I am in the unenviable position of having to find a suitable car for my 16 year old stepson. Naturally, new cars are out of the question, because there aren't any in the price range that a new driver ought to be driving (approximately $1500 to $2000 in my opinion). So I started looking at used cars. However, there also aren't any used cars in that price range that actually run and aren't falling apart. My first car, 20 years ago, cost about $1200 and it ran and it was only falling apart a little. Also, that car was really only worth about $700. I figure if inflation has doubled in the last 20 years, and it hasn't, then I should be able to get a comparable car for about twice what that one was worth, or about $1400. However, it seems that an eight year old car with 100,000 miles on it these days still costs about 5,000. A lady at work was thinking of selling her 2002 Honda Civic with 72000 miles on it. I figured she might get $5,000 retail for it and I might be able to get it for $3,000. But no, according to Kelly Blue book, this car retails for almost $10,000, and trade-in is almost $6,000. This is a car that was probably released in 2001 and is therefore 8 years old, and has close to 100,000 miles on it. another 28,000 miles and you wouldn't be able to get a loan on it, but the dealers want $10,000 for it. It was only $13,000 brand new. How is it that a car can loose half it's value when it drives off the showroom floor, and then 8 years later still cost 80% of it's original value?
Where does one go to find reliable transportation at prices befitting the fact that the person driving it is almost certainly going to wreck it within the next two years?

Let's preface this with the fact that I am not so happy about my job anyway. But I have been doing it, and doing it well, and trying not to whine too much about it. However, a couple of days ago they sent out a form that everyone is required to sign indicating that they agree to their information being put into a "treasury folder". This folder will contain Criminal History results, Consumer Credit results, Copy of Birth Certificate, Copy of state issued ID, Fingerprints, and other miscellaneous items.
It is probably not illegal for an employer to ask for any of these items, however, I feel that they hired me several years back without the stipulation that I give them this right to invade my privacy, so what need do they have to invade my privacy now? The thing is, they are being hypocritical. We deal with healthcare information, which I am happy to keep private in compliance with HIPAA, however, they want to keep our customers' data private while meanwhile digging through mine and sharing it with their customers. I don't agree to this.
So I am left in a quandary. I can't sign the agreement saying that I agree with it, because that would be committing perjury. However, if I don't sign it, they probably will fire me. This is an at-will state, so they can do that. I don't think it should be legal for an employer to demand your private, non-company related information and fire you if you choose not to comply.
Unfortunately, at this stage in my life, I do need the job. I have kids, and my other income sources do not generate enough to keep me above water without this job. However, every year I get a little more independent, and a little more likely to tell them to bite me when they come up with stuff like this.
The good news is I have an interview in about 1 minute with another company. Hopefully it will go well, and I can tell my company I do not wish to sign their paper and see how it goes.
More good news is that I talked with some other people who were wary about it, but were going to sign it because they thought they were the only one with concerns. Now I have about 5 people who aren't going to turn it in, so maybe our "union" can bring about some change.

Update 2008-09-08
Late last week I was brought in for "The Talk". Basically, I guess I am one of the last people who hasn't signed the paperwork allowing the company to investigate into areas of my life that they have no business investigating or keeping records on. I was told by the company lawyer that I would be terminated if I did not allow them to probe into my finances, credit history, and other personal information. I found some information in their documentation which said that after they fingerprinted me, this information would be turned over to the state law authorities as well. I told them that I absolutely disagreed with this procedure. Unfortunately, it was either sign the documents or be terminated. They also had language in there that said that if we refused to sign this stuff and were terminated then we would be considered to have "quit" and would not be eligible for unemployment. So they were pretty much strong arming me. So I ended up signing the documents because I have no other job to jump to at the moment, but I did verbally indicate to them that I was signing the documents indicating that I agreed, but that I did not agree and was only signing under duress. Also, I am writing this missive as further proof of my disagreement to their terms.

Long lines at the Post Office have long been a problem, but today I was reminded of the issue once again, and it got me to thinking. The USPS keeps raising rates to cover costs on the one hand, but on the other hand they are trying as hard as they can to lose customers and thus the economies of scale. Today I went in to the local Post Office and there were 8 people in line and 1 clerk. I just turned around and left because I don't have 45 minutes to wait around. Another person in the line also left while I was standing there. The problem is, what is the alternative? If you have packages, you can go to FedEx, UPS etc., but the USPS has a government enforced monopoly on first class mail. I think it is time to break that monopoly and make the USPS compete.

It is not very often that I actually get to do something interesting at work. Once upon a time I used to do interesting and challenging work all the time. That was back when I worked on database administration and data warehousing. I used to have to come up with software solutions for business challenges. But for the last five years I have spent all my time coming up with solutions for software challenges. All of the software that I have had to use in previous years has been poorly designed, buggy, and basically not ready for release to the real world. So I spend all of my time coding around bugs that the vendor's won't fix, creating functionality via APIs that ought to be in the base product, and of course, spending huge amounts of time in meetings fighting with the vendors about their crappy products. I spend less than 5% of my time actually using the software to meet our business challenges.
I did finally do something interesting yesterday, although it was still an end run around a roadblock put up by our vendor. Basically we have been fighting with them for about 6 years on the fact that they don't provide us sufficient information on who is keying the batches in their product. Their "keying information" consists of the start and stop time and the keyer name of the last session spent on a batch of work. If one keyer does not finish the batch and another keyer picks it up, the start time gets overwritten and the keyer name gets overwritten, instead of another audit record being written. For six years, the vendor refused to fix this. So yesterday, I sat down and started writing code to write database entries every time the keyers changed any of the data. It was only a few hours work to create a solution that will give us all the information we need, and I still need to put together some queries to wrap this up into a report, but this is by far the most interesting thing I have done at work recently (pretty sad, I guess).
This just reinforces my recent thinking that my real calling in professional life is databases and datawarehousing. It is the only type of work I have ever done that gave me a sense of fulfillment. It was also something that I was very, very good at, as any number of former supervisors will attest. I wish I could find a job doing that sort of work again.

Redbox is an interesting new idea in video rentals where you pay $1 plus tax each night. After 25 nights (and 25 dollars), you can keep the movie. You can rent the video from any kiosk that has it and return it to any kiosk you want. They don't have a store, so costs are low, but they have limited space, so selections are basically new releases only. The thing I like is that you can view selections online and determine what is available at different kiosks. This comes in handy for those of us who would rather sit in air conditioned comfort and browse movies from multiple locations rather than stand out in the heat and browse that particular kiosks selections. In fact, it is really pretty stupid if you are looking for a particular movie to take your chances that it is actually at the kiosk you happen to go to. However, lots of people are pretty stupid, particularly the ones that rent at the McDonald's locations.
One big drawback of the Redbox system is that each Kiosk only has one monitor and so even if you have efficiently made your selection online, or even if you simply want to return a movie, you could end up sitting in line behind someone desperately seeking a movie that is not in the machine through the somewhat slow movie selection screens. This seems to happen without fail at the McDonald's locations and has never happened to me in a supermarket location.
For this reason, I highly recommend that anyone looking to rent from Redbox choose their selections online, and then, even if they have to go out of the way, choose to pick them up from a location in a supermarket rather than one at a McDonalds. I also recommend to drop your movies off at any location other than a McDonald's, so you similarly don't have to stand in line.
A particularly bad example of this happened yesterday. I arranged my rental online as usual. Because there were no other locations that had the movie I wanted to see, I had to pick up at a McDonald's location. When I arrived, there was on lady at the machine already as I pulled in the lot. There were no spots near the redbox except for a handicapped spot, so I had to park about 30 feet away. While, in the process of pulling in to the spot and walking back to the machine, a lady parked in the handicapped spot (she did not have a sticker) and got in line behind the lady who was already there. After about five minutes the first lady was done, and the second lady started her transaction. She rented 6 movies. She looked at me coyly and said "movie night". I found myself unable to share her smile. Partly because it was 95 degrees and she had cut in front of me by parking in an illegal manner, and was delaying my 20 second transaction with her 15 minutes of browsing which any intelligent person would have done online.
All in all, though, Redbox has stopped me from using Blockbuster, where a one night rental is still $6. Maybe they will try the kiosk idea too. They actually have enough locations where they could just make an automated station and probably cut down on full time personnel.
Redbox's system is not flawless, however. Once I returned two movies, and they charged me a full $25 for each of the two movies that I had returned. I called their customer support and they were unable to find the tracking numbers for the movie and would not issue a refund. I found this very frustrating. After all, I may have even been interested in buying the particular movies, but probably wouldn't have paid $25 for them, maybe $15, definitely $10. But I had paid $25 and they said I owned them, but I didn't have them. Major suckitude. Luckily that is the only time that has happened so far, and I have mostly been able to enjoy first run movies for an average price of probably about $2.50 each, and the average falls each time I get to watch one for $1 and they don't try to charge me full price.

These days, I guess the car rental companies are trying new things to try to attract customers. One of the things they are trying is offering non-traditional cars for rent. A few weeks back I was assigned a Chevy HHR, and one of my coworkers got a VW New Beetle (which he hated). This week I got a PT Cruiser. It was bad enough that I felt I had to comment on it. The first thing I noticed upon getting the car was that there was no way to open the rear trunk in order to get your bags in. There was no button inside to pop the trunk, and no button on the keychain either. There was not keyhole on the trunk that I could see. I gave up and put my bags in the back seat. I noted that getting on the highway was a chore for this vehicle, as it had very little pep even with the hammer down. As I drove to the hotel, I noticed that the information on the trip meter and the outside air temperature were in metric units. I was unable to locate any apparatus for changing this to standard units.
The next day I had to park in a parking garage. As I went to roll down the window, I discovered that there were no switches on the door for rolling down the window and no manual crank either. The controls were also not on the center console as they are on some cars. After a few seconds, I gave up and opened the door to retrieve my ticket. Later that day I discovered the window controls were up on the center of the dashboard, a very inconvenient and out of the ordinary place. As I went to park, I noted that the turning radius was terrible on this car and I had to make two attempts to get the car to turn into the spot. Also, the shaped of the front hood makes it impossible to tell where the edges of the car are in close quarters, which makes parking difficult. On the way home that night, I noted that the ride was terrible. After going over a bump, the car continued jittering for several seconds. Then when I went over some railroad tracks that were on a shallow corner, the car hopped sideways, which could have caused a loss of control, as it was totally unexpected.
Once, while fiddling with the trunk, I got it to open, and I looked at some articles on the internet, and discovered that you are supposed to pull up on the Chrysler logo. I tried this several times, but it was hit and miss. I found that even if I hit the unlock button twice in succession, it was about 50/50 whether pulling up on the Chrysler logo would open the trunk. The logo was kind of flimsy and I was afraid to pull on it very hard because it felt like it would break or fall off. Once I got the trunk open, I found that there was very little trunk space. There was also no privacy flap, which is a must in a wagon or SUV type of car where you can see the trunk contents through the back glass. I had to leave my bag in the trunk visible to the world in the parking garage after checking out of my hotel.
The keyfob has a panic button on it which is very easy to hit. I hit it once during the five days I had the car. It is located in a place where you are likely to hit it while removing the key from the ignition.
The gas mileage was surprisingly bad for a car that has so little pep.
There is really not much positive to say about the car. The styling is retro and harkens of a time before I was born, therefore it is not much interest to me. It may appeal to people who were born in the '50s. I think they were going for novel ideas on the convenience features which may work well for somebody who owns the car, as they would be used to the location of the features and it could be a subject of conversation with passengers. However, as a rental car, it just doesn't work. When you rent a car, you need the switches, trunk releases, buttons and other features to have expected locations and behavior, otherwise it is frustrating and possibly even dangerous. A rental car with no way to hide your bags is just asinine.

When it's less than or equal to the increase in the cost of living. If you, as a manager, value your employee exactly the same this year as you did last year, assume that he has learned nothing in the interim, and that he doesn't add any more to the productivity this year than he did last year, than he deserves a Cost of Living Adjustment. If you give him now cost of living adjustment, then that means that you feel that the employee contributes LESS to the company now than he did last year, that he has lost some of his ability to do his job and has forgotten how to do parts of his job.
An employee who has worked hard, learned and applied new skills and taken on new responsibility should feel slighted if he receives only a Cost of Living Adjustment and should feel slapped in the face if he is offered no increase in compensation whatsoever.
This year, I received a modest pay increase, only it wasn't a raise, as I have not received a pay increase in the last three years. During that time, the cost of living increased by about 8.6%. By contrast, my increase in salary was only 6.25%. So I am worth about 2.4% less now than I was 3 years ago.
What is truly insulting in my case is that this current increase is only half of the amount that I was promised to get 3 years ago, which I was supposed to get two weeks after my start date. I was told they could not give me the salary that I requested, but in two weeks they would increase it to what I was asking. A year later, when I inquired about the status of my year old raise, I was told that raises were coming soon. A year after that, I inquired again, and provided updated figures of what other people with my job description were getting and pointed out that I had been lied to several times by management, and also quoted a new figure which I thought I should receive, which was about 20% under what other people in my position are getting. Well, I received my increase in salary, and it raised me up about 25% of the way to the salary that I felt I could accept. As I pointed out, it is even less than the cost of living has gone up. However, I know that management likes to give out small increases like this, because then they can feel that their employees are greedy if they request another raise before another couple of years has gone by.
Yes, I know that some people received no increase in pay this year, others received reductions in pay, and some have no job. I don't ask them to feel sorry for me. I ask them to be even more outraged at what their employer or lack thereof is doing to them.
Time to read the classifieds.

Well, I had to see what all the fuss was about. I work with and, of course, go to Church with quite a few Christians, and most of them are pretty conservative. So I had heard all the buzz about how this movie was a horrible anti-Christian movie where they kill God at the end. Well, the Bible tells me that I am always supposed to study and prove out what other people say to see if it is true. So I watched The Golden Compass, and much to the probable horror of many Christians, I watched it with my family. I was prepared to shut the movie off at the part where they killed God, if it came to that. However, I had my suspicion that they wouldn't kill God, because no one really knows what God looks like, and you can't kill the author of life, because He doesn't have a physical existence in the Universe that He created. To think that someone on Earth could kill God is like thinking a character in a painting could kill the painter.
Anyway, the movie was good enough as movies go. It was pretty similar to the Narnia movies. This is where I think some Christians get up in arms. Before I knew that C.S. Lewis was a Christian, I was always amazed that Christians didn't get up in arms about his portrayal of Aslan as a Christ figure. Other than the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, most of the other books did not have such a vocal religious message, so I didn't put two and two together that C.S. Lewis was a Christian. It was only later that he was and that he had written other Christian works. So it seems that Christians don't get upset when one of their own writes a book containing a blatant Christ figure who is not actually Jesus, but if another author who professes to be an atheist and an agnostic writes a book about fighting a false religion, than Christians get all up in arms. It's sad to me as a Christian myself. In particular the fact that so many have not seen this movie and yet pass judgment on it blindly by listening to what other people have said. I mean, this is why people bash religions, because people blindly listen and parrot back what other people tell them without so much as verifying what was said. Don't they read their Bibles? It plainly says that you should always read the scriptures to see if what the pastor says is true.
Another funny thing. The author of The Golden Compass claims to be an atheist and an agnostic. Those are two contradictory ideologies. An Agnostic does not claim to have the answer to whether there is a God or not. An Atheist claims that he knows for sure that there is no God.
I actually liked aspects of The Golden Compass. For instance, the religion they fought had people high up in the organization who KNEW that the religion was false and actively fought scientific study of "dust" which would prove the religion false. Of course, this is a strawman as there is no way to prove any of Earth's religions false scientifically. However, there have been efforts by some religions, including by Christians at times, to thwart scientific progress. In my opinion, this is because their faith is weak and they fear that science may discover something which proves their religion wrong. In truth, science can not prove a religion wrong if it is right. If God created everything, then science is the study of that Creation, and everything they discover will only ever server to reveal more about God. As a Christian, I believe I have nothing to fear from Science. I have read Darwin, his works did not turn me away from my beliefs. It turns out that I share the same beliefs as Darwin. He was a Christian. He also was a 'naturalist', one who studies nature. He came up with some theories about how species evolved. In many books he wondered at the grandeur of God's Creation. He never proved there was no God.
In short, this is a pretty good movie for those who, like me, don't like religion, and is not a threat to those who, like me, are Christians. The message is not anti-Christian, but anti-religion. I don't like religion either. Neither did Jesus. Religion is all about worshiping the practices of worshiping God, instead of just worshiping God. Religion says that by following certain rules and guidelines, you can obtain heaven. Religion is all about bondage to a set of rules. Jesus came to break those bonds and set us free. Not to enslave us to another set of rules.
By all means, see the movie. Don't listen to the people who haven't seen it.

I want to make you aware of a huge problem with all of the major wireless providers. They all allow shady third party billers to claim charges against wireless customers, pass the charges through to the customer with no authorization and no research into whether the charge is legitimate, and then claim that they are unable to reverse the charges which THEY placed on the bill.

In my specific situation, my stepson had his phone stolen. When we received a replacement phone, he immediately started receiving text messages which we did not sign up for. Presumably the thief signed up for these programs. Even though Alltel is fully aware that our phone was stolen, and these charges mysteriously showed up on my bill on the very day that the new phone was activated (although I did not even give the phone to my son that day), they refused to reverse the charges and told me I had to call the original company which billed these charges. Why am I guilty until proven innocent? Why do I have to call a company with which I have never done business in order to receive a refund for charges which I never authorized? Nevertheless, I did as directed, and they said that it may be up to 12 weeks to receive my reimbursement, if their accounting department approves it. How come I have to pay my bill this month, but they have up to 12 weeks to reimburse me, if they choose to do so at all? Alltel says they will cut me off and charge me $200 per line cutoff fee if I do not pay these unauthorized charges. In my case, I know my stepson could not have signed up for these, because the phone was stolen and we had no phone with which to make these charges. In other cases, these companies apparently send unsolicited text messages, mostly to kids, because they know kids always respond to text messages, and if they receive a response, they automatically sign the phone up for charges ranging from $5.99 a week up to $9.99. Most of the time, the people with the phone are under 18, so are technically under no obligation to pay, but the phone companies and the shady companies who deceitfully send these text messages claim that the children act as their parents' representative, so the parent is responsible for the charge. This is not a case where a person can simply change service providers as EVERY SINGLE WIRELESS PROVIDER promotes this scam. They are all acting anti-competitively and in collusion to steal money from consumers. The wireless companies get to keep around 35% of these fraudulent charges, so they have no desire to help end the problem.

We need legislation to force Wireless providers to block these companies from billing their customers. These third party companies all provide a service which no one would legitimately sign up for for the price which they charge. People responding to their text messages have no opportunity to review pricing or know what they are signing up for simply by replying to a text message. Most of the people responding to the text message are not of a legal age to be able to be held to a contract.

I am completely fed up with the wireless companies all doing business with these third party deceivers and then claiming no responsibility, no ability to reverse charges, etc. I am writing my state representatives, the Better Business Bureau, the Attorney General, the Federal Trade Commission, my lawyer, the Corporation Commission, and anyone else I can think of, because these companies are stealing from people.

It was my great displeasure to have to travel on the day after the foiled terrorist plot on August 10th, 2006. Security was, of course, heightened. It may seem odd to have heightened security when the plot was, in fact, foiled. But sure enough, they were not allowing liquids of any kind on the plane. They were allowing prescription medications, though. Obviously, a terrorist is not able to obtain a prescription for some medication, and then empty it out and fill it with some sort of explosive.
The most major annoyance was that no one was recommending to you at checkin that you should probably check your carry-on if it contains any shampoo, toothpaste, cologne, deodorant or anything like that. But really, who travels with that stuff anyway? Everybody just buys an entirely new toiletry set every time they travel right? Well, from now on they do. Once you get to security, you have to throw all that stuff away, even the $100 bottle of perfume. Just try to get out of line and go back and check your bag now. They'll shoot you where you stand. So you have no notice that they are going to make you throw away all of your toiletries until you are in the security line.
Then, the second annoyance. After they have forced you to throw away all of your liquids, they then ALSO refuse to allow you to take any liquids on the plane. So if you have a 6AM flight and decided to buy some toothpaste in the terminal to brush your teeth, you get to throw away the remainder of your toothpaste. If you buy some Orange Juice, you have to drink it before you get on the plane. This is AFTER security. Instead of forcing you to throw away everything you buy at the airport stores, why don't they just tell the airport stores not to sell explosives?
Finally, on the plane, I had to sit next to a guy who had his own aluminum coffee mug, with coffee inside it. Nice job, security. Give yourselves a pat on the back.

I've seen the movies where kids play "mailbox baseball"; driving down residential streets smashing up mailboxes with a baseball bat. I always thought that was a irresponsible, stupid thing to do. I mean, for one, it is a federal offense to interfere with the delivery of the mail. For another, it means that several people are going to have to get a new mailbox, even though they shouldn't have to, and even though they may not be able to afford to.
I thought that I would be immune to this, since I have a brick mailbox. But alas, I suffered from some derivative of mailbox baseball. During the night hours, what would almost certainly have to be several people, knocked over my brick mailbox. It would have been no easy feat, as it is about four feet tall, and 2.5 feet square. Someone would have had to both knock it loose from it's mortar, and then lift it up before pushing it back over. It obviously wasn't hit by a car, as the mailbox was knocked back toward my house, not along the street in either direction.
I can't understand the mentality that considers this "harmless pranking", as it quite obviously does harm to my budget, which is thin already, and also causes me unneeded stress with my family, and leaves me feeling violated and vulnerable.
Our whole society has a problem wherein the law abiding have to pay the cost for both upholding the law, and for the consequences if the law is not upheld. I feel it is unfair that I should have to pay for someone else's damage to my property. Why don't we just charge all the criminals that have been caught doing crimes like this, and pay for their damage out of that money?
We should make criminals pay for their own room and board in prison, pay for the legal system that brought them to justice, and recompense all the people that they hurt. Sure, it seems harsh, but of course, criminals always have the option of not committing crimes. It's not like anyone ever steals to survive anymore. The reason people steal these days is because they want stuff that they can't have unless they are willing to work for it.
I wish I could afford a camera system at my house. It seems like every couple of months, somebody vandalizes my house. If I could catch them on video, maybe I could get them thrown in prison. Seems harsh, but once again, nobody forced them to vandalize my house.

My father has been charged with "unlawful taking of a water fowl". He has confessed to accidentally killing a Canada Goose with a pellet gun.This is not the first time he has shot at the geese. He shoots at them when they chase his cats, chase his grandchildren, eat all the birdfood out of his birdfeeders, and congregate on his driveway, refusing to budge to allow him to go to work. This is the first time he has ever actually hit one, and unfortunately, it died. Naturally, for this first ever occurence, a treehugger (driving a big american pickup truck) was there to witness and to accost my father. My father was frightened by the man's behaviour, and it was a race to see who would call the police first. The police came, and my father confessed. Not having any idea what to charge him with, they eventually left. The next day, after constant badgering from the "good samaritan", they finally were able to come up with the charge of "unlawful taking of a water fowl". They asked my father if he would come down to the station and surrender his pellet gun, and $250 bond, or if they should send a squad car for him. My father said he would drive himself, to save the taxpayers some money on the squad car. And he did, and he surrendered his pellet gun, and paid $250. Now he has a court date at the end of March, and may face additional charges up to $5000, and up to a year in prison. This is an absurd punishment for a man who has spent his life bettering humanity and is now living on a fixed retirement income. My father was one of the brilliant engineers who helped Bell Laboratories to be a success. He dedicated 35 years of his life to the company, which under Lucent's horrible management, suffocated and was all but destroyed. My father has worked on premature baby respirators, cost effective home alarm systems, voice recognition technologies, and a host of other projects to benefit humanity, and now, at the behest of one environmentalist nutcake, society wants to throw him in prison. The self procalimed environmentalist admits that he wants the court to "nail his butt". he says he saw someone deliberately swerve to hit a canada goose once and he swore to himself that the next time he saw something like that, he would do something about it. Well, my father is not the one who swerved to hit a goose. Why should he be prosecuted at the whim of this nut job because of something someone else did? The nut job also admitted that he was a reformed hunter. Now it becomes clear that the man has issues with his own pat "sins" and rather than dealing with them, he is going to attempt to punish my father for his own sin. The man obviously has some emotional issues.
Ironically, my father was charged with a crime which he did not commit. He did not unlawfully take a waterfowl. The environmentalist did. The environmentalist took the bird and buried it. HE is the one guilty of unlawfully taking a waterfowl.
Anyone in the northern part of the United States is aware of the problem with Canada Geese. The geese cause airplane crashes, automobile crashes, bite children and pets, and leave their staining and corrosive poop all over pavement, roofs and anything left outdoor. It is legal in many states to destroy the eggs of Canada Geese. Why? Because it is the migratory geese which are considered endangered. Obviously if they are laying egges, they are not migratory, but resident. The law has seen the light of day and realized that non-migratory Canada Geese are a huge problem. Some states even have hunting seasons for Canada Geese. Was the one that my father shot a migratory bird? Evidently not, as it was in Illinois in the middle of winter. However, even though Illinois will allow you to destroy eggs, you may not actually kill one of the adults. The EPA has estimated that there are now more than 255,000 migratory Canada Geese, twice the number there were in 1972. However, there are literally millions of non-migratory nuisance geese. On the roads of Illinois, hundreds are killed every day. Yet none of those people are thrown in jail, or even charged with a crime.
I feel that my father is being unfairly targeted by a man with issues dealing with his own past, and unfortunately, the justice system is actually paying attention to the man.

It used to be an every 6 month chore to reinstall windows back in the old Windows NT 3.51 and Windows 95 days. But after working with Windows 4.0 and 2000 and XP for the last few years, I had thought reinstalling Windows was a thing of the past. But not so! The day before yesterday, while working happily on my computer, I noticed Windows Update wanted to install some things. So I let it. BIG mistake. HUGE. After rebooting and logging back in, Windows Explorer throws an error. Then Dr. Watson throws an error. Every icon I doubleclick or right click throws a Windows Explorer error and a Dr. Watson error. Then I have to kill both instances of Dr. Watson before I can even get focus back. After that, the cycle just repeats itself. And of course, Clicking the Start Menu does the same thing. I try several different user profiles to see if the problem is only with mine. It's not.
I boot into safe mode and the same problem happens, but luckily after the first error, I am able to click some of my other icons. I attempt to run adaware, but after 25 minutes of scanning, (and finding about 83 things), it throws an error and dies. I try rebooting several times. Annoyingly, I am unable to log off in safe mode, so I have to keep physically powering off.
At one point, after allowing my computer to send the results of an error to Microsoft, I get a message back from Microsoft saying that the error is caused by LAME MP3 codec. Well, I decide to go ahead and uninstall the program that uses that, just in case. Unfortunately, it will not uninstallin safe mode, and I can not get to the uninstall window in normal mode.
I run the windows file checker utility to make sure the original versions of all windows executables are in place. It exits without saying anything, which I don't know if that is normal or not. But it sure didn't fix anything, as the problem still persists.
I download and reinstall XP service Pack 2. It doesn't immediately solve my problem of not being able to shut down cleanly when in safe mode. But when booting back up in normal mode, the windows explorer problem appears to be fixed. The computer works fine all day.
Then this morning I wake up to find that Windows Update has downloaded some more files to my computer and automatically rebooted. Once again, I get the windows explorer and Dr. Watson errors on everything I touch. One more time, I will try reinstalling SP2. Plus I am disabling Windows update. The exploits from the script kiddies cause much less damage and stress than the Windows Update is causing me.
If SP2 doesn't work this time, I guess it is time to reinstall Windows.

I got another amusing job solicitation the other day. It was for a medium length (6 month) contract in Connecticut. It looked like something I could do, so I responded that I was interested. They sent me a contract to sign prior to being presented to the company. When I looked at the contract, it stated that I would be an employee of the company, and that I would be responsible for all travel, relocating and living expenses. Now that is just completely unreasonable. Can a company really expect someone to up and move their family every 6 months at the whim of the company? Or since it is a short term assignment, does the company expect it's employees to eat $45,000 a year in travel expenses? Sure it's all tax deductible, since it is a business expense and is required in order to maintain employment. But tax deductible is not substitute for money in the wallet.
The other funny thing was that about half of the document was related to H1B status. I'm a citizen. I can work here. That's about all you need to know. But there were all these other questions about H1 status and whether I'd be willing to transfer my H1B to this company and so forth. My guess is that I will never hear from this company again, because they are only interested in hiring H1Bs. I am thinking that they are looking for H1Bs because H1Bs are more willing and able to relocate since many times they have no family ties here. As such, the H1Bs would be more willing to take a small apartment for 6 months at a time in a new locale. Also, they can afford to have tens of thousands of dollars shaved off of their wages for company expenses, since they are not trying to raise a family.
To a certain extent, they seem to meet the letter of the law by offering a competitive wage to H1b and citizen alike. However, the fact that they make the employee pay the travel expenses puts the job below the competitive wage, and thus it is illegal to give that job to an H1b. Also, if a citizen and an H1b are in competition for the same job, I believe it would be illegal to offer the job to the H1B unless he had specific jobs skills which were required by the job and that the citizen did not have. And then finally, I have to wonder how a company can actually offer jobs to H1Bs that are already here anyway. My understanding is that you can only hire an H1B if you offered a competitive salary and got no takers from a citizen. Only then could you offer the job to an H1B already here or a potential one in another country. However, many companies seem to be skirting the whole concept of offering the job to the citizens first. I find this to be an illegal method of trying to save money by hiring offshore labor when there is labor here in the United States willing to work if given the opportunity.
Well, anyway, as I said, I doubt I will hear from that company again, as I am not an H1B, and so they probably view me as being too expensive. (But how can that be, since H1Bs are paid the same competitive wage as the rest of us? Ha!)
Luckily, the market continues to improve and it will be only a matter of time before I can laugh at the two companies that have so far treated me in a way most unappreciative of my years of experience.

I recently received a job offer from a local company. The offer itself was somewhat low on salary for the experience required. In addition, the job offered no paid holidays or vacation. Of course, they would still require you to take certain holidays off, they just wouldn't pay for them. The job was also somewhat risky, as the company basically did projects for outside companies, and if they didn't get a contract for a few weeks, they would let you go. Essentially, you were a W2 contractor for this company. In fact, if I had taken the job, I would have been termed a contract employee. However, in an effort to play both sides of the fence, despite all the lack of paid time off, and the fact that you would get laid off if there was no work, they still also termed their contract employees as exempt so that they wouldn't have to pay them overtime.
Well, since they offered no paid time off, I had to figure out how much that was going to cost me each year. They kept telling me to look at the "total package". However, they should have told me to just look at the base salary, because the total package involved me having to subtract from that. The total compensation they were offering was a few thousand more than I make at my present job. However, I stand to lose probably five or six thousand if I leave my present job, due to quarterly bonuses, 401k matching, profit sharing, Employee Stock Purchase program and other stuff. So in effect, the new company was asking me to make a move for a decrease in pay, at least for the first year.
While doing some research on salaries in the area, I found that the amount they were offering was about $10,000 below the average for the position. So they were offering below market wages AND not paying any time off.
So, naturally, I could not accept their offer. Instead, I made a counter offer. I asked for a compromise between what I was asking, which was industry average (despite thinking of myself as above average. See how accomodating I am?) and the amount they offered. I also asked that they pay for holidays and three weeks vacation. I told them that if it was a problem to give a new hire three weeks paid vacation, I would settle for two weeks. I also asked for a modest starting bonus to cover the losses I would suffer from leaving the old job.
Apparently, they were very upset at this counter offer, and I will no longer be considered for positions at this company. They rescinded the offer and gave the job to someone else. (Actually, no one else in this region has the combination of skills they were looking for, so I guess they had to settle for someone who can't do the job as effectively as me).
So when did it become a no-no to negotiate with a prospective employer? I realize this isn't the dot com era, but the economy is getting better, I am getting several notices a week from headhunters seeking to see if I am available. Another good question is, if you can't negotiate at hire time, when do you negotiate? Once a company has you, it is almost impossible to negotiate a new salary. If you get a raise, it will be only a few thousand. Just as in the '90s, the only way to get a significant raise is to go to a new company. Well, anyway, I feel that I should be allowed to negotiate with a company that pays far less than industry average, offers no paid time off, and expects you to take the risk of losing your job if they can't find a contract. I guess they figure they can find some suckers in the local market that don't have a job and would be willing to take anything just to work. That kind of sucks, because it brings down the average salaries for those of us who are more experienced and can actually do the job.