I need a gig, 2017 edition: Day 2

I usually need a new gig once a Jan 1 to Jan 1 calendar year. What’s good is, my gigs have consistently been going about a year.

Not this time. I started it Nov 13. Got word yesterday I am rolling off 2/10. That’s something less than 3 months of work.

Troubled project, I’m glad to be leaving. Couple of the other guys, expensive PM types, got straight up shit canned.

I do now have to dig into my deep reserve of job finding moxie that I had all this swagger about a couple days ago. I think it will be fine.

I want to document the ins and outs on a daily basis….

Got notice yesterday…

Days until idle workdays: 14

Updated: LinkedIn, Dice, resume, references

1 interview procured for tomorrow morning, screening type interview.

If we had castle doctrine, this guy…. would probably still go to prison

There was that homeowner shoots burglar case in Little Falls couple years ago. The burglars were juvenile delinquents who had the unfortunate luck to encounter whack-job Byron Smith in his home. Smith murdered them, and he was convicted. He got life.

This guy, figure he was adrenalized, just wasn’t thinking clearly as he ought to have been.

http://www.startribune.com/minn-homeowner-jailed-after-one-shot-dead-one-wounded-in-home-invasion/412148143/

He’ll get convicted, maybe do a couple years. You can’t shoot burglars in retreat like that, but the circumstances are more mitigating.

Madelia is where the James / Younger gang was cornered after the Northfield raid in 1876 (minus the James’, who slipped into South Dakota). My forebears farmed in Madelia a little after. I think the biggest industries in town now are food processing… turkeys and chickens say.

The newspaper makes much of the fact this fellow lives in a $425k house. I don’t know if I agree with that, editorially…. but it probably is a very affluent home for Madelia, and I guess material to this notion of what might have been being burgled and defended.

Terkling: 1 – work as domestic born IT guy, 2 – ?, 3 – profit

A couple weeks ago the IT staff augmentation vendor that employs us consultants at this site brought us all into a room and gave us a pizza lunch. My Trumpy co-worker had, in days prior, vented a grievance that Indian H1B workers were making middle aged white guys very expensive for enterprise IT. So I took this occasion of the lunch to do a bit of a census.

There were 30 people in this group having pizza. I counted 7 white guys I think, 3 white women, and the rest were foreign born – Indian, Pakistani, West African, and a couple eastern Europeans.

I don’t share my Trumpy co-worker’s pessimism that we’re going to get obsoleted in favor of cheaper, younger foreign workers (at least I’m not going to be unable to find work as an older man… I’ll never be discouraged out of the work force doing what I do, I‘ll ask for work and I’ll get hired, I built up a pile of moxie doing what I do…)

But there is this phenomenon that’s curious, and it is that I fairly seldom encounter other 40-55 yo white guys on the job, plying the IT contractor trade. It’s apparently a job that Americans won’t do. And it isn’t the money, cuz I don’t think I know anyone who’s been doing it 15 years that isn’t making $100k.

I think it’s the security. Even though the gig economy is well established, most people want a permanent job once they get into their 30’s and beyond.

So there’s this, from Trump HQ:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-30/trump-s-next-move-on-immigration-to-hit-closer-to-home-for-tech

What I’d say follows from what I just mentioned… I don’t think there are a lot of native workers to attract into IT consulting, even with rates that inflate due to a lack of H1B workers. And no one is going to make firms hire perm employees faster than they do.

T+2: Pussy march and other thoughts

Father knows best… I’m a right wing crank dad right…Well I banned the 12 year old from Reddit in months past because he picked up the term “Femi-nazi” there, was asking about the bitchiness of the womens’ movement basically.  Reddit might be culturally hip and liberal, but you come to observe there’s a lot of bro hooliganism riding along.  I think it may be true that the women’s movement asks for some things that are a bit absurd, but I am not going to have my boys go forward in life with this unhealthy baggage about the gender wars.

Yesterday he was asking about protests, and the worthwhile of people ‘complaining’ after a perfectly good election.  He’s glommed on to a RW line of critique there, and I don’t know where he gets it from because this is not actually a caustic RW house and he goes to a gifted school in St. Paul with the children of liberals.  It must be pervasive.  I said….let’s get back to the more literal word, “demonstration”.  If they can put 100k people in the streets in 20 American cities, that “demonstrates” potency to politicians, that it’s a point of view that needs to be addressed.  So it is worthwhile, now as in the past….  Protesters convinced Johnson not to run in 68, convinced the govt that the consensus position ought to be end the war in Vietnam…

“And the suffragettes”, my wife said.

So, with the protests….  they were big, a lot of people I know went.  There’s something there, something powerful to be cultivated for the Democrats.  I guess alternately though you could say, those people probably all voted for Hillary anyway, and there’s not any net votes to get out of it.  And it takes the party left-ward probably, which really doesn’t work any better now than it ever did.

I was watching the inauguration on Friday at work, watching it on my PC.  My co-worker is a white guy in my age bracket, actually one of few in recent years (I work with a lot of millennials and Indian H1-B workers, buncha things at confluence there, topic worth elaborating on at another time…).

Guy is a Trumpist, he was pretty jazzed.  “Lots of things are going to change”, he said, and he picked out trade and the “$20 Trillion dollar deficit” Obama made.

I expressed that I was not unhappy with a Republican presidency, but that those items were kind of dubious in my mind…. Started doing this Hayek-ian / Friedman thing about how we should have free trade and leave low value manufacturing to other countries while we do high value work…

Guy looked at me like I had two heads.  So I stopped before elaborating about the nature of govt spending, the 2009 financial crisis…

I thought the Trump speech was quite dark.  The muscular / nationalistic adjective that comes to mind is ‘Spartan’.  And it’s just too much.  Not like I don’t think we should get control of our immigration situation, but that could be paired with some high-mindedness you figure.  But that’s not who Trump is eh.

Dots w/ jots: T minus 1

Analysis: True http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/president-obama-faces-white-house-press-corps-one-last-time-n708391 To say that ‘America is going to be fine’, he’s got to be in possession of proper wisdoms about the Constitution, checks and balances, and the superlative qualities of America… he’s an American exceptionalist is what he is. I mean it.

Commutations and pardons: I’m all for it. Commute away, Obama.

The unvetted, unqualified Trump cabinet: Hey now, Obama nominated the thoroughly deficient Eric Holder for AG and he was confirmed… This ain’t topping that.

We’re doing the 80’s over: http://theweek.com/speedreads/674163/donald-trump-about-nuclear-launch-codes-heres-what-that-means I remember the same lament when Reagan took office…“He’s a warmonger! (…ours was a Democrat household…). We’re not going to have rash nukings borne of Trump’s childish temperament, alright. But my larger point… the current zeitgeist feels like the 80’s.

This news seems kinda fakey: HHS Sec nominee Tom Price’s stock trading: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/01/18/tom_price_s_stock_trading_scandal_isn_t_going_away.html The implication is Price traded in health care stocks and ETFs at a time when there were bills before congress whose passage would impact these businesses… One detail is he bought $10k give or take worth of Zimmer Biomet. You know what that is at prices over the last couple years? Like 100 shares. You know what you profit on $1 worth of price appreciation on 100 shares of stock? Yeah, $100. The man has an 8 figure net worth, he’s not shepherding legislation through congress to goose stocks such that they return a couple hundred or a couple thousand more a year. Nor is he picking stocks based on their ability to return a couple hundred or a couple thousand more a year b/c of congress’ actions. ETFs… same. These are not volatile enough make for an enriching ‘insider trading’ gambit. There’s no way that the explanation for Price’s stock trading is not true, and mundane…

That’s why you got Trump… There’s this line of blaming that says the excesses of Obama gives us Trump. And then maybe its retort, that anti-Obama–ism gave us Trump. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/trumps-the-legacy-of-anti-obamaism-not-obama.html Ultimately, with these you’re trying to argue for who Trump can be pinned on, clever-by-half Democrats or deplorable Republicans. I’m not sure ultimately that any a bunch of little butterfly effect blow backs are bigger than the fact the pendulum was just going to swing dislocatingly hard…. But I would pin Trump specifically on the Democrats for the mere fact that they obsoleted the ‘career killing scandal’ for sake of a ‘scandal free’ Obama administration. IRS, Fast and Furious, VA… there were some things that were plenty big and scandal-y, and they were pooh-poohed. Which is why Trump doesn’t get sunk by that fact he gropes women and has a fraudulent for-profit school and doesn’t pay taxes. Republican voters learned by example they could pooh-pooh any and all of it, not be shamed out of not having him be the candidate.

Making America Great Again: no clam chowder at inauguration

I agree with this, I support Donald:

http://www.salon.com/2017/01/13/donald-trumps-inauguration-team-ends-another-tradition-legal-sea-foods-clam-chowder-wont-be-served-this-year/

I’d rather eat barf than clam chowder.  Not that I’m going or anything.

I said that: a lot of celebrities will die in 2017

Now MIT says what I said:  Many people think that 2016 was particularly bad, but data tells us that it is not an exception. In fact, we should expect more famous people to die in 2017 than in 2016. Why? The answer is simple: because the number of famous people has increased over time.

 

MLB deep track: Goltz v. Niekro

ZOMG, MLB deep track, game 163 playoff game, 1980 NL West, Dodgers v Stros, Dave Goltz v Joe Niekro, Uecker and Al Micheals on pxp, Toni Tennille singing the national anthem…

Goltz is from Rothsay, down the way from Fargo… He was the Twins best pitcher in the 1970’s, then was one of baseballs first big money free agents.  I was a ‘fan’ of his as a boy, but as a 10 year old, I had no idea of what it was I was a fan of… was he a power pitcher?  A control artist?

Now I know.  This is probably the only decent telecast of him that made it to archive on youtube.

He was a good pitcher but not a great star.  6’ 4” righthander with a sinker… IE, a plus fastball with some right side run at 92, 93… and a knuckle curve.  This is a common form today, Twins have one of these guys now, say Kyle Gibson.

Jots w/ dots 1/13/17

Golden Showers: I’m just some rube software guy with an opinion, and this was a bit of my observation a few days ago. “The poor grammar and shaky spelling plus the author’s use of KGB-style intelligence reporting, however, do not fit the image of a high-end London security company run by highly connected former British intelligence figures.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2017/01/13/the-trump-dossier-is-false-news-and-heres-why/#501097d655f1

Pillow man / Music man. There was a time in my life when I tried fiction writing. Part of the fiction process is writing down story ideas on index cards…I had an idea once about a con man who starts a con, but through serendipity ends up with a successful business venture that helps a bunch of people. Well, you go on in life and read more, and one finds that story / script got written: it’s ‘The Music Man’, staple of so many high school musicals and dinner theater. A grittier treatment would make for a good contemporary movie though, and here’s your ‘based on real events’ protagonist: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-01-11/the-preposterous-success-story-of-america-s-pillow-king Guy is a bit of Trump-ist though, which is unappealing. We have a set of these pillows. They are quite alright as pillows go, and his basic insight about the superiority over down pillows seems correct.

I have been meaning to do a post on intersectionalism: https://theweek.com/articles/672265/liberals-are-drunk-political-poison-called-intersectionality I think this is true, and a coming disaster for the Democrats for reasons Linker describes, ie, the overt marriage of the party platform to “identity politics” is going to repel, ya know “normal people”. Another thing though, is this weighing of whose racial grievance is most valid, all based on how badly you’ve been oppressed by the hegemony…. It’s a Marxist class dialectical exercise. Go do that, Democrats, keep right on choosing your destructor …

Eye on Kerri Miller, who I’ve always kind of liked: http://www.startribune.com/mpr-s-kerri-miller-to-host-national-call-in-show/410643905/ The call in political radio show is actually kind of dead. I mean, such that we understood this to actually exist in right wing media… by which I mean, these callers to Hannity etc are all fake… actors basically.

This news seems fakey: Kompromat

The Trump debauchery w/ hookers in Moscow story there… I’m not buying it. The details have the feel of being calibrated to tickle the outrage prurience of about every political leaning. Doesn’t feel organic, feels contrived.

Other thing is… I’ve been reading the supposed set of raw intelligence docs on Buzzfeed. Being worldly in at least the ways of process and so moved here to contemplate how intelligence apparatus’ must work on a day to day basis, I can perceive that an operative’s grind is just writing notes every day as a matter of creating knowledge artifacts. This creation of knowledge artifacts has analogs in many industries now actually, and there’s good software built for the process.

…These raw notes look like shit, like someone has an unending Word document on their desktop devoted for this purpose. I just have my doubts this is normative practice these days in a world of clever software.