth is no different from that. It’s the SAME THING!

Please, America, re-think the politics of envy! You are sowing the seeds of our destruction when you punish the Henrys of our culture.

If you think taxing the populace to support government programs is the best way—and I don’t—then at least tax every single person the same! There are very few Henrys out here who would squawk much about paying a set percentage of their income—if everyone else did, too. But this idea of some butt-scratching bass fisherman saying government should tax his neighbor and not him—just because his neighbor has succeeded—must stop.

So the next time an elitist media talking-head starts telling you it is the moral imperative of our culture to tax my friend Henry, change the channel.

The next time you see someone wealthy who feels guilty and is preaching the politics of envy, change the channel.

The next time you see some celebrity who feels guilt over their income preaching socialism, change the channel.

And the next time you run into a misguided, butt-scratching bass fisherman who says the evil rich people in our culture should have their private property confiscated because that is fair… well just shake your head walk away—and make sure to vote against his candidate. If he and his type win, God help America

First Doctor Visit about Pregnancy

2008-06-15T14:02:00.000-07:00

6 Weeks...
5 Days...
Getting ready for a 4 Day vacation to Bonaroo
Had to take 3 home pregnancy tests, but only one at the docs,
2 Yolk sac, 2 Embryos, 2 heartbeats, 2 Nervous and Excited parents
1 SET OF TWINS ON THE WAY!

Is Socialism really that popular now?

2008-06-06T07:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, you guys know I'm not an overly political person. But I saw 20 seconds of a news story last night that caught my eye. It was a piece about Obama Art compared to Socialist Propaganda. I told my wife about it and she had not seen any so I thought I'd collect some examples. First a disclaimer, Official art sold by the Obama campaign are the first two pics. Not to Socialist, pretty average.

But what's interesting is the art below are the posters that are selling the most, let's compare shall we:

It's interesting to see such influence on the "unofficial" art. It's also interest to see that it's the art that is selling the most. As a fiscal conservative, and true capitalist through and through, I'll admit it's a little scary.

Breaking outta blog retirement

2008-05-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

Clear Blue Test : $11.99
EPT Test: $11.99
Breaking out of blog retirement to announce to friends and family that after taking 3 tests, the number of which are needed to convince my wife, my dear wife is 5 weeks pregnant..............

Priceless!

Why I lean right.

2008-03-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

From an MSNBC article found here

Obama and Clinton both promise to reverse Bush's tax cuts for wealthier taxpayers, but the Democratic budget they'll be voting for would allow income tax rates to go up on individuals making as little as $31,850 and couples earning $63,700 or more. ....
Under both Democratic plans, tax rates would increase by 3 percentage points for each of the 25 percent, 28 percent and 33 percent brackets. At present, the 25 percent bracket begins at $31,850 for individuals and $63,700 for married couples. The 35 percent bracket on incomes over $349,700 would jump to 39.6 percent.
That's alot of cash out of pocket if they get elected President, and in a time of slow economic growth/recession that's alot to ask for. So, that's one of the most fiscal reasons I'm more conservative. This move makes sure some governement budgets stay above inflation, the problem with that is with a slow/receeding economy, our income raises will not stay above inflation, so why should the governments?

25 Days of extended support left

2008-03-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

So, there are 25 days left of Official Microsoft extended support for VB6. And today, the scope just changed on a project that is to enhance a VB6 application that is setting back the requirements and design dates. I can not wait for the day when I start contruct on a officially non supported language in just 3 weeks from tommorow.

Drama at work

2008-01-02T15:29:00.000-08:00

So today I had a lot of work drama.

Here's what I have to say about that.

Followup to Why Karma Hates Me

2007-12-07T18:10:00.000-08:00

So the wife, was all up in the vacation until she opened the spreadsheet and saw the 1550 payment to her school loan she was not going to pay. SO YOU WIN DAVE RAMSEY! we're not going skiing. But I'm not sending you a card either. so Nya!

Warning: Put your coffee down before you read my funny shyt

2007-12-07T16:26:00.000-08:00

ok. Fair warning, I'm not responsible if you spit coffee all over your monitor. Hey readers, yes I"m not dead. OK back to the funny stories.

Funny story number 1 I call Why do you hate me Karma?

So today during an absolute hell day, I was searching my gmail. I got an email from Solitude Ski resort. It's a great place we went to a couple a years ago. Well, they are having 50% off at their Resort through Dec 20th. Hmm I say to myself, we just got paid, and that would be an awesome kidnapping christmas present for my wife. Yeah it would cost around a grand that is budgetted for my wife's school loan, but we just got paid, we got it covered. It would rock. I nonchalantly ask my wife if she'd like to go on the trip. She's so excited. To her its worth putting off paying her school loan to go. (only putting it off for 2 weeks anyway)

So we decide to book it tonight. So then I come home. I get the mail. Woot the first Christmas card of the season and it's addressed to me. It's not to "the Williams" or To "Amanda and John" its to me. It's from Brentwood, TN. Hmm I say, I dont know anyone from Brentwood, which is the really rich part of Nashville by the way, maybe someone's moved there, let's open it up. So who's the first person to send me a Christmas card this holiday season? Who's the first person to say personally, "John, You matter, Happy Holidays"...........Dave Freaking Ramsey! :(

It's personalized to. "Hey John, I figureed out you were going to blow $1000.00 today on a stupid vacation you can not afford so I just thought I write you a Christmas card and say ha ha asshole your in debt. You are just going to be stupid and go on that vacation you dont have arent you."

Well Yes I am Dave. Phuck your guilt trip. Stupid karma, Now I'm going to blow $1500 on the trip.

Funny Story number 2, or Rant number 1 of the day, or to make half my readers laugh is titled "GOD I miss Shelby"
NOW I KNOW IF YOU DID NOT HEED MY WARNING, YOU ARE NOW WIPING COFFEE OFF Of YOUR MONITOR.

This is more about my hell of a day.
I'm now in charge of a couple of websites for LottoCone as well as the lead developer in a Desktop application team. In fact, the websites I'm now in charge of are really just an extension of the desktop application I"m in charge of. One such website has been "down" since 11/27/2007. I say down in Qoutes because it's actually working. Just not correctly. Here's the background I just recently took over for these sites as the person I took it from has been promoted to Project Manager. This person also happens to be the person who recruited me from TGI. Basically for the last year and a half, my career has been replacing this person as a programmer. Now, that being said, I should have been prepared for total shyt quality stuff as that is what TGI had and this person in particular was in charge of TGI before I got there. Read the archives if you do not remember my impression of TGI's applications.

Anyway, the day I take it over, we have to just post her last update to the live server. It's already been tested and approved by QA, It's no big deal, yatta yatta yatta. So I pretty much post this site without looking in detail to her code. OF course, the day I do that I broke the site, it's all former TGI's fault, but who's to blame me the new Subject Matter Expert.

This site is only accessible from our software, so it's a little clean, But in a nutshell, When the former TGI employee created an "Upgraded ASP 2.0 site" she blew away the login screen logic. So when you access the site, you can just click the login button to go to the next screen. Nice. In addition, theres a little bug where the file the user is uploading to the site needs the Username and now the username is not kept in the session object. So we're also saving every file on the server as FileName..GUID.xml when it's supposed to be FileName.Username.Guid.xml Now that's not why this story is funny. THe funny and the reason I miss Shelby is this. I fixed this site on Wednesday, but the red tape of posting a website change to production involves getting a QA approval, a Business Program Manager approval,(this guy basically "owns" the site I'm updating, it's his software I design), and my boss's approval. At shelby, as webmaster, the site would have been fixed 2 days ago. Because I would have taken the page I created, and posted it to the server. Instead I'm getting an automatically created email every 10 minutes from the server because the script that imports the XML files has no idea what to do with a file with .. in the name and desperately waiting on approvals, and I cant delete the files on the server because I cant get to production.

My QA guy for the site is on vacation till Dec 12th, So I send the request to the backup QA guy. First he runs a production test without approving my request to change production. IT fails. Why? System Admins have not received approval for the change.
So I explain to him, that I'm merely putting back in the same logic for Login that was there before the "upgrade" If he'll just approve the change, We can test a production test as soon as all of the approvals are in. If it fails, why we'll just roll back to the broken website.

He responds with He's not sure how to approve the request.
End of Day Thursday he finally says, Hey I've figured out how to approve the request. and does so. So now we're just waiting on Business Manager and My boss approval. The IT Systems admin has the file I've given him. Two emails and we're done. It doesnt come. I tell QA guy and IT Systems admin we'll resolve this on Friday.

Friday morning comes, and QA guy has had a chat with Former TGI girl and she tells him that he's not supposed to approve the change until he's tested on the test server. PHUCK! Thank you very much Former TGI girl. Of course he CC's everyone in the god damn world that John was trying to get him to approve a change he did not test.

So I apologize. Set up a test server environment and send him all of the details to perform a QA test. The test "Fails" I'll explain why thats in quotes in a second. First it fails because someone has logged into the test server after me, opened up IIS and turned off my test site. Then it fails because I've given him a login to a shop that was turned off. However, upon investigating why it "failed" with the shop I given him, I figure out that in fact the login screen and the login logic actually worked exactly as it should because it returened an "invalid user" message because the shop was turned off.

Anyways, I turn on his test shop then ask him to try again. Then someone logs on after me and turns off the website again. So I fix that. Then send out an email to all who can touch that server and say Stop turning off my damn test site. Then request another test. and then I wait, from 4:30 to 6:00 without a response from the QA guy.

Oh well, Phuck it, I'm going home. Time to drink some RUM and go buy plane tickets for my spur of the moment vacation. I'll deal with this "broken" site, and the 400 emails I'll get from the server on Monday.

The Funniest man I just heard of: Jason Bryne

2007-09-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

MSN Money Forum Part 2

2007-09-03T07:29:00.001-07:00

So I linked a post from the moderater asking us who feel we need to give our advice to wait till NFCC posts. Here's what another poster put as his response :)

http://moneycentral.msn.com/community/message/thread.asp?board=AskACreditCounselor&threadid=387556&boardname=Hide&header=SearchOnly&footer=Show&linktarget=_parent&pagestyle=money1

I pray you can see this message before it goes away :)

My latest indulgence, People deserve my opinion!

2007-09-03T06:14:00.001-07:00

OK,

I make no claim to be a financial expert. I've been loosely following Dave Ramsey's plan for 5 years and aggressively following it for about 2. I'm officially debt free (just personally, not counting spouse's debt) in October except for the mortgage.

Of course the absolute main reason I'm debt free is my spouse (see aggressively following a plan mentioned above), so no readers, I do not actually disregard my wife's debt. I'm personally debt free first only because it was her will. We're debt free except for mortgage in April 08 by her plan. It is going to be incredible, it's been an incredible journey of 97k vanishing in just over 3 years.

Anyways, no I am not a financial expert, but my new found Internet hobby is offering my unsolicited advice at the NFCC expert message board on http://moneycentral.msn.com/community/message/board.asp?Board=AskACreditCounselor I'm no expert, but with my wife's help, we've proven debt can disappear.

So, my newest addiction is trolling though this message board and finding posters that have ridiculous debt questions and giving them advice on how to actually fix things.

The funnest thing is people always ask how to make debt go away, or how to borrow out of debt. Sometimes you get the occasional person who really needs expert help so I tend to let those go buy, but I truly enjoy letting people know what I think as a person. Do I think it's not my right? Absolutely, but I love it.

I'm part of a group of posters that hit that board every day and probably post 1-2 a day. We do this because the NFCC, in all of it's expert glory really only has one answer. "call our 1 800 number, go to our website"

Now if that's the only expert advice the experts are going to give on a message board themed with "Ask an expert" why don't they just make that a sticky at the top of the board and leave the true world non expert advice to us assholes who believe their opinions can help people.

Some of the fun of this board is getting NFCC posters to agree with me on my advice: http://moneycentral.msn.com/community/message/thread.asp?board=AskACreditCounselor&threadid=377318&header=SearchOnly&footer=Show&linktarget=_parent&pagestyle=money1&boardsparam=PostID%3D9682743

Of course some of the absolute fun is getting NFCC to disagree with me too:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/community/message/thread.asp?board=AskACreditCounselor&threadid=375464&header=SearchOnly&footer=Show&linktarget=_parent&pagestyle=money1&boardsparam=PostID%3D9623985

That's when I get my poster friends to back me up and teach NFCC a lesson ;) thanks Nstigator.

Of course the absolute best thing that's happened funwise is this post:
http://moneycentral.msn.com/community/message/thread.asp?board=AskACreditCounselor&threadid=387175&boardname=Hide&header=SearchOnly&footer=Show&linktarget=_parent&pagestyle=money1

Anyways. I realize I don't blog enough to keep my fans raving. But if you miss my opinions you can find them here, I guess now after NFCC gives their non expert replies. And if you really do not want unsolicited advise given to people, why make it so free form, and SOOOO APPEALING!

Fun with Contractors

2007-08-09T06:01:00.000-07:00

Well I have not posted in a while. Been busy at work. So give me just a second.

Test.................Test................ Can you read me in the back? Yes? ok.

So today's post is about LottoCone hiring a contractor that believes he is a consultant. We'll call him Steve.

A history of Steve, Steve used to work for TGI, I used to work for TGI. Another team member and my wife's boss worked at TGI with Steve. Steve lied his ass off on his resume about TGI. According to Steve, he taught my teammate Amy all she knows about programming and handled 10 more servers than TGI has. Amy was the programming lead at TGI that I basically replaced when she found a home a LottoCone. A different team member interviewed and hired Steve despite the warnings of the former TGIs because we were in a crunch and frankly ran out of candidates. Our thought was, at the very least, at least he'll be able to write the code we need. Even if he's not superman he can code right? WRONG!

Now, The plus side of Steve. Steve can code pretty well............ONCE you get him to shut up and code. He knew enough of .NET to code with me our first .NET applicaitons. But he loves to spew all of the book knowledge garbage at you relentlessly. Yes, thank you for telling me how ClickOnce works. Yes, thanks for explaining what a dataset is, you have taught me true wisdom. Now could you just code the application I'm telling you to make. Oh wait, you do not realize that you can not do a Clickonce application with command line arguments which is a requirement of the application we've told you to build? OOOOOHHHHHHH you've never actually installed a .NET app. Gotcha, well thanks for teaching me all I know about .NET while you were here.

LottoCone makes it pretty clear that they hire contractors not consultants. A contractor can provide suggestions but when the shit hits the fan, and orders come down, they pretty much get a design document with laid out business rules and mock GUI's and are told "make this".

I gave such a document to Steve on Thursday last week, he had to modify the proof of concept applicaion he was working on to make it fit the requirements doc.

His first response to the document I gave him was this. "I disagree, the functionality you want on 3 different tabs will be used so little, so I'm putting it on 1 tab."

Now, I'm not saying I do not agree entirely with what he's saying. But I've got brass looking down on me expectign a program written to the design documents and I've got my fucking coder disagreeing with what I'm telling him to code!

Steve, You are a fucking code monkey contractor. You get paid and freaking highly I might add based on your ability to write the application the design team has spent hours designing. At this point your input is falling on deaf ears. Shut the fuck up and code.

A consultant gets paid big bucks to come in and make suggestions on high level design information and systems. A contractor writes code. I seem to remember you being asked to leave the design team meeting which you were all to happy to do since you'd rather be coding. You are not a consultant Steve, you are a contractor.

7 days after I told him that he could not disagree, he just had to code in a much more professional way, I'm tasked with getting screenshots of our application so that our project can pass LottoCone auditing and brass approval. I go to Steve's desk. Ask him to show me the application. He has still not implemented the changes I've ask, told, and demanded he make.

Now I get to tell the brass that I'll rewrite his GUI and if I'm faster than Steve at completing the project, Steve gets let go prior to getting let go at the end of August as was the original fed up date.

Goosfaba.

Ah felt good to rant again readers.
Have a great day.

Yes I'm still alive

2007-08-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

Reader's don't despair. I'm still around and I just found out I have a few more readers than I thought from the old stomping grounds of ShelbySystems.

I love you all, thanks for laughing at my tales.

John.

VIVA LAS VEGAS

2007-05-09T21:35:00.000-07:00

So, I turned 30 last Sunday. 3 decades old. I made it, I survived. Not bad. BUT my 30th was even better, I turned 30 on the toilet in VEGAS! Now that's a way to celebrate staying alive for 30 years.

Vegas is an absolute must for any adult. You must go and spend no more then 3 days there. Why three days? Well because being a normal human, you can only go about 3 days before the non stop grind that is Las Vegas. Trust me. My wife and my best friend decided to stay up one night of the weekend. They actually saw a Vegas sunrise. You know what happens at Vegas during the sunrise? The pretty lights turn off. The security guard sweeps the beer bottles and homeless off the stoop of the casino. And people gamble. It is a CHURN, a NON STOP EATING BREATHING MACHINE that can and will suck the life out of you! But it is so much fun, so go for 3 days :)

Most viceral (sic) points of the weekend in no particular order:

Saw a 60 ish year old woman on a slot machine at 4:00 am smoking a cigarette in one hand, and she had her own personal tank of Oxygen in her cart!

Overheard the following conversation:
Guy 1: Yo dude did you get that number?
Guy 2: Naw man, I'm just gonna get a hooker tonight instead.

Went up $250 dollars in blackjack one day only to lose it in poker the next. Now thats entertainment.

Saw a couple making out outside the nightclub and heard this conversation:
Guy 1: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm He didnt really talk, too busy trying to rip the girls skorts off.
Lady 1: You know I'm married right?

Guy 1: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Other than those moments, the trip was really great. We saw 3 shows. First up was Jubilee. Nothing says Vegas like a 25 year old Topless dancer show with rhinestones. We had seats literally right in front of the stage. I could have climbed up there in 2 seconds easily. The show was fine. But you really do get boob overload. Plus there were scenes where the male singers only had studded leather gstrings on, apparently thats the official garb of Samson and Delilah. Now I'm not homophobic. I can handle watching a man in a banana hammick sing. What I cant handle is a guy in a banama hammic that is also covered in pubic hair coming out of it and blending into his chest hair sing. In between "scenes" there were some acrobatic/aerial/comedic guys. They rocked. All three "sideshows" were 10s

The boobs and banama hammock show? I give it a 6 out of 10, and the audience agreed with me, no standing O for the dancers. I was shocked.

Next we saw "O". Now that was amazing. Such a great visual stimulating show. Basically straight out of a Tim Burton film. This show uses an amazing stage that can almost instantly be a pool deep enough for 75 dives. Very entertaining and worth every penny. I give it a 10 of 10. Audience agreed. Standing O imediately.

Last we saw Penn & Teller. Mainly because we're superfanboys of their show on Showtime "Bullshit". I have never met two more humble stars. First of all, their magic was ok. I'd actually seen them do most of the tricks on TV. But we were on the 3rd row which was really cool.

The show, I'll give it an 8 just because its these super cool guys. Did they get a standing O? No, why? because they end their show like this. "We're Penn and Teller!, Thank You" and Run out of the BACK of the theater. So when you get out, they are there signing autographs and taking pictures. They did not get tired, they did not complain about the flashing. They signed every damn one of the autograph requests. Penn, Teller, your show was an 8, but you two are 10s.

My first week at a Fortune 500. Plus the fun of the common name.

2007-02-28T16:41:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don’t know, I recently accepted a job with a major player in the car parts and accessories department. I won’t say who but the name rhymes with Lotto Cone.
Anyways, below is the first impressions I got working for a really big company, something I’ve not done in a long time.
Monday:
First I have to wait outside the employee scanning station at the lobby for 20 minutes until my HR rep gets to me. It’s a good thing my new boss did not expect me at 8:00 am on the dot, since I’ve been here I’ve watched 100s of faces go through and get scanned. Lotto Cone has its own parking garage, but since I’m brand new I got to park in another garage 3 blocks down. Good thing the weather is getting warmer. I’m told to come by Security at the end of the day to get my new parking pass and Security scan tag.
HR Rep gets here. She’s nice. She tells me about a Lotto Cone cheer that I’m so looking forward to doing…., and I fill out some paperwork. I have to call some government official and explain to them I do not qualify for any tax breaks for Lotto Cone (not a vet, not disabled, did not get food stamps in the last 6 months, etc)
Then the first tour, I’m guided through the first to levels of the building in a winding maze of hallways. Really the only thing I’m noticing is the electronic doors that for the most part open anytime you scan your photo id card. So this place is pretty secure. I can not just go down to the bowels of Basement 2 and scan my way into the Servers. That’s nice. Hmm where are we again. The lobby? Oh ok. Lotto Cone has its own cafeteria, which actually has good healthy choices to go along with the hamburger and fries. And it’s own gym that happens to be across the hall from my “room” in the building. SCORE!
We’re on my floor, Basement 1. The HR rep scans her ID, I walk into my “room”. When I say room, I mean a room that can fit at least the size of 10 of my houses lined up together and it is filled with cubicles. And in every cubicle is a IT professional programmer, or project manager, or manager, or analyst, or even Directors, the bosses of bosses position. First thought. Holy S! second thought. Even If I got promoted 2 times in my career here, I’d still just have a teeny tiny cubicle.
Out of sheer coincidence my boss and my project manager just walked by. They were trying to go have a smoke break, but since I just walked in guess they’ll say hi to me. HR rep dumps me on them. I quickly shake the hands of two people as I walk to my cubicle. It’s only after I’m introduced that I’m told those two people just happen to be my director and the CIO of Lotto Zone….. Damn, and I did not remember their names, no way they remembered mine. Great.
Anyways, I get to my cubicle. Same as any. I get a pretty nice PC, a great flat screen monitor that Dell is pimping out at the moment, a phone, two cabinets, and a lot of desktop space.
No instructions on how to log in. Though. So I get to call IT help desk. Well it turns out that there is also another Jwilliams in the LottoCone world so I get an unfortunate username of jwillia1. I attempt to log on. RESULT! I’m in my pc. My boss starts giving me instructions on what I need to do…. Hmm I have to install applications on my PC and I do not have Admin rights. My boss will take care of that real fast.
Lets open up my corporate email. Hmm no instructions on what my password is, but my username is now jwilliams for email. That’s another call to IT services to get my temp password that happens to be temp. Email is Lotus notes, my very first time using it and I already miss outlook. I change my password. Doesn’t take it, I try another one, doesn’t take it. I’m told there needs to be both mixed cases and special chars in my password. For internal Email? Is it really necessary to make that as secure as Fort Knox? Regardless, my third attempt is accepted and I’m in.
I see my boss’s email stating I’m due admin rights and he requested that last week and it was overlooked. It’s cc’d to a few big names I suppose. Things are gonna get done fast I can feel it. Meanwhile I’ll just stare at some intranet sites. There is no instructions on how to get to external internet and I’m not up for another IT services call just yet.
…..
…..
….
Result! Just 3 hours later there is a response. Wait…. All this email says is “Approved” by someone who has a weird IT security, data management title…….. what does that mean? That apparently means that now IT ops can actually give me admin rights. Who knows how long that will take though. Lets get external internet working. You have to submit a request for access. This request goes to IT services and my boss. Its 2pm. At 5 pm there is still no responses. Not even emails.
I drive home thinking perhaps I’ve made a huge mistake.
Tuesday
I get into the elite LottoCone parking garage. I just happen to be on the 5th floor. Oh, and as I’m carrying my programming languages books down the stairs to the lobby, I drop my huge Programming Visual Basic.NET desk reference 7 flights of stairs into Basement 2 of the parking garage. Well at least it looks used now J.
I was a little overwhelmed yesterday but today I’m taking a new attitude, I’m going to demand things go my way and just take what I need. I get in no problem. I log onto my pc no problem I get into my email no problem. My boss has approved my access to external internet. That’s great. Do I have admin rights yet? Nope. Time to stare at my email inbox
…….
……
……
Lunch
……
….
Workout in Gym
…..
4:00. I get an email. Its IT services saying they finished granting me access to the internet. Great. Time to log into MSDN and tie a subscription to my passport and start downloading software I have to install that is not already on a DVD over here. The email doesn’t really go to me but after some create digging I find a username and password. One problem, they don’t work. I send a FW of the email with the user name and password to IT services and say hey this doesn’t work. I get a response with my boss CC’d saying I never requested internet access.
My boss replies first, because I’m getting emails like 3 or 4 hours after they are sent to me for some unknown reason. He lets them know I certainly did request internet access. The response from IT Services is “my bad” Turns out the username they gave me conflicts with another jwilliams. No surpise there. Try this one, jwillia1/password. Doesn’t work. Jwillia2 doesn’t work. Lets just say my internet access username is now jwillia5 RESULT!
I get a phone call at 4:45 pm Its an IT ops guy. Nice guy, very helpful. He’s giving me local admin rights. I log out, log back in. I’m still an admin. Great! Tomorrow I’ll start the great install. End of the day. Did I make a mistake?
Wednesday
I get in, log into my PC. Can not install software, I look at user rights. I’m now a “power user” some group policy is abolishing my rights to the PC. It just so happens its because of my common name, but we’ll get to that later. Anyways, I start the chain over again. I don’t have rights. I notify my boss, He emails someone very pissed off. The same IT ops guy gives me rights around 2:00 pm swearing we’ve done this before. I agree with him. Now I have his direct number and email. I install VB6 and SQL server. SQL server fails because I do not have IIS installed. I put in a request to Information Services for IIS. End of the day. Did I make a mistake?
Thursday
I get in, log in, I’m a power user again. I call the IT ops guy. He cant believe its still a problem he gives me admin rights. Before I log off/log back in, Lotus notes crashes, and my machine reboots on its own. When I get back on, I’m a power user again. One more call to the IT ops guy. Now they are tracking my pc with some EXE that will let them know the group policies running on my box.
Something else really cool happens today. It turns out some tickets to the U of M basketball game tonight versus Rice, to be televised on ESPN are given to my team. There’s 12 of us on the team, we have 5 tickets. Its first come first serve. My wife is working tonight, I’ll try to go. RESULT! I have in my hand a ticket to the LottoCone courtside suite for the game tonight. Now that’s a fringe benefit! I’m not to worried about the did I make a mistake thing today J
So today I discover why I’m getting emails several hours after someone sends it and in blocks of a time instead of each letter when they come. It turns out, someone who used to work here with the email address that had an alias that was my email address. So emails to me were bouncing around all over the place and bogging the servers. IT ops had to delete some 20k bouncing attempts to get email to me. Ahh I love being a common name. So they weed out the 5 or 6 good emails to me and send those to me in blocks. That’s why I’m getting conversations that occurred 5 hours ago sent to me.
After getting admin rights, I start installing more software. Now its down to just SQL server and IIS. Time to go to the game.
Turns out the game and seats were primarily for Directors and it just happened to filter down to me. Directors are the elite of IT in LottoCone. There are 12. About 6 come to the game. Some are really nice, asked me what I do and I got to press flesh about how great an asset I’ll be. Others take one look at me and see a peon not worth talking too. Oh well. All in all it was pretty damn fun being in that suite with the up and ups from LottoZone and cheering the Tigers. I didn’t make a mistake. I can do this.
Friday
Log in, I’m a power user again. On the outside I’m zen like calm. Inside I’m laughing hysterically. I call the IT ops guy. He’s laughing hysterically on the outside. He gives me local admin rights. Then calls the group policy guys. During a 3 way conference call I’m to reboot the system. I do so, I’m now a power user. Turns out the group policy guys were granting the wrong jwilliams admin rights to his machine, since I’m jwillia1 on the Network.
That appears to be fixed. Only thing missing is SQL Server/IIS.
….
….
Lunch
….
….
Meeting
….
….
Gym workout.
….
3:45. I have IIS installed by another IT ops guy. I install SQL server successfully. At 5:30 pm I’m actually looking at the desktop application I’ll be working on first. Now all I’ve got to do is learn how to be a VB6 programmer J
See ya next week readers!

Partnership Fun with Fidelity Part 2

2007-01-30T09:53:00.000-08:00

So, After months of working with Fidelity's programmer correctly write part of thier own software that talks to a webservice on our website to prefill some values of our order entry site, Fidelity is finally ready to implement this into their software.

So now every Fidelity bank using Fidelity software will be able to use TGI as a check order vendor.
This is possibly a HUGE increase in Sales revenue this year. And I have to say, I feel pretty damn responsible for it, not as developer but as a systems manager. I worked with the contracted developer to debug the webservice, I changed our classic ASP website to use MSSoap 3.0 to talk to the XML documents the webservice creates. I handled the debugging and testing with Fidelity's programmers answering whatever questions I could and showing log errors I was receiving as they tested.

Not a whole lot, but still pretty damn good. I feel like I just justified my cost and my salary for the last 6 months. I've made a successful impact for TGI and the result will be huge in the future.

So is now a good time to let them know I just got offered another position from a fortune 500 company that I did not look for but that actually recruited me?

At what point to you just bang your head against the wall!

2007-01-29T10:48:00.000-08:00

So everyone is aware of the cliche IT guy. You do not want to be the developer who can not talk to users or help them because you can not empathize. I strive everyday to improve my people management skills and see things on an end user's level.

So at what point is it when there is just no other way to politely "suggest" solutions to the users.

Background: TGI has a messed up billing process. Products can be sold without pricing and billing functionality properly set up. This is changing, designs are in place to fix this programatically. In the meantime, checks and balances are in place so that the problems can be quickly identified when it is time to bill our customers.

Here is a transcript of an actual email conversation I'm having with users today, and I'm just posting here to get the teeth grinding to stop. Then I'll figure out the best way to handle this I'm sure:

roles:
Project Manager - Called PM below - In charge of customer set up and relations
Accountant - Called ACCT below - You know what an Accountant is
Myself - Application developer:

11:50 am I write the following addressed to both Acct, and PM:

Acct: Order 4930401 is a Laser product over qty 2000, needs to be paper billed.

PM : Order 4930582 is a DUP-BB order for FNBKIZARD, FNBKIZARD needs to have “R” pricing set up for this order to bill correctly. Orders 4910925 and 4928088 are DUP-BB orders for HOLMESCBT, HOLMESCBT needs to have “R” pricing set up for this order to bill correctly. Order 4933997 is a WAL-BL order for NAVYFEDRL, NAVYFEDRL has no pricing set up for FI_upcharge or FI_wholesale and need this pricing set up for the order to bill correctly. Order 4929268 is a PDO-XX order for NBCBANK**, NBCBANK** needs to have “D” set up for this order to bill correctly. Order 4916774 is a BDXD-XX order for TRUSTMRKB, TRUSTMRKB needs to have “D” pricing in FI_wholesale for this order to bill correctly.

That leaves 5 orders from "XXXX" that IT needs to figure out why they are not billing. I’m looking into that now.

12:22 pm Acct responds to us both with this:

PM corrected order # 4910925, 4929268, 4916774 last week. I do not know why they are showing up on the unbilled again this week. If you need anything further just let me know. Thanks ACCT

I determine that the problem is perhaps that the PM is perhaps(using perhaps lightly because it is obvious that the data does not exist in production, but like I said, striving to be end user friendly) setting up the products in the stage/test environment and not the production environment and send this out just to the PM (to minimize the critism to just PM and myself)

12:27 pm:
PM,

Please make sure the price set up is done in production and not stage admin.

Me

12:43 pm, PM responds with the following:
Were these not done in production? Do I need to add them? I thought I had...

Nameste.

2:30 pm Author EDIT, I wanted to add to this post because of a couple of things. First, I realize that with the theme of my blog, one might just consider me a cranky programmer and say, just deal with it and learn patience. But this is truly a difficult communication problem that is excasserbated by a user that does not write anything down. Second, the fun is still continuing so far today:

1:03 PM responds:

These have all been corrected. Let me know if I need to do anything on the "XXXX" orders.
PM.

1:10 pm. I look at the database and see cold hard evidence the pricing is not set up for the banks. Evidence as in, no records returned in my SQL queries. I triple check them, My queries are right.

1:42 pm, I respond with the following quoting the email from earlier today and adding some comments:

PM,

I’m still showing some pricing issues on two of the orders; I need you to double check these two for me:

"Order 4930582 is a DUP-BB order for FNBKIZARD, FNBKIZARD needs to have “R” pricing set up for this order to bill correctly. "
The bank does not appear to have “R” pricing in production for FI_wholesale or FI_upcharge.

"Order 4933997 is a WAL-BL order for NAVYFEDRL, NAVYFEDRL has no pricing set up for FI_upcharge or FI_wholesale and need this pricing set up for the order to bill correctly. "
The bank appears to have FI_wholesale pricing set up correctly, but not FI_upcharge.

1:50 pm: I receive a phone call from the PM, she's certain its in there and she says staring right at the website and its in there etc etc. So I open up the webapplication as well.

For the DUP BB order for FNBKIZARD, which needs R pricing set up in FI_WHOLESALE and FI_Upcharge, on the FI_Wholesale page there is pricing for A, B, C, D, E, L, and P for Style "DUP", there is no "R" pricing.

For the FI_upcharge webpage that controls the FI_upcharge table, there is also only pricing set up for A, B, C, D, E, L, and P pricing levels for "DUP" products. but there is now a newly added "WAL" pricing of R.

So the PM has added "R" pricing to "WAL" products but not "DUP" products, and now I have to explain that to her.

For the WAL-BL order for NAVYFEDRL, the PM has added "A" level pricing but the pricing for design "BL" is "D", but since I've never told her it was "D", she only added "A" level pricing. Forget the fact that any bank that has "A" level pricing should automatically have A, B, C, and D pricing.

I believe I'm stepping up to "GOOOSFABA!" instead of "NAMESTE", next is just beating a pipe with a wrench in my garage tonight.

3:58 pm Author edit. I'm sorry readers, I just could not help but continue reporting the madness.

3:33 pm I write:
Dear PM,

I’ve figured out the pricing discrepancies we’re having on the last two orders.

First, Order 4930582 is a DUP-BB order for FNBKIZARD, FNBKIZARD needs to have “R” pricing set up for this order to bill correctly.
The bank does not appear to have “R” pricing in production for FI_wholesale or FI_upcharge.

Pricing has been set up for “WAL” for “R” but not for “DUP” for each table.

Second:

Order 4933997 is a WAL-BL order for NAVYFEDRL, NAVYFEDRL has no pricing set up for FI_upcharge or FI_wholesale and need this pricing set up for the order to bill correctly.
The bank appears to have FI_wholesale pricing set up correctly, but not FI_upcharge.

“A” pricing has been set up for “WAL” but “BL” is a “D” priced design, we need “D” pricing also set up.

3:37 pm, The PM writes:
John,

I corrected these this morning. They should be ok now. If not, I need to find out why the changes aren't taking.

PM

Geez, the PM must be getting short on patience, it is now the application's fault this is wrong and I just know she's pissed about me bringing it up all day. I'm a litte histerical myself, I do not know how to explain better something is still wrong. This is all I can think of to say:

3:52 pm, I write:
I think for the first you saved “WAL” pricing instead of “DUP” pricing and for the second one you saved “A” pricing instead of “D” pricing.

4:10 pm, PM writes:
That's what I did initially but I went back and corrected it. I will take another look....

4:51 pm. I get a phone call, it's the PM, she says this application is driving her crazy. She's staring at the pricing for the second order and it says "A".................. Now I'll give you as a reader 10 seconds to figure out what is wrong.

10,
9,
8,
7,
6,
5,
4,
3,
2,
1,

So I politely tell PM that the second order needs "D" pricing to bill. She says ok no one ever told her to do "D", she'll put the pricing in.

I'm going home and getting drunk!

Fun with Scope Creep and testing

2007-01-23T08:30:00.000-08:00

Or the lack thereof.

So about a month ago, I assigned a task to TGI's resident handholder to add some validation to the importing of a ITI file for coupons. The issue was simply this, we pull zip code from the Address2 "text" in the file that is imported. We take the right 5 or 10 characters based on if there is a "-" in the zip. However, we do this with some vb Len() funcitons and some math. Since you can not subtract from 0 and get a length value, we had to add validation to make sure that first Address2 had a length > 0.

Our handholder decides to add a check to the zipcode first. she add's validation to our check required feilds functions. That validation first checks to see if the zip code length is 0. Then it checks to see if the zip code is numeric.

Well, you might say but John that doesn't even validate the task you assigned. Why yes reader it does not. When I brought that up to the handholder, she finally adds the validation needed on the ITI file import and checks in the code and compiles a new application.

Just one thing, we import 5 different types of coupon files, and well the handholder was only told to add validation to the first type so when the function she changed now expects a strzipcode and the other 4 file types are not passing in that string to the function. All kinds of fun ensues. Our validation rejects the orders and emails the clients if there is something wrong. So now our application is rejecting valid orders and emailing our client telling them the zip code is missing from their orders, when anyone can open the file and see zip code validation. Not to mention the isnumeric validation on the zip code is rejecting international orders since Canada's zip code is alphanumeric.

So we clean that mess up and assign fixing the code to the hand holder again. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice? Well here's what happens this time. The handholder adds the string to each file import. but also adds new validation. Now she's looping through each character of the zip code and making sure the ascii code for each is between 48 and 57. I assume that is 1234567890. So now, not only is she still rejecting international orders, she's now also rejecting all 9 digit zip codes because the ascii code for "-" happens to be 45.

Of course, she does not test this and recompiles the application, and low and behold every single customer ordering has reject orders. I quickly scan the code and find the problem, and explain it to her, and she says no it can not be the "-" because she strips the string of that character before doing the loop. I show her the 35 plus emails of rejects for perfectly normal 9 digit zip codes and just say, obviously not.

Same thing occurs. She's added the striping of the "-" in only 1 version of the coupon import and the other 4 types of files are failing.

So she sets off to "fix" this bad code once again but by this time the CIO is pissed off. He storms out and annouces that we're going to completely remove all zip code validation entirely from the import process, If the customers send us a bad zip code, we print a bad zip code. Well as the handholder removes the code, she also removes the Address2 validation to pull out the zipcode from the ITI file import.

Now that is just fun.

The AFC Championship Part Deux

2007-01-22T13:57:00.000-08:00

So if you missed the AFC championship game yesterday, you missed some of the best football all year.

First Peyton Manning looked like the Manning of old throwing only deep passes and an interception before half to give the Patriot a 21 - 3 lead with minutes left in the first half, then the Colts drove down the field to end the half with a feild goal.

At the start of the second half, Belichick was quoted as saying the Colts could erase a 15 point lead very quickly, and thats exactly what they did. They tied the game in 11 minutes between the 2nd and 3rd quarter and then the rest of the game was keeping that tie with the Patriots.

In fact, the Colts only had the lead for 60 seconds of the game, unfortunately for the Patriots, it happened to be the last 60 seconds of the game.

Now Manning has won "the game before the big game" which was his curse, and he can now rightfully be compared to Dan Marino of the Dolphins, and if the Colts just happen to win in two weeks, then no one will ever have anything to hold over Manning again as he shatters all of Marino's/Favre's records prior to retiring.

Oh on another major note, for the first time ever, the Superbowl will have a Black head coach, and since Lovie Smith (Bears) and Tony Dungy (Colts) both happen to be black americans, for the first time in history the Superbowl winning team will have a black coach.

That is wonderful. But it should not be news. I am proud to see this day come, but I never thought it was as big an issue as it has turned out to be. It must be about race though because both coaches are letting people know it is about race. That makes it not seem so significant to me. but what do I know, I'm white.

The AFC Championship

2007-01-15T14:01:00.000-08:00

So I watched the San Diego Chargers and Patriots game with mixed emotions yesterday. I just could not wish any team to win or lose. I do not like the Patriots, just because they are the best team in the last decade and it's fun when people beat them, and I've tried to get LT on my fantasy team for the last 6 years so I really enjoy watching him play, plus San Diego is just exciting to watch.

So, who did I root for in the end? The Patriots. Not because they are worth beating the San Deigo Chargers, they are not, but because the Indianappolis Colts can play a good game and beat the Patroits, but I'm not sure they could beat the Chargers.

Of course, Peyton Manning is playing pretty sloppy in the post season so far, but he's still Manning. All it takes is one game and he'll be in the Superbowl and all this chatter about he's never going to win the big game will be over.

On the other side of the ball, I"m on the bandwagon! America's team the New Orleans Saints over the bears. Why? hurricane katrina? The comeback story of the saints?

Nope, Drew Brees has been my fantasy QB for 3 years. I knew he'd lead a team this far.
I was just hoping we'd see a Charger/Sainsts Superbowl so we could have the media frenzy about the two QB's.

But Colts/Saints is just good television.

Firefox 2.0 the PC Virus

2006-12-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

Firefox vs IE.

I myself am more of an IE person. I never liked tabbed browsing and was only recently forced into it with IE7. But what I liked with IE was I knew that javascript worked, I knew that any add on to watch video, Real time or quick time worked. I knew it worked.

Yes, its full of security holes, yes its not following all the standards it should. ok ok. But I've never liked tabbed browsing anyway.

So last night I come home to a stressed out wife and a friend visiting to the holidays that is feeling really sad because he was the last to touch my wife's laptop. My wife was so mad, she yelled at him and was crying because of the guilt of the anger. I ask what is wrong.

Well the laptop completely locks up 10 seconds after it loads and you can not do anything but move the mouse icon.

So We run spybot search and destroy, find and destroy 2 spywares, we start in safe mode and remove all the services and startup processes and reboot, the PC loads fine. So we start adding back services a few at a time and continue the rebooting as normal process every once and a while it fails, we can not pin point the startup process or service that is causing the problem.

Oh not only that, but every computer on my network is having trouble with the internet. You could not log into a SSL page like online banking, you would sometimes have the page load with the generic page not found error only to have to click refresh and have the webpage load fine.

So then we try system restore, we have no points of restore to use. (note to self learn how to make points of restore)

Then I ask them to carefully decribe what they were doing. Well my wife showed my friend a video on the net and then my friend clicked yes to downloan and install a Mozilla Firefox update.

Long story short, uninstalling Mozilla fixed my wife's PC and freed up every other PC in my network allowing them to hit the internet.

HA ha ha hahahhahahah

My alma Mata goes Myspace

2006-12-18T12:53:00.000-08:00

In an effort to better track where the university's donations are going to be coming from, my undergraduate alma mata, Baylor University, has created its own internal myspace knockoff. It has been fun looking at it and it is still in beta testing but on the first day I found 2 people I had not talked to in at least 4 years, and one I had not talked to since graduation at all.

I was pumped. My network was gonna expand and I'd remember and connect to everyone who was everyone during my 4 years at Baylor.

Then the last few days have gone by............... and nothing new to report on my "incircle network".

I have 2 friends, 6 friends of friends, and 36 friends of friends of friends.

So what's more disappointing, the fact that I can barely remember 19 people's names from college to even do a search on my old friends, or the fact that of those 19, only 2 have remembered me, and over half have kept their recent emails away from Baylor and even the University can not find them.

I suppose I'll just stare at the network for the rest of the day and then drink a sixpack of ol' mickeys for good times sake.

Partnership fun with TGI and Fidelity

2006-12-14T11:35:00.000-08:00

When I first joined TGI as a contractor. One of the biggest projects in development was a three party developed .NET webservice to be placed behind a required client certificate on the server.

The members to the party:
1. TGI who had no idea how to create a webservice or install a required client certificate on its server.

2. Fidelity: The customer pretty much for the project, all the demands and requirements.
3. Desoto Systems: The development shop with supposed "answers" to all the problems TGI was having.

It was my job to come in, work with Desoto's contractor to develop and install the webservice. Modify our existing website to use the webservice and coordinate with Fidelity all of the progess reports and testing on their end.

I wont bore you with all the technical lessons we learned creating this thing, because that is not the funny/aggrevating stuff that fits the theme of my blog.

What is the funny/aggrevating stuff is the fact that I pulled long time hours, apparently to no avail.

Here's what happened.

We got to the point during the development where Fidelity's Project Manager flat out told TGI that if we did not have the webservice done by November 30th, 2006 they were putting it off. Well see the application of Fidelity's we were adding our website too would have allowed any bank of Fidelity the ability to choose TGI as its printer at any time. To say the Venture Capitalist of TGI was eager for the customer increase and revenue increase is a understatement. Lets just say I almost felt like my ability to get a good full time offer, which I did rested on this project.

So I met with the Desoto contractor twice in the first week of November. We worked on installing and changing the webservice till 9:00 pm both nights. Once it was installed I had to figure out why my SOAP calls in classic ASP were not reading through to the webservice. Several more serious late nights. Long story short, we had the application up and working and tested in both internal and external networks on November 20th, 2006.

Thats 10 full days before the cut off date. My job is saved. I just helped our profits for 2007 soar! Right? Wrong.

Well Fidelity's Project manager, we'll call her Linda B was not the best to get in touch with. First of all, she took at least 15 days vacation in November. Then when she was finally back "in touch" with us at the end of November her programmer "guru" was on Berevement leave. Then November 30th hit. They still have not programmed their application to use our webservice. I offer any help I can. Impart several of the lessons I learned about SOAP and Secured client certificates etc etc. Emailing and calling daily from Nov. 20th through Nov. 30th.

...................................................................................................................................................................

That pause represents the feedback I got from Linda B. So I escalate it up to the ole CIO of TGI. Let it be known TGI and more importantly I did everything they asked for and the system is working to their demands. Offer possible solutions to the problems etc etc.

Our CIO is promised that Linda B will be vigilant and fight to get us into their software as soon as the "guru" is back from Berevment Leave.

Another 2 weeks of silence despite constant reaching out to her and here is the email we just got from them:

Dick,
Sorry for not getting back in touch with you until now. I tried to call you today but rolled over into your voice mail so I decided to send you this email. I am not going to be able to work on this project until January of next year. We will be dedicated to working out the issues at that time. This is a very busy time for us preparing for Year-End or using up vacation time. I had hopes to work out the connection issue this month but it’s just too close to the end of the year. I will be in contact with you at the beginning of next year.
Thanks, Linda B Fidelity IFS

Hmm, does this mean in January we'll be told that they are going to pass on adding us to their software until 2008 since they only add versions of their software once a year?

AHH! Yes readers, thats the sigh of a completely satisfied programmer!

Busting out of Blog Retirement

2006-12-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

Hello readers, sorry I've been gone for so long.

So what makes one like me bust out of retirement?

Ladanion Tomlinson proving this week he's the greatest Running back ever to play the game by scoring more touchdowns in a single season, as well as faster than any other running back in NFL history?

MyIndianapolis Colts getting the shitake mushrooms kicked out of them preparing me for the fact they just will not win in the playoffs?

No. I had to post today to link to one of the funniest blogs about real life corporate america I've seen today.

Verizon Wireless, It really is just a matter of Dollars and cents:
http://www.consumerist.com/consumer/asinine/transcript-verizon-doesnt-know-how-to-count-220723.php

A great post on addiction to WoW

2006-10-18T09:42:00.000-07:00

I have not talked much about my life on this blog other than in the corporate environment.

But I've been playing World of Warcraft for nearly 1.5 years as a fun hobby and way to still play video games on the weekend. At my worst, I played for 3-4 hours a day after work, but lately I've been only playing whenever my friend comes over to play, which is usually only once a week.

I read a blog post today that I loved. http://soulkerfuffle.blogspot.com/2006/10/view-from-top.html That being said, I was not considered "hardcore" enough to be a player like this blogger was, and actually was labeled a "weekend warrior" by my guild and thus "not worth the time to invest in".

But this blogger's post really shows so well the reason the game ultimately leaves you unfulfilled in the end.

Fink the Expert

2006-10-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

Well readers its been a really long time since you've heard from me but I just could not help myself today. This actually occured a few days ago, and it just recently popped back in my mind.

The other day Kevin and I were trying to solve a C# problem. Being that I'm a VB.NET guy and Kevin is a VB6 guy who's just learned VB.NET, we did not have any real desk references to get the answer.

The preliminary google search came up with nothing. So we try experts exhange. As we're going over to the site, I jokingly tell Kevin about the fact that the domain name says expertsexchange

Well Fink hears us discussing it and comes over. He suggests we both get an account at the website. Kevin and he start talking over it while I do some digging to find our answer. Most of the conversation is about how great the site is, and how cheap, I'm not really paying attention. but then Fink says something that made me pray internally that the laughter going on in my head was just in my head. It turns out, Fink is an expert on Experts Exchange!

For at least 30 seconds the only sound you could hear was crickets.

Fink.................

This is the guy who thought he had to reformat his PC because he had someone else's .NET 1.o solution file on his pc and the localhosts were not lining up. I created a new project, included the old files and saved a new solution and voila site started working.

This is the guy who could not get his IIS to line up to the folder for moving release compiled version of the code when you click the copy project button. I deleted his folder in IIS, deleted his move folder on the system. clicked the button in VS 2002, and made sure the website path and fold had the same name, Voila it worked.

This is the guy who created a stored procedure that litterally did nothing new except make it so that the stored procedure that had a repetitive logic called his stored procedure with that logic.
(instead of logic insert, logic insert, logic insert; the original SP now goes Logic Exec fink's sp, logic exec fink's sp, logic exec fink's sp) and when we tested it, it did not work because 1 he took the dbo permissions off of the sp and 2 he FORGOT 2 parameters!

This is the guy who spent half the day complaining that he could not open the Classic ASP in interdev design mode because there was some VB script interlaced in the HTML which make that impossible, therefore he could not possibly add width to a text box because he could not see the control ............... instead of just finding said damn textbox and adding a width property to the html

this is the guy who actually debated with me that the logic of VB - Database, VB - Database, VB - Database was better plan than creating changes to an insert stored procedure where the changes I proposed would have allowed the logic to go VB - Database.

This readers, is an expert on Expert's Exchange.

I'd spend the rest of the blog size typing HA HA HA's repetitively but 3 are good enough.

A Day Remembered

2006-09-11T06:38:00.000-07:00

There will be so much posted and reported about the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks so I will not be adding too much to that. I just want to merely say that we should never forget, pray for the mourners, and support the troops fighting in the world today to prevent something like this from happening again.

Speaking of that, I'm sure its only a matter of time before people that lean to the left start harping about how we've finally accrued more deaths in the war in Iraq than the deaths in 9/11. Ok, that is true, more people have been killed in the wars in Iraq. Notice I said wars, there were two wars in Iraq, one versus Saddam and his regime, one versus terrorists insurrgents and foreign fighters who entered Iraq to attack the US. But the reason we're fighting over there is to PREVENT an attack on US soil. It's not enough to talk about the numbers lefties, you have to talk about the numbers over time. 3500 US Citizens killed in around a half an hour is a whole lot worse that 3500 trained soldiers killed in nearly 5 years. I'll take those kind of numbers anytime.

To Stay or not To Stay

2006-09-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

This will probably be a series as I consider whether or not I'll stay at TGI once my contract part of my contract to hire time is done. I thought I was all but staying, but this week was a possible glimpse of the future and it's made me think about possiblilites elsewhere.

Basically a ton of stuff happened all at once this week. The hand holder went on vacation,... well thats actually been quite a blessing, the programmer who's been here the longest has just had a baby boy with his wife so he's out each day at noon and taking the next week off, and last but CERTAINLY not least, we've hired a contractor here that we'll just call Fink.

Now to say Fink is arrogant is to say the sky is full of space, but I can not stand arrogance about programming skill, in Fink's case VB when you are completely clueless on other skills. Its a catch 22, can I learn some things about VB from him? definately, but theres just this thing that makes you want to always be laboriously working in your cubicle when he comes by.

Here is as best as I can remember my absolute very first conversation with him (keep in mind I had just walked in the door on monday and had just spent an hour going 1.5 miles on 240/40 because there were two wrecks on Monday)

Fink: What do you do?
me: I'm a programmer, I've been primarily working on the websites here but all of us pretty much do a bit of everything.
Fink: Is it in VB6 or VB.NET?
me: Mainly in ASP and vb6 at the moment but we are ardently working towards vb.net
Fink: (interrupting) I can help you with VB.NET ** Fink runs to his cubicle
me: (thinking) Hi my name is John, what's yours again?
Fink: Here install this (holds up a USB Flash card)
me: um ok
Fink: Its every VB.NET e_book Microsoft has created.

Ok, in text it doesnt look that bad, but I can tell you the first what do you do was more like WHAT DO YOU DO! if that helps any.

Now, Fink knows his stuff in VB, but I had to help him write something along the lines of Select MicrID, micrformat from micrformats in SQL and that kind of skill descrepancy just irks me.

Now lets go over a non programming conversation we had today.

Scene: John is emailing one of the parents of his soccer team about games on Tuesdays.

Fink: You seem busy,
Me: Not really just getting this email out real fast, I coach little league soccer for kids
Fink: (Interrupting) What age group? I have a daughter she plays soccer.
Me: 8 - 12 at the Ym...
Fink:(Interruption again) Do you have a schedule?
Me: as luck would have it I do, here's my teams schedule.
Fink:Do you have this schedule as an electric copy?
Me: Yes
Fink: Email it to this email (Fink grabs my pad off my desk and writes his wife's email address down on the pad)
Me: uh............ ok.

Now see Fink and his wife are in the process of moving from somewhere in Missourri to Memphis. But how the hell did he get the impression I was going to put his kid on my soccer team. That is not even something I can do, the team is set up by the Y. But our conversation wasnt can my kid play, it was already assumed his kid was on the team and I was to write the schedule to his wife. So I did, but I made it clear she'd have to call the YMCA for more details. Thats when I realized that Fink married someone who also beleives the world exists for them. Here's the response I got from his wife:

"If you see Fink, tell him that I have an interview tomorrow in Memphis with a christian school. So I need to figure out how we are going to do this.
Meagan is a soccerholic. She would love to play... hopefully everything will pan out so that she can. Let me know when.where practice is and I shall see what we can do.
Have a great day and thanks."

I actually had to write her back and tell her that I'd be happy to have her on the team for the spring season, but registration for the fall has been closed.

This second conversation with Fink really shows more of his arrogance than the first. Imagine working on application development with someone who makes crazy assumptions of ownership and such. Its quite tough. Now I'm not saying he's a bad programmer, he recently was assigned a task to add some validation on account length on the websites. He spent his day creating a function we need to put in a class library and that function uses regular expressions to get account length by product and Financial institution. It was very smart. But he would not accept that we had to have it in VB6 at the time being. When he asked me, I said well the websites are in ASP/VB6 and your function really is only the start of the validation, we kinda need it in VB6 or vbscript on the pages. But no he wouldnt have it, he went to Kevin, the programmer with the newborn and asked him, then made the CIO have a meeting about it too. In the end, it is in VB6, and I'm not sure its validating the webpages yet at all.

Ahh good stuff.

So back to the discussion of to stay or not to stay.

This week with Kevin basically out, alot has fallen into my lap. I'm not complaining the week's flown by. I've always dreamed of kinda running things for a department at some time, but what good is running things when the people you run are Fink and the handholder? I know that Kevin wants out of TGI and he's smart enough to find an opportunity eventually, it's just job security and feeding two kids keeping him here, But after 90 days I'm being groomed to be the "Go TO" guy here. So whats better, a leadership role, or a good team of developers? At Shelby when I started thats exactly what I had, I learned a ton there, both in training and in training newer employees. At TGI, if Kevin were to leave, my learning would be through fire and my people to work with would either require alot of attention, or alot of patience. Choices choices choices.

Forget all the bad things I've said about TGI!

2006-08-31T12:39:00.000-07:00

So the company is cleaning up the refrigerator on Friday to prepare for the holiday, and this wonderful gem was inside the refrigerator when I went to get my lunch out of it. Now, I for one would love some beer at work, but somehow I'm sure this is actually the plant manager saying he's confiscated someone's beer at work and they have to see him to get it back.

Nonetheless that made my day today.

Corporate Emails

2006-08-31T06:15:00.000-07:00

From http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/31/0343225&from=rss

"KingSkippus writes "You've got mail! ...and no job! The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that RadioShack has notified 400 workers by e-mail that they are being laid off. The e-mails state, "The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated." Nothing says thank you for your years of service to our company quite like an e-boot out the door."

Read more"

Now that is a sad day when the company you work for fires you by email. I guess anyone leaving Radio Shack should also resign by email now.

Developing Egos

2006-08-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

I love finding gems like this. I am working on some tasks over here at TGI and found this true to life comments qoute which I just find completely amusing.

--Created by Steve Frase - The pain in the butt label. At least in this database most of the information is within one join away: unlike--the piece of crap Daniel assembled that required about 6 joins and cross joins.--JSF - 2/21/00 - Updated to get the return address at the FI_Level. Formerly gotten from the FI_Institutions (lame in the flexibility dept.)--This accompanied 10 or 15 new sps and several others were changed to allow Mods to orders where StatusId < 5, instead of only status 1.--added zippllusfour field on the select ac 02/06/02 - used for Max 4 lines on LetterCheck field-- or o.statusid = 1 - REMOVED--

This is the header for a stored procedure in SQL server. Now if I ever get too big of an ego for developing, a task I tirelessly strive for but am reminded daily how there are truly brillant people who know so much more than me that its kin to them developing atom bombs and me tieing my shoes everyday thus humbly keeping my ego in check, I will for sure not leave comments in code about how brilliant I am so that 5 years down the road the next programmer who fixes this code will know just how ImPortTant I am.

Oh and this wonderful stored procedure this guy wrote? It has 6 joins and guess what they are all cross joins. Ahh thats fun.

Of course, 5 years down the road some TGI programmer might find this blog... LOL

True story from a friend

2006-08-28T06:30:00.000-07:00

My friend just emailed me this pic. I thought it was too funny not to put on a blog about humorous office antics and rants.

Death of the Blinking Menu screen at TGI

2006-08-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

When I was looking for a job and first found out about TGI, I looked at its pretty simple webpage. It is basically every lesson learned about what not to do to a webpage that the world learned in 2001 on one screen. But the thing that killed me the most was this awesome flashing menu option with "What's new" as the caption. See its blinking so it screams look at me! So I clicked on it and the popup window that opens after that was of course a REALLY horrible gif file that was at least 5 years old.

Well today, just because I wanted to and because I'm kinda the programmer here with any web experience, I went ahead and killed that wonderful link. I bet I just increased online revenue by 30%

Anyways, back to typing up the specs on blowing up the rest of the website my boss wants me to write.

Microsoft Exec figured it out, I work for a "Digital Immigrant!"

2006-08-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

The following excellant article was written today regarding how us young whipper snappers are demanding internet use in companies!

http://www.apcstart.com/site/dwarne/2006/08/1104/unlock-work-internet-or-risk-losing-staff-microsoft

This new policy sucks! Plus Lessons on How to Delegate!

2006-08-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

I just got this wonderful memo today:

"Information Tchnology wil provide on-call support for production processes on a rotating, 24x7 basis. It is the policy to have a primay on-call technician and a secondary on-call technician in case the primary is unreachable.

It is the responsibility of the IT Manager to assign primary and secondary on-call responsibility on a rotating basis each month.

It is the responsibility of the each IT team member to ensure that they are reachable at the published phone numbers or that a designated replacement resource has been identified and the replacement's contact information has been communicated to Production.

Production resources will refer to the on-call assignment list to determine the primary resource. Production will attempt to contact the primary at their home, and if they do not answer, on their cell phone.

In the event that the primary on-call technician is not reachable, Production will contact the secondary resource at their home, then on their cell phone.

Finally, if the secondary resource cannot be reached, Production will contact the IT Manager at their home, then on their cell phone.

The contacted resource will attempt to resolve the production problem via phone or through a secured, VPN connection. If the problem cannot be resolved in one hour or in what Production feels is a timely manner, the IT Manager should be contacted by the technician and informed of the nature of the problem and the efforts to resolve it."

Now I get to be Secondary for the month of September and Primary for the month of October and then get to not be on call until February. Oh you can bet I'll be charging a full hour if I get a 5 second phone call during those months!

We had a meeting today where we were going over everyones tasks. Alot of my current tasks are to pick up where our newly departed senior developer left off and finish some of her tasks. Not entirely too difficult but tough because it takes some time to find out exactly what left to complete before even completing it. But thats not what pissed me off today, what made me grind my teeth was when it got to the handholder, she explained how she wants to add a "box" to the adminitration website where our project managers essentially create our customers datawise and in this box place the ID for the Financial Institute's MICR format from both the stage and production database. She says doing so would allow the PM's to know the MICR format is in both databases.

Now I'm sure you readers have a number of questions as I did. 1. What good is a text field with two ID's going to prove to the PM's. 2. WHY THE HELL DO THEY NOT HAVE THE SAME ID'S IN THE TWO VERSIONS OF THE SAME DATABASE ANYWAY?

but heres the best part of the hand holders discussion. She ends with "well i told you, John and I will discuss it and John will do it".

Jigga Wha?

The only thing that saved my hair from catching fire was the CIO looked at her funny and said, no you will do it.

Oh one more juicy tidbit. We recently lost a very functional DBA because he was just brought in to train the Hand holder and the IT guy how to be DBA's but who got assigned a task to make sure our Systems Analyst can access tables in the Reporting database, (something I would have to learn how to do) well if you guessed either of the newly trained DBA's you guessed wrong.

and I actually turned down a job interview today LOL

Productivity vs Management Club

2006-08-17T08:06:00.000-07:00

The other day at TGI something very funny occured. We had an IT meeting we have each week where everyone kinda quickly goes over the tasks they are assigned. When it got to the systems administrator here, he mentioned that the tools were now installed where he could block streaming audio, streaming video, and instant messaging and he could turn it on when given the green light, BUT and here's the good part, If he did turn it on it would block all of the manager's IM capabilities too and there was no way to allow it for the managers should he turn it on.

"Now I dont wanna get off on a rant here but"
WTF?!

So the managers and executive officers actually had a meeting where they decided they wanted to block audio, video, and instant messaging but did not want to be included in said blockage? Way to lead by example.

my boss, the CIO of TGI actually said he'd have to bring that up in another management meeting to let the group decide what they want to do. Heaven forbid the managment team not be allowed to IM.

I thought about playing devil's advocate and bringing up some research that shows IM's replacing email and discuss how its counterproductive to "yell" across the cubicle farm to kevin, a practice done here at TGI, when I could IM him and ask a question, but as I opened my mouth to bring this up something else occured.

The Systems Admin asked Francine if she could still IM or do anything that she used to do on her pc since turning on some stuff.

Let me back up here a sec and discuss Francine. Francine what I call the handholder programmer. She's smart in VB6, but get her to explain something to you and you'll get a long diatribe of information that typically has nothing to do with the question you asked. And if she's learning from you, you'll be teaching alot over and over and over and over again as she asks the same question.

An Example: She given a task to create what she thought was a webservice prior to me joining the company. When she found out I knew .NET she bombarded me with webservice questions. I told her I had little experience writing web services but basically from what it sounded like she needed to create, we just needed to spit back out a byte array from our database to their website once it called our webservice voila PDF opened in browser. She researched how to create a webservice in c# using .NET 1.1 when she presented it, the research not a webservice, in another one of our meetings described above, our CIO told her he wanted it done in VB.NET and .NET 2.0. Then I was part of a conference call with her "client" for this webservice and after Francine asked the client multiple times what Soap was and how we would have to use it for the webservice the client said something like this: Look, we just want to have a link on our webpage where our customers can see their estatement that estatment will be a page on your(TGI's) website. I then told francine ok its so easy now, just make a website, even sent her all the VB.NEt code she'd need to load a PDF from the SQL database.

But what does Francine ask me about on a nearly weekly basis? Well she's read a book in java 1.1 and wants to learn how to create a webservice and would like to me show her how to do that. I replied I did not know Java 1.1 and she said "oh not java, you know uh .net." So let me get this straight, You need to create a 2.0 .NET vb webpage, and you want me to teach you to create a 1.1 .NET webservice. Great! I'll get right on that.

You get the picture.

Back to our story at hand, So Francine says she has not im'd since she deleted everything that wasnt required for her to do her job. The entire group kinda waits for her to elaborate. She does: She had installed some weatherbug thing, three or four IM softwares, some sort of streaming radio thing, and something else. and Since earlier in the week she had some sort of malware on her box that made her box load everytime in safe mode only she deleted all that and low and behold, if you dont have a bunch of junk on your box, you can do your job.

Ok, so maybe the management team as a bit of a point about blocking all this stuff, but I mean come on! I've only used microsofts IM's but I can tell you that 95% of the people on my contact list are developers. and I typically IM'd them because I knew that they were smart enough to answer a question I needed help finding an answer too faster than google or my desk references.

Ah well. C'est La vie

The Rose, the Title, and the BS

2006-08-11T12:53:00.000-07:00

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet."
--From Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
…. but a job title misused no matter how you define it can pretty much still smell like bullshit.

Welcome to my first true rant readers. Enjoy. (names might have been changed)

At the one and a half year mark of my tenure with Shelby Systems we underwent a major change. The programming manager created a formal structural hierarchy which included 3 basic job functionality career paths within the programming department. There was the code slingers path, where the best programmers eventually would run teams of programmers moving up the ladder. There was the project management path, where someone with Systems Analyst skills, like me, could eventually climb up to a position where that individual was a project manager for every project in the department, and last, there was the Framework codeslingers path where you could develop the framework, the code generator, basically the programmers that coded for the programmers team.

This was done because prior to that, there was a team of programmers with team leaders and the programming manager, and the only way up was if the manager left or died.

So, at this time, there were also 3 promotions. Sally got Programmer II and a raise in pay scale, a codeslinger designation and became team lead of some developers including myself. Jimmy got Programmer II and Framework Developer II and a raise in pay scale, and low and behold I got the almighty “Technical Project Analyst I” to go along with my already earned Programmer I title. This was the “entry level” project analyst role the manager had laid out. My pay raise for this wonderful prize? $0.00. Now I was told that I had exhibited a bad attitude lately and the manager needed to see I was still active in Shelby Systems development prior to giving me a raise. (now I admit I was only working the 40 hours a week for two months prior to getting this illustrious title, but in my defense I mainly let myself just work what’s required because my one year review just happened to be 6 months late and my expectations where dashed almost monthly as I was told for 5 months my promotion would come next month and was told on the 6thmonth that my review would come the next week) Now, no need to comment on the life lessons of leaders persevering etc etc.; trust me, the lesson was learned.

Anyways. I was totally excited. Here was my chance to show that while I could not spit out code as fast as Jimmy and Sally, and I admit I cannot, I could provide value to the department. I started a private project to develop a ERD diagram of our database system for the web application my team developed. Now that doesn’t sound extravagant, but let me explain. This database had over 1500 objects and over 11000 stored procedures. I was gonna plaster an entire wall with this bad boy. It would have been neat to see. I knew going in that I could not devote much time to this project, but I figured an 80/20 rule would suffice. The one slight problem was I was on Sally’s development team. She made it very clear one day by verbally chastising me for not working on the issue assigned to me infront of the entire development team that I was in no way to work on Project Analyst work while she was in the office. Now keep in mind that I was only working on this till like 10:00 am and burning out my tasks from then on. But I knew then, I’d never open that project again. I had been given a title only and it was to stay that way.

There quickly became a complete lack of support even from the programming manager for a “Technical Project Analyst”. I did my tasks, kept my nose on the grindstone, and was starting to make some waves once again. I was training a programmer on ASP.Net and how to be a website administrator for Shelby Systems. Sally was happy, the programming manager was happy. I was quickly becoming an unofficial lead website programmer.

I wont go into a lot more of the details now, for it’s another story which I’ll tell on this site soon, but the programming manger found better employment at a little company called Microsoft, apparently they are pretty good at software development and I felt with his departure, my chances of growing into project management with Shelby Systems and the hierarchy the programming manager set up were gone too. This was just one of the reasons I looked for employment a few months ago.

Flash forward to today and I have heard through the grapevine that Shelby has hired a guy to perhaps eventually be the Programming manager’s replacement. His title is “Sr. Technical Project Lead” and he’ll be in charge of all the projects the development department is working on. Now, I’m not claiming I should have been in charge of the department; I was not qualified for that. I agree with the ex programming manager’s view that someone in charge of development ought to be an expert on all the development languages before acquiring such a responsibility. All I’m saying is when I join Shelby, such a role was the goal of the programming manager, my immediate supervisor who was a team lead, and I was always after obtaining. Of course none of us are still there this day. But besides personell, what changed, How exactly is a guy who’s never done any programming gonna be a leader to a team of developers and manage their projects? I’m not sure but again the grapevine tells me that’s exactly who they hired.

To the Sr. Technical Project Lead: Good luck, hopefully your title will mean something, but I can tell you that you are on the “ladder” of job titles I was placed in a year ago, and the bottom rung of the ladder did not mean dick.

G Who?

2006-08-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

Today I received this email from a recruiter I contacted before when I was desperate to get out of a job you will hear all about when I have more time to post. (Names and numbers may have been changed to protect someone’s identity)

“
Subject: DREAM JOB for Entry Level VB.NET person

John,I have a very rare opportunity for a really sharp entry level VB.NET professional (someone with paid VB.NET coding experience is perfect). I am looking for someone that is passionate about coding and is ready for a professional role. It is a contract to hire opportunity that is ready to be filled immediately. If you know someone that fits the bill, please have them to call me at 901-555-8324 or email me their contact information and resume.Thanks!Buck RodgersRecruiter, G Who Tech”

Now let me explain why this is pretty funny to me. Well, here’s my history with G Who. I contacted them about 4 months ago because I was eager to get paid more money. Actually let me rephrase, they were the first recruiting firm to contact me when I put my resume on www.monster.com for a half a day to see who would contact me. I admired they found me in only 6 hours so I gave them shot. I went into G Who and was interviewed by Stella, my recruiter, and Shannon, another recruiter. I briefly met the President named Wes. Wes strikes you right off the bat as a successful guy. He’s sharp, smart, witty and you can tell he’s driven. He also strikes you as a guy who can walk across autozone park during the Memphis in May music festival in a white suit and white shoes and not have a stain on him when he gets to the other side of the park. Now that’s the kind of guy I can say I want as my pitchman if I go into the looking for a job phase again.

His recruiters, not so much, Stella seemed pretty overwhelmed during the interview. Shannon was a knockout beauty you usually see in sales these days but pretty quiet natured. Anyways, they quickly got me one interview which I admittedly botched. However during the interview which Wes attended to get a feel for me, I got a commitment that he’d represent me any time. I felt honored. He told me to consider lowering my salary demands, I told him why don’t you find me an interview and if it gets to salary I’ll consider lowering my demand. (At the time I was being paid according to my market research below the 25th percentile of salary for someone with my experience. My “demands” was that I find a job that paid the average salary instead of what I was getting at the time. I like to be riding the wave of the bell curve or if I can be surfing the front of it. I hate being the fat kid who cant body surf to the crest. You get the picture.

Then two months went by. I did not hear from G who at all. No calls, no interviews, nothing. I contacted a bigger Headhunter firm, had contract guys and full time guys finding me 3 or 4 interviews in a month. Then I was contacted by Shannon and Wes. Wes wanted to hire me as a recruiter, see my sales experience combined with real world IT experience gives me great street cred when I spam you IT professionals with emails like the one above. I actually considered it for a while, because I had recently help a friend get a 15k raise by teaching him how to write a resume and was in my opinion personally responsible for the recruitment of 40% of the programming personnel at Shelby Systems the company I was looking to leave (you’ll hear much more about them some other time). However I’m still hesitant to get back into cold calling folks for money so I politely turned Wes down.

Shannon was calling me to inform me that she was now my recruiter and Stella had left the company. I was still pretty eager to find work so I put her to work. She said she’d be looking out for things. Another month went by before she called me again. I had just signed a contract to hire position with RHT to client TGI. But she was pitching a very interesting job, and she sounded a little more eager to place someone than before. It was this nice Project Manager in training position complete with paid PMI training and more salary than I was offered with the contract I just signed. It was enough to open up my eyes and look into. I was in, I told her submit my resume, we hung up, two minutes later she called me back and said she made a mistake, she wanted to talk to me about another position it was just merely SQL development oh and it paid 5 grand less than the contract I just signed, Hmm my interest just seemed to disappear. That’s when I noticed the desperation in Shannon’s voice I did not see before, she was hungry, she had to place someone soon or leave G who, the problem was in her desperation, she confused who I was with what I was qualified for and pitched me the wrong job, one that sounded awesome. I did not hear from Shannon again.

Earlier this week ol Buck from above contacted me on my cell phone. To my obviously sarcastic surprise he was informing me Shannon had left the company and he was my new recruiter (god I’m thankful I politely turned down Wes) He said he’ll keep in touch and look out for good things for me. Then today I got the email above.

To Buck:

I am a vb.net programmer.
If G Who kept recruiters for more than 2 months you’d know that
The words “DREAM JOB” and “Entry LEVEL” do not go together.

Example of a “Entry Level Dream Job” would be six figures for training, a significant signing bonus, and plenty of vacation time and benefits.

Something I do not foresee occurring for someone looking to hire entry level folks.

To Wes:
I criticize, but I would contact your firm again when I’m in need of help, incompetent recruiters withstanding.

Intro to Rants from the John.

2006-08-11T08:04:00.000-07:00

Well readers, I've officially joined the true 21st century and have decided I'll pour my thoughts onto a blog. Why wait so long one might ask, guess I'm just lazy.

About me, I’m a nearly 30 year old male in Southaven, MS. I have a wonderful wife, a house, a fence, so far no children, and two dogs.

I make my living these days as a .Net vb programmer and web application developer. I’m fairly good at it, but there is obvious room for improvement. Although that’s not entirely interesting to some of you, I find that so far in my 8 year career I’ve lived through some amazing things in both a sales industry and in the IT world. For example, in sales I’ve survived a Merger, and an acquisition, I’ve been downsized due to the economic shock of 9/11. In IT, I’ve been promoted, I’ve been given the redundant 3% raise, I’ve been passed by, I’ve been recruited by head hunters, I’ve been a consultant, I’ve accepted counter offers, I’ve rejected counter offers, etc etc.

There are times when I find situations in corporate America very funny. Think Dilbert and Office Space. Only the stories you hear from me will be entirely true based on my interpretation of the events as they occur around me. One of my favorite hobbies is to tell these stories to my friends, I was told by someone I respect that I should post them online, hence. Rants from the John.

Now what can you expect the content to be from this site?

To answer that lets explain me a little more. I’m not an overly political person, though when asked to express my views I tend to land more to the right than the left. But why? Well my parents are Republican of course, why would I deem to have my own views. Well actually I do have some opinions of my own, and generally I’m a basic selfish person and I want as much of my money as I can get and Republicans raise taxes less. Hell G. W Bush gave me $300 back two years ago. Ok, that’s not the only reason I’m a moderate republican, but that’s a good start. However, I will admit upfront that I generally do not read political news often and if I state an opinion, one could argue that it may be uneducated blah blah blah. I’ll try not to stand on a soap box if I delve into the political scheme of the world on this site, but if I do feel free to attempt to educate me if I’m way off the subject.

I’m not an overly religious person either, but religion has been a part of my life for a long time. I went to a Baptist based high school, a Baptist based college, I’ve worked for a company that created and sold ERP software to only religious based churches and missions and charities etc for nearly 3 years of my IT career. I’ll try not to preach to anyone on here.

What I will aspire to bring is a smile on your face reader. I think there are infamous moments in our lives that are hysterical. If I happen to live through one be it political, religious, corporate, or personal, you’ll hear about it.

But this site is also called Rants from the John. So this will also be my way of venting some frustration about the world politically, religiously, professionally, or personally as someone as close minded as myself can be. Those post will probably make you laugh too come to think of it. Anyways. Lets see what the day brings forth.