Day #117 1/28/2014 Actual Work

Networking:

1. Had followup conversation with another consultant regarding our networking project for IT professionals in the commercial construction industry.  We missed our meeting yesterday because my phone was without a charge at -20F and he was jackhammering the floor out of his house.
2. Reached out to only one of the two commercial construction firms in North America that I have any interest in working for.
3. Spoke with a former vendor/contractor regarding CIO positions in the metro area.

Small Business

1. Finalized the second large accounting issue on the table.
2. Worked on inventory and order fulfillment issues.
3. Putting framework around six-month strategy.

Real Estate Rennovation:

1. Bought a new trash can for demolition on closeout for $15.00 (regularly $29.00).
2. Bought shims for door installation.
3. Pulled out some old carpet
4. This a very exciting (not) project.

Reading, Writing & Media:

Unfortunately, I've been really busy, drinking too much caffeine and watching too much online stuff rather than reading.  On the upside of that I did appreciate the internet which allowed me to re-enjoy the Pete Seeger catalog today.  Somewhere in the unclear past I did see him in person at least twice.  As time passes It's 11:23 PM.  We're sitting in the family room.  Charlie Rose is on the TV.  I have my headphones on and am listening to The Best Radio You Have Never Heard and the TV and my wife.  Both of us have been typing for at least an hour.  I'm trying to remember the world before personal computers and the internet.  At 63 I remember life before television.  People used to talk and read books.

A Final Word on Careers:

I am one halfway through my sabbatical of working with LHH to find a new gig.  In two weeks I'll make a decision if I re-start that process in March or April.  All is good.

Day #115 1/26/2014 number sequence meltdown

Weather is Work...
One of the blogs I follow is written by a gentleman who I believe lives in Oregon.  This week he wrote about planting oats.  I believe the seeds are drilled into the ground which is all part of this no-till approach to farming.  The seed catalogs have been arriving at our home here in MN for a couple of weeks, right after Christmas.  It does give a bit of hope for spring and warmer weather.  Drilling seeds into the ground is what you would have to do here after you scraped and shoveled your way through a few feed of snow.  It's been a very cold winter, the coldest since 1997, which means the ground is frozen at least four or five feet.  That not like just hard, it's like a rock.  Fortunately we've had early snow which insulates the ground.  Were it not for that the ground would freeze down six to eight feet and make a mess of the rural (mine) septic systems.  Tomorrow morning it's going to be -15F with wind chills of -45F.

Snow has been arriving every few days and shoveling starting to be not only tedious, but a chore since the piles on each side of the driveway are about five feet high.  My snowblower is one-half as old as me.  I should be using it more to save me but given it's age I don't use it on the small stuff.  My plan is to never buy a replacement.  Given the inevitable failure I'm planning on simply walking (or snowshoeing) away and moving where I can plant oats in January.

Number Issues...
The last few days have been consumed with a couple of accounting issues.  One of our customers thought they owned us $10.  We thought it was about $1000. That one is done.  The second involves doing some recaps of income and profit/loss for the past few years and that should be done tomorrow.

Given the temperature forecast Monday will be a good day to hunker down inside and start pursuit of the 2013 income tax challenge.

This blog is about my quest for a new source of income and "worthwhile work" enjoyment.  It's been about one hundred and some days since the end of the 27-year gig.  The plan was to write a blog entry each day about that pursuit and I began numbering the posts to coincide with the number of days unemployed.  A relative said writing every day would be impossible.  Another said "why put yourself up against that?  I'm been unemployed for years and attempting to do something like that makes no sense."  Having missed a few days (like this week) and at least two other times the numbering sequence might be messed up.  It's unclear if I inadvertently started to number posts rather than days unemployed which would be the same if I'd missed no days.  It's probably not important but it probably is important to resolve this.  If I had a job I would not even waste a moment on such a stuff thought.

The X Files...
I found the "X Files" to be a most interesting TV series and David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were engaging and well-cast.  Under the umbrella of my Amazon Prime account and my Kindle Fire "Californication" presented itself starring David Duchovny as a once-hot novelist struggling to write and straighten out his alcoholic, promiscuous, directionless life.  It's extremely well cast, with good snippets of dialogue in most episodes and likely to be explicitly offensive to many in terms of language and nudity.  There has been something pretty funny and thought provoking in each episode...and a slight excuse for not writing and working.  

#110 1/21/14 MLK Day

A Facebook acquaintance of mine posted the attached photograph of Dr. King and then Vice President Nixon.  The commentary accompanying the photograph was about Dr. King and Vice President Nixon meeting to discuss how to overcome Democratic opposition to civil rights initiatives in 1957 and the thought that you would not hear about this meeting or association in today's liberal press.

I was going to let the Martin Luther King Day pass as I normally do with thoughts about the disenfranchised, the oppression of poverty and many lives lost and destroyed in the pursuit of civil rights and we might as well say human rights here in the U.S. and elsewhere.  The day was almost over.  Then I read Sarah Palin's Facebook post which started with sort of a "have a happy MLK day" like it was a free ice cream cone day and which ended with a suggestion to President Obama that "he stop playing the race card."

Without getting into a discussion of the successes and failures of the Obama administration I want to go first to Palin's comment.  "Nice white girl card."  Enough said.

Secondly I'm posting my comment on Facebook to the photograph and original comment:

Nixon had a fairly decent record on civil rights which was at the time of this photograph primarily about voter rights for blacks. Democratic opposition to civil rights changes were concerns over loss of the southern Democratic vote, which was obviously in the face of obstacles to registration a white vote. It's always about strategies to get the vote. It was then and it is now. Nixon bailed shortly after this photo on his support for King. Lyndon Johnson was the senate majority leader at the time and did lobby for a weaker version of the civil rights initiative. By the time of the 1960 Presidential election between Nixon and Kennedy Nixon had all but abandoned his communications with King. Politics at it's best by both parties. Now the southern Democratic vote (white) has totally shifted to being a southern Republican (white) vote.

King was arrested on a phony charge in 1960. Nixon ignored the whole situation in fear of losing Republican votes. Kennedy intervened on the arrest at the risk of losing the southern Democratic vote. Nixon won only 32% of the black vote, less than Eisenhower's 54% and Goldwater's 92% and lost the election by 112,000 votes. Politics at it's best. The big guys play the small guys.

Today's conservatives would paint the world simply, as we know, in black and white.  It makes a nice sound bite or visual bite to show Dr. King with Vice President Nixon (Republican).  In reality one of them was changing the world for all minorities while the other was positioning for a Presidential Election.  There's no question that John Kennedy's action in the 1960 election in regards to Dr. King was also about positioning for the same Presidential Election.  Either Nixon or Kennedy may have been doing what they thought was right to get to the Oval Office where they could do whatever right and better thing they thought should be done, just as Senator Lyndon Johnson was doing in the Senate with the civil rights card and as he would do during his Presidency.  The same games are played today with the addition of live, dynamic media, and as the more right-wing faction has their issues the left-wing liberals similarly have trouble picking any color other than not black and not white.  It's a mess.

We should all have the dream of Dr. King.    We live today in a diverse culture and barring unspeakable options that is our future. 

Finally I have to post my own Facebook comment of the day (intentionally short to flow to Twitter):  I am not sure that anyone who calls themselves either a Democrat or a Republican understands what it truly means to be an American.

If not just some of use, but all of us were set upon by dogs, beaten or sprayed with fire hoses and shot at by bad guys in the Middle East this democracy might get something done.

P.S.  This is a blog about not having a job and the trek to find one.  Even as a geezer white guy I'll  find a better one, more quickly and easier, with more pay than most minorities, some of whom will never find a job.

 

#109 1/19/2014 Sunday (workless)

As a kid Sundays were clearly about church, eating with family and constraining playing with the neighbor kids.  Certainly there was no shopping and even gas stations were closed.  I'm talking about the 1950s in southern Minnesota, Albert Lea to be direct.  Everyone seemed to go to church then, in a wide variety of denominations.  Our neighbors across the street went to a bar in Manchester, a town with nothing but a bar.  I can remember their kids saying "we go to the bar in Manchester" when I complained about going to church.  In recent times, although I've not kept track, but I may have frequented more bars than churches on Sunday.  Assuredly I've worked more Sundays than anything which is a major contrast with my youth.  Most of those working Sundays were for the 27-year gig.  I'm not doing that or anything like that again, that which is primarily in the pursuit of money or compensation.

Today everything is open except things like dentists and car dealers but I'm sure there must be a place somewhere where I could have had a dental cleaning and checkup if I wished.  Now we seem to work all the time and even the big holidays have stores and venues for shopping and buying frequently more open.  What if Amazon was closed on Sunday?  Or if you could only buy certain goods on Sunday?  It gave us a day or rest and reflection.  For a while I've been thinking about an electronic gizmo sabbatical.  Maybe I should stay away from computers one day a week or not carry my cell phone.  For two days, including today, I've not carried my cell phone, not because of making that sabbatical choice but because I took it out of my pocket while working at the computer.

Over the past two days I've probably put in 10-12 hours of heads done computer time, primarily on accounting and tax challenges.  The sabbatical choice could not include the computer because I just cannot write as quickly by hand any more and I want to keep writing and putting a few thoughts together.  That's what my work going forward will be.

Monday is Martin Luther King day.  It warrants reflection for disadvantaged and those the subject of all ranges of discrimination.  We're not the kind of country today that any of us wish to have.  I'm headed up north later in the day to work on snow removal, re-starting that renovation and to work on some craft/art projects.  Progress is being made there.  Most of our back yard oaks were recently removed.  In the process of that we needed to take down a nice sized black cherry.  Most of that will be carved into spoons and bowls.  It's nice carving and beautiful.  Over the years I've turned a lot of trees into firewood but turning even a small log into usable art is tremendously rewarding.  It's the kind of work that I want to do and it's the kind of work that would be acceptable and appropriate on Sundays, now and long ago.

#108 1/18/2014 More Shoveling

There is little question that the winters in MN are much less severe than they used to be with less snow and fewer really cold days and much shorter durations.  We get teasers of the past, now.  We had a few days of -20F when we used to get that and colder predictably.  As a kid we'd frequently have several days a winter when the wind and snow would blow in off the prairie leaving us housebound.  Really good blizzards would sweep the snow off the prairie dump it on the small downs like small windbreaks and then top off the drifts with sprinkling of frozen black loam. 

This winter has been cold and damp and we've had a lot of snow.  At the end of the driveway where I come face-to-face with the Ramsey County snowplow in defining and debating what should be snow free the white skyfall is now about five feet high.  Each shovelful needs to be heaved a bit higher leading to smaller shovelfuls and more time at the task.

Difficult projects require seat time.  You don't sit down and write a great book or article in fifteen minutes.  I've heard that songwriters put together really great songs in short periods of time but I suspect that they put together really mediocre sons in a short time more often.  I find that I have to find my grove before things start to flow.  During my long employment gig I used to lobby for quiet space for my programmers.  The office Nazis always fought that and they almost always won, lobbying that open spaces create collaborative spaces.  When working in your own head, your primary space, distractions are like leaving the windows open in a blizzard.

Today I spent about three hours working on an accounting task that was challenging because of some people's expectations and because I was missing some critical information that I could not make up (not that I ever make up accounting information in case the IRS or NSA is reading this).  At a point it was time to work on some sort of commentary for #108. 

I can see some progress on all or some of these ignored life projects.  The reading pile and magazine pile is shrinking.  There have been some donations to Goodwill.  Demo has started on the real estate rennovation project.  There is progress on accounting issues.  Nothing has been done on taxes yet but the 1099s are starting to come in and that's good.  In the midst of this the most important thing I've been able to do is find some time to work on projects like this, without distraction.

This upcoming week I'm going work on a couple of potential income-producing projects.  Taking a break for LHH and the job search was good.  There is, was, and will be value in that resource but it was a distraction.  Making the decision to wait, to approach projects (and jobs) in some logical fashion, with some put on hold, was correct.

On a legacy note I ordered replacement bees.  My first bees were ordered in 1964.  At that time the cost was $8.  Now the same unit of bees is $99.  The span of bees in my life is now fifty years.  I'm still learning.

#107 1/17/2014 we are who are online

Online ... who we may be
As this day winds to a close I thought about this commitment of writing every day and looking to the future as a I craft my next gig. It's been a frustrating but good couple of weeks with some real positive reinforcement.  During a conference call this week I was conversing with a couple of high-end IT project consultants and drove the conversation weaving in perspectives on the future of IT and past experiences in a $1B company.  That was stimulating.  The past couple of months have been occupied with a lot of catch-up activities and a fair amount of caffeine.  From a very practical perspective the recycling barrel and the trash can have been full every week and my electronic world is a bit more tidy.

The Target security breach, which is now much larger and extensive than expected, has given me cause to be more careful in my online activities.  My browser perspective has always been one of leaving and collecting as much good and bad information as possible.  Private browsing is fine but you also are identified by your IP address and sites can collect your visits and some computer information so I'm now using a service that routes my access through a proxy which presents an anonymous IP address.  Having had my card lifted in several online transactions and having had our small business cards lifted multiple times on point of sale equipment it just seems prudent.

Entering my name and my 27-year gig employers name provides interesting results, far more than I expected.  It turns out that I've been quoted far more that I realized, with some of those quotes, perspectives and insights ending up in books. Where are my royalties?  Tomorrow I'm going to revisit some of these sites.  In our small business I've been pushing hard on leveraging social media and there may be opportunities for some self-promotion via social media and web penetration for my work in my previous gig...I'm not looking exactly for that kind of position but it is a wonderful reference in and of itself.  I can say to a prospective gig "my accomplishments are on the web."

#106 1/16/2014 keeping track of days, walking familar corporate trails & barbers

Keeping track of days...
While a soldier, back in the 1960s and 1970s you knew what day it was because you were in a countdown...so many days and a "wake up."  Then you were gone.  FTA all the way and all such stuff.  At one point I kept track by hours which was probably overkill.

Yesterday I thought it was January 16th. Today is January 16th.  At points I always new if it was Wednesday.  That was the day the Powerball was picked and that would mean the end of going to work.  Saturday was Powerball day, too, but it was clearly Saturday since I was not at work although there was probably some work ocurring.

In the absence of a real job, a dumb job the days do begin to flow together a bit.  It's possible that this flow opens up the creativity a bit rather than compressing it between a start time and an end time or putting a bad taste on it in the concept of "really long work days."  

For the last couple of days I set my alarm (iPhone) with the intention of getting up and getting to work, in all the contexts I've previously addressed.  For the last couple of days when listening the the alarm, I "swiped" it to put it rest, thought about getting up and delayed the conversion from horizontal to vertical orientation.  As a nerd I should have said moving from a landscape orientation to a portrait orientation.

I've also been obsessing about getting a haircut, not having had one for three months, and thinking that I might want to impress someone.  At 63 I'm not sure that you can impress anyone positively on appearance but it's never been my style to be unkempt.  Casual would be the standard.  Formal the exception.

Walking Familiar Corporate Trails...Barbers
Barbers are important.  With a couple of very brief exceptions I have two barbers in my adult life.  The first lasted from 1973 until 2010.  The second has been from 2010 through today.  Nina was a recommendation from a co-worker at the 27-year gig and she was located close by and on the Skyway System.  For those unfamiliar with downtown Minneapolis, all the primary buildings are connected with second floor corridors for pedestrian traffic and skyways between buildings.  

Downtown Minneapolis is a thirty minute drive from our home suburb and parking is expensive.  I decided to park in the Target store parking garage, make a quick trip to the barber and then buy $20 worth of miscellany at Target to get my hour of free parking.  This happens to be  the same building in which I worked from 2001 to 2013 of my 27-year gig.  It was inevitable that I would encounter a former co-worker wandering the Skyway.  I did.

It was an easy encounter with quick waves and a few words.  He asked if I was coming upstairs to visit. "No."  "Hey, everyone would like to see you."  Not everyone would.  I declined citing an appointment.  That was true.   I was on the clock trying to avoid $5-7 of parking fees.

Nina and I had a nice chat.  She does a very professional cut and has a lot to say.  We talked about our families, Facebook and good TV series to follow.  She has blue hair.  Always she asks me "are we going standard or what."  I always respond "standard, I guess." I can only imagine what would happen if I suggested hair liberty.

When I left downtown I committed to Nina that I'd keep going to her for cuts.  I'm not going to park in my old building next time.  It felt bad, more of an old trail than something new and fresh. 

So now I have a haircut and look good.  It's Friday and I've been trying to get the same two projects done for two weeks.  Friday AM I'm lining up some caffeine and putting in 2-3 hours before helping at the small business for an hour or so and then heading back to the home office.  Given that it's Friday (the day before Powerball day) I may cut out early since I'm pretty much cut out all the time.

I have been thinking about Javascript and Ruby on Rails a lot.