young gun

Well, if 50 is young in your book, then I guess I am a young gun. And I disagree with your bargaining power statement.

There once was a company with a great machine that borked. Consultant after consultant was brought in to unbork the great machine. After a couple of years, management finally called in the high priced expert. The expert walked in, looked around for 5 min and pressed a button. The machine roared to life. Upon presenting his $150k bill management asked, isnt that a little excessive for 5 min of work? All of these other consultants didnt charge that much and they worked for months! The expert then commented that its not the time, its the knowledge and knowing which button to press.

In the above scenario, two people made serious money. The agent of all the consultants (head hunter or union) as 2 years worth of fees were collected. And the expert. You can either be the union boss or the expert if you want to make serious cash. The consultants are still looking for their next project as the union boss and expert sip single malts together looking for the next borked machine/process.

My greatest card when bargaining is my history of successful projects, knowledge, and presentation that raises me above the "large labor force". I try to represent myself as something worth more than the average worker. Thus I have had an extremely successful career so far.

As far as Dad goes. He ran his company as like this:

Workers were required to work hard. Sometimes overtime, which he paid OT rates for (dont forget tinbashers are trade) For this hard work, he bought every worker and their wife a trip to hawaii. Another year, they all went to vegas. Each year he would try and do something like this. Staff took the company trucks home instead of driving their own vehicles. In becoming a Union shop, the biggest factor was the "stability" a union shop provided. However, this gave some of the guys the "I will report it to the union" card. So in trade for the stability, the trips disappeared, the trucks stayed in the yard, breaks became regulation 15 min, ie work to rule. Dad was 62 years old and said, Mexico sounds real good, and I have a buyer... Why not retire a couple of years early? (I hope to retire in 5 years)

I can

I worked as a prof in a local college that had a "Professional Association" (read expensive union)

When I stated that I would prefer not to join, I was told it was a requirement. But they asked why. I told them, I would rather negotiate my employment conditions as I could do a more effective job representing my skills and their value than a simple grid that listed years of experience and years of education. As an example. I earned the same salary teaching Advanced C Programming (yes this was a while ago) and earned the same salary as the prof teaching a high school math upgrader. My marking alone took many more hours than the multiple choice exams my office mate had.

In 1996 the college went through a downsizing. Since I was the last man hired, I was the first man to be released. The students actually demonstrated to keep me. ( I was the only prof who had actually done real development work in C, the others that they kept actually sat in my lecture in the morning and attempted to reteach in their afternoon block )

At one point, I thought I would try and work with the system. I booked a meeting with my union rep and made a proposal for a 3rd dimension on the salary grid. Course difficulty. I actually had it mapped out quite well with research from the colleges own industry reports where salary would now be based on length of employment, education, and teaching load. Where the classes were ranked on load. This would then become the 3rd dimension to the grid. I even volunteered to present it at the next meeting.

The answer I got was, "This looks nice, but you elected me as a representative, it is my job to decide what should be put in collective agreements. You then vote on what your union officials decree". My proposal never got a second meeting, nor acknowledgment anywhere.

When the downsizing happened, students complained (in numbers) to the dean, I even suggested to some that they try the union. The information I got back from the union was that they agreed with the college about downsizing so that they could maintain the current salary grid for those remaining. Now if you look at this politically. If you want to maintain your rep seat, keep the people that are staying happy. To bad for those released, but they wont be paying dues next year.

Another example of a real union was the Transit Union. When I was going through school, I drove a bus at night to pay for my college. If a driver called in sick, dispatch could force you to drive a double shift, and once I drove a triple shift. However, because money was important, you were allowed to drive a shift for another driver and he would pay you. The only difference was, if you drove more than 48 hrs that week you were not allowed to pick up another shift. Here is the catch, Say you traded your Tuesday night shift to study and picked up someones shift on the weekend, and then on Wed, dispatch forced to drive an extra shift, you would not be allowed to drive the shift you traded for on the weekend because the time system said you had too many hours.

Off I went to the union meeting, asking that this be looked into. The membership in attendance voted almost unanimously, a couple of abstainers, in favor of discussing this with management and looking at it during the contract negotiations. This was the last I heard of the proposal. When I asked about it, I was told more important issues came up. Some of the items that did get negotiated were absurd at best. "Seat covers for the drivers seat" for example.

In the end any union or prof association I have ever belonged to has only managed to lower my salary to what I have been able to negotiate myself, collect fees from me, and not carry forward any of my concerns. Most were more interested in keeping their own rep posting.

Last example. My father owned a tin smith shop. He employed approximately 30ish tradesmen. One day a few of them got together and decided that it was time that the shop become a union shop. Sometimes you have to wonder about the intelligence of some people. The end result was, Dad lowered their wages to the union rates. took away the perks like taking the company trucks home. A couple of them lost vacation time. The guys then started to grumble, and this was then the final excuse dad needed to retire. He sold the shop to a new owner that new nothing about the business. In two years, he ran it to the ground. The shop closed, and everyone became unemployed. The union really helped out here :)

Any organization should always ask "Are we still required", There was a time unions had a place, but all I have seen most do is protect the lazy worker, collect dues (take away from my salary), ensure I can only obtain an "average" (at best) salary, and occasionally give up all of my income for a few months when people want to strike for issues that I could care less about.

 

cut out a slice of their potential audience right from the start. But this is better left alone...

This was the guy that Roland chased across the world, in the end, he didn't even know that he met his end. References were dragged in about him being flagg from the stand. The build up of the character was huge. In the end, he provided no insight or satisfaction to the hero. It made no difference really. I just showed how the whole story was a running creation with no overall story arc thought out. Walter simply became a loose end (like many others) that were simply dropped. I also couldn't figure out the dialog shift. I read these a while ago so can't remember which book it was, but, they went from speaking normal to that strange farm dialect for the rest of the series. He explains that Roland picks up dialects, I can understand that. But then he should also loose that dialect in the next book.

There are lots of positives, here is one that says "dont waste your time" /* Spoilers */

It is some of Kings best and worst work. Where as most great works start of shaky and gain strength. Kings hits hard and strong in the first half, then crashes and burns. There are plot disconnects. Deux et Machina are a plenty even as the books themselves discount it as a cheap writers trick.

I personally am disappointed with myself for paying money for the last couple of books, but I kept thinking, it has to get better, the start was so strong, this is just a build up to a fantastic finish. And then the cork fell out of the gun...

We never see a stand off between Flag the ultimate bad guy, and Roland. In fact Flag is killed "out of hand" a long with a myriad of other characters. As a reader I want to be rewarded for investing my emotion into hating the bad guy. He deserves to die at the hands of hero in an epic confrontation.

I probably just dont understand the ending, and maybe he even did it first, but the whole, "it was a dream" didnt work for me. The fact that there was nothing in the dark tower, except memories could have been quite powerful, but to cause a reset because he didnt pickup the bugle? just lame. In the end the 7 books to get to the dark tower didnt mean anything. I think because King didnt know what it was either.

I predict that this will turn into another Lost ending (if it survives)

I read about King enough in the books to ruin what started off as very promising. I don't need his self egotistical therapy on screen as well.

I have never read anything that had so much potential at the start and went down hill so far and so fast. My hope is that this new format will retain the "theme" of books. Loose the SK reference entirely and rewrite a decent ending. I also hope they treat the antagonists with a little more respect than SK did. to have an ultra antagonist for 6 books only to have him die in a random encounter with another antagonist, with confrontation with the protagonist is flawed just a little bit. Unless the other antagonist turns out to be the real mega. but alas the spider turns out to be trivial as well.

Sorry for the rant

I am excited by the format, howard, and initial concept. But this is one that I hope they deviate DRASTICALLY from the latter half of the books.

Im not sure BP would agree with you.

My view of the initial space race was that it was more of a political statement of "look how advanced we are! we can fly to the moon!" disguised as science. Sure it was exciting, but the real gain was in politics. Today, its just doesnt carry the political "wow" factor. Who cares when the average small country has the bomb. Robots were always better than sending people anyhow. As for mining, there are mines on the earth that are much more profitable to mine. You think we have issues with some miners down in a hole for 2 months, how are we ever going to lift that much into space and then get it back down without it burning up? We cant even mine the ocean floor effectively... Why head to space?

Yes it might be able to identify a "potential" terrorist by identifying them. However, if I remember correctly, you are innocent until proven guilty. So we have identified a potential terrorist, legitimately visiting his sick grandma in denver. He is flying with his toothbrush and shorts. So what. What we need to do is identify that the toothpaste is really an explosive. And if he is a good terrorist, he isn't going to carry the stuff on the plane with him, someone else will or it will be planted. We need to identify the potential weapons, as well as the people.

Do we bar a convicted criminal from flying after he has served his "20" year sentence and been released?

Not to mention all of the X-Ray/radiation issues and already suggested methods of potentially beating the system.

He did know how to use "in a classroom setting". But was one of the commercial pilots putting in time teaching. His instructors all used the multi function displays prevalent on new aircraft. (lots of discussions on information overload) It is a different skill, that needs practice. Like the poster above stated. Sometimes its nice to just do VFR flight, just make sure you can get there. None of his instructors were anal about location and heading like Dave was with me (he would go out of his way to see if I could get lost, said he lost lots of friends not being able to find their way back home).

It is like diving. Now that you mention it, it probably has a LOT to do with what you were taught. I only got certified as a diver 4 years ago, as such, we learned the dive tables as required, but I use an Atom 2 DC. Love the thing. BUT I still do a dive plan, I drive my daughter nuts with my "planning", even if we are just at a resort and doing a cattle boat dive. She thinks Im crazy with everything I carry "just in case" and calls me GI Joe.(no I'm not a tech diver, just recreational)

Its not that he couldn't, its just that he felt he depended too much on the GPS and that the focus of his training was very "tech" oriented. Mine was more about, well flying by the seat of your pants (if you have ever flown the old fleet canuck, it was fun simple aircraft. but simple is the operative word) We could use each others methods, just were at opposite ends of the proficiency scales. I credit him with spotting something he wanted to learn better. There are a lot of instructors that "know it all", then there are the good ones that learn from each student. (I still like my knee board though)

I like to think of an emergency as something you haven't planned for... You may never need the plan, but if you do, it just might save yours or someone else's life.

I admit to being a bit old fashioned and cautious. My nickname is "Safety Bob" because I am always the one with the first aid kit, rope, knife etc (basic kit).

That being said, I have rescued my fair share of distressed adventurer at the cost of my own excursion. I am that guy on the dive boat that brings a little bag and lends you the screw or fin strap that you never noticed was broken. The fact that I am posting on \. might tell you that I have something to do with IT. (Been a developer for while now, see the age posted above). I like my techy geeky nerding things. But I also like to disconnect. Where some people will use the GPS as primary navigation, I will pack it as backup in case things turn bad. We purposely have a cabin that has no phone or TV using solar power only.

I joke with my children, that they do it in their head and check with the calculator, I prefer to do on the calculator and check with my head, or at least have some form of verification. Every instrument in the cockpit can be verified by using one or two of the other instruments.

But you are correct, there are the real idiots out there that will press a panic button because its easy and their "right". Sometimes Darwin helps us out though and casts its net...

I am 50ish and pilot. I learned to fly when I was 17 flew for a bit (10 years ish), then had a family. I then decided to return to flying. I went back for some more training. The differences.

1st time: My instructor was an OLD WWII vet. A mean cuss that ALWAYS was trying to get me lost. I live in Central Alberta where land marks are few, its flat, and water lines can vary greatly from the charts. We used a map covered in wax paper, a pencil with 1" marks cut in to it and a watch. I never did get lost.

2nd time (25 yrs later): Modern aircraft, Cessna 172 instead of the 1947 fleet canuck. GPS as well as compass. Instruct must have been all of 6 or 7 (really about 25ish). Nice young kid, good skilled pilot. We went up for a refresher check out flight. Did a stall, spin, slow flight etc. (Oh yeah, he did smile at my knee board with the wax paper and pencil). At the end of the flight he said lets head for home and I banked the aircraft while he punched in the coords on the GPS. By the time he was done, I was already on the heading. He was mildly impressed.

We went for coffee and discussed the differences in our training. We both admitted that I could use some more training using the GPS. However he offered his time in trade get some more experience with my flight computer (plastic slide rule for headings and wind for the non pilots) and knee board. He recognized that if he ever did loose his GPS for what ever reason, a manual system might be good to know.

I look at all of the technology available to today's hikers, boaters (I have my skippers papers too), and pilots that forget about the mark I computer sitting on our shoulders. It provides a false sense of security. Everything is fine in the perfect scenario, but for many of these adventures, emergencies arise, not because of a real act of god but a lack of planning. When diving we say "Plan the dive, dive the plan". This should be applied to all "adventures" but we live in a society where the quick adventure is what we are after and fewer a learning how to plan and be prepared. We are quick to pass on the responsibility to technology or experts, knowing that we can sue if they fail.

The only answer I can see is passing on the expenses of rescues to the rescuees. Legit or otherwise. Might be a good thing to take out adventure insurance... The more training you have, the less the insurance would be...