Sunny in San Diego

I’ve been busy lately with my busiess research, some side projects, job hunting, hitting the gym 5 times a week, and of course the pregnancy; which includes reading up on and researching parenting and child development. Add to that the fact the little guy kicks and pokes Debbie late nights and early mornings so a bit of sleepless nights gets included in that mix as well. And Debbie is only at 23 weeks pregnant.

It seems the little guy is stubborn and likes to play games. Maybe all kids do this, I don’t know, but even at the doctor the doctor gave up trying to catch him when rubbing the stephoscope(?) on Debbies belly. He was like “I’m not chasing this kid around all day to show you his heart rate.” So he just showed us through another ultrasound on the house. That was cool because a baby is expensive with no insurance or job.

Well Debbie has insurance but her deductible is $5k just for 70 percent coverage. And many things aren’t covered or barely covered. So a 500 buck test might only
add $250 to the deductible. But we still had to pay the doctor or lab 500 bucks.
I’d say we are going to owe like $10k and insurance will cover the other $10k.
So even with insurance it sucks. Debbie’s mom has been helping us out a lot from afar so far and I’m grateful for that. hopefully I find some job soon.

San Diego sucks for jobs at this point. I got a lot of calls about jobs in las Vegas, minnesota, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Connecticut, north Carolina, and Florida but Over the past month San Diego and Los Angeles areas have the same jobs open since 3 or 4 months ago. who knows. I’ve had a couple of interviews with companies in Florida so we’ll see where that goes. Debbie’s mom will be excited if we move to South Florida cause that’s where she’s at but i like San Diego. then again with no jobs can’t
really say it’s that great. But they say the economy is improving. For who?

A Stifling Rabbit walked along an incurable road and discovered the ultimate Epiphany.
For it’s never about one’s destiny during endless and hopeless battles. Nor is it about reaching one’s full potential according to some fear mongered hope.
Pursuant to a conceptualized realization, an immutable Epiphany if you’d like, it’s never about what others see in him; nor is it ever what they feel is a realization of oneself; rather an acceptance in the eternal damnation of the world within himself and himself within the world.

One of my new favorite sites since I found out my soon to be child is a Boy. That’s right there will be another mini-me running around in the world. A baby boy coming July 2, 2010. Fascinating to see all the ultra sounds and baby movements. Even felt a kick the other night. Weird.

Anyway the site is….

http://rockabyebabymusic.com/

My son will have some Ramones, Metallica, Beattles, Nirvana, and Bob Marley lullabies…I’m stoked.

The New Orleans Saints are Super Bowl champions. Good for them and that city. They played a hell of a game but I think Manning chokes a bit, whoever kicks for that team seems to choke, and Caldwell showed he isn’t a very good coach. Yeah he took over a great team and won 16 games, but he showed tonight that he really doesn’t know how to coach.

How do you run the ball up the middle 3 times in a row at the end of a half, especially after that big 4 down stop at the goal line, and then give the ball back to the Saints? The Colts and Manning are supposed to be the best or one of the best 2 minute drill offenses in the NFL. Even if they don’t score, going into halftime up 10-3 after that great stop would have been a plus. Instead they give the ball back to the Saints, who get a field goal and really, the game was over there.

The Colts were never the same after that Garcon drop either. Who knows… I wasn’t rooting for anybody as I don’t like either team, but in the end, Manning choked, his kicker choked, and his coach choked. The Saints won this game and Drew Brees should be called the best QB in the NFL. He was far superior than Manning. I guess the Chargers wish they’d of held onto him and not drafted Philip Rivers. Rivers is good but he’s s stat guy. He’s not very impressive when it counts. And you see how his teams don’t win when it counts. The Chargers just luck out because they’ve been in a division where the Broncos stink, the Chiefs are horrible, and the Raiders just gave up after 2002. Sort of like the Eagles for most of the 2000’s.

Anyway congrats to Drew Brees, Jonathon Vilma, and the New Orleans Saints. Your team deserved to win and played a hell of a game. Even though the defense will get tons of credit the reality is they rarely stopped the Colts offense. It was the Colts who stopped themselves besides that interception.

I’m not really rooting for anybody in tomorrow’s Super Bowl. I think the Colts are going to win, but it should be a good contest. The Saints are a feel good story and Drew Brees, Reggie Bush, Jonathan Vilma, and Sean Payton, etc all seem to be down to earth people I guess. A good heart warming story for a beaten down community who once wore bags on their heads because of the ‘Aints.’ New Orleans needs this they claim. The Indianapolis Colts don’t come from a great well known city and people from Baltimore still fumes over the fact they left Baltimore in the middle of the night in a moving van. That’s kind of funny how they forget the same thing happened to Cleveland who moved to Baltimore then changed their names from the Browns to the Ravens. But it’s different somebody told me. Yeah different because now you are the the thief team and don’t’ want to think that way. People like to be the victim I guess. Hell the Ravens won a Super Bowl about a decade ago so why are they complaining? Oh yeah it’s Baltimore and DC and Maryland. I’m not a big fan of that area or most of the people from that area. Nice to visit for a moment but kind of a dump(urban, suburban, and rural) if you have to stay for awhile.

Anyway my final prediction is

Indianapolis Colts 27
New Orleans Saints 17

What does the unemployment rate really mean? How is it that after careful re-calculations that there were about 900,000 more jobs lost last year, yet that
doesn’t seem to be calculated into the jobless report? They say those numbers probably will have to be re-tallied again for recent months. And then we hear about another 20,000 jobs lost last month, which may or may not be an accurate number. It does look like the economy is improving ever so slightly, but at the same time how do you continue to lose jobs, find out there were close to another million jobs lost you didn’t calculate last year and then suddenly the unemployment rate goes down 3 percentage points? It just sounds like one big Obama bullshit ploy. Hey I voted for the guy, but at this point I’m just assuming these politicians are full of shit. And he hasn’t done a damn thing but waste more money for no reason at all. Great the banks got big bonuses yet haven’t done a damn thing for anybody. It seems all the data they are pushing seems to be wrong. Blatantly and corruptly wrong.

Do any of these new numbers count for anything? You lose an additional 900,000 jobs last year and the unemployment rate goes unchanged from those months? How is it that in a 9 month time frame, you lose an additional 100,000 jobs per month on average and none of this changes the data? So instead of say 10.3 percent, maybe it should have been 11.3 percent unemployment rate. Which brings us to the current month and no new jobs gained and yet the unemployment rate goes down.

Maybe there should be a massive cut in politicians. Companies have been cutting for the past few years. Well the Governments are broke, we don’t need most of these people who do nothing but lobby for more money. At least then they’d actually show they understood the American working class citizens. Slash say 25 percent of the politicians in the US. 99 percent of them are useless wastes of space anyway. Look at California. San Diego still gives out bonuses yet we’re broke. If you slash 25 percent of the Politician’s from Federal, State, and Local you’d cut a lot of wasted spending. Do we really need most of these con artists? No. We’d save a hell of a lot of money though.

After reading some interesting news the other day, I started to wonder about some social media web sites, companies, and so on.
What really made me wonder is the concept of Twitter. It’s fascinating yet at the same time not that big of a deal. Microblogging, so to speak, that really
seems to cater to marketing, news, and celebrities. What people do on Twitter is also done on Facebook, MySpace, their own blogs, etc. It used to be people would say more on their blogs and social sites, but ever since Twitter became huge, people post one thing across multiple sites. And it’s the same one or two sentences. Talk about redundancy. So if you follow somebody on Twitter and they are a friend on Facebook or Myspace or if you subscribe to their blog, it’s most likely you’d get the same information multiple times. The same marketing bull, the same mundane pointless update, or the same news story. That becomes a big reason to ignore or not follow somebody.

I like the idea of these short, simple and to the point excerpts. But when those excepts become the same thing on every site and there is nothing more, it becomes boring and pointless. And there are a ton of wanna be celebrities who have tons of followers who post about absolutely nothing. They create videos and post about editing them, and for the most part everything they do is nothing more than fake ads or comments for companies. Oh yeah they pretend like they have a real opinion except every other word is more or less just to get another free product or service. Or some people, especially females who are ‘broadcast journalists’, post about rather boring topics, but because a ton of geeks think some fake tech girls actually like them, it seems interesting. Most of what they post is just marketing crap with no real opinions attached. Can’t dis the masses as they say. Or there are tons of companies who jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and just seem to post random facts about nothing or many times, they just post spam as if to think that will drive people to their companies website or become interested in their products or services. The company I used to work for jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and in reality all they really seemed to post were about crappy contests or they just posted spam. No real interest in utilizing Twitter for the better good. Just a marketing ploy to spam people. A lot of companies do this and it’s rather obvious. Companies should market their products/services but it would be nice to see them actually push out opinions and ideas about their industry, competition, product/service updates, customers, etc. Instead we get two sentences of nothing but some lame free ad that says nothing. How useless.

Twitter is great for quick updates of breaking news stories(whether from news sources or individuals), interesting facts and updates about real company information, or interesting tidbits about interesting topics. Instead of weekly or monthly email newsletters or blog subscriptions, you can get updates from experts on a daily basis. Real information from real people with real knowledge and opinions. You might not always agree with them but at least you feel like their is a real flow going on, not some fake spam like posting scenario. But except for a few, what is mostly posted on Twitter will be useless in a day or two. Yes for people who stalk celebrity info, it can be a great service and I”m sure there is a business model in that sense, but for everything else, the business model is just one big spam scam. If I disappeared for a month or two and came back and logged into my Twitter account, I wouldn’t have missed anything real for the most part. Most of what is posted is just jargon that isn’t important. Yeah how many times do we need to read, “Oh I posted a new video about a product a billion other people posted the same damn opinion about.” And from somebody who isn’t an expert and is either a fanboy/gal or a hater. Every company seems to have both these days and every one seems to have opinion-less and fact-less posts about every product released.

Anyway, the founders of Twitter will make a killing(and probably already have) when all is said and done, but for the investors, the proof is in the pudding. Teenagers and Kids aren’t using Twitter. Hell according to reports half of kids don’t even know what it is. And these are the same kids who are addicted to Facebook. So much for the theory that Twitter is such a great innovative technology people can’t get enough of. It’s become nothing more than another place for businesses to spam constantly and Celebrities to push out nonsense. Or a place for people with no real talent to attempt to get their 15 minutes of fame. Yeah the masses will follow, but just like anything else, the masses soon move onto something else. And if the younger generation isn’t using the product now, they sure aren’t going to use it when nobody else uses it.

It was a great concept and I’ve enjoyed using it over the years and will keep using it to keep up to date with news stories and some groups I belong to, but other than that it’s rather pointless. And unless they figure out other things to add to their services, Twitter will one day be like many of the other web technology sites and just disappear. Hey they might still be around, but just like MySpace these days, nobody gives a crap about it anymore. You always wonder about some of these companies who get millions, if not billions, in investment money yet they never seem to make a dime. I guess that’s why most of these companies never go public anymore they just get sold or refuse to sell. It’s because they have no real business model and no real way to make a return on investment. Put half these things in front of the SEC and some stockholders board and I bet many times these companies would wind up worse than Enron or Worldcom. A lot of crap about nothing. The whole Dot Com “new business model” theories that were nothing more than a load of shit. Except back then those companies actually went public and the SEC turned a blind eye. Kind of like the whole Wall Street and banking scams that crashed the economy. Who knows.

Maybe Twitter will learn and add more features and ideas to their great concept. If they don’t, who really would miss them in the long run? It’s not like they really changed the world for the better or added something new. When you aren’t attractive to the younger generation and people of my generation and the one after me has the attention span of a gnat, then you are in big trouble. And so far the teens and younger could care less about Twitter. Not a very good sign. Not when it comes to technology.

I spoke about rip offs and cons in an earlier blog post. This is in conclusion to the one piece about some Project Risk Manager with over twenty years of experience who seems to be a unprofessional blowhard.

This individual applied to a entry level/intern position. His resume spanned over twenty years. Seems most of his experience was as a project/risk manager. I didn’t know why he applied, but I responded back to him along with 50 other candidates. Yes, I received close to 100 resumes for a entry level/intern type position that paid more in stock and experience than in salary. That’s how bad the job market is out there. And most of these candidates had masters degrees and real world experience.

Anyway, I sent out a few questions to the candidates to get a feel for what they knew and if we should move forward. This guy responded with two emails. One was proclaiming my questions were a joke. The other email was more fascinating coming from a guy with over twenty years management experience. Yes, this guy had the nerve to email me back a graphic of a middle finger. Some kind of 20+ year manager I guess. Call me what you want and tell me that you think of too many questions for an entry level position, but this guy responded to my ad, he sent me his resume, then he had the nerve to email me back a middle finger. I should spread the word to recruiters and other managers that this guy is a piece of work and shouldn’t be working. A manager with that kind of professionalism is kind of a joke. Who would want to hire somebody like that? Not me.

Recently, I’ve been working on a few projects and most of it involves coming up with some ideas, plans, designs, etc and then implementing some theories, diagrams and content. Or maybe research something a little more. At the same time I look around for some help regarding web development, software engineering, artistic design, etc. What I’ve learned is that most people are either idiots or con artists. That’s not exactly true. The majority of software engineers seem to be an intelligent bunch. Except for one guy who probably wasn’t even a software engineer. This guy was a trip. Read my other blog posting(Project Risk to hire this Manager) about this individual.

Back to the original point. I can see why a lot of people assume Information Technology professionals or more importantly, web developers, are nothing special or a pain in the behind. I shouldn’t throw most people under the bus. Like I said, most of the software engineers seem respectful and know what they are talking about. Then again it’s because most of them went to college and learned about computer science. They actually come up with original thoughts and analysis or maybe they have what’s called critical thinking knowledge. But it’s almost a lost cause when it comes to web developers/designers and graphic artists. I know the technology and I hear people trying to sell me a bag of goods regarding what they can do for me, how they can market my website, and how much a site like mine would cost. Of course they claim to give me some huge discount. And it’s funny how half these ‘people’ send replies that refer to themselves as ‘we’ and so on. Hell I even had one person inform me that they haven’t used Flash in years, but they could relearn it again if I needed them to. Yeah I’d pay them to learn something. If I were to do that, I might as well just learn it myself and save the damn money.

Another project was designing a logo and banner. The damn logo and banner were already drawn, designed, etc. All we needed done was for somebody who knows photoshop or illustrator very well to digitize it and maybe show a few different color and font options. A few people claimed this could be a thousand dollar project. Thousand bucks for what? They didn’t’ come up with the idea. They didn’t even freaking draw the thing. They really didn’t do a damn thing. Yes, their time would be worth money. But their time isn’t worth what some of these people think. To top it off, some of these people email a sample with watermarks that had nothing to do with the original concept or drawing. Do people even read?

Even after hiring somebody to do some artwork, it takes over a month to come up with a simple damn update. Like I said everything was already done for them. They only needed to touch up the drawing and digitize it a little better. But half the time they don’t bother reading what the requirements are and what you need done. Or they come back with (i can do this for this much, but anything more will cost a little more). It’s one thing if they came up with the concept, drawing, design, etc, but a month for a logo that was already done? How stupid.

Oh and there are plenty of ‘artists’ who seem to ignore your requirements and then design something on their own time you don’t like or want and then claim, ‘hey I spent such and such time on this so I deserve such and such money.’ That’s like going to a job interview, it doesn’t go well, they go home and decide to make something up, and then email that company and ask them for a paycheck. People are really stupid.

Hell, on another project I threw out an idea of what I wanted and needed, so I could get a feel for what some artists could design for me or if I needed to change my idea altogether. You know what, half the people who got back to me asked me to come up with a sketch so they could get a better idea. If I’m drawing the damn thing(i’m not an artist) why the hell am I paying them? All I wanted was for somebody to come up with a concept and design after I gave them the original idea and concept.

I understand people should charge for their services, but it really seems there are a lot of unprofessional people out of work who are really out of work for a valid reason. You ask them for something and they don’t bother reading what you asked for or they ignore it altogether or they think their 5 minute unoriginal half assed job is worth thousands of bucks. Go figure they need small jobs. They shouldn’t be doing what they are doing.

I’ve come to the conclusion that people might as well not hire web developers or designers or even artists/graphic designers. Not for what they are charging. Or maybe that’s why people offshore and outsource work. Just look at some of the examples of these people and it’s obvious they seem to throw together a template that takes about 10 minutes(hell you can buy a template and edit it yourself for under 100 bucks and you don’t even have to know much about programming or even html). Don’t go around claiming some simple 5 page website you threw up using some other persons template, that took you under 5 minutes to do, is worth $5K. It’s not. Or maybe most of the web designers/developers and graphic artists need to inflate their egos because the reality is their work isn’t worth much in the real world anymore.

Nobody should be paying somebody $30/HR for somebody who knows html and wordpress. Yes, if you need a shopping cart, a content management system, some flash, and a ton of original real programming work done to some complicated e-commerce site or backend system, it might be worth it. There is actually programming or real design involved. But somebody selling some $30/HR unoriginal template cheap ass work is a scam. Plain and simple.

Whether it’s a website or a graphic doesn’t really matter. Playing on people’s technological ignorance is what a lot of people seem to do. Everybody needs to make a buck, but when your work is worth $1 and you charge $10K….then it’s just a scam. A con. A rip off. And in all honesty people like that should be thrown off a cliff never to be seen again. End of story.

So I recently lost my job, which in a way was a good thing. It became a very poor company and environment to work in and for. Very few people seemed to be happy and the management seemed to lack leadership and in all honestly, it became a place where everybody was looking over their shoulders and nobody trusted one another. And it was obvious a few people seemed to have their hands in a cookie jar. Who knows how that will all play out one day. I’m sure the IRS will have a field day with that. But then again it’s a private firm so those things rarely get looked into until they want to go public or get bought out.

So onward and upward as they say. My girlfriends mom wants us to move to Florida and she makes some valid points. The baby(find out the gender in a few weeks…excited to know if it’s a boy or girl) will need a babysitter and what better option than a grandmother. Plus it’s the first grandchild in her family so……..And I’d be closer to my family as well… And the Miami area isn’t half bad. But I like Southern California. I guess we’ll have to see. If the Jets win this weekend and make it to the Super Bowl(first time since Joe Namath back in 1969), then I’d be on my way to Miami next Monday. I’d plan on coming back to San Diego though.

The other thing that has come to fruition is the fact that half the places I’ve interviewed at or spoken to recently just bore me. It’s not like they are bad companies or have bad people, but what they do might not be interesting to me or the job description is a laundry list of bullshit and then the actual job just seems to be boring. At one of my interviews recently the VP actually told me he’d think I’d be bored out of my mind at his company. I was just being honest in what I want to work on and what I think is exciting. And doing mundane computer administrative tasks obviously isn’t something I’m going to be jumping for joy about. Plus I’m not big working at a tech company where 24/7 all they talk about is technology. I worked at a place like that once and it was the worst experience I ever had in my life. Working around super smart people who lack social skills isn’t really a fun environment to be in. At least not for me.

Most of my career I’ve taken contracts and jobs just for the experience, the money, or because ‘hey i needed a job.’ It’s gotten me this far but i’m also so tired and bored which leads to a miserable time after awhile. Yes I do side projects like writing and making videos and so on, but that’s not really something that puts food on the table. And I’d rather have money to make something I actually want to make rather than be forced to make or accept something that I hate. And media/entertainment is an industry where 1 percent make big bucks and 99 percent make less than 20K per year and have to have other jobs to support them. Which leads back to that being a hobby and interest and still needing to work to support myself. And having a miserable boring time at a job means the creative portion of my life suffers as well as many other things.

I need to find something I’m passionate about but at the same time I’m not sure any company can actually give that to me anymore.
The more I’ve been thinking the more it seems that if I can’t find a job that really makes me excited for a company that really sounds interesting with people who are bright and fun, I might just have to create one on my own. I’ve actually started a company last year but never really initiated anything or had a clue what I really wanted to do with it or why. Over the past few weeks more ideas have come to mind and I’ve been working on a business plan and some designs and theories, but who knows. Maybe a job that I fall in love with will come about soon, or maybe my company will actually make money or get funded.

A startup isn’t exactly easy and doesn’t always make money. But then again making somebody else rich while being bored out of your mind helping them do that isn’t exactly a good thing to me either. It’s one thing if I worked for some cancer research center or a research firm looking to cure diseases or a biotech company who searches genomes. At least I’d be involved in helping to save the world in a way. Plus that data would be incredibly interesting. It’s another thing altogether if I work on a system that grabs data and pushes out accounting reports and sales reports all day every day. How exciting.

There are some things already in motion. But I don’t like the company name. Need to change it.(Not sure how that works for a C corporation, but I’ll find out.)
I do have tons of ideas… It does involve Building software and consulting but at a whole different level. Plus doing some mobile things would be cool. And again…I’ve always been one who liked leading and starting things and I’ve never been good at listening to somebody who obviously is a pencil pusher who has no clue what they are talking about yet their decisions are the ones pushed forward and then when those decisions fail, which happens more often than not, the peons get the blame. Who knows.

I’ve already put some ads up looking for people for my company. If I get a prototype of what I want at the smallest level, then maybe investors will be impressed enough that I can actually implement my ideas. And then through some connections get into certain industries and organizations. And from there build the software better and consult/train people on it. Like I said, who knows.