More crap from stupid recruiters

OK, so twice now I get emails for the exact same position, the first time from the same domain, thus the same company, and the next time from two different gmail addresses. In the later case the phone number for both of those emails is the same! Why in the world would you send the same job from the same person but use another email address?!? How exactly does that work?

So I called up the dude and he said that he sent it with another gmail address because the first one was returned undelivered. It was not returned undelivered - I know. I run my own email server and I have my own hand crafted spam filters. When you email me I send it back to you can tell you to "click here to register and your email will go through" - sorta like a captcha. But idiots like this don't bother reading the message thoroughly - not a good sign that they do anything thoroughly!

So then I asked him to read me that undelivered message in an attempt to get him to actually read the message that is returned. If they do read it usually they are (rightfully) embarrassed that they didn't bother to read it in the first place. So what does this guy start doing? He starts reading the job he's try to push off on me (it's in Milwakee so I'd never take it anyway). I correct him and say "No, I mean read the undelivered message you claim you received". And then the dude hung up on me!

Ok so:

1. Sends multiple copies of the same job description using different email addresses as if that somehow makes it better.
2. Is using gmail addresses - how unprofessional!
3. Hangs up on potential clients!
4. Oh, just saw this - uses Bcc to spam probably a dozen or so candidates. Using Bcc hides the "cc" list and instead is displayed as "undisclosed-recipients" by some email clients. The other day I got one from somebody who used Cc instead of Bcc so I replied all and told all of the people he was spamming that he's a crappy recruiter. Good work there dude!

And they wonder why I blacklist them and block their numbers...

What are the essential duties for a technical recruiter?

July 10, 2017 9:39 AM

I think it's odd that most recruiters do not seem to know what they essential duties are. Just looking at it quickly one would think that a recruiter's job is to find qualified candidates. In the field of computers this often means looking at buzzwords and matching them up. But it's more than buzzword matching (Jobscan can do that for you). It's really knowing the technologies behind the buzzwords to know that, for example, Jenkins is essentially the same as Electric Commander whereas MySQL is not really at all like MongoDB though they do share the characteristic of both being databases, one uses SQL and the other is No SQL.

I get way too many "offers" by recruiters - typically Indian recruiters - for positions that I would have thought I was not qualified for. For example, the client will say that 3+ years experience with AWS is required and I do not have any AWS experience yet (I've played around with it at home and have taken some online courses but it's clear the client wants 3+ years of actual experience not classroom experience). But the recruiter will contact me nonetheless. Or a recruiter will approach me for a Salesforce developer job. The word Salesforce appeared on my resume once. I helped the Salesforce team integrate into JIRA via a plugin. I configured the plugin and verified that Salesforce was talking to JIRA. I did absolutely nothing in Salesforce itself. I would think that a Salesforce developer would know Salesforce in depth. This is a waste of my time and their time and really a waste of the client's time.

I realize that the recruiter may be thinking "Hey, I'm not sure that this particular guy is totally qualified but I do see Salesforce on his resume. I'll reach out to him and ask questions". Then I would think his email, rather than being just a form email, would be something like this:

Hi, my name is <name>. I saw your resume says you've had some Salesforce exposure but it's not clear to me how much experience you actually have. I have a Salesforce developer position described below. Can you tell me if you have enough experience and if you are comfortable with the job requirements?...

But they don't do that.

I have toyed with the idea of faking experience so as to compel the recruiter to get me an interview and then go in there and simply say "I don't know any of that stuff and I don't know why Mr. Recruiter said I did" just to discredit the recruiter to show their clients that this particular recruiter is not properly screening (or screening at all for that matter). Something needs to be done, IMHO!

Case in point: Working with one Arvind Kumar of Araucaria Technologies, he approached me for an AWS Cloud Engineer position that has the following:

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of progressive experience with large, complex information systems
• 3+ years of experience provisioning, operating, and managing AWS 3+ environments
• Vast experience with transitioning physical plant to AWS environments
• Must have strong LAMP & Tomcat Java experience.
• Experience in automation and testing via scripting/programming.
• Strong experience with Ansible. Experience with SVN and Github (preferred)
• B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent (preferred)

Yet nowhere on my resume would you find 3+ years of AWS experience, nor transitioning physical plant to AWS environment. Have no experience with Ansible, nor SVN or Github. This is not to say I couldn't excel at these technologies as I pick up things quickly. And I do have experience with things like Clearcase, Perforce and git (just not Github or SVN). And I have taken some AWS courses but I would not claim to have 3+ years of experience or even 1 year of experience because my experience is at home, not at a client's site in a production situation.

As a result, why would anybody trust Arvind's word at all? Why would anybody work with Arvind or other recruiters at Araucaria Technologies knowing that their quality control is very sub par?

Recently I found this Tech Recruiter job on DICE. Some of the essential duties include:

• Identify the client's business and cultural nuances, as well as define the position, its functions, challenges selling points, and viability. Uncover the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities of the ideal candidate.
• Coordinate with Program Managers and Account Managers to ensure quality delivery to client's requisitions. Work with sales team on account development and account management.
• Actively market qualified candidates to new and existing clients. Utilize sales techniques to expand business through research and prospecting and turning client inquiries into job requisitions.
• Assist with the design of a sourcing strategy to uncover both passive and active candidates through existing and new sources in order to maintain an effective pool of candidates. Utilize electronic process in recruiting and placement to maximize efficiency and time saving.
• Target the most qualified candidates and screen resumes to identify potential matches.
• Present opportunity to candidate and conduct in-depth interview to determine suitability and interest of candidate. Identify, evaluate, and summarize relevant technical experience, knowledge, hard and soft skills, and abilities in relation to job requirements.
• Submit qualified candidates and respond to client concerns.

So as you can see recruiters should be qualifying people before emailing candidate who incompetent recruiters such as Arvind obviously have not qualified.

Dealing with Recruiters

April 24, 2017 9:29 PM

Sorry, I guess I need to vent. One of my biggest complaints as of late is so
called "professionalism". You know, you call up some support group and you're
trying to get things straightened out, frustrated from being on hold for 20-30
minutes navigating the voice mail call menus (there are apps to assist for that
so this is not just me!), trying to fix a problem that was basically caused
because company A fucked up and you're now fixing their problem. You utter
something like "Fuck you mean I need to wait for 4-6 weeks for this to be fixed!!!"
and they retort with something like "Sir, please! Be professional". You know what
asshole! Being professional is about actions not words. Your actions were
unprofessional thus causing me strife and frustrating resulting in me blowing
off steam and uttering the word "FUCK", which you've heard a million times before
and you know what is going on here. Look if you were fucking squeaky clean then,
and only then, you might have a point but you don't.

Recruiters are the worse - especially Indian recruiters fresh off the boat! Typical
things that I encounter are things like a recruiter will call me up, apparently
not be able to hear me well (or so they claim) then they hang up. Literally hang
up on me. Do they call me back? No. Do they call and leave a message? No. Can I
call them up? Sometimes. Other times I get a message saying "This Magic Jack
subscriber is not here" or it's a general number and I need to know their
extension. Well I don't know their extension BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T FUCKING BOTHER TO LEAVE A DAMN MESSAGE! Or I get to their voice mail and their mailbox is full.

Think about this - a business who depends on being able to communicate with
the candidates and they do not have a way to take a fucking message, they do
not have the professional business courtesy to leave a fucking message nor
insure that they can be contacted. They've left a dead end trail. No, I'm not
the fucking unprofessional one - you are.

Then you have things like this Zip Recruiter link, which sends you to here, which sends you here, which now requires you to fill out forms. Other places require a login and even a series of 4-10 pages to "fill out your profile" with an account that hell I don't even want!

New Banking Partner

November 21, 2016 8:32 PM

Sorry I've been taking my time responding. Truth be told the reason is, although you might not believe me, I don't actually like complaining! I'd much rather have nothing to complain about. But my personality type is also that I will not sit idly by when I have problems I shouldn't have to and/or can see improvements that can be made.

I have been making a list and I've decided to keep it on my server so I can amend and update it as time goes by.

However, the following is something I'd like to have taken care of quickly (it was #4 on my list but that may shift around a bit when I finally publish):

4. I've had a problem logging into this centresuite.com - a totally separate website to manage my one business credit card. My account had been locked. I called up and complained. I was told that somebody - perhaps you - was supposed to get back to me to resolve the issue. It's been almost 3 weeks now, no followup, no phone calls, no email, nothing!

Basically I've had not been able to log in to that site to pay my business visa. Please fix, contact me or whatever as my next invoice is about to be paid and my plan was to pay that off then.

Note: You do not want to become like my last bank Wells Fargo

Problems with CNB website and/or mobile app:

1. Often I can't simply log into the website instead receiving very uninformative error messages like: 
   
   When speaking to support they cluelessly tell me to "clear my cookies and cache". This never works and if you wrote a web app that requires you clear cookies or cache - then you wrote the website incorrectly.
2. I signed up to get email alerts when my personal checking account is < $500.00. I often do not get them in time. For example, on 11/06 I had a balance of $529.48. Today my balance is at $160.39. There are several "In Process" transactions. It's 6 Pm on 11/07. Now I'm aware many banks post things at the close of the day. Fine. However don't cha think I should be notified that if the current outstanding transaction are legit I'll be under my $500.00 minimum balance? What if the total "In Process" transactions brought my balance below zero? I'd like to be told ahead of time! Otherwise the alert is worthless!
3. Having to go to multiple sites to manage different accounts that I have with you, including business and profession is dumb! I want my total financial picture - not a limited set. Nor do I wish to maintain several bookmarks of where to go as well as usernames and passwords and stupid security questions.
4. I've had a problem logging into this centresuite.com - a totally separate website to manage my one business credit card. My account had been locked. I called up and complained. I was told that somebody - perhaps you - was supposed to get back to me to resolve the issue. It's been almost a week now, no followup, no phone calls, no email, nothing!
5. I should be allowed to simply transfer funds from say my Personal checking account into my Personal visa and have it effectively make a payment instead of having to search for the one link that allows me to pay a credit card.
6. I would like to be able to set my business visa card to autopay every month. Can't seem to figure out how to do that.
7. City National Mobile login does not work when using a service like LastPass. I have over 400 sites in my LastPass. It stores the username and passwords of the sites I visit. I've generated a unique 16 character password for just about all of my sites containing uppercase, lowercase, special characters, etc. I'm serious about security and want my bank to also be serious about security but not asinine about it! IOW use security practices that make sense and enhance security not those that don't make sense and detract from true security. Having this many passwords requires having a password manager. LastPass is setup such that it can fill in the username and password for you. On Mobile that means it uses "accessibility' options to effectively "type" for the user. City National Bank's mobile app does something wonky causing LastPass not to work. No other app in the some 100 apps I use has this problem!!! I've posted in LastPass's forum about this issue and they've confirmed that the CNB app is using the accessibility options incorrectly and they are eager to help your guys to resolve the issue. But for the life of me I cannot seem to get simply contact information for the app guys in CNB. Look if you need to go through your internal system then fine - go through your internal system. But please do not stop me or your developers for working together to resolve problems! MAKE THAT PATH EASILY AVAILABLE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS!!! NO MORE EXCUSES!!!
8. When I write a check for my rent I want to see that deduction reflected in my online account so I know that that money is earmarked for somebody else and I really don't have that in my account!!! To my knowledge your website doesn't do that. Now on the new website it still doesn't do that. This is essential information for anybody! I need to know that I wrote a check for rent and not be writing any more checks or taking out any money that would cause that check to bounce. It's IMPORTANT! Worse case - make this an option that I can toggle on and others can toggle off if they don't like the way I'm proposing!
9. If you ever prompt in your phone menuing system, for the user's account number, credit card number and you FORCE him to comply and enter that number before he can go forward, then good gawd man, let not the first question that comes out of the tech support's mouth when he finally gets a human on the line to be "What's your account number?" ARGH! How frustrating!
10. If you're asking for a number who's length is known (i.e. 16 digit credit card number) then don't require that they type # to end the number! You know it ended! You know the length and the user entered in 16 digits. What is the purpose of requiring the "#"???
11. I'm constantly being asked security questions even then I've registered my computer... Speaking of security questions - they're dumb! Many people besides myself know my mother's maiden name or the city where I was born. These are not secure! As such I answer such security questions with odd answers. Then I need to keep track of those odd answers per site. To add insult to injury I cannot reveal my security answer as I type it to insure that I typed it OK. Many sites allow you to show the password. You look over your shoulder, make sure nobody else is around then reveal the password so you know you typed it right. Is that too much ask?
12. You should REQUIRE whoever is running this call center, I mean the directory of the call center themselves, that they have to call in at least once a month without disclosing who they are and actually be a customer of their own call center. This would go miles towards making service better!
13. For grins I attempted to deposit a check using the mobile app. This time, unlike others, I purposely did not sign the back of the check. To my surprise the software said it could not find my signature. So I signed it - "You mean you needed this?". IMNSHO if a signature of "You mean you needed this?" was enough to "qualify" as my signature then signatures are totally bogus and should not be insisted upon.

Southbound Silicon Beach

May 3, 2016 10:15 PM

Looks like I'm moving to LA! Or more precisely Marina del Rey. I have a
new contract with ICANN (International Corporation for Assigned Names 
and Numbers - the people who hand out internet IPs and DNS). That's 
exciting! Silicon Beach as they say. And I'll be closer to San Diego, 
my guitar playing and non-guitar playing friends out there. Perhaps 
Randal and I can ride share to Mexico on occasion. Shout out to my 
friends in Mexico! Hey Ed! You zombie chaser you! And Charles...

Marina del Rey seems to be a wonderful place - right by Venice Beach, 
Santa Monica as well as other beach communities. And my new place looks
fantastic with ocean views...

Right by the marina:

My mother always said she envisioned me living by the beach. Well Mom,
this is as close as I've come so far! Miss you Mom! It's the Wild, 
Wild West... Doing my best!

Everybody take care and have a great summer!

Contractor Pay Rate vs Company Bill Rate

March 17, 2016 12:23 PM

If a recruiter is telling you he's only making like $10-$15/hr above the rate he's offering you then he's probably lying. The industry standard is anywhere from 20-75% markup. This means that for a rate of $90/hr the staffing firm is billing the client anywhere from $108/hr to $150/hr.</>
From http://peopleticker.com/bill-rate

Typical markups range from as low as 20% to 50% or more

From http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/234665

In general, niche markets (e.g., IT) produce higher markups than do traditional staffing markets (e.g., clerical). Veigele notes that occasionally her firm's markup can approach 75 percent for a computer company client.

From http://www.eremedia.com/fordyce/heres-how-to-set-your-contract-staffing-rates/

Once you have an hourly pay rate for the contractor, you can use an average multiplier to calculate the hourly bill rate for the company. The location of the contract assignment can affect what multiplier you use. If you are placing someone in New York the multiplier would be higher than Michigan. Multipliers usually range between 1.5 and 1.8, but they can go much higher for healthcare professionals and hard-to-fill positions. 

Our tracking shows that the current average multiplier for technical and professional contract staffing throughout the United States is 1.60. For the past 10 years it has ranged from an average of 1.51 to 1.67. (Excluding healthcare contract placements.) 

Note: The multiplier is defined as the quotient of the company bill rate divided by the employee pay rate. A simple example of a 1.5 multiplier would be a scenario where the bill rate is $60 per hour and the pay rate is $40 per hour. The common term for multiplier is also "mark-up."

One to watch out for

October 5, 2015 7:22 AM

Lalaine 7:17 AM
Sent from EXPLORE the BAY
Kindly delete my pic pls

Andrew DeFaria 7:19 AM
OK. Sorry. Didn't mean to "steal your soul"...

Lalaine 7:31 AM

The picture is not a good thing to display buz it looks like I was annoyed with you or with the event, but I was not. I was just caught off guard.

If the pic did not show that kind of expression, then I would not mind nor would I request that you delete it. I wish you had asked my permission first when posting this 'kind' of picture. The concern is, not only it got posted and it's in everyone's emails, which such picture can be misjudged.

Please also ensure to delete every copy of this in your mobile gallery or any postings you've made on other sites (if any...). I trust that you'd respect my wishes. Thank you and have a good day.

Andrew DeFaria 8:14 AM
But you were annoyed at me for taking that picture. That's why you looked that way.

Lalaine 8:31 AM
I was not annoyed. Pls reread my email, I was caught off guard. I did still talk with you even after - remember? Did you see any annoyance in that. You've joined us quite a few times after and I was still talking with you cordially. My attitude did not change. Besides, I did not know that you actually took it cuz I started walking away and did not expect that you would post it either - if you did take it. I assumed wrong. I'm not comfortable when men are taking a 'solo' pic of me and esp a stolen pic. Yeah, it made me so uncomfortable that's why I showed that expression... Hope it does not happen again.

Andrew DeFaria 8:47 AM
What I said was exactly and literally true. You were annoyed at me - for taking that picture. Not you were annoyed at me personally and would never speak to me again. You just didn't like that I took that picture. That's all I was saying. And it was why I still talked to you and hung out with you. I found you "exotic" and lovely which is why I took the picture. I thought you a bit pouty in the picture but I thought it looked cute nonetheless so I posted it. Sorry it bothered you. I removed it and I can assure you I will take no more pictures of you.

Lalaine 9:51 AM
I was just really uncomfortable. I find it rather odd. See, I had bad experiences from a few men before who stalked me. A while back I had to file unwanted harassment even at work and it all started by men taking a stolen solo pic of me. I'm not saying ur gonna be like that, but I'm traumatized... We can all take pics in a group. Thanks for the compliments. God bless.

Andrew DeFaria 9:55 AM
Thanks for thinking of me as a stalker first before thinking of me as just a nice man. Made me day!

---

The bitch then proceeded to attempt to get me thrown out of the group. My opinion: Seems like she's has issues and should not be approached. Smells like a Fatal Attraction to me. Beware!

Passing the Bluetooth torch

January 9, 2015 10:48 AM

I have many problems with Bluetooth not working correctly. The problem is that when it does work it's great. But when it screws up it's extremely frustrating. This should not be as hard as it is!!!

Here's my biggest problem: I have a pair of LG HBS-730's that I use all the time. I also have Bluetooth in my 2013 Camaro. Finally I have a Galaxy Note 3 phone running Android. As I approach my car I'm often listening to something on my headset. I get in the car and start it up. Now I want to "pass the Bluetooth torch" from the headset to the car.

The problem is if I start up my car but I forget to disconnect the headset form Bluetooth then the car will connect to Bluetooth but only the Phone profile - not the Media profile. At this point I cannot get the car's Media profile to connect to the phone no matter what I try! If I hit the Media profile to connect it it flashes for a second then stops. I will not connect. I can turn off Bluetooth and turn it back on. Nada. Same problem. I can put the phone into airplane mode - same problem. I could turn off the radio... turn off the car. Nothing.

Then I discovered that when I turn off the car and open the door, at that precise moment the Bluetooth connection to my phone and the Phone profile disconnects. Great. So I'll just close the door, turn on the car and I should be set right? No! Instead, in order to get my phone to connect to the Bluetooth Media profile if I committed the sin of forgetting to power off my headset before the car attempts to connect I have to turn off the car, open the door at least briefly to have the Bluetooth drop then wait anywhere between 1-3 minutes before turning the car on! This is extremely frustrating! At that point, when I turn the car back on, if the radio displays the splash screen I know it's re-initialized the Bluetooth driver such that it will connect. UGH!

Now I'd love to say to Chevy, "Hey your Bluetooth implementation sucks. Fix it!" but I have little hope that the dealer's mechanic jocks really know anything about this nor will they be able to fix it. So I've tried to get around this by using Tasker and setting a profile for "Near Bluetooth" to quickly turn off my headset so that the car can connect. The problem is Near Bluetooth and the car itself both are polling some amount of seconds looking for Bluetooth devices. So if Tasker is gonna poll in 20 seconds from now but the car is in it's polling cycle and has only 10 seconds left then the car will attempt the connection, fail and be in the bad state described above. But it Tasker is in it's cycle and is going to poll in 10 seconds and the car's gonna poll in 20 seconds then it'll work.

I've also experimented with A2DP Volume, which seems to handle this a bit better but I still experience times when it messes up.

Has anybody experienced this and has come up with a more reliable workaround?

Dealing with recruiters

January 21, 2015 4:33 PM

I get a lot of calls from recruiters. Many are not that professional. Many don't have anything to offer me of worth. How do deal with such people? Here's my system. If you've been redirected here then you've failed the test.
What's the test? Well recruiters work with a script - so I have my own. My first line of defense is to direct them to email me the job requirements. I do this for a few reasons:

1. To have a record of it
2. To see if the recruiter is blacklisted
3. To see if the recruiter is responsive enough to deal with simple instructions

You see I have my own spam filters that I've used for well over a decade now. I filter based on From address. Anybody who is not in my system gets a bounce back message telling the sender how to register with MAPS - my home grown spam filters. If the sender is on my blacklist it means that I have not had good results with this person and thus I will no longer do business with them.

Now most recruiters can't figure out this simple system that quite frankly my 85 year old aunt has no problem with! At first I thought that my bounce back message was being filtered into the recruiter's spam folder. But lately I believe that it's probably in their inbox but unread. If you've ever seen the typical Outlook user they have thousands of messages in their inbox and hundreds of them are unread. So this tells me that if I were to do business with this recruiter and I had say a problem with invoicing or receiving payment I might have my email in their inbox unread for days. I don't do business with people who are unresponsive and effectively are ignoring people. Sorry if you have a workload - I do too. And I manage to manage mine. Learn to manage your own.

If the recruiter figures it out and simply clicks and types in their name to register with MAPS the email will be delivered and I will promptly respond with my standard response asking them to quote me a rate. IFF the rate is acceptable I'll talk with the recruiter.

Installing and using Yubikey Neo Manager on Ubuntu 14.04

November 14, 2014 9:58 PM

I only run Ubuntu @Home. So I need to have my Yubikey Neo work @Home. Follow my thought process here...

I go to your website and find https://www.yubico.com/faq/enable-u2f-linux/. I download it an extract it. There are absolutely no instructions about how to install this! There is a setup.py file however it doesn't run. Hey have you heard of this great invention called the shebang line? Google it. It'll flip you out!

Sticking "python" in front of that script I get this wonderful error message:

Earth:python setup.py
no previously-included directories found matching 'doc/.build'

Installed /tmp/yubikey-neo-manager-0.2.5/nose-1.3.4-py2.7.egg
usage: setup.py [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
   or: setup.py --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
   or: setup.py --help-commands
   or: setup.py cmd --help

error: no commands supplied

Gee, what am I to make of that? Should I explore the depths of this setup.py or... Wait, there's a README... Let's look:

=== Installation
The recommended way to install this software including dependencies is by using
the provided precompiled binaries for your platform. For Windows and OS X,
there are installers available for download
https://developers.yubico.com/yubikey-neo-manager/Releases/[here].

Wondering why a README file for a Linux installation would be talking about Windows and MAC at all!...

For Ubuntu we have a custom PPA with a package for it
https://launchpad.net/~yubico/+archive/ubuntu/stable[here].

OK, wait a sec! Didn't I just download what I needed to install this? What's this "and now go download this from here..." crap? Further on in this README file is talk about Windows installation and Mac OS/X crap but nothing else about Linux.

OK so what's this https://lanchpad.net/~yubico/+archive/ubuntu/stable thing? A ppa. Alright. So I set that up. Now what do I do?!? Dead end. Instructions lead to a dead end.

OK so back to that setup.py. I learn I can do python setup.py install. After doing so, what? What am I supposed to do?!?

Needless to say your Linux installation leave a hellofva lot to be desired!

DevOps - combining 3 jobs into 1 and paying only once for it

February 24, 2014 10:31 PM

Lately the trend is to combine traditional SCM position with your Unix/Linux administrator and Automation/Helpdesk work, call it "DevOps" and pay only one salary. They're asking for the world and paying for a cityblock. They are asking for a jack of all trades who is a master of no trade specifically and what they get are burnt out engineers trying to please everybody and failing miserably.

Witness a recent post to the job board DICE: DevOps Engineer to which I respond:

I suspect that this is an example of the kinds of assignments we would be shooting for however let me point out a thing or two.

First, this is supposedly W2 only. As such this supposedly would not be open to our business at all...

Secondly there's a statement of "This is an excellent opportunity to work on the latest technologies used by the big software/web companies while maintaining a great work/life balance" however anybody knowing all of this stuff clearly has no room on their calendar for any kind of work/life balance unless you define work as working at work and life balance as working at home!

Finally, in order to quote/unquote "qualify" for this assignment you'd need to know Linux, Windows, Agile Envs, Ruby and Java web apps, Perl, Python, Bash, Awk, PHP, Elastic Cloud (probably Electric Cloud but the recruiter got it wrong), ESXi, EC2, Rackspace Cloud, Hypervisor, KVM, Xen, VDI, Jenkins, Hudson (which is merely the old name for Jenkins), Cruise Control, Electric Commander (yes all of the CI web based platforms... 'cept BuildForge, of course...), Chef, Puppet, Cfengine (cause you can't know just one), Babushka, Knife, Mcollective, Func, Kickstart, PXE, MySQL, Oracle, MongDB, HBase, Cassandra, Hadoop, Junit, Phpunit (is that real?), Rspec, Cucumber, MQ, CDN, Varnish, MemcacheD, Redis, haproxy, Global Traffic Management, GeoDNS, Failable Architecture (I would venture to guess the non-failable architecture too), SDLC, Nagios, Gangila, CollectD, Graphite, Aptitude, dpkg, Yum and RPM (what no setup.exe or Install Shield?), Single Sign on, LDAP, Kerberos, OpenDirectory, PAM, NFS, NTP, APache, nginx, IPTables, Nessus, nmap, F5 BIG-IP, Viprion, REST, XML, JSON and if you can add it on - HBase. Oh and walk on water, turn that water into wine, in high heels, backwards and if it were not too much trouble - with a smile . On and exhibit all you're wonderful skills in a mere 6 months.

Is this for real? I would bet my entire year's salary that a person who knows all of this does not exist in America! Like my subject says: Basically: Looking for Jesus!

Can you say unrealistic? Sure you can

W2 vs. C2C

January 22, 2014 10:46 AM

I'm a consultant and have been for quite some time now. In April of 2007 I finally incorporated and I have been successfully paying myself a paycheck ever since. There are many benefits to me to be in business including business write offs, the ability to put away more money in my IRA, etc. I have my own benefits and do not wish to give them up.

I have also worked on a W2 basis in the past. However I got to thinking that I have never ever been placed a second time by the same recruiting firm. In other words, I may be working through a consulting firm on a W2 basis. And at times I've been extended on the same contract. But when that assignment ends the consulting firm does not place me somewhere else. So whatever consulting firm I go to next I'll have to renew my benefits there. I probably will not be at the first consulting firm long enough to get vested in their 401(k) plan so I'll have to roll it over, etc. I also do not benefit from the benefits offered because I don't have the wife and kids (my child is an adult now) to utilize the benefits offered. It used to be that the consulting firm would pay you a reduced salary when you were between contracts, and that was their incentive to get you placed at the next assignment quickly, but they don't do that anymore. Instead you're out the door on your own to find your next assignment.

So what's the point of being somebody else's employee? Just so they can process payroll for me and take out taxes? You know Wells Fargo does that for me and it costs me less than $0.15/hour to do this. Yet W2 employees are offered rates that are between $20-$30/hr less than true independent consultant working on a 1099 or C2C basis. You can calculate what benefits cost and it's not that much in terms of $/hour - like $10/hr tops. And bare in mind that most of them offer pretty minimal benefits and the new rage is "W2 without benefits"! If you come across one of those ask them how many consultants they have on W2. If it's > 50 then the must offer benefits!

Also, when you employ a person as a business you must pay the other side of the payroll taxes. This is currently about 7.5% or on a $100K income that's $7,500 AKA $3.75/hr.

The usual arrangement for my contracts is that I am working for the client through a consulting firm. I bill the consulting firm and they bill the client. The consulting firm often has consultants that are on a W2 basis (IOW they are employed by the consulting firm), maybe some consultants on a 1099 basis (meaning they have their own business like a sole proprietorship) and perhaps some working on a C2C basis (same as 1099 except the consultant has formed a corporation).

I've found many recruiters state that the client insists that the consultant is paid on a W2 basis. However this makes no sense. I've often asked but have yet to hear a valid business reason for the client to insist that the consultant is paid on a W2 basis. In fact it's really none of their business how the consulting firm wishes to engage with the consultant be it on a W2, 1099 or C2C basis. As we can see above it's better and cheaper for the consulting firm to just pay the 1099 or C2C consultant directly. In such situations the consultant assumes all of the liabilities for paying his own taxes, benefits and insurance requirements. The consulting firm does not have to offer, pay for nor administer any benefits nor do they need to pay the 7.5% of the payroll taxes. Why is it only in the IT consulting field that this is an issue?

When I'm faced with a "the client wants W2 only" situation I ask them the following question: Have you ever hired a plumber/electrician/carpet cleaner do to work at your house? If so did you bother to call the phone number on his truck to insure that the person who showed up was being paid on a W2 basis? None of them have and if they are at all intelligent they get where I'm coming from. It's of no concern to them and likewise should be of no concern to the client in my situation.

So then why do client's insist on W2 only? I can't be sure (because recruiters never even think about this let alone have put forth a rational answer to the question "What is the business reason why the client insists on W2?") but I have some theories:

• W2 contractors are more like the sheeple of employees out there. They aren't true consultants trying to run a successful business and perhaps build it up. Most likely they are or wish to be employees because they assume that that's more secure and they don't want to be bothered with running their own business. The best they could find was a consulting job and being on W2 is comfortable and familiar to them. Clients like such tame, go along with the crowd, workers.


• Clients often want so called "contract to hire" where at the end of assignment an offer of permanent employment will be made. True consultants running their own businesses get paid a lot better than permanent employees or W2 employees. The "sticker shock" that results when clients attempt to convert their consultants to perms is often too much for the consultant to lose. Paying W2 employees less to start with lessons this sticker shock (and we already know the W2 consultant is more likely to want to be perm as they are already an employee of somebody else - they're not independent).



• Many consulting firms offer consultants who need H1B visas. I believe in such situations the H1B visa holder needs to be employed on a permanent basis. Why it should be the concern of the client how the consulting firm employs their consultants is still beyond me however as it would seem to me that the consulting firm should be free to engage non H1B visa consultants on a C2C basis.



• I think some clients believe that they lesson the likelihood that the consultant will be considered their employee when they are obviously an employee of another firm. There was a big brew ha ha back in the day with some Microsoft consultants being found to be Microsoft's employees and not consultants. Microsoft was forced to pay them a bunch of money because of this (see Vizcaino v. Microsoft).

However one should note from that same Wikipedia page:

The IRS definition of a common law employee rests on whom actually controls the work done by the leased employee. IRS Publication 15A explains "Under Common Law Rules anyone who performs services for you is generally your employee if you have the right to control what will be done and how it will be done..."

As such many if not most (or even all) IT consultants that I know are told not only what will be done but how it will be done. Of course, the client has the right to define the work to be done, but how to do it? Think of this as you would if you hired a lawyer. You would tell him what you would want to see happen, but you would not tell him how to do his job. Additionally truly independent workers often bring their own tools. Now tell me the last time you saw an independent IT consultant come on the job site and say "Here's my laptop - hook it up to your intranet. Oh and I'll be re-writing that code in a language of my own choosing"....

California

March 10, 2011 2:09 AM

OK, so I'm back in California. I must say it's good to be back. I find California to be much more laid back than Virgina, where I came from. The job (at Tellabs) is good - so much better than the more stuck up companies that I've been working at - it's much easier to connect to my web services like my email at home and calendars, etc. - much less paranoid that other clients I've been at lately. The job seems cool with interesting assignments and just a general laid back feeling as is what I remember from California. That coupled with a yearning to be productive from months of waiting for a gig and life it good. That plus my apartment is pretty kickass too - I can't wait really for spring and summertime and to get back out to the trails in California hiking and just enjoying the wonderfully weather and diverse topology of California as I remember it. That plus a cool job, money in the bank and what's not to love? Oh I must head out to Napa soon too...

Point people more directly

November 1, 2010 11:55 AM

Why do people write stuff like:

For more information, sign on to your Bill Pay service, click Help at the top of any Bill Pay screen, click the "How Do I..." tab and select "How do I change the payment option for one of my current payees?"

Instead of "For information about how to change your payment options click here" or "How do I change the payment option for one of my current payees?""? I mean why do they insist on leading you through a maze to get to the answer?!?

Comcast speed

October 20, 2010 7:26 AM

I mean wow! Remember speed kills!


Now if I can just get my static IP assigned.

How not to run a company

June 18, 2010 1:51 AM

I'm a guy who believes in giving credit where credit is due and the flip side of giving blame where blame is due. I like MediaMall and their product - Playon. In general I think they have a good idea. It's not many companies that I will actually buy software from, let alone shell out $40. However they have gone downhill and quite frankly are no long worth spending money on. I actually used to actively tout their product, Playon, to people. I no longer do that precisely because of the support, or lack thereof, that they offer. Seriously don't buy their product. You've been warned.

Here's a recent exchange:

In the interim here I just want to say - All I ask for is for this software to perform *reasonable* well. I want to be able to sit and relax in my easy chair and watch videos and entertainment on my device *AS PROMISED* by MediaMall in their agreement with me. Look I'm a reasonable guy and willing work with you and actually put out enormous amounts of effort and cooperation with you trying to help everyone in the process. But there comes a point at times when even I feel like I'm being abused and dumped on as if this is my problem with no help whatsoever being offered by your side to come up with a resolution to such problems. Like a trapped animal I will strike back if treated unfairly (and I believe I'm being treated unfairly). I will become your worst enemy. If you wish to resolve this privately then email me. Otherwise the public fight is on. I will not rest until I receive satisfaction. Enough is enough and I am tired of being treated like the enemy here.

Response from Playon support:

Your PS3 can't communicate with your router the way you want it to. That can neither be caused by nor solved by PlayOn.

Of course it can. You can make suggestions and offer work arounds. Surely you are not lacking that much foresight are you?

It is a completely independent problem between two devices you bought from other companies.

I.E. we're about to pass the buck here...

You need to consult with them how to fix it.

You know what? Last week it was working just find. You know what else? For the last 2 frigging years (like how frigging is not considered profanity yet we all know it's merely a substitute) it's also been working fine. It was not until you guys were suggesting that I run these funky networking programs that it suddenly broke. Gee, imagine that....

Just because our product/business relies on your network does not make us responsible for maintaining it.

I'm not asking to maintain it - I'm asking for help. It's you who are refusing to offer help, instead choosing to pass the buck onto somebody else - namely me.

Similarly, if the power outlet which your PS3 was plugged into was not supplying the PS3 power, we would not be able to help you there either.

Really? I mean really?!? You could not say "Hey plug it in?!?" Man are you missing the boat here!

If you choose to respond again with profanity on this matter, you will no longer receive any replies or support from us at all, on any matter.

The profanity is a sign of extreme frustration. Need I point that out to you?!? Your support sucks! You blame your customers for things and refuse to offer assistance. You constantly pass the buck and blame your customers for problems you refuse to assist on. I am not the only customer that has pointed this out to you. When will you start listening? I can put you down without profanity but unlike you I am able to use the full vocabulary of the language to express myself including what you call profanity (which is BTW protected by the 1st amendment of the US Constitution) to not only express your incompetence but express my frustration in what may be called a short hand that you full well intuitively understand and know as I assume you are 1) human and 2) relatively intelligent adults thus comprehending not only "adult language" but also understanding it's common usage and expression. Yet you are about to use it as your scapegoat to refuse to deal with this issue because truth be known, you don't wish to deal with it. What exactly does that say to your current customers and potential customers? I leave you to ponder that.

But here's the real deal. You have a product that often does not work and that people are simply dropping you off as yet another company who does not know what the "F" you're doing (and who are we kidding here - everybody knows what I meant by "F" so lets stop kidding around and start really acting like adults. Ain't nobody being fooled by what "F" means. Your protestations about "profanity" are silly!). I would think if you were smart you would be working with such people - especially such people who were 1) technically inclined and 2) tenuous at working solutions such as I am rather than blowing them off with the "Hey you said a dirty word" excuse.

OK, fine, I didn't say what was politically correct so you'll just censor me in order to attempt to maintain a pristine reputation (though I'll just capture this over on my blog which you cannot censor) rather than deal with the real issues. Great. Give me my f**#$in $40 back and I'll go away. I'm sick of dealing with your screwed up company! I tried to help you but you refused the help so I give up!

More Playon Fun

June 18, 2010 2:08 AM

On 06/17/2010 11:25 PM, PlayOn Support (Michael) wrote:

Andrew, Your PS3 can't communicate with your router the way you want it to. That can neither be caused by nor solved by PlayOn. It is a completely independent problem between two devices you bought from other companies. You need to consult with them how to fix it. Just because our product/business relies on your network does not make us responsible for maintaining it. Similarly, if the power outlet which your PS3 was plugged into was not supplying the PS3 power, we would not be able to help you there either. If you choose to respond again with profanity on this matter, you will no longer receive any replies or support from us at all, on any matter.

My right to "profane" is protected by the 1st amendment to the US Constitution. Now you also have the right to refuse to deal with me but I would not base that on "profanity". IMNSHO that would be unwise to do so. My profanity is a sign of extreme frustration. Now if you wish to blow off customers just because they are extremely frustrated at you I would suggest to you that that would be a very unwise move. Take it for what you want I guess.

Meantime I will do everything in my power to insure that everybody I come in contact with knows that MediaMall is not a company they want to do business with. Now is that what you really want? I would hope not. Or can we civilly work together? Your choice.

How to get your mic working on Ubuntu 9.10

April 2, 2010 11:37 PM

I've been having a hell of a time trying to get my mic to work on my Ubuntu 9.10 machines. Part of the solution I believe is to get the latest ALSA libs, utils and driver and build it. The other part has to do with damn Linux guys often label things funny and provide options that are not really useful or at least are not documented.

Here's the deal, if I run pavucontrol (Pulse Audio Volume Control) and go to the Configuration tab there's a drop down for my Internal Audio. I had it set to Audio Stereo Output. Seemed to make sense to me. But my mic appeared as greyed out in the Input Devices tab. If, however I change it to Audio Stereo Duplex then the mic starts working. I guess it makes sense now that "duplex" means "goes both ways - in an out" but what doesn't make sense really is why would I want the option of making it so that my mic doesn't work (i.e. Audio Stereo Output)?!? I mean if I don't want my mic to be active there's already a mute button!

And on my desktop, which has a 5.1 sound card (and yes I have a 5.1 speaker setup) the option to get my mic working there is to select "Analog Surround 5.1 Output + Analog Stereo Input. Now all I have to do is go out and buy another mic for my desktop - I seem to have lost the last one.

Still haven't gotten HDMI working under Ubuntu 9.1 but I have some things to try out from the Ubuntu forums.

Broken DNS

March 1, 2010 11:48 AM

This seems to be the trend now a days in Corporate IT. Is it just Windows related? I don't know. It used to be that you could rely on DNS. Now you can't. Case in point - people hear talk about a machine known as "seacase". Others use the name usseacase. Whicih is correct? Well an educated guess would be they are one in the same and a DNS alias exists between them. IOW seacase is just a "pretty" name for usseacase.

Now I used to be that you could verify that with DNS, in particular you could use nslookup to find each of the names and see they have the same IP address. But more and more, Corporate IT DNS stuff is screwed up, perhaps in the name of security, such that they don't always resolve:

$ nslookup usseacase Non-authoritative answer: Server: <dns server> Address: 13.230.100.200Name: usseacase.<domain>.com
Address: 13.230.100.74

So we can look that one up but we can't lookup the other:

$ nslookup seacase *** <dns server> can't find seacase: Non-existent domain Server: <dns server> Address: 13.230.100.200

However ping works! And verifies that this is the same machine. So why doesn't DNS know about this?

$ ping seacase PING seacase (13.230.100.74): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 13.230.100.74: icmp_seq=0 ttl=127 time=230 ms 64 bytes from 13.230.100.74: icmp_seq=1 ttl=127 time=0 ms----seacase PING Statistics----
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip (ms) min/avg/max/med = 0/115/230/115

Another pet peave of mine is people using either IP addresses instead of names (Do you refer to your friends by their cell phone numbers?) or using fully qualified machine names all the time when you don't need to...

Priority Queues...

March 1, 2010 1:35 PM

Many IT departments run long running and intensive processes on the various PCs throughout their organizations. For example, virus scanners (are evil but that's another rant), defragmentation and disk cleanup stuff. Is it really too much to ask for them to put such background tasks in the LOW PRIORITY QUEUE!!!. Do they know what the low priority queue even is or that it exists? I have yet to see anybody, other than myself, think ahead far enough to say "Gee this would interrupt interactive performance. I know! I'll put this in the low priority queue instead of being rude". I wonder what the thought process is for the IT guys or even if there is a thought process...

And then processes spawned from the original process go in the normal queue, so even if you put the first process in the low queue, the next process pops out in the normal queue. The correct way to do this is to have the original process, the parent process, in the low queue and have it insure any children created are also in the low queue!

Stupid is as stupid does

March 6, 2010 7:05 PM

OK so I've moved up to Seattle and need to get my business and personal bank accounts all settled in. So I stopped into my local Wells Fargo branch to introduce myself. He said he could save me some money but unfortunately I need to get new accounts. With the new accounts come plain old boring cards. I had personalized my cards before. Now I have new plain cards I need to reactivate, only to have to re-personalize them again!

So I go to activate one of them and they ask for my 17 gillion digit card number then the last 4 numbers of my business checking account number. Well I don't know that so I need to go to the Wells Fargo bank site to get that. While I'm doing that it keeps saying "Sorry I didn't get that" and eventually I exceed my limit of retries. Hey I was just trying to get to your slow web site!!!.

Of course I'm dumped into the tech support queue where some ditzy blonde answers the phone. She tells me that she'll need to have my full business account number. I tell her I don't have that. I only have the last 4 because that's all your web page gives me. Normally I have to open up statement to get the full account number but I can't do that because this account is too new and doesn't have any statements. "Well you could just look at your checks..." to which I quickly interject "Listen sweetheart I haven't used checks in 18 years!". Then she tells me that she could help me but I'd need to give not one, nor two, nor even three but four forms of identification in order for her to help me! I told her that in no way would I be comfortable with that because everybody knows you don't achieve real security until after 20 forms of ID are presented and hung up!

OK stop and think here for a second... Why can the automated phone system validate me with just the mere last four digits of my account number, which is probably pretty damn easy to obtain, but the human needs the whole account number and/or 4 forms of ID?!?

Bottom line: Since I'm now at the web site I hang up on the dtiz and simply go back around and punch in my 4 digits and I'm validated. Stupid is as stupid does - and I ain't stupid - but I do see it all the time!

Cell phones - Not up to snuff!

March 6, 2010 7:24 PM

What is it with cell phones anyway. It's primary function, while I admit is not a function I do that frequently compared to other things, it can't do all that well. I mean calls but I don't mean hard to hear connections and dropped calls. Those are problems too however just the mechanism of placing the call...

First off - never make a fucking phone dialing app that is incapable of accepted a paste of a phone number!!! You'd think that'd be a no brainer but way too many phone dialers do not allow paste. So you find a number in a web page or an email or you put it in a file - whatever. You select the phone number and you go to the phone app and want to paste it in. There's no paste. Stupid phone!

Secondly you would think that a phone application would be, oh, I don't know.... RESPONSIVE PERHAPS. Many play back those button tones we all know and love. But most phones can't keep up with even the slowest of typists. How hard is this to sense the button was pushed and immediately (I mean right away, with out hesitation - IMMEDITATELY!!! - did I say immediately?) play the fucking tone and be ready for the next button push. Come on folks, this is not rocket science nor is this a lot of work that the phone needs to do in order to accomplish this minor fucking miracle - yet on both Windows Mobile based phones and now my Android based phone this constantly happens. Is it hardware related? Again, how much hardware is needed?!? My old land line never seemed to have an issue accomplishing this task - why can't my $$$ phone do it?!? Write the damn phone app in assembler and make it (and the tones for that matter) memory resident so you have no excuses WRT speed! Really is this too much to ask?!?

And another thing about phones - why is it that the most common things I do require push and hold in order to work. Not just phones, sometimes accessories. For example, my Bluetooth headset of choice (Sony Ericson HBH-980) has a recessed power button and you must hold for a few seconds to turn on. Now I understand the concept of requiring such a delay to distinguish between a real turn on/off event and an inadvertent one but trust me you would not be inadvertently hitting this power button.

And why is it that I must always wrestle with Bluetooth to get it to work right. My BT headset can handle both "Media audio" (from the media player) and "Phone audio" from say and incoming all. Why the distinction? I don't care. Just call it audio. You don't know how many time I try to connect my BT headset and only the phone audio gets connected. No media audio. So I try to connect again. No go. Try powering off the BT headset and back on. Nope. Try turning off BT on the phone and back on No go. Then the phone hangs. Bluetooth is the only thing that seems to have the power to hang my phone, requiring me to open the case and yank the battery in order to reboot!

And then when listening to Bluetooth often I'll get gaps of silence, especially when starting a new song or podcast, as if it needs to buffer stuff or whatever. It's real annoying. Why is Bluetooth so hard, flunky and trouble ridden?!?

First few days at GE - AKA: How broken processes can get?

February 2, 2010 7:20 PM

After being here a few days and working through the various set up processes and the frustration involved with that I feel compelled to rant a little to blow off some steam. How do processes get this broken? It can't be just "Management by MS Office" as there are now web components entered into the mix of unneeded and unnecessarily redundant processes (pun intended)!

OK so I'm signing up for access to the Unix shares and machines so I can use Clearcase. I need to use Clearcase! I mean I'm the Clearcase admin right?. So first off there's a process, and process documentation to go through - a 4 Meg 70 page process! And the step by step guide is, of course, old and wrong. Muddling trough I submit a ticket to some support group...

Gripe 1: Why do I need to provide all kinds of information for this simple request? IOW Why isn't a simple one "I need Clearcase access to X" sufficient! Oh well. Rule - keep things simple.

So I get an email with yet another 8 step procedure that I must complete to get this access. Plus the way they describe it - Go here, click there, put your username here, search for this, select that - for most users (what if I'm not most users? How would I know if I'm an exception)? Etc. Then submit to start the process!

Ah I see a problem here, they tell me to go to this page and search for that then I'm presented another page. Why not give me the link to that other page? Well because the web programmer didn't program it such that it has a unique URL. Bad design!

Gripe 2 : Why must I follow various individualized steps? If I must fill in certain fields certain ways, why not give me a link that fills them in for me? Reduce the steps! Never tell the user to go to a web page then start clicking to go to yet other web sites - just point them to their final destination!

Gripe 3: What do you mean start the process?!? I started the process last step. Aren't we in process?!?

Gripe 4: Waiting. Where possible eliminate user wait time! This is the 21st century! Wait times of over a few nanoseconds shouldn't be there. Now I know sometimes you need to get "approval" of the boss or whatever but make it quick.

Gripe 5: After we complete this we get more instructions?!? You're kidding right?

Gripe 6: Never send email that does not have a proper reply to address. Doing so assumes your communication is perfect. It's not!

Better than a car dealership?

February 4, 2010 10:18 PM

Latest story - like I said, I still don't have proper Samba access to mount vobs. I put in a ticket stating "I cannot log into Unix machines and I do not have access to Unix shares that I need for my work". I have managed to get a Unix account created. But I need to be added to the proper netgroup.

So the tech closes my ticket. I reopen it stating "I still can't log in so this issue has not been resolved". He closes it stating that "Well you need the netgroup - go here to request that. There's nothing for us to do so I'll close this ticket again". I reopen it stating "Until and unless I can log into Unix machines and access Unix shares this ticket is not resolved". Again he closes it.

So I give him an analogy - I tell him if I go to the car dealership to have my brakes done and I get a call from the service manager saying my request is completed only to come to the dealership and be presented with a piece of paper telling me how I can request brake pads I'd be fucking pissed! It's not my job to pick the store where you'll purchase brake pads for my brake job! It's the responsibility of the auto mechanic or the dealership to resolved that!!! IOW it's part of the job and you should not involve nor expect the customer (i.e. me) to have to deal with this issue.

He states he understands but he's just following SOP. I tell him "Well then the process is broken and should be fixed".

You see I'm struggling to understand why the support process is so horrible at such corporations. We would not accept such "service" from our auto mechanic, plumber, etc. - why do we tolerate it from our helpdesk team?

Security for your own good

February 21, 2010 4:28 PM

I wrote this in response to a Slashdot article about the recent home grown terrorist activity of that guy flying his plane into the IRS building regarding is perceived unfairness of Section 1706 of the IRS code that removes the safe harbor provisions of Section 530 - Our Low-Tech Tax Code. In my opinion this guy was over the edge in FUD, interpreting the IRS's actions as making him a "criminal and non-citizen slave" - he was in full control of his life and how much success he could muster. But I see an alarming trend of the government either directly or indirectly "protecting" us from ourselves. Where's the opt out selection for this?

---

I don't know about you but I'm getting really tired of other people "protecting" me and treating me like a person who cannot protect nor fend for myself. I enter into relationships of my own choosing - of my own volition. But my government doesn't trust that I can make the right decision for myself and must force me to do what they think is right at the point of a gun. Didn't we used to overthrow such tyrants? Perhaps it's time to do so again!

If I wish to perform contract work for a client for years and at pretty handsome rate and I must then get my own benefits, to pick and choose those that I want and not get those which I determine I don't want, if I am happy with such a relationship then isn't it I who have voluntarily chosen to engage in such a relationship?!? If the government still wishes to steal my hard earned earnings in the form of taxation and they don't believe I'm paying my "fair share" then that is an issue between my government and me - not an issue between my government and my customers/clients. Take me to tax court if you must and I will show you I am complying with your silly rules for membership in the Socialist States of America.

What happened to the thought that we should limit the abuse of forceful power that the government wields against our lives in the forms of such laws? Unlike the government, private business does not hold a gun to my head to force me to work for them. If they did, then that, and that alone, is the proper place for government to step in and protect my rights which are being violated against my will in a non-voluntary fashion. Now government implements this abuse of power indirectly by forcing private business to comply with legislation designed to protect me, even against my protestations to the contrary.

We see this in spades by private businesses asking all of these security questions that provide no real security, and collecting even more personal information, thus making identity theft even more likely, all in the name of 9/11 and the Patriot Act and "for my protection" as they say. But what if I don't want such protection or if I feel such protection is actually counter-intuitive or that it provide less security because now the identity thieves have a much more convenient target - your cell phone company's computer systems (and don't tell me you haven't heard of such theft of that information).

Lord please stop my government from forcing me to protect myself from that which I've voluntarily decided I do not wish to be protected from? IOW if you need me to sign a release I will gladly do it but stop forcing me to live my life as you see fit! It used to be that such an ideal was esteemed in this country but not it seems to be reviled! Why?!?

Names should not be hard

February 24, 2010 1:22 PM

Another in a series of rants about things I see and how backward they are...

Why is it that organizations use Outlook at all? And then when they do they have their address books set up for <lastname>, <firstname>? That's not how I think of people - by their last name first! And to add injury to insult, often looking up people as <firstname> <lastname> fails!

I use Thunderbird and one of the first things I set up is an LDAP directory in the address book for the organization. Often this involves getting the secret LDAP info like server name and most importantly baseDN. Surprisingly I have been successful in getting this information most of the time! Once connected I have access to that elusive Outlook Global Address Book because essentially it's just and LDAP implementation. And my <firstname> <lastname> searches automagically start working directly in Thunderbird. Yippie!

Still there are broken search tools like SameTime's Add New Contact dialog which fails if you <firstname <lastname> search. Coupled with organizations propensity to use <lastname>, <firstname> is "Jessie Scott" "Jessie Scott" or "Scott Jessie"?

Insisting on breaking links

February 24, 2010 1:59 PM

The reluctance to use HTML in email (and news groups for that matter) is astonishing! Instead people insist on using plain text and inevitably paste long links that break due to stupid clients badly wrapping the URL. For example:

http://gisclarifyweb.somewhere.com/eSupport/eSupportjsp/MenuSystem/CaseViewMS.j^M sp?casenum=G03519757

Note: "^M" included to indicate where the line wrap occurs as this blog software will wrap it differently

Email clients then linkify the first part (http://gisclarifyweb.somewhere.com/eSupport/eSupportjsp/MenuSystem/CaseViewMS.j) but fail to include the second part (sp?casenum=G03519757) resulting in the link not working and making the recipient have to do the work of piecing the URL back together. And with some humongous URLs (and you've seen them) this can be quite an effort. Move this to your small cell phone in a bumping bus ride and this is next to impossible!

So this has spawned an entire industry most notably tinyurl.com and friends. But why? Why not instead simple think up a meaning few words to describe the link and make a proper anchor href. For example, the above is talking about a Clarity case number of G03519757. So that should be the link text. Viola you have G03519757. This magic is achieved in Thunderbird - my mailer of choice - simply by highlighting the link text, typing Ctrl-L for link and pasting in the proper URL (In Outlock you select Insert: Hyperlink). There! You're done. Was that that hard? You've not only made it much easier on the receiver of your email by providing a simple - and attractive - link that will not break by being wrapped by any email client capable of rendering HTML (i.e. most of them) and for any incapable, they'll see the link in all its ugly glory and improper and broken wrapping they they must be accustomed to by now anyway!

So why don't people do this regularly? I'm not sure but my guesses run neck and neck between lazy and ignorant. What's your guess?

More support crap

February 24, 2010 4:43 PM

Do people think at all how they come off to other people? Case in point - I want to set my Unix password but for some reason they've disabled the passwd(1) command. Off to the help desk it is for me! Apparently I have not paid enough penance.
So the conversation goes as follows:

Helpdesk dude ...hi Andrew how are you doing today
1:33:39 PM◄want to talk to you please ping me,regarding unix
2:30:50 PM Andrew DeFaria And your number is... 
2:31:24 PM Helpdesk dude ...i am mazhar from the helpdesk 
2:31:28 PM ◄andrew 
2:32:09 PM ◄as you called in for unix password setup 
2:32:17 PM Andrew DeFaria Yes. 
2:32:37 PM Helpdesk dude ...you already logged in however you want to setup a password 
2:33:37 PM Andrew DeFaria Yes, why doesn't the passwd(1) command work? 
2:34:30 PM Helpdesk dude ...please give me one minute
2:39:23 PM Andrew DeFaria Times up! 
2:40:23 PM Helpdesk dude ...sorry for that working on it 
2:41:03 PM ◄contact with XXXXX to confirm 
◄who worked on the time zone of unix system XXXXXXXX 
2:42:40 PM◄the case you raised through idm 
2:42:53 PM Andrew DeFaria Jessie's the only guy I 
know who has an underbar in his name! 
2:43:52 PM Helpdesk dude ...yes exactly 
2:44:46 PM Andrew DeFaria I find it hard to believe that I'm unique in wanting to set my Unix password... 
2:45:51 PM Helpdesk dude ...do not worry sir we will try our best to fix thix issue 
2:46:04 PM Andrew DeFaria Did I say I was worried? 
2:46:35 PM Helpdesk dude ...i really appologize for that 
2:46:39 PM Andrew DeFaria That's OK, this is making a great blog entry... 

Aside from the atrocious English spelling and grammar of this supposed College educated support tech... First off, why's he explaining my problem back to me? I know my problem - I'm not stupid.

Secondly, maybe ya should come to the party prepared! I mean the problem here is simple - a user simply wants to set his password. Have you read the trouble ticket? Do you understand the issues involve? Great then contact the user. But here clearly he state "please give me one minute" - Then clearly takes several! Shouldn't he have the solution in hand?

Making it way harder than it needs to be

February 26, 2010 3:36 PM

Why do people do the following: A user is having difficulty performing a task so they submit a ticket. Attached there's a zip file that contains a Word document of 5 pages, 4 of which are entire desktop screen shots showing each steps in it's huge glory taking up tons of space where screen shot 4 has the error dialog that I need! Further, page 5 has the textual representation, which is really all I needed and is copy and pastable!

Now before you say "Well they didn't know and they were trying to be helpful providing you with all the information" consider this: What the hell was the zip file for? There was only 1 file in it. Why zip it? "Well Andy, you hard ass, at least they are saving space because the zip file will compress it". Well then, riddle me this batman, why then capture the entire damn screen probably in the wasteful bmp format! And if you just wished to send me a bunch of screen captures why didn't you put only those in a zip file instead of having to call Word - and all it's inefficiencies - into play?

The end result is that they do it in the most inefficient and complicated way they can find!

Oh don't worry - Linux is easy!

May 5, 2009 2:37 PM

Recently on a Slashdot posting about the old Linux vs Window argument a Linux support wrote:

With Linux there's always one more resource, google the problem and you'll find a forum somewhere with the answer, even if it means you'll have to recompile something. It's better to recompile than to fall back to reformat and reinstall...

You just got through saying you don't have to google forums for answers and now you do!
All that said, I've been using Unix (then Linux, etc) both professionally and personally since ~92. I run a Linux based web server, mail server, etc. out of my house and have done so since around '99 and I just switched to Ubuntu 9.04 for my everyday desktop. Here's some real world experience for you from the last few weeks.

No need for drivers? Well the relatively recent ATI Radeon 3200HD card that came with my new system that I just bought doesn't work with Jaunty. There are "open source" drivers but they don't do accelerated 3D graphics. The proprietary drivers do 3D accelerated graphics but don't work with dual monitors and cause X server crashes because 9.04 decided to use the latest X server. With no solution in sight I just dropped ~$100 on an Nvidia 9500 GT card. Got it home and it does more but I still can't run compiz (says Composite extension not installed). Speaking with people on the forums and they're telling me I have to add stuff to /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Tried that, even rebooted, didn't work. Some say use "Composite: 1" others say no, no it's "Composite: Enabled". Uppercase, lowercase? Who knows, no error messages are generated - it just doesn't work. Running regedit is easier compared to this!

Wanted to run Boxee. Sorry, no 64 bit version of Boxee is available. Search the forums. Pointed to a post that describes how to build Boxee from scratch given patch files, etc. Download them and the source. Attempt to compile. Oops, need to install gcc - was gonna do that anyway... Compiling... Oops missing package X. Install that. Recompile... Missing package Y.. Install that... recompiling... Looks like it's getting somewhere. Oops linker died - missing libraries. Gee why wasn't this in the build instructions? Oh yeah, right, because I'm doing bleeding edge building now... Finally after a few hours of this I get a 64 bit version of Boxee!!!

Try to run it. Buzzt! Sorry, won't run on the ATI card - needs accelerated 3D graphics!
Last night install new Nvidia card and try to configure it. Get the 3D graphics going. Start Boxee. Play an MP3 file... Segv! Wonderful! Try a video. Wow, plays OK. Try an online video from Comedy Central? Hangs. No way to get out of this full screen application. Can't reboot, can't get to a terminal! Have to power cycle machine! OK run Boxee windowed from now on. Try again. Video plays at double speed, no sound at all! Crap. Try another one. This one plays, for about a minute and then goes to double time/no sound. Wonderful. Let's try Music again. Oops! Hang again. Kill the window. Restart. Try again. Segv.

Don't let anybody kid you that Linux is without it's problems, trials, tribulation and frustration. On the plus side you can compile and configure things to your liking. On the negative side, except for us pinhead, geek, jerks (of which I count myself) your on your own!