Romney Is the Best You've Got

This is another post for Daily Kos, but I'm posting it here first, because Halloween seems like a bad time to post something on DK -- it will be lost before anyone has a chance to see it.

There has been a lot of talk about Mitt Romney being a lousy candidate for President, but I think that if you look at him in the context of the Republican Party, they are lucky to have him.  I believe that this is about the best the Republican Party can do, in all seriousness.  Consider:

·         A candidate has to be a nutcase conservative to survive the Republican primaries, yet only a moderate could win the general election.  Romney can be both with equal conviction, and as a former Republican Governor of a very blue state, he has some background to support either.

·         Romney is a good salesman.  He managed to sell his switch to moderate Republican to some independents without losing the hard case right-wingers, even after his campaign spokesman said that was what he would do.

·         He has convinced evangelicals to vote against the only Christian in the race.

·         He has a built-in constituency – Mormons – who will vote for him by a huge margin and give money and time to his campaign.

·         He is intelligent and articulate.

·         He can win a debate even when the facts are against him.

·         He manages to avoid specifics that can be attacked politically and sells it as bipartisanship with a straight face.

·         The man has no scruples about what he says.  Whatever it takes.

·         Consider the alternatives, in something like decreasing order of viability:  Pawlenty, Perry, Santorum, Gingrich, Huntsman, Bachmann, Cain, Trump.  Palin maybe should be in there, just ahead of Bachmann.  That’s a horrible field.  Obviously, it isn’t easy to find a Republican candidate who can survive the primaries who isn’t out-and-out crazy.

It is just hard for me to imagine anymore what a viable Republican candidate for President would even look like.  Anyone truly crazy enough to believe in this party will get killed in the general election.  A true moderate will be shouted down and chased away.  The Romney solution – a guy with no specific policies and no philosophy who can sell different versions of himself to different crowds – is better than I thought they would do.  With less than a week to go, he still has a chance, which is pretty remarkable.

It’s the party, not the candidate.  There is a reason that Democrats have better candidates:  you don’t have to be crazy or dishonest to be one.  If Republicans don’t like Romney as a candidate, I would love to see them go with a true believer next time.  Then they'll know what a terrible candidate means.

Rick Santorum is still young.  Oh please oh please oh please.

What's Wrong with White People?

This is another of my Daily Kos diaries.  I think mostly because of the title, this diary received an unusual amount of traffic -- it was posted 4+ hours ago and has generated 83 comments (I'm hoping it will get to 100) and 26 recommendations.  Some of the comments accuse me of mindless racism, but most are supportive.  One accused me of being basically Ann Coulter, which is certainly interesting.  I'll stand by my comments.

A little update:  96 comments as of this morning, though that is probably where it stops.  Just to give some idea of the size of the Daily Kos readership:  Only Daily Kos members (you just have to sign up) can post, comment on a post or recommend each other's comments.  I added up the total recommendations on all of the comments on this post -- 531 recommendations, with about 10 of those being negative.  Lots of those are duplicate recs by the same members, but it's safe to say that at least a few hundred people read this post.  A thousand is quite possible.

Although the polls consistently say that we are headed toward a close election, there is one large constituency out there that is keeping Mitt Romney from crashing to a fiery and humiliating defeat. This group, if they controlled the election, would elect President Romney by an 18-point margin or so, and would no doubt give him the huge Senate and House majorities he would need to carry out all of his policies, if he can ever decide what they are. Actually, President McCain would be up for re-election, but you get the idea.


This group of voters is white people. And as a white person, I just don't get it.

Actually I'm white, male, 55, married with kids, and live in the suburbs, so a pretty good candidate demographically for the Republican Party. I still don't get it, not at all.


Republicans took a balanced budget, drastically cut taxes, started two wars and still cut taxes more, ran up huge deficits, then blamed the next President for their failures and now insist that we have no choice, the only way out of this mess is to cut programs that support the middle class, like Medicare and Social Security, and to cut back on spending that might create jobs, improve education, or rebuild the country.

How does this help white people?

Republicans have refused to work with Democrats to run the country, creating a historically divided and ineffective Congress at a time when America desperately needed leadership and government action. They have proudly proclaimed their lack of any sort of cooperation.

Are whites better off because of this?

Republican policies have created a tiny class of super-rich who have reaped virtually all of the economic gains made in the last thirty years and have favored these super-rich with the lowest taxes they have seen in decades, while shrinking the middle class.

Is this what white people want?

If you are white and gay, or female, or are benefitting from Social Security or Medicare, or hope to one day benefit from those programs, or if you are concerned about access to affordable medical care, do you really want to put Republicans in charge? Why?

I could go on and on and on. Mitt Romney is not going to help white people, other than a few really incredibly wealthy ones. Republican policies are not making life better for white people, but white people seem to love these guys.

What in the world are white people thinking? I just don't get it.

Unemployment Chronicles: The Next Big Thing

It is possible to google-image a phrase, such as "meeting agenda," and not have anything interesting pop up, but it is surprising how often you can pick something innocuous like "the next big thing," just an ordinary phrase, and it's obvious right away that this has some very specific meaning to someone.  The Internet is vast.  Turns out The Next Big Thing is a video game, with lots of puzzles to solve and wacky, colorful characters.  Let me know how it turns out.

It's Thursday evening, and I last worked last Friday morning.  At some point, preferably soon, I will have to work again or one day start living under a bridge, or worse, move to Stringtown.  (Little inside joke there -- no offense intended to anyone, living anywhere, or anybody's family...Let's move on.)

First step to making the contract thing work was to get the first contract.  Check.  Second was to do a good job, make the client like me.  Check.  Third thing is to get the next one, a pretty important step.  What I still need to see is whether this career can result in reasonably steady work; two weeks between jobs is manageable, but ten isn't.  Well, check, maybe.

My preference would be to continue to work with Robert Half (Resource Management) if they can continue to keep me busy, just because otherwise I am jumping from company to company and scrambling for an opportunity every time a contract ends.  Other firms have contacted me, especially in the last week or two.  They seemed to know somehow when I was coming to the end of the contract, like they share information or have little spies everywhere or something.  I respond to almost everyone (except the guy who is a recruiter/gym owner and personal fitness coach), but I think continuity with one firm is the most likely path to keeping busy.

Resource Management gave me a courtesy call Tuesday, and they at least sounded as though they wanted to find another job for me, which is nice.  They also gave me a classic noncommittal look forward:  "It's a little slow right now, but the timing is really good because it's picking up."  However, I got a call today, and they have a job possibility that looks promising.  It's with an insurance company, and it could start as early as next week.

So I am enjoying my time off again, and the initial signs are good for the next big thing.  Another contract, and then another and another, and pretty soon this could be a career.

On Politics and God's Will

Once again, this post is cross-posted from a post by the notorious Akronborn, who amuses himself by writing "diaries" on the unabashedly liberal website Daily Kos.  This post got a fair amount of attention -- 23 comments and 19 recommendations in an hour and a half.

Update:  Three hours later, my diary has rolled off the front page and into obscurity, but with 34 comments and 26 recommendations, which is a really good response by my standards.

Mostly lost in the discourse about the Richard Mourdock's comments about God and rape is a larger point that I would like to see brought out more often: If you believe in God, it is not surprising if that belief sometimes shapes your political opinions. This is inevitable, and not a problem. However, your personal religious beliefs should have no bearing -- zero, none whatsoever -- on the public discussion of a political issue, and to raise them as a reason to support a point of view in the political arena is absolutely inappropriate.

First, I do not believe in God or anything that you would call religion. I'm not sure why that matters. It doesn't. But there you go.

More to the point, let's say you think gays should be allowed to marry, because Jesus taught us to care about other people. Good for you!. I hope you live in Washington and will vote (better, already voted!) for Referendum 74. But when you say, "We should pass a law that allows gays to marry because it's what Jesus would want," you have crossed a line that should not be crossed. Now you are saying that based on your religious beliefs, based on your personal interpretation of the teachings of your particular church, everyone should be legally bound to a particular path.

It's not only, or even foremost, that this thinking runs afoul of the Constitution. It is the worst kind of tyranny, forcing your religious beliefs onto other people who may not share them. It's just so wrong. You understand that, right?

As a corollary, if you do want to make an argument in favor of some political view, and all you have is "It's God's will," or anything similar, you don't have anything at all. If you can't frame your arguments in terms of benefit to society, including people who have no stake whatsoever in your religion, you really need to stop and reconsider jumping into the political discourse.

And yet, political leaders and pundits make these kinds of comments way too often, and we hardly notice, and we just move on. And it is just so wrong.

Unemployment Chronicles: Last Day

My last day at my first contract job was actually last Friday, but this writing thing takes time, so I'm just writing about it now.  My contract came to an end as planned Friday, and I ended up working a very short, 2.25-hour day.  I started the day by writing a nice note to my client and offering to leave at noon, as I just did not have much to do, and I knew how difficult it would be to find something new for me to work on for just a few hours.  I had one little graphing problem to solve, and as it turned out, I solved it in an hour and a half.  At 10:00, the client looked at it, said it looked good, and asked if I had more to do.  I suggested that I could just clock out, and I was done.

I have to say, I think that having a last day is going to be one of the great benefits of contracting.  Most jobs are a never-ending set of overlapping tasks, some one-off, some repeating off into eternity.  You are never done.  You can never step back and say, "finished."  Even if you can say that about some aspect, there is always more on the table.  The contracting model is more like taking a college course -- you put in an effort, have some things to do, and then you're done.  Really really done, turn-in-your-badge done, never going back there done.

The way I have managed my career -- which means hardly ever looking for a job until I was disgusted with my current one -- I have never left a job on the greatest of terms.  That doesn't mean that I was banned from the premises everywhere I used to work, but there was always a bit of unhappiness in the end.  The worst case of that phenomenon was Farmers, where I had great success and worked for 11 years, but the last three years and the ending left a bad taste.  (In fact, there I am effectively if not actually banned from the building, as I would not feel it was appropriate to go back.)

By contrast, World Vision was pretty much a complete success.  The client was happy with me, the work got done, they offered to give me a reference.  Put that one in the books; you can't take it away.  I suppose that things could go south with Robert Half one day, but my first contract was a good one.  It must be part of my personality that I like to see closure.  Doesn't everyone?

One other aspect of contracting that appeals to my desire for feedback:  In most accounting positions, it is not easy to see the direct connection, if any, between your work and the profitability of the company.  I couldn't tell you how much more, or less, profitable Farmers was because I was there, or how that compared to anyone else.  The same is true for World Vision; however, for Robert Half, I can give you a pretty close estimate of how much money they made because of my work.  Some people who work there are paid on commission based partly on my earnings, so my work benefited them directly as well.  I like knowing that.

So one down, and on to the next one.  And that is a subject for another post.

Mensa

Yesterday I did something that I have been thinking about for around 40 years:  I took the test to get into Mensa.  And much to my surprise, the test was really hard, and I am not at all confident that I will be invited to join.  Lucas went with me, and he might have done better -- he was certainly faster -- so maybe one of us can join.

Mensa says they take the top two percent in intelligence.  Well, I was already tested in the top two percent when I was a kid.  In addition, I have taken the types of tests that are supposed to be indicators of your ability to join, and I have always done well.  For example, they have practice problems on the Mensa web site, and I got 29 of those right out of 30.  I really figured passing their test was a formality.

My incentive for finally taking the test was being unemployed and thinking that this was a way to meet people, and as a bonus, people who would know that I am in Mensa.  Well, not so fast.  There was the matter of actually doing well on the test, and there were a few problems with that.

First, you can request a non-culturally-oriented test, particularly meant for people who may not be fluent in English.  I did not request that, but we were all given that test.  Not optimal for me, I think, because some of the pictures are difficult to interpret.  More on that later.

The first section was not timed.  It was pretty easy, all based on pictures.  One question did not have an obvious answer, and one of the pictures was very bad.  I interpreted it to be maybe a small staked tree; Lucas though it might be a coat tree.  Still, overall fine; however, one person took about 15 minutes more than the rest of us while we all waited, which came into play later.

The next section was a surprise.  Four very quick, timed exercises.  If there is one thing that goes as one gets older, it is the ability to solve problems really quickly.  I could not get to all of the questions.  Lucas was faster, getting through at least a couple of the exercises.  This is a good time to mention that I was clearly the oldest person there, possibly by 15 years or more, and Lucas was the youngest.  Perhaps they will grade on a curve due to my advanced years.

The third and last section was again untimed, with pictures, and a little harder than the first section.  I had two issues with this section.  One, after finishing the first section in the middle of the pack, I was one of the last people done with the third section, and although it was supposed to be untimed, we were put on a deadline because the room reservation was running out, so I had to hurry, thanks in large part to the guy who took so long on part one.

Second, several of the pictures were tough to interpret.  Real example:  Which item is different?  A measuring tape, a folding yardstick, a kitchen scale, a calendar, or a rectangular box shape with lines on the top of it?  Kinda depends on what the box is supposed to be; I could not identify it.  Another picture may or may not have been a pile of bricks.  Another possibly bread slices.  Another a long rectangular piece of wood?  Or maybe not.

I felt like the timed section was key, and I did lousy on that, but who knows?  I guess I would not be too surprised either way.  If nothing else, it may be something Lucas can take advantage of.

Update:  Well, if I did not pass the test, I can still get in.  They will accept either the SAT or the GMAT as sufficient evidence, and my score is high enough on either to qualify.  So now we wait a couple of weeks to see the results.  That means I could have joined any time since my senior year in high school.

Chess

The thing I find most interesting about chess is that it has held my interest for so long, and it has held the interest of so many people all over the world for so long. It is, after all, a simple game in many respects, with relatively simple rules that are easy to learn. But somehow chess has just the right balance to be easy enough to play, but impossible to master completely, that has kept people working on it for centuries.


I grew up in the age of Bobby Fischer, but the real inspiration for my interest in chess was my brother. Mike and I learned the rules, when I was about ten, from my dad, although I don’t really remember playing against him; he stepped back when we quickly became better players than he was. From there, we began to teach ourselves from chess literature and to learn from each other and from playing our friends. Mike has always had, from a young age, the ability to throw himself into a task and pursue it with a competitive spirit that I have never possessed, so he began to study the game and collect chess literature, compiling a pretty good chess library while he was still in high school. I was just swept along for the ride, trying to keep up with him. By the time Bobby became world champion, we were already pretty good.

In fact, I would say that two of my three greatest chess triumphs involve my brother. First, when I was a freshman in high school, I won the school chess championship. I won a rare game against Mike on the way to that victory, although the final game was against an easier opponent, Mr. Schulman, a teacher and our academic sponsor. I don’t remember all of my games by any means, but forty years later I still remember the winning moves from both of those games. Second, I played a few rated games years later and achieved, and still have, a higher rating than Mike does. But let’s be clear: those are accomplishments precisely because he has always been clearly the better player.

The third triumph was beating 14-year-old prodigy and Chess Master Kenny Fong (when I was in my twenties.) The first time I played him, it was in a simultaneous exhibition, and I was the first of his 40 or so opponents to win against him. I played him many times after that, often in conditions that favored me, and he crushed me every time.

Over the years, I have set chess aside many times, but I have also gone back to it. I have twice joined chess clubs and have played hundreds of games against computers, but my favorite chess activity is to play through books of chess puzzles; I have literally worn out several chess books, discarding them when they fell apart because I went through them so many times. My latest quest is to beat every level of Chess Titans, which came with my computer, 50 times. On levels 2 through 4, I have a record right now of about 170 wins, 1 draw, and 1 loss (should have won those two too), so I can still beat a lousy opponent.

I have thought over the years about getting into playing shape and competing again. When I was in high school, my strength was knowing my openings and end games; when I played again in my twenties, I had forgotten the openings and relied on the middle game. If I put those things together, perhaps I could be better, who knows? But getting and staying sharp at chess requires a lot of time, more than I am willing to give it while I am working. It’s something to think about for retirement.

The Sad State of Right-Wing Blogging

This was originally published on Daily Kos 2.5 hours ago.  It's political, but mostly a blog critique.  This post has gotten a bit more attention than most of mine:  21 comments so far, 8 recommendations, 15 DK equivalents of a thumbs up.  Don't know how many views yet, but obviously quite a few.  dgs


Like many of you, I keep a couple of right-wing sites in my favorites and like to check out what they are up to on occasion. Not too often -- I just can't stand it. But occasionally.

I happened upon this post on Media Research Center, which tries to be some sort of answer to Media Matters for America but not surprisingly doesn't exactly measure up.

What surprised me most about the article wasn't the mindless opposition to science -- we're getting used to that. What surprised me was that they would bother to publish an article written at the level of a not-so-bright fifth grader. I can tell you that I write a personal blog that gets maybe 30 page views on a busy day, and if I were ever to publish something this pathetic, I would be mortified. But I won't so it's OK.

The gist of the post, included in the title, is that Time Magazine published an article with contradictory solutions to global warming. Their examples? Move to the city, live in a smaller home, telecommute, hang a clothesline. And the article's point? If you move to the city and live in some tiny home, why telecommute, and where are you going to hang that clothesline? And that's it. That's their point. It's contradictory!

Well, here's an idea. Maybe some people could live in smaller homes closer to work, and others could telecommute and hang a clothesline.

Oh my god, I just blew away your post and made you look like a complete moron with one simple, really obvious idea!

And this post is featured prominently on the main page of Media Research Center, third article from the top as I write. Really, if that's the best you can do, you should rethink your life and try to find something useful to do. No kidding.

Get a Job

We have talked lately about Lucas getting a job, and I realized in the process that there is something that was really, really different when I was younger.  Lucas, and you could say the same about Jarrod, has in a very real sense never worked a day in his life.  In the very real sense that, at the age of 17, he has never been paid by someone outside of me or Jackie for anything.  As far as we can think, not one hour of babysitting, no yard work, no watching someone's pets or watching their house, literally nothing ever. 

And while this has not seemed so odd on a day-to-day basis, in retrospect it's pretty strange.  I was never the most industrious kid (trust me, really), but by the time I was his age, I had babysat, watched houses and pets, had a paper route, and was working Saturdays cleaning a machine shop.  A lot of those things just sort of happened, part of being a teenager.  People asked you to do stuff. 

So how did we come to this?  One thing I suspect is that the culture has just changed, similar to the way that kids don't play outside like they used to, or how people who live on the same street don't talk to each other.  That Jackie and I don't know our neighbors well probably is part of it at least.  The relative isolation of homeschooling, particularly from people who live really close, hasn’t helped.  Lucas doesn’t have it quite as easy as I did, because he has to actually look for work if he wants it.  He has applied for a couple of things but didn’t get them. 

The thing that surprises me though is his attitude toward the idea.  He doesn’t have any interest and says that having a job doesn’t sound very fun.  Now that second part he gets from me, because my job wasn’t fun the last few years, but I did keep getting up and going.  But again going back to my own experience as a kid, I don’t think it ever occurred to me that I could just not work because Mom and Dad would pay for everything.  I wasn’t always thrilled to go off babysitting, but I did it anyway if I could.  And I liked having some money. 

Just to pile on a bit, in this year, this rebuilding financial year, the year that I have been unemployed and will be again a week from Monday, we have spent a bunch of money on Lucas.  We bought him a car.  We took him to an archery tournament in Boston and another in Ohio that was combined with a driving trip to Oklahoma and as far as UT Austin for a campus tour.  We also ordered new archery equipment for him – really expensive archery equipment.  And most of all, we are offering to send him to universities next year, some of them very pricey.

OK, about now I have to point out that I don’t blame Lucas at all.  This is more about my failings as a parent and my genuine surprise that things are at this point.  Really, how does a kid get to be 17 and not want to make money?  I have always taken the attitude that I wanted my boys to have the chance to be kids, to not always have a lot of responsibilities, because the day will come, and decade after decade will come, when they have responsibilities all the time.  I wanted them to have some fun.  Maybe I overdid it.  And that's "I" by the way, not “we,” because Jackie has always had a tougher attitude. 

I also think that I have been lax about this because I look at the big picture, and in the big picture, there are critical things I want to see from my boys, and Lucas is pretty great about those things.  His main job as a kid is to lay the groundwork for becoming a productive adult, and he’s done that well.  He is an excellent student, and although his mother was a big part of that, a lot of the credit goes to him.  He has always been responsible.  He has stuck with activities like Boy Scouts and archery for years, making it easier for us to commit to them.  Right now he gets up at 6:00 or so every morning and uses that car we got him to go to college classes.  One quarter he was getting up at 5:00 and taking the bus.  He even hasn’t been too much trouble as a teenager.  Hard to beat that. 

Anyway, learning how to do a job is part of your education, like learning to swim or ride a bike.  He might even like making money.

Retiree Medical

This post is about the retiree health plan of a certain nameless company that I retired from.  Some of the more clever of you may be able to piece the puzzle together and figure out which one, but that can't be helped.  My readers are clever.  It's not my fault.

Anyway, this is not intended to be a factual analysis; it's just my best understanding of some conversations and things I think I remember, but who knows, I could be messed up.  That's not all that important.  The important thing is that I did not mention Farmers any specific company and I confessed up front that I don't know what I'm talking about, so no one can feel disparaged or defamed, I'm pretty sure.

The way I think it used to work is that retirees got the same deal as employees.  The company would subsidize their health insurance the same way they do current employees, paying something like two thirds of the premium, and retireees could stay in the program and pay what they paid while they were working.  That's a pretty substantial benefit.  Post-retirement benefits were never really guaranteed though, and one day a few years ago, they changed them.

Here's how it works now, if I remember correctly, from the conversation I had today.  After you leave the company, you can sign onto a plan for retirees, as long as you had coverage when you were working and then continuously maintained coverage.  However, the Zurich benefits specialist I talked to told me that COBRA is better coverage for cheaper, even though COBRA is not cheap at all.  So if you pay COBRA for 18 months and that runs out, you can join their worse and more expensive plan.

The good thing is that they set aside some money for me to help pay for that plan, if it comes to that.  Unfortunately, after 11 years at the company, I think I have enough money designated for me to pay for maybe 6 months.

That is not a substantial benefit.  I almost laughed when I realized how it works, especially with the Zurich representative assuring me that the plan sucks.  (She didn't say that, but she might as well have.)  I suppose that if you retire at 63 and a half or 64, it helps you get to Medicare, but the plan has a $3,000 deductible, so even then it's going to cost you.

I wonder if someone at Zurich feels bad that they couldn't come up with a way to give people less.

After you reach age 65, they have another plan.  I haven't read about it yet, but I bet it's really excellent.

River Cruise

This is a post about a vacation I would like to take.  Jackie spotted the idea, as usual; left to my own devices, I never notice anything.  But I'm not strictly left to my own devices, so that's good.

The concept of river cruising is relatively new (if you don't count steamboats on the Mississipi in the 1800s), but I think the idea is growing quickly.  We get brochures from Viking Rvier Cruises all the time, and it's one of the few bits of junk mail I actually like to read.

What makes it seem fun is that, unlike most cruises that go a long time between ports and then stop for a short time and leave, river cruises get from one place to the next quickly.  Lots of tours are included -- it seems like not nearly the dead time you have on an ocean cruise.  Besides, you have a view from every room, and since you're on a river, there will always be something to see.

The really nice one is Amsterdam to Budapest in 15 days, through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary, but there are more exotic trips, like through Cambodia, if that's what you want.

The downside to these cruises is that they cost more.  Regular cruises now cost about the same per night as a Motel 6 plus three meals at Denny's, but river cruises are more like a Hilton and someplace nicer than Denny's.  And that means just me and Jackie.  If the boys want to go on one, they can use the college education we will pay for and get good jobs and pay for their own.*  Our twentieth anniversary is two years from now, and if all goes well, we could take one then.  Lucas will be off to college, and Jarrod will be 15 and, um, going somewhere...Hey Mike, can you take him?

It might be ambitious to think we can afford that, but we have put off travel for a long time.  It's time to go somewhere.

*Jackie says you have to be 21 anyway.  They don't take kids.

A Rebuilding Year

No, this is not another post about the Mariners.  This is about the economics of this year for Jackie and me.

For the last ten years, our financial plan for the family has been pretty simple:  I would make as much money as I could, and that would be enough.  As this year started, we hoped to add to that, with Jackie looking to get work in the second half of the year.  My job at Farmers was already more tenuous than one would hope, but I did not plan to leave.  Then things changed.

Now, we will have less income this year than we did last year, although not dramatically less if I can keep working.  But what we hope we are doing is building a foundation that will make us better off in the future, maybe as early as next year.  If it works out, I will almost certainly make less money again next year, but again, it doesn't have to be a lot less.  If Jackie can find work too, we could have more income than we ever did.

So far, the rebuilding plan is where you would want it to be, though we're in the early stages.  For me to break into consulting, I needed to get through the barriers to get that first assignment.  As a result, I took something that pays a bit less than I would like and didn't last very long -- without an extension it would have been eight weeks, now it's ten -- but I got my foot in the door.  The second important thing was to make a good impression on that first client, and that seems to be going well.  They extended my stay, a nice sign, but also the person I work for has said good things about my work, even seemed a bit amazed by it a couple of times, and importantly, she has said positive things to Robert Half.  Next step is to keep the ball rolling after this contract, so I have already updated my resume to include my current work and begun to contact firms who might have the next opportunity available.

As for Jackie, she started the year needing to finish her coursework, pass her final exam, pass a national certification test, then get a job in a field in which experience is highly valued and it's tough to get started.  She has done all those things, although the job she has is a non-paying externship, but she is really happy with the experience she is getting, and she should get a good recommendation out of it as well as the chance to say she has experience.  They seem to like her as well, offered to increase her (unpaid) hours if she wanted, but she is finding that going to work every day is not all joy and goodness, so she declined, for now.  Still everything she has done this year is setting up for the future, laying the groundwork for a new career.

Like most rebuilding plans, it is not guaranteed to work.  But if it does work even close to the way we hope, we could be better off than ever soon.

Saturday Politics

As I watched the presidential debate Wednesday, I was amazed at the number of obviously dishonest things Mitt Romney said.  I kept saying "He's going to get in trouble for that," but after the debate everyone just said that he won, pundits and the public alike.  What he was saying wasn't true, but that didn't matter.  One post I read said he used a "Gish Gallop," named after a creationist debater, meaning he just threw out so much BS that his opponent couldn't counter it all.

I wrote this Daily Kos diary yesterday.  Like most of my Daily Kos stuff, it didn't get much attention, I think because my posts are usually opinion rather than any information.  Still, not much attention on DK means 3 comments, 4 recommendations, 6 shares, 1 tweet, and 52 views so far.

What I Hope the President Will Say in the Next Debate

At some point, Mitt Romney well tell a major lie during the next debate. He may repeat his claim that he can pay for military increases because he is not going to cut taxes, or he may talk about the President's apology tour, or maybe both of those and lots more. And when he does, I hope the President will say something like this:

"Governor Romney, during the last debate, you said that I could have my own house and my own plane, but not my own facts. (I don't own my own plane, but if I ever want to buy one, I appreciate that I have your permission to do so.)

Well Governor, you are not entitled to have your own private universe with your own rules. You stood on the stage in Denver during the last debate, and after campaigning for 18 months, saying that you would cut taxes for everyone, even the top 1%, you suddenly decided that you weren't going to do that, that you never intended to do that. The health care plan you propose won't allow people with pre-existing conditions to get health insurance, but suddenly you said it will. Your own campaign, right after the debate, had to admit that that just wasn't so. You said that you would repeal Dodd-Frank, but then you said that you would keep bank regulations. You claimed that 50% of the green energy companies my administration invested in have gone bankrupt. After the debate, your own campaign admitted that you were simply wrong about that, not even close, not even in the right ballpark.

Anyone can stand up here on stage and talk about all the wonderful things they are going to do, but your comments need to be rooted in reality, the reality of THIS universe. And in this universe, the one the rest of us live in, you can't give everyone, even the top 1%, a tax cut and at the same time NOT give them a tax cut. You can't protect people with pre-existing conditions with a plan that doesn't allow people with pre-existing conditions to get health insurance. In this universe, you can't repeal regulations on Wall Street and at the same time keep those regulations in place. In the real universe, the only one any of us knows about, those things just aren't possible. They don't add up.

This "apology tour" you refer to never happened. Not in this universe, not in any universe. That claim, which you have made over and over, has been fact-checked by news organizations across the country, and it just isn't true. It never happened. That's a fact.

I will NEVER apologize..."

You can take it from there, Mr. President. Go get him.

Baseball

When I was younger, I used to follow sports much more than I do now.  Being married to a non-fan of sports will do that to you, as well as having a busier life.  I don't really notice anymore when football season starts, even though I used to live for Raider games.  I was never a huge basketball fan, but now I don't notice either when the season begins or when it ends.  Forget about hockey, golf, tennis.  Never got into soccer.  I missed the entire Olympics this year.

These days I focus almost all my sports energy on baseball, specifically on the Mariners.  Even as a baseball fan, I read about players around both leagues, but I really don't know much about other teams beyond their records.  But I keep up with the Mariners year round, reading speculation about which players might come or go and what the team should do in the off-season to improve, and I follow them every day during the season, even months after they have been eliminated from contention, again.

(My post-season rooting is this:  I hope the Yankees lose.  Go A's.  In that order.)

I have given some thought to why I think baseball is a better game than others.  Maybe it's just because I like it, but I have reasons anway:

• Baseball is a game of statistics.  Like no other game, baseball can be broken down into the results of every at-bat, every inning of pitching, every hit, every walk or stolen base or strikeout.  When I discoverd several years ago that the statistics were getting more sophisticated and people were out there blogging about every little aspect of the game that could be measured, it was a delight for me.
• Baseball is played by real people.  Basktball players are enormously tall, with a few exceptions.  Even the short ones are tall.  Football players are almost all some combination of huge, incredibly strong, and/or track-meet fast.  Normal people can't hope to play those sports professionally.  Baseball players are fast, slow, small, big, strong, not so strong, some even a bit portly.  A regular guy can at least dream.
• It'a an easy game to follow.  Unlike football, you can see what's going on in baseball.  You can follow the result in football or basketball, but I, at least, can't really tell how those results came about, because too much is going on.  Most of the action in baseball follows the ball, and as a result the game is easier to understand and better officiated.
• I'll draw on a cliche for the last point:  it's a game of inches.  There is a luck factor in any game of baseball that helps make it interesting.  Football and basketball are games of precision, but the players control the movement of the ball.  There is no way that a batter can control just where the ball will go off the bat, and that creates a randomness that makes it a little more excellent when a player gets a hit or makes a great defensive play.  Minute differences, a few inches this way or that, can decide a baseball game, and that's part of what makes it fun.

And one last thing.  The Mariners won 75 games this year, which counts as a positive year for them.  Finally, they are beginning to show some signs of life.

The Joys of Working

I did a post back in March about the advantages of not working, which are many and obvious, and I easily listed ten.  The joys of working are fewer and more subtle, but after a few months off, I admit there are a few.

Routine

It is easier to eat right when I'm working, because I get into a pattern of fixing a decent breakfast and taking a sensible lunch with me, and there isn't much variation until the evenings.  Even at Farmers, I used to lose a little weight during the week and gain over the weekends.  When I'm home, I usually still eat a good breakfast, but then there's second breakfast, early lunch, snacks right there to be eaten.  Also, Jackie and I have gotten into a routine of exercising before work (although we are skipping today), and though I also listed exercise as one of the the benefits of not working, we are done with our exercise by 6:45 now, when we used to leave the house after 7:00, so the day gets started earlier.

Paychecks

Yes, it's good to have money.  Beyond that, I am much more appreciative of the money I am paid in the consulting world.  A salary is so predictable.  My paycheck now is dependent on hours actually worked, so every day is a money-making achievement of sorts.  When my client extended my assignment a couple of weeks, my expected earnings from the job actually rose.  For the first time in forever, I feel like I used to feel when I was a teenager, the anticipation of getting another payday, the direct connection between hours worked and reward.

Audio Books

I used to really enjoy my commutes with Joel, my fellow INTP who would engage me with anything interesting we could come up with.  But it was kind of a happy accident getting together with Joel, and consulting/contracting does not lend itself to carpooling.  I knew that books on CD were a good diversion, but they are expensive.  It was Jackie (as is often the case) who actually did something, getting me a Jason Bourne book at the library.  It wasn't written by Robert Ludlum, and I did not like it and did not finish it, but when I took it back to the library, I got another book.  I have now listened to two books that I just grabbed based on their descripitons on the back:  World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler, and Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd.  I had never heard of either book or either author before I chose them at the library, and they are not books I would ever have read except for my need for entertainment during my commute, but I thoroughly enjoyed both.  Now I am listening to Endgame:  Bobby Fischer's Remarkable (etc.)... by Frank Brady, a can't-miss book that I would have read eventually anyway.  I look forward to my commute.  Audio books are great.

Validation

I'm not sure how important validation is, but it's nice.  I never doubted my abilities for an instant, only the sanity of people who questioned them without any rational basis.  Still, after 11 years with one company, it's nice to walk in somewhere else and be acknowledged for the contribution that was taken for granted and then ignored and denied for so long.  They like me, they really like me.  Or more like "In your face, Farmers" is what I'm really thinking.

Twelve more working days at World Vision.  I may be starting the Unemployment Chronicles again soon.

Lucas

I don't particularly want to post a picture of Lucas on my blog, so we have this other guy named Lucas instead.

Lucas is 17, a senior, and about to apply to colleges for next year.  He's a smart kid and a pretty good student, so his list of colleges is impressive:  MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Cornell, University of Washington, and maybe UT Austin.  His first choice is MIT because it has a reputation as the best engineering school.  He would really like to go there; everything else is second.

First thing to note is that he will probably not get into MIT or Stanford.  The truth is, almost no matter who you are, your chances of getting into those schools is low.  Perfect grades, 800 on one of your SATs, it doesn't matter.  MIT and Stanford will reject just about anyone.  To be in the top 75% of the students who enroll at those schools, you need an SAT average of about 780 or so.  Lucas isn't quite there.  That said, his test scores are slightly better than the 25th percentile at each school, so it's reasonable to say that he isn't out of the running, which is impressive enough from my point of view.

He has a pretty good chance at the other schools, and any of them would be a fine choice, so barring a big surprise, he will get into a good university.  UW isn't bad at all for a fallback plan.

Before I say a little about his other strong points, let me be honest about some weaknesses.  Lucas is not the most driven kid.  He gets stuff done, but he has a tendency to do just enough, just soon enough to get by.  Not as bad as me, but not great.  Some of what he has achieved can be credited to his mother's persistence more than his.  His grades last year were good, but not stellar -- he seems to shoot for an A-.  He likes video games too much.  He doesn't take the initiative often.

As far as other strong points, colleges say they want more than just classes and good grades.  Here I think Lucas has a compelling story or two.  Still could be better, but it isn't bad.  First, his education has been untraditional, a mix of home schooling, online classes, and two years of running start classes.  He has not been in a traditional classroom since second grade.  Despite home schooling, or maybe because of it, he started his online high school two years ahead in math and one year ahead in English, took honors courses, and then went to running start at a local college starting his junior year.  Second, he is an accomplished archer who competed in tournaments across the country and is nationally ranked.  Also, he will become an Eagle Scout sometime this year.

It's more than I ever did.

If I have any advice for him, it is this:  you have been given a good mind and a good start.  Don't waste them.  Do something with your life that you can be proud of when you're done.

Fortunately, Lucas doesn't seem like the type to let things slip away.  He tends to choose a goal and then pursue it, maybe without too much energy, but he keeps at it.  He wants to be an electrical engineer, and I expect he will be one day.  The first step -- which school he goes to -- should be decided by the middle of March.

The Joys of Consulting

I could not bring myself to post a picture of "consulting," and the images associated with the word consulting on the Internet are a pretty boring bunch anyway, so here's a nice picture of the harvest moon instead.  Ooh, pretty.

A couple of downsides to consulting first.  One, it's probably going to be hard to make as much money as I used to.  Maybe if I can get a high-paying, longer project with some overtime, but that's a best-case scenario.  Included in this downside item are the benefits offered to contractors by Robert Half -- there are some, but they are nothing like what most large companies offer, and that will translate into less money in my pocket.  It's the nature of contracting.  Also included is the inevitable time between projects, which is why a longer project could be better.

Second downside is the uncertainty between projects that there will be another project.  Hopefully that will dissipate in time.  In truth, the end of the first project and the time until the next one will be a big test of whether this can work, but the end of every project may end up being a test.

So enough of that, how about the advantages?  Here's a big one:  Monday I did not go to work because it is a Day of Prayer for World Vision employees.  They meet offsite, in a church, and pray and talk about the previous year and future plans (October 1 is the first day of their fiscal year.)  They also have something called "devotionals," which are mandatory weekly meetings of some sort for employees, and they have a separate time for chapel.  I don't have any idea what the difference is between devotionals and chapel, and I don't want to know.  But in case you are missing what is good about these activities, it's this:  I am not expected to participate.  This is excellent.

Now you may think that World Vision is unique, and that I would not have this non-participation benefit anywhere else, but I do not think so.  Farmers also had a Day of Prayer, or something similar, but they called it Profit Sharing Day, or STIP (short-term incentive plan) Day.  Their devotionals had various names, like "Let's talk about the employee survey" meeting, or Manager's Strategic Planning meeting, or "We're going to implement some great new idea" meeting, but the prospect of being able to avoid them is just as appealing.

Another fine thing about contracting is that the client actually seems to appreciate what I do, at least this one does.  My manager seems impressed by the work I am providing to her, which doesn't exactly surprise me, but she thinks that I am extraordinarily thorough and organized, and that I think of everything, none of which would be things that people would have said about me during my last few years at Farmers.  There is one big, huge, REALLY OBVIOUS factor that makes the difference between being thorough and organized and not being thorough or organized at all:  well it's really obvious, so I don't have to tell the intelligent people who read my blog, do I?  Whatever, the difference is time.  Instead of trying to ride herd on 25 different priorities at the same time, I am working on one project, with the time to do really good work.  To a large degree, this was the difference between me as a Senior Accountant and me as a manager, but no matter how patiently or mostly very impatiently I explained this to certain fine people at Farmers, my words were not heard.

As always, there is no prize for being right.  Too bad; I am right so often...  (I may have mentioned, Jackie tells me I'm arrogant.  Not sure why.)

Perhaps another day I will talk about some of the lesser benefits and non-benefits of contracting.  For now I will say that, if I can make it pay, I will keep doing it.

Calling for Obama

I made calls for the Obama campaign Sunday at my friend Chuck's place.  Chuck hosted a "calling party" for a couple of hours, and if my political rants have not achieved anything else, they have at least let people like Chuck know that I might be willing to help out with a political campaign.

I made calls once before, two years ago, for Suzan DelBene, who would have been my representative if she had won, but 2010 wasn't the year for a Democrat to upset an incumbent Republican in a conservative-leaning district, and she didn't really come close.  My inspiration, besides being somewhat passionate about politics, was the great man himself -- Bill Clinton.  My friend Karl met Clinton at a local rally, and Clinton pointed a finger at him and said "You gotta get out there and make sure people vote!", or something similar, and I tried to live up to Bill's expectations, even though I heard it second hand.

The experience with DelBene was miserable.  I did my duty for her for a couple of hours, but then I told them no more.  I was calling "independent" voters to convince them to vote for DelBene.  It was close to the end of the election cycle, many people had already voted, and those independent voters were mostly just sick of getting calls from every political group under the sun.  I got as many rejections as the guys who walk house to house trying to sell "free" home alarm systems, and probably a less friendly reception.

Still, when Chuck asked me to come help, I gave it another try.  I figured at least Obama is a more compelling candidate than DelBene could ever hope to be, plus I would really like to have an influence beyond my own vote if I can.

The experience today was much more tolerable.  This time, we were calling MoveOn.org members in Florida, trying to get them to volunteer to help contact Florida voters in their neighborhoods.  I think maybe every MoveOn member (whatever that means -- how do you become a member?) is going to vote for Obama, so we were definitely talking to friendlies.  I got a few quick hangups or "not interested," but mostly people were pleasant even if they did not want to help.

So how successful were you, Dennis?  Well, let me say first that, even talking to known committed Democrats, you get more "noes" than "yesses."  Quite a few more.

So on to the numbers.  After we watched a video and practiced on each other, we received sheets of 16 people to call and try to get them to volunteer at a local event in Florida.  I went through 3 sheets, so 48 calls.  Of those, maybe 30 or so went to answering machines, which means I just hung up, not supposed to leave a message.  A couple of those 30 went to a message saying they were not taking any calls, probably a good swing state strategy for trying to reclaim their life until after the election.  Two people that I remember hung up on me, and one said not interested before I got started. About 5 were disconnected or wrong numbers.  So that leaves maybe 10 that I talked to.

Like I said, people were nice.  Some of them explained the difficult circumstances that made it impossible for them to volunteer; the first guy I talked to said that his wife was in a hospital bed full time at home.  Others were just busy.  Some talked about the election, said that Obama had their vote, but in the end couldn't help.  The most excited person was clearly an African-American woman who told me with some excitement that she and everyone in her house and her friends were definitely voting for Obama, and she had worked on registration, but even she didn't volunteer.

And then there was George, a 76-year-old from Pensacola, the one guy I called who agreed to volunteer.  My one success.  He said that he might bring his daughter though, so that would be two if he does.

Altogether, the eight people who made calls at the calling party recruited a total of eight Floridian volunteers, so my success rate was right on the average.  Even getting committed Democrats to volunteer is a laborious process.  The whole thing really is like those poor guys selling the home alarms, or like trying to find a job.  A whole lot of effort goes into trying to get any positive result.  Eight volunteers call 350 people, and eight of the 350 call some other people, and in the end you influence a dozen voters, you hope.  Then the Koch brothers invest another $2 million in ads to overwhelm you.

But that's the way it is done.  I did what I could, Obama seems to be winning, and I'm OK with it.  We'll be back at it October 14, so we can try to top our eight successes.