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I Would LOVE to RTFM

So I’m working on a project for my job job (I’m not quite able to support a family on blogging–yet), and have been wrestling with a biggish enterprise software package.  As you’d expect, there’s quite a bit of convolution to it–things like hundreds of database tables with nondescript names like T001, T0043, H3222, etc.  (Was this thing designed to run on AS400?)  It’s actually not that big of a deal.  A part of me secretly enjoys stuff like that.  It’s like a giant sudoku, except instead of 1-9 the numbers go 1-100.  And no matter how much of the puzzle you solve, there’s still more to work on.  That means no boredom, provided you like puzzles.

Most packages of this size were designed and coded up long long ago in a galaxy far far away.  Any growth, expansion, or enhancements they’ve undergone were probably done piecemeal with who knows who taking over and steering the thing onto the latest technology at each fork in the road.  That’s bound to happen to any project this size I guess.  It’s sort of like what you’d expect to happen to a person who was reasonably good looking in their youth and, as they aged, had countless plastic surgeries performed by different doctors of varying abilities.  The individual pieces may be really nice, but put them together and you have an odd colored face mess.

Usually these type products involve a lot of RTFM.

Don’t get me wrong…I like to RTFM.  My willingness to RTFM means I’ll probably never be out of a job for long unless I want to be.  You could say I make a living Ring-TFM.  But please, large software corporations who charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for your products, make the manuals readily available.

One of the manuals I was reading this morning referred to another manual–the “Installation and Tuning Guide”.  Like any good manual reader working for a company that’s shelled out some bucks for this pricey behemoth, I used the login for our company (they don’t give the info to just any old body), and searched for this manual on their site.  No dice.  So I searched the support base to see if anyone else had trouble finding it.  That didn’t work either.  I did find two other manuals–one which whose title led me to believe it was relevant but wasn’t, and the other to the last version of the same product.

So I asked my boss if they’d provided a DVD, pack of CDs, or even physical books when we bought the product.  Nope.  But he was able to find the manual I needed nonetheless.  Guess where…

Google.

Freaking Google found it, even though their own search engine on their own site that is available only to customers who paid for support couldn’t.  Now, not only am I irritated that it couldn’t be found on their site, I also feel like an idiot for not trying Google FIRST.

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CoWorking in Knoxville. Why Not?

Although I didn’t get any work done, this was one of the most productive afternoons I’ve had in a long time. Today I met up with some fine folks to discuss the idea of CoworkingKnoxville. Of course, as the name implies, the general idea is that we actually will get some work done eventually. But today turned into more of a discussion of ideas centered around coworking and its possibilities in this area. For more information on coworking, a great place to start is Alex’s site, but the general idea is a shared space where people with different skill sets and backgrounds can gather to collaborate (or not) on ideas using shared resources, making everyone’s work time more productive and efficient.

The group of five who met today all came from different backgrounds, but without a doubt there is a common thread running through the collective consciousness. Although it’s an idea that all of us have in some abstract form in our minds (ok, it’s pretty firm for Alex), it’s still a little hard for me to get my own mind completely wrapped around at this point. But to me, that shared idea is “why not?”

Why can’t a guy who works for a large corporation while remaining a blogging powerhouse out of his home office share workspace with a freelance marketing research consultant recently transplanted from LA? And why shouldn’t they have access to another guy who works a job locally but is tied into the local web development community? And wouldn’t it benefit everyone to sit next to an altrupreneur who is in Knoxville by way of San Francisco and may be here for a month or a year? Why can’t all of these people share internet access, and a conference room, and a big whiteboard?

Why can’t this movement grow to the point that people are actually attracted to come here to be a part of it? Why can’t we make Knoxville a place people flock to looking for this exact thing? After all, Knoxville is loaded with talented people and the cost of living is negligible compared to the West Coast.

Why can’t we make this happen? I think we can.

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It’s The Hard Knock Life? For Us?

Jigga What?“In my business, we like to say we’re from the hood. We’re not in the hood. By no means. Not even close.”

-Jay Z in “Water For Life”

I bet I catch some flack over this one, but it has to be said…

Over the last few weeks I’ve read several posts around the blogosphere about how tough times are financially right now. Gas prices are soaring, and…people are still complaining about traffic, so someone’s driving. The stock market is sort of…just steady. And I guess if you’re basing your assessment of your financial situation on how well your stock portfolio is doing, that’s not all bad. Interest rates are…near an all time low, though artificially. Unemployment is…5.1% (low). And the obesity rate of our country is reaching a level of crisis, so I guess there aren’t that many people going hungry.

Is this as bad as the Bush administration could screw things up? Is this all they’ve got?

Believe me, I’m a little frustrated too that times are so tough here in the land of milk and honey that we can only get milk and honey a few days a week. The other days we’re stuck with choosing either milk or honey.

Jigga's Problems

It’s gotten to the point that even the Jigga Man has problems. Based on what I’ve heard and the evidence presented in the graph above, he has at least 99 problems.

Then again, I don’t see any basic needs of survival listed as any of his problems either.

Seriously, I know there are people out there who are struggling just to get by. I know that. But what does “get by” entail here?  And how many bloggers are rummaging through virtual dumpsters to get a virtual meal via their high speed internet connections?

What are we actually struggling for? Bandwidth?

Are there problems? Hell yeah! Should we be concerned? Of course. But let’s keep things in perspective here. Having to sacrifice by doing things like cutting back to basic cable, making coffee at home and carrying a thermos, carpooling to work (with air conditioning), or not going to Disney this year are not the end of the world.

You hear it all the time, but it’s true. Go to some other country where people are really poor, and you’ll come back thankful for all of the luxuries the poorest of us enjoy here. When you see firsthand that “average” or “struggling” here is better than “wealthy” in many places, your perspective is changed forever.

It’s not just me, either. My grandfather, who grew up dirt poor during The Depression (capital letters, because that was for real) had this to say in his journal about his travels to New Guinea during World War II:

The only identity of men or women in their dress was their breast. I saw women with breast that hung down to their belt line. The men used pits to trap hogs and they would catch small pigs in them. I have seen women feeding babies and pigs also. They would feed the pigs until they could eat solid food or other things. They sure had a hard way of survival. I always thought I was poor and brought up the hard way. The only comparison I had up to that time was with people doing better than we were. When I saw a different comparison, I suddenly discovered that I had been rich all along and didn’t know it.

Not trying to trivialize anyone’s problems here, but please, let’s keep some perspective.  It’s not as though our women are breast feeding piglets to the point that they can eat solid foods so that we’ll one day (hopefully) be able to trap them, slaughter them, and have a meal.

By the way, if you are interested in helping someone who is trying to survive day to day have clean drinking water, please consider helping at PlayPumps.org.  You can also learn more about Jay Z’s travels to Africa to document their water issues at MTV.com.

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My Only Remodeling Tip

Light blogging (and other stuff) for the last few weeks because I’ve been pouring a lot of time and energy into remodeling my old place (yes that place).  I’ve learned a lot during this process, not only how to do a lot of stuff I didn’t know before, but also some tricks and lessons.  I’ve also learned that I hate doing remodel projects.  I’m not a carpenter (or plumber, or electrician) and I don’t want to be.  I have a ton of respect for people who are good at these things, but that’s just not me.  So what tip could someone who sucks at handy work give you?  It’s pretty simple really:

The amount of time you have left on a project is directly proportional to the amount of money you’ve spent at your most recent trip to Lowe’s.

To clarify, your third trip of the day because the water to the entire complex is off and you need a tool to complete the job so you can turn it back on doesn’t count.  I’m talking about the trip you made based on the list you made of things left to complete.

For example, on my first trip to Lowe’s when starting the project I spent a lot of money on tile and wood flooring.  My subsequent trips were less expensive, but the cost went back up when the real estate agent said to replace everything in the kitchen and baths.  So I was back to spending a lot of money (again) on appliances and vanity tops.  In general, I spent less money on each trip.

Yesterday I had to buy a set of masonry bits and some new light switches–around $16.

Today I bought 5 magnets for cabinet doors and a sponge–just over $6.

Tomorrow I’m taking some stuff back and not buying anything.  That’s right.  They are going to give me money.

That means I’m finished!

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Blogging Yourself To Death

An NYT article about the dangers of blogging…

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

But don’t these types of things happen to workaholics in any field?  I get the fact that if you fall behind one time with a big time blog someone else will be there to fill in the gap you left, and I suppose that’s stressful (for some people), but these people are the .0001%.  Most bloggers are doing it just for fun anyway.  The few pennies we get on AdSense here and there is more of a justification validation that we’re actually “working” while we do this than anything.  Of course, some of us find a way to turn our blogs into a one-stop-shop for aircraft sales.  Then we’re talking about some serious money stupidity.

I am a little worried about someone who posts as feverishly as this guy.

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A Great Place to Work?

As a former employee, I was interested in the article the KNS ran today about Denso Manufacturing Tennessee’s expansion. It was about what I would expect from a local paper writing about a local company expanding–lots of talk about new jobs, complimentary remarks about the people of the region, and a few standard corporate-type comments from top management–nothing really remarkable or controversial. The comments posted by readers, however, are very interesting. Some comments came from employees and former employees who actually know what it’s like to work there, while others commented only on what they’ve heard.

So what’s it really like to work there? Well…

Decision--To Denso or Not to DensoThe comments from current and former employees are not that far off. But to be fair, I suspect Denso is not much different than any other large corporations in many respects. I’d say that it’s better in some ways and worse in others, but all-in-all the good and bad average out for most of their employees. Sure, there are people there who think it’s really bad, but it always seemed to me that the real reason they don’t like their jobs is that they feel stuck there. Some probably feel stuck because they have been dead ended in their career by the powers that be and can’t move up, while others feel stuck in that they don’t have the skills (or at least don’t think they had the skills) to move out. Others may not even realize that they are stuck by their own comfort and fear of change. I’m sure some feel stuck for a combination of these reasons.

There are people who love working at Denso, and they have their reasons as well. It’s been a very stable company traditionally, and for someone who is worried about layoffs or job shortages it’s a very compelling reason for working there. In my mind, that sort of falls into the fear (real or imagined) that they don’t have the skill set to go elsewhere. But hey, if you’re happy I’m happy, right? There are others who are basically coasting, but I think that’s probably common at most big companies as well.

For me, the good outweighed the bad for most of the time I was there. Were there things I didn’t like? Most definitely. For instance, you can forget about anything like this ever happening there. They (whoever “they” are) would never allow it. The performance evaluation system is a mirage for the most part, and I doubt that will ever change. But I really enjoyed the work I was doing, and I hated leaving my co-workers. Loving what you do and liking the people you spend your days with is not something you can find just anywhere, and it kept me around for a long time. However, I was ultimately placed in a situation that was going to make my relationship with the company much more lopsided than I was comfortable with. I’m not one to stay around and complain, especially knowing that change, if it does come, is slow for Denso. I’m no victim either, and besides, I have confidence in my skills. The only immediate way to resolve the problem was with compensation. How did that discussion go? Well, I’m a former employee. 🙂

I always found it a little ironic that Denso spends a great amount of resources trying to figure out how to recruit engineers out of college but doesn’t seem to find much value in retention of engineers and technical staff. HR held regular meetings with engineers on how to recruit from colleges, and they usually ended in engineers expressing that exact sentiment. It may be that Denso has a reputation on campuses as the type of company that isn’t attractive to today’s college students. Is that reputation based on what they hear from Denso employees and on the web? Does it come from fellow students who do co-ops at Denso? I can’t say for sure.

I don’t know the numbers or stats, but it seems like replacing good people would be much more expensive than retaining them. However, they make billions, and I make not-billions, so who am I to second guess them? Maybe they’ve calculated all the factors and decided that paying competitive salaries for years of experience would put them in a situation where no one would ever leave. Would zero turnover be as bad as high turnover? Dunno.

So the point of this post–is Denso a great place to work? I guess it depends on what you want from a job. It was great for me for a long time. As I said before, I enjoyed the work I did at Denso and the people I worked with, although I must say there were very few jobs or departments there I would have enjoyed as much as I enjoyed mine. Jobs that provide opportunities to develop skills that are universally marketable are somewhat limited there. If stability is a major factor for you, then by all means it is a great place to work. As with almost everything else, you’ll probably have to compromise a few things that you’d like to have in exchange for this stability, but it’s worth it for a lot of people.

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Mongolian Spots and CPS

I just got a phone call from a friend who was upset to the verge of tears. She’d had Child Protective Services called on her by the daycare that she’s used for more than three years for her first child, and most recently for her six week old baby. Why did they call CPS? Because they mistook the Mongolian spots on her baby’s back for bruises.

I’m not expecting everyone who reads this to know what Mongolian spots are, so here’s a quick explanation. They are birthmarks that occur on almost every baby of East Asian decent and are common in other races as well. They look a lot like bruises, as the photo above demonstrates. (More on Mongolian spots at Wikipedia).

Mongolian spotBut Mongolian spots aren’t bruises. And while I’m pretty sure that the average person who hasn’t seen them before doesn’t know what they are, I would definitely expect the director of a child care facility to know exactly what they are, especially when this facility exists in a THE family fitness center (you can probably guess the one) that presumably services a variety of members from different ethnic backgrounds.

How embarrassing for her, not only to have CPS called on her because of someone else’s inexcusable ignorance at their job, but also because she is an instructor at this facility and was leaving her children with her co-workers while she taught her class.

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Spring Cleaning My Blog

I made a promise a couple of weeks ago that I’d be making some changes here. For better or worse, I set out to do just that last night. I committed to working through Earth Hour at least, and ended up going to bed early this morning.

In lieu of turning out the lights for an hour last night, I decided to try to conserve energy in a different way. I set out to make my beloved readers have an easier time with my site by changing the theme and upgrading to WordPress 2.5 (post coming on that alone) to make things easier for myself. I think I’ve reduced my bandwidth footprint as well–eliminating a crap ton of useless images and junk.

Spring cleaning for my blog.

Here’s what I was able to do in a few hours: elimination of large header image, elimination of background images that I think caused issues on some browsers, and elimination of post separator images. These should not only improve load times, but also make things a little better visually.

Other visual changes were to increase the width and text size of the main content area, addition of a tag cloud, and enlarging and moving the subscription button to the header. Hopefully this will boost readership too, which is a bonus for me.

If I could just find a way to keep Hillary’s mug off of my site through the adsense in the sidebar without blocking all Newsmax ads, things would be much improved visually.

Let me know if you’re having any problems loading the site. I’m sure hubonst will have something to say about it.

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Firefox 2.0.0.13 and WordPress

Is anyone else having an issue viewing their WordPress dashboard in Firefox 2.0.0.13? My blogs themselves look ok, but the dashboard is wack. No? Just me?

That may be the last time I take a brand new upgrade.

***UPDATE***

“Wack”= CSS doesn’t seem to be working at all, but only on the WP Dashboard