Two Things I Don't Understand

I have written some other posts that make it clear that I don't understand Republican thinking sometimes.  This post is about a couple of major examples of Republican thinking that seriously make me wonder, "How can anybody still support these guys?  What are they thinking?"

First, let's talk about the fellow in the picture there, George W. Bush.  Republicans pretend now that they never heard of him, but make no mistake:  When he was President, Republicans loved that guy.  You could not ask for a more hardline conservative President.  He had Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, and despite winning the Presidency with fewer votes than Al Gore and narrowly beating John Kerry, he governed as if there was only one party and he had a mandate to implement a conservative agenda.  He passed big tax cuts.  He increased military and domestic security spending.  He pushed conservative social values like abstinence-only sex education and anti-gay bigotry.  He treated foreign nations with contempt, pushed his wars through, did not care about international law.  He was extremely partisan, leaving Democrats out of the governing process and pushing voter fraud falsehoods to try to deny Democrats the vote.  He stocked the federal courts at all levels with conservative judges and put in place an ultra-conservative Supreme Court.

He was, in short, everything conservatives ever could have wanted, everything they ever dreamed about.  And the result was an unmitigated disaster.

Bush inherited a balanced budget, but by the time he was done, he had run up unprecedented deficits and left President Obama facing an even larger deficit.  The economy was in free fall, the worst most of us have ever seen it.  The United States was hated and feared throughout the world.  Two of the big three automobile companies were on the verge of collapse.  We were still fighting two endless wars, one of which was based on lies about WMDs that we supposedly "knew" were there.  The government was forced to offer up $750 billion to prop up banks just to keep the world economy from collapsing.  We were losing over 500,000 jobs a month.  And let's not forget, the country was attacked on his watch, the worst terrorist attack in our history by far, and the Bush administration was forewarned that something was coming but failed to react.

What I don't understand is, when you get exactly the governing principles that you want, when your party is free to implement everything they ever wanted, and they aggressively do so, and then it's plain to see that the result is an embarrassment and complete failure, how can you continue to support them?  Honestly, I don't see it.  Republican policies = disaster, this is clear and proven by experience.  And yet conservatives have reacted by angrily trying to ensure that the next President doesn't implement something different.  Sorry, but that's irrational.  It's nuts.

OK, second, and this one is no better.  As mentioned above, George W. Bush came into office with a balanced budget.  One of the first major initiatives under his administration was a huge tax cut that went disproportionately to the very rich.  Then 9/11 happened and we started two wars, and Bush and Republicans decided that no one had to pay for those wars, at least not until the next guy became president, so they actually lowered taxes some more.  In his second term, he pushed through Medicare Part D without identifying any revenue to fund it.

As a result of these policies, the Bush administration ran up deficits larger than any that came before him.  Add in the terrible economy at the end of Bush's second term, and President Obama inherited a worse deficit than any other President has ever had to deal with.

Now, never mind for the moment that Republicans, after running up huge deficits under Bush while never lifting a finger to bring them under control and seeming not to care at all, suddenly got religion on the day that President Obama took office and realized with apparent shock that we were running huge deficits and that this was going to destroy the country.  Well, maybe not exactly "never mind," but their hypocrisy and dishonesty is obvious to every American with a brain, which means maybe 40% of us or so.  The point I want to make is slightly different from that.

Now that they magically realize that the deficit has to be tamed, Republicans have a solution, which is to take money away from the poorest Americans (i.e.. food stamps and unemployment) or from people who have paid into the system for 40 or 50 years, paying for previous generations with a promise that one day they would benefit (i.e. Medicare and Social Security.)  They tell us that this is the only way; we have no choice, because those programs are bankrupting the country.

Well maybe I'm a simpleton, but it seems to me that before you start attacking the safety net, the rational move would be to undo the things that got us into the deficit situation in the first place.  Before you do anything else, restore the tax rates to Clinton administration levels, and restore military spending to Clinton levels as well.  And then you might consider finding a way to raise revenues to pay for Medicare Part D.  People seem to like it; we should be willing to pay for it.  Also, ten years too late, let's raise taxes to pay for the two Bush wars.  Again, if we wanted them so badly that we elected (and re-elected) the people who started them, we should be willing to make a small sacrifice and pay for them rather than pass the cost on to another generation.

Instead, we get the people who made utter fiscal irresponsibility a hallmark of their party telling us that we have to make the tough choices and screw over the poor and the elderly.  I don't understand how anyone can say that and mean it, but they do.  And I don't understand why anyone believes them.  Again, just nuts.

I have lots of problems with conservatives, but these two really, really big items stand out to me.  To be a Republican, you pretty much have to rationalize away the whole Bush administration as well as the steps your party took to create the deficit spending we have today.  That's a lot of rationalizing.

Six thoughts about the Affordable Care Act

 I have seen a lot of opposition to the Affordable Care Act since October 1, particularly from my friends on Facebook, and, being me, I have not suffered in silence.  I have responded, made my own comments, linked to articles.  What I have not done is to write down my own thoughts about the law, or try to express how much I believe that the many people who so virulently oppose this really just have no case.  So this is that post, six things I hope opponents of the Affordable Care Act will think about before they complain about it again.

1. Last Place

When you think about the United States, do you think of a country that lags behind other countries?  A country that just doesn't have the resources to provide for its citizens the way other, more prosperous countries, like, maybe, Columbia do?  Do you think that it's OK if it is just a disadvantage to be born here, because as a country, we just can't do what others can?  Well, when it comes to health care, this is exactly the case.  Columbia's healthcare system was in fact ranked above the United States by the World Health Organization, as were Portugal, Greece, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco.  The United States ranked 38th, just behind Costa Rica and ahead of Slovenia.  Have a look at that list.  Does it make you feel proud?  But if you checked out the list, you may have noticed that we do actually lead in one area:  We are number one in expenditure per capita.

The truth is that the United States has one of the worst healthcare systems in the world.  We get pretty good care compared to other countries (although just comparable, not necessarily better), but a) the care we get is extremely expensive, and b) it is not is not administered fairly, because a good portion of our population is uninsured and so does not realistically have access to good care.

More about the fair part later, but let's understand the expensive part.  Because you are an American, more of your income, and/or your company's benefits, and/or your tax dollars, goes toward paying for your healthcare than if you lived anywhere else in the world.  This is like a tax on every American citizen, a price you pay for living in this country, because nearly every other industrialized country has figured out something that we have not.

So I exaggerated, only 38th place, not last.  But bear in mind that the countries below us on that list don't have the resources we have, so we cannot really be compared to them.  The United States has a terrible healthcare system, one the rest of the world would never think of emulating.  We should be able to do better than 38th place.  If you don't think that the United States needed healthcare reform, you are saying that 38th place, with the most expensive system in the world (and it is a lot more expensive than almost anyone else), is great.  That's not right; it isn't great.  This is why we needed healthcare reform.

2.  Republican opposition to Obamacare is a lie

This is an important point that does not get emphasized enough:  When Republican leaders tell you that they hate this law, that it is an abomination that has to be stopped, they are flat-out lying to you.  I don't mean that they are lying about death panels, government takeover of healthcare, or how Obamacare kills jobs, although they are in fact lying about those things also.  What I mean is they do not oppose this law as policy the way they say they do.  It's a ruse, a lie, political theater to make you think that everything President Obama does is terrible, even though they know that this law is good for the country and for their constituents.  This is a strategy they are using to try to get re-elected and to help their party gain power, plain and simple, and they are willing to pretend to oppose good legislation in order to attain their goals.

Now, that's a pretty strong charge, so it's only fair to ask how I could know this.  Well, a couple of points.  First, refer back to the first section, 38th place.  Our system is so bad that in other countries, if a politician wants to get really negative, he will accuse his opponent of wanting to install an American system of health care.  Any politician slandered in this way will then be forced to respond that this is a heinous lie, that he or she would never support anything like we have in the United States.  This is a true thing; it really happens.  Republican members of Congress may not all be really bright, but they know where we rank.  They know our system is bad, and that it is hurting Americans.  They have never proposed any alternative.  Remember how Republicans proposed to deal with the healthcare problem during the Bush administration?  No, me neither.  It's not like they had some better solution available.  They cannot seriously imagine that the best solution for the country is to continue to spend more than everyone else -- more than double many other countries with healthcare that is just as good -- while leaving millions uninsured.  No one could think that.

Second, it was Romneycare before it was Obamacare.  Republicans were not so adamantly opposed to Governor Romney's plan in Massachusetts, which was based on principles endorsed by the very conservative Heritage Foundation. There are possible options that are much more progressive, including just copying almost any European nation's example.  The Affordable Care Act incorporates conservative ideology by using existing, for-profit insurance companies and emphasizing personal responsibility.  This is a conservative solution, a compromise put forward to appeal to Republicans and conservative Democrats.  And yet, every single Republican in the house and the Senate opposed it?  And they voted 47 times (or so, I have lost count) to repeal it because it's so, so awful?  Heck, even Mitt Romney was against it, hated it, thought it was the worst thing ever.  Do you believe that?  You should not.  It doesn't make any sense.

A good trick I use to evaluate reaction to some policies is to reverse the parties.  (This is a really good tool for evaluating progressive stances.)  So let's imagine, suppose a Republican President had proposed this legislation?  (It could have happened -- don't forget Romneycare.)  Would these same Republican legislators have opposed the same legislation so violently?  Would every single one of them have opposed it?  Not on your life.  Not even close.  No way.  They oppose it because it was passed by a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president, and their political strategy from the beginning of the Obama administration has been to oppose everything the President and his party propose.  They are lying to you, and you are falling for it.

3.  Under-reporting the impact of Republican obstruction

If you don't think Republicans would really hurt their country and their constituents just for political theater, just to fool people into voting for them, consider the case of the many Republican governors who have refused to expand Medicaid as prescribed by the ACA.  I have not heard any actual justification to explain how this obstruction helps anyone.  I have heard ridiculous, meaningless phrases like "socializing of our medicine" or "will not allow President Obama to bully Louisiana"  (Wow that is so stupid!), but nothing that approaches the level you would associate with the word "reason."  On the other hand, the damage they are doing is self-evident, and it is really far-reaching.  About 5 million people who should be eligible for expanded Medicaid under the new law will not get it and will remain uninsured.  And this blind opposition will hurt more than just the millions who will remain uninsured for the benefit of making political points; the money that will now not flow to those states could have helped their economies and created jobs.

Contrast coverage of that issue with the coverage of the bad healthcare.gov website rollout or of the many people who have had their insurance cancelled (more about these two issues later.)  The word I have heard most often to describe the rollout of the ACA is "disaster."  Everyone in the United States knows what a disaster Obamacare has been.  And yet this atrocious, disastrous disaster has already done a great deal of good and has not done anywhere near the harm that has been deliberately perpetrated by Republicans refusing to expand Medicaid, let alone their decisions to hurt their constituents by refusing to set up state exchanges, obstructing ACA navigators, encouraging people not to enroll, etc.  The lame-stream, "liberal" media loves their disaster, but the bigger story should be Republicans refusing to help their country by implementing the law of the land.

4.  People are losing their policies

Well, what did you expect?  Did you think that we could implement a law that regulated health insurance across the nation and moved us toward universal health insurance, but no one would be negatively impacted?  In fact, a very small percentage of the population will truly be put in a worse position due to this law.  It's funny, for twenty years I read and heard stories about the abuses of insurance companies, how people were not covered for care they needed, went bankrupt even though they had insurance, lost their insurance as soon as they got sick.  Then suddenly, as January 1, 2014 approached, it was all about millions of people losing their wonderful insurance from their wonderful insurance companies.  And my more conservative friends were so eager to jump all over those stories.  Maybe it should have occurred to all of us that the stories about people's great insurance policies weren't exactly fair and balanced.

In fact, almost all of the stories the media picked up at first turned out to be people who were going to be better off under the ACA, or had really crappy insurance and wanted to keep it, and the horror stories kept falling apart.  After a short time, the press got a little smarter and started selecting their stories more carefully, finding people who might have to actually pay more without getting substantially better coverage.  I remember one of the first actual examples I heard, on NPR, was a single dentist who had a good plan and did not need pregnancy coverage, for example, and he was going to have to pay more next year because of Obamacare.  OK, fine, that's one.  But he's a single dentist.  He's probably still going to be all right, better than all right.  I'm sorry, but that story just does not resonate with me in comparison to stories of tens of thousands of people, just here in Washington State, getting onto Medicaid or getting insurance through the exchanges, people who were not insured before and really needed that insurance.  And let's bear in mind that, as far as I know, no one really lost their insurance; they just maybe had to pay more and get into another plan, one that provided benefits their previous plan did not.  The whole story of people losing their policies was just way, way overblown.

And don't forget, those policies were not just magically "lost."  The insurance companies knew that the ACA was coming, for three years, and they chose to continue to offer products that would not meet the new standards.  Those companies had choices; they could have upgraded their plans, prepared their customers for the new law and suggested different policies, or stopped offering policies that they knew would have to be cancelled, but they didn't.  While many of the consumers were caught off-guard, the insurance companies knew exactly what they were doing.  They created the situation by selling inadequate insurance, bringing customers in, then cancelling their insurance and directing them to more expensive plans.  It's called maximizing profits, and it's what corporations do.  Again, it's not surprising that the new law allowed insurance companies to find a way to make big profits.  But don't fool yourself.  Barack Obama didn't cancel anyone's insurance.  Insurance companies did that.

5.  A bad website

Yes, it was a bad website.  A disaster.  But ask yourself this:  How well did Social Security work its first two months?  How about Medicare?  Do you care?  Does it matter?  How about Medicare Part D, how did that work out?  I remember that one, and the rollout was -- well, disastrous.  But years later, most of the kinks have been worked out, and it is helping make prescription drugs more affordable for seniors.  It is making life better for Americans.  If you stop trying to score political points and look at the big picture, that is what matters.  A bad website can be fixed, and it has been to a large extent.  The law will affect millions of lives for years to come.  I said the stories of people losing their insurance were overblown; the national furor over the terrible, awful website, the huge damage it did to the President's reputation and legacy, blah, blah, blah, was absolutely ludicrous.  Yes, it was bad.  It just wasn't the end of the world.

And here, let's give another nod to the Republican governors who did everything they could to make sure that the residents of their states were not able to benefit from the law.  In some states, like Washington, Kentucky, and California, the ACA rollout went pretty well.  Why?  Because they set up their own exchanges, so people did not have to rely on the federal site.  But in Republican-controlled states, politicians wanted to be so certain that no one would benefit from Obamacare that they refused to set up state exchanges, leaving their residents to use the broken federal website.  This forced more people onto the federal site than it could handle, which didn't help matters.  Republicans have done their best to sabotage the law, and to some extent, they have succeeded.  Don't blame the law.

6.  A moral issue.

Last one.  I don't usually write so much in one post, but I have a lot to say on this subject.

In other countries, fairness in the distribution of healthcare is considered a moral issue.  A big part of their thinking, in many cases, is that they don't want to leave some of their fellow citizens without access to healthcare.  Everyone is taken care of.  We don't let our countrymen go bankrupt or die because they get sick and aren't rich.

I just Googled a couple of numbers.  One article said that about 60% of personal bankruptcies in the United States in a year are due to medical bills.  That's 60% of about 1.5 million bankruptcies per year, so 900,000 bankruptcies due to medical bills.  Another source estimated 26,000 people die prematurely due to lack of insurance.  Lack of insurance ruins Americans financially, lots of them, and kills a lot of others.

If you don't believe that so many people could die from lack of health insurance, consider a single case:  mine.  I have always had insurance, I'm in my fifties, and my parents both died by age 75, so I go to see the doctor every year like I am supposed to.  One routine checkup revealed thyroid cancer.  Fortunately, that's not really very life-threatening, but it was good to have it treated as soon as possible.  (Treatment cost tens of thousands of dollars before insurance, by the way.)  Another routine check revealed diabetes.  As long as it's under control, diabetes isn't terrible, although the medicines are expensive, but had I not known about it, I could have gone years undiagnosed.  Diabetes does bad things to your body and can affect your brain as well, but I went less than one year before I started to control it.  In addition, I have regular colonoscopies, and although I haven't had cancer, the tests have not been completely clean either, so they keep an eye on me.

It's so easy for me to imagine that, without health insurance, someone like me wouldn't have noticed that lump in his neck until it had gotten much bigger, could have let diabetes tear down his body for a few years longer, could just put off that expensive colonoscopy until he found out he had colon cancer.  Multiply me by 48 million uninsured, and you can see that some of those people will die unnecessarily.

I realize that the moral issue just doesn't get a lot of traction in the United States.  We have a history in this country of selfishness, a large contingent who simply do not want to care for their fellow Americans.  But understand that for a lot of supporters of healthcare reform, 26,000 dead and 900,000 bankrupt every year just is not acceptable, not when we know other countries are doing better.  It's a moral issue in this country too, at least for some of us.

A Thanksgiving Family Tradition

I grew up with the traditional big family Thanksgiving dinner, first at home with my parents, then visiting them after we grew up, and finally at my brother's once he and Lisa took over.  After Jackie and I moved to Washington, we still went back to California at least a couple of times.  I think the last time I went back was 1999, the year my dad died a few days later, on November 30.  I went back at Thanksgiving to see him one last time, and it was indeed the last time.

In any case, I think starting the next year, we decided to go out for Thanksgiving dinner.  Neither Jackie nor I like to cook, and we aren't big fans of turkey, and I don't like most of the stuff that is usually served with it, like stuffing or cranberry sauce, so we celebrated at a restaurant.  Not every year, but most years since then, we have gone to Black Angus on Thanksgiving.  We started going to that restaurant because, even though it is not really a restaurant that caters to kids, they had enclosed booths with high walls, so we could corral the kids and keep them from bothering other customers.  Over time, it developed into our thing to do.

We only go to Black Angus once most years, so we don't get tired of it.  We eat a light breakfast, then go to the restaurant between 1:00 and 2:00.  We order everything we want: appetizers, salads, steaks, mushrooms.  Not dessert, because we get pecan pie and cheesecake (for Jarrod) at Costco and have that waiting at home.  Usually we don't get wine anymore, but we used to.  I'm not sure if they will serve a traditional turkey dinner if you want it, but none of us ever ask.  I get prime rib every year, with the mushrooms.

We go around the table and talk about what we're thankful for (although this year was pretty lame, I have to say), but mostly we just eat, talk, eat some more, and bring home leftovers.  This year it was a chance to catch up with Lucas a bit, because he is living on campus at UW.  And then we go home, and the rest of the day and the weekend is free, and it's great.  It was greater when I was working all the time, because I almost never got four-day weekends, and if I did it was so we could take a trip, so it always seemed to me that I had this huge stretch of free time after the Thursday meal.  It was a holiday I really looked forward to.

The strange thing about eating at a restaurant on Thanksgiving Day is...that it's not so strange.  Black Angus is packed on Thanksgiving; it is probably their biggest day of the year.  You have to call a few weeks early to get a reservation.  If you come without one, you just have to hope that someone doesn't show, because they are booked solid, even at 1:00 (we had to take 1:15 this year because 1:00 was filled.)  If you are in our situation, with extended family mostly far away, it makes a lot of sense.  We don't stress out trying to do shopping the week before (except the desserts), we don't have to get ready for guests, we don't prepare any food, and we don't have to clean up afterward.  It's just easy, and it's still family, and it's still food, and everyone seems to like it.

You Need $2.5 Million

"You Need $2.5 Million to Retire."  That's the title of an article that popped up on LinkedIn today, written by a guy named Nicholas Pell.  Well I have a word for Mr. Pell:

Bullshit.

At least I hope it's bullshit.  I'm going to come up about $2 million short if it isn't, but I'm pretty sure it is bullshit.

It's also the kind of nonsense that keeps us working until we die at our desks, always wanting more, doing everything within our power to help some huge, highly profitable company stay huge and highly profitable, and always figuring we have to have the bigger house, the new car, the sailboat, the second home, the trip to China, and every other thing we ever wanted.  $2.5 million will buy you a lot of stuff.

In addition, it's advice that will keep financial planners employed.  Anyone striving to put that kind of money away is a good candidate for some financial planning advice, so I figure this type of article (and there are a lot of them) is self-serving.  It's always professional financial planners who write them.

Here is the way I see retirement savings:  The kids are gone, the house is paid for, you can move to a smaller home and live more simply.  To help you, there is social security, and any pension or other money you may have coming, so you have some income.  And then you have retirement savings to make up the difference between your income and what you spend.  If you don't have enough savings, you adjust your spending.  If you don't have any savings and no pension, you live off social security.

But let's say you have $500,000.  Figure you want the money to last 25 years or so (you'll be pretty old by then.)  That's a supplement of $20,000 per year.  That's not much, but in my case I think social security for both me and Jackie plus my pension (I have one, small but enough to matter) will net us at least $40,000 per year.  OK, so $60,000 doesn't sound like much either.  But the kids will be gone (this is soooo important) and we won't need so much space.  Also, that $60,000 comes with no social security tax and at a low income tax rate.  Assume as well that the house will be paid off, or we will sell the house and buy another with no mortgage.

We want to travel, and health care costs are scary and unpredictable and potentially ruinous, I know, but really, you just can't live on $60,000?  $5,000 per month with no mortgage doesn't sound so terrible to me.

So back to Nicholas Pell.  How will you manage with $2.5 million in retirement funds instead of my paltry $500,000 (I hope!)?  Well, as my clever and astute readers have already figured out, you can now supplement your income by a nice fat $100,000 per year for 25 years.  (I am simplifying a bit of course, ignoring both inflation and investment income, assuming that they will cancel out.)  I agree that most people should be able to retire with that much money.  So much better than those poor slobs who only saved $2 million and have to scrape by on $80,000 a year plus social security.

It all seems a little crazy to me.  I wonder how many people actually have $2.5 million to retire with.  10%?  2%?  I just looked at the Google -- about 3.5% of US households have a net worth of $1 million or more.  So I would say maybe 2% or fewer of us will actually retire with $2.5 million.  Does that mean the other 98% can never retire?

Nah, it just means that $2.5 million is nuts.  The better approach would be to start figuring out what you do have, then learn to live with that.

Book Review

This past week, I mentioned on Facebook that I had finished listening to an audio version of War and Peace, and Joel seemed to think I should write a book review.  So here's a book review, but not of War and Peace.  Instead, I started reading the second book in the Fifty Shades of Grey series, this one called Fifty Shades Darker.

Previously, I reviewed the first book.  I was not a big fan.  To recap, the Shades of Grey series is fan fiction, a sort of homage to the Twilight series.  George Takei brilliantly summed up the theme of the Twilight series this way:  [Said in a whiny voice] "Does my boyfriend like me?"  E. L. James captures this idea all too well, and it just isn't a subject that holds my interest.

Let's be fair; there are sex scenes, and that's why the books are so popular.  But just like the movie Nine and a Half Weeks, even sex scenes will only get you so far.  In between, the story makes you want to give up.  Which I did.

At the end of the last book, our heroine Anastasia and her kinky boyfriend Christian, who is the most attractive man on the planet, a self-made (of course) billionaire, a pianist and helicopter pilot, and twenty-something I think, had a dramatic and heart-wrenching (for them -- I didn't care) breakup.  So the first thing this book needs to do is get them back together.  So Christian calls Anastasia, and she agrees to see him again.  Hmm, maybe that breakup wasn't all that heart-wrenching for them either.

They have sex at least a couple more times (I really should keep better count), then Christian takes Anastasia to have her hair done, facial, makeup, whatever.  Only this doesn't work out so well, because the famous Mrs. Robinson is there, the older woman who lured Christian into his kinky world of sex (and yes, Mrs. Robinson is a reference to The Graduate, not the woman's actual name.)  Christian didn't know that Mrs. Robinson would be there, because although she owns the place, she is usually not there.  Anyway, Anastasia is furious and storms out, and is angry that Christian is such a typical stupid man and that he doesn't understand why she is angry.

I don't understand either.  I suppose it is true to Twilight, again, to conjure up conflict in ways that seem contrived and artificial, so good job there.  But he took her to a place where he did not expect Mrs. Robinson to be, but Mrs. Robinson was there, so damn stupid thoughtless man, of course she's upset.  Only...why again?  So I stopped on page 100 or so, and I'm not going back.  The only reason I did (OK, and the sex) is that it was more than a year ago that I read the last one, so the pain had dulled with time.

What I Learned from Sallie Krawcheck

Popular,
I know about popular

-from the musical Wicked.

Sallie Krawcheck is a very successful businesswoman, but she has been fired a couple of times and has written about the experiences.  When I went into LinkedIn today, I saw an article Sallie wrote titled "The 7 Things I Learned When I Got Fired (Again.)"  So let's look at Sallie's seven lessons.

1.  If it feels too good to be true, it probably is.  She did not get to meet any of her peers before she started, or the Board members, which should have warned her.
2.  The power of culture.
3.  Face time still matters.
4.  A sponsor matters even more.
5.  Business results are not everything.  Here she says that on the day she left, the business was ahead of budget and gaining share.

Let me interrupt for a second here.  I think that at least numbers 2 through 5 are summed up by number 5.  It's not about results, it's about...relationships, and...synergy, and...leadership...

It's all about popular.
It's not about aptitude,
It's the way you're viewed

OK, but isn't that the same lesson you learned in high school when you couldn't make it onto the cheerleading squad, not because you couldn't bounce around in a skirt, but because you didn't flirt with the right boys or wear the right clothes, so the other girls didn't like you? 

What bothers me is that this article legitimizes the nebulous, undefinable, un-measurable corporate buzzwords that are used to make indefensible behavior sound defensible.  Really, you were let go because of failing to meet your peers, "culture," face time," and lack of "a sponsor" and despite business results, and you learned valuable lessons from that?  About what you should do differently?

Time to move on...

6.  A strong outside network helps a lot.  Yeah, in case you get fired from your job for no discernible reason.

7.  Gratitude helps even more.  As my mother would have said, oh for criminy's sake (not sure how to spell "criminy," but it's pronounced "cry-mini," accent on the first syllable.)  Perhaps I'm an ingrate, but I think I would have been pissed.

The Contracting Thing

I landed another contract position this week, this time before my old one ran out, so I will go from one to the next without any time off.  Since May, I have worked all but a few weeks, and those were around the time of my vacation to Alaska.

The secret has been working with Kristy, the owner of a recruiting agency that seems to consist of her and an assistant.  She has kept me busy and has also come up with several possibilities that didn't work out, so she always has something in the pipeline.  This is a big contrast to the other firms I have worked with, who couldn't keep me working even half the time and generally paid less.

I feel lucky to have gotten in touch with Kristy, but I almost blew the chance.  She contacted me right when I was interviewing with Symetra, and all my energies were focused on that, so I put her off (I hear from a lot of recruiters.)  When the Symetra possibility flamed out, it had been two weeks, and I contacted her again.  When we finally met, it had been a month since she first emailed me, but she was very upbeat and found me work within a few weeks, and she seems to be able to keep me busy.  As long as that keeps up, I can keep contracting indefinitely.

I try to think of contracting as running a small business; I kind of like that idea.  Particularly working with Kristy, I either bill her or the client directly, so I am not technically employed by anyone..  My product is accounting services, my salespeople are the recruiters who find work for me, and my marketing efforts amount to keeping up with recruiters and using LinkedIn.

Like a lot of small businesses, mine started out kind of slowly.  During the first year or so that I put myself into the contracting market, I worked only 3.5 months.  However, in my second year, I have worked 4 months, have worked lined up for 3 more, and then have four months left to go.  So business is looking up.

There are some definite downsides to this business.  One is the uncertainty; no job is ever certain, but this kind of work is inherently unsteady.  Another is pay.  As a contractor working for most recruiters, say Robert Half, you get no holidays or vacation, so those days are just unpaid.  I figure you have to subtract 10% for that.  Working for Kristy as a 1099 contractor, subtract another 10% (sticking with round numbers) for self-employment taxes.  (I do make at least 10% more working for her.)  I don't make enough to make up for all that, let alone medical benefits (I'm going to use Jackie's) or a 401K.  Still, it's not too much less.  Also, I can add back 10% because I work less, or if they want me to work more, I get paid for it.  That helps.

So it looks like I am busy through December at least.  This is great news.

Interesting Times - Liars

First, I would like to thank the leaders of the Republican Party for their fine work, shutting down the government and threatening to cause the country to default on its debts.  You see, just a few posts back, well before all the current drama, I wrote about the need to get rid of the Republican Party altogether, plus I have been predicting their eventual demise as a party since Bush II was re-elected in 2004.  The recent Republican antics have made me look prescient and well-informed and wise, and have contributed significantly to the possibility that the party will in fact be wiped out in time.  Nice job guys.

But this post is not about the shutdown or the debt limit.  This post is about a fundamental quality of Republicans that explains the need to destroy their party, and that is that they are liars.  Liars, liars, liars, every one of them.

I'm not really talking about the two pictured above (for them you need a stronger term than liars, like Super-Liars or something), nor about the political leadership or the talking heads like Rush Limbaugh.  Of course those people are liars.  But I'm talking about the rank and file Republicans, the ones who keep voting those leaders into office and listening to conservative talk radio and watching Fox News.  They're liars too.

"Liars" is my brother's word, and he might have picked it up because Al Franken used it, but I used to like to give the rank and file the benefit of the doubt and say that they were "irrational."  I'm warming up to the word "liars," because I think that Republicans are irrational by choice, that they have to realize at some level that they are giving themselves permission to deny reality and reason and start reaching conclusions that are utter nonsense.  Their thought processes are intellectually dishonest.

For an example, take global warming.  Most Republicans understand what science is, and they are used to relying on it.  If they read that a new planet was discovered close to a nearby star, they believe it, even though they don't examine the evidence closely or understand how one finds a planet.  If they hear that earthquakes are caused by shifting plates on the Earth's crust, they accept it even though they have not seen the shifting plates themselves.  But tell them that human activity is causing the Earth to get warmer (which always seemed very plausible to me), and suddenly scientists are all liberals and liars and cheaters out to fool us all, and only Fox News is telling the truth, and the world is NOT getting hotter, or if it is, people didn't cause it.

Deep down, most conservatives have to realize that their point of view on global warming is about the biggest load of horseshit ever, but they have given themselves permission to lie, telling themselves they really believe what they say.  But they know better.  You can't just deny reality without a voice going off in your head, telling you that something isn't right here.  You can shut off that voice and make yourself believe any stupid thing you want to believe, just because that's what you really want to believe it, but at some level, you know that's what you are doing.

The sad thing is, conservatives might have had something of value to say about this issue.  They could have proposed solutions.  We could have had a discussion about the best way to go about solving the problem, how much to use government resources versus private industry, how much money to spend, who should pay for research, etc.  But Republicans decided to deny the whole thing, not because they really don't believe it, but because they don't like the idea that Al Gore was right, or because they hate environmentalists, or something, and so they cannot have a voice in any solutions.  They are just in the way.  The healthcare issue isn't very different, nor gun control.  Conservative don't engage in the discussion because they pretend there isn't any problem.

However, you say, if we destroy the Republican party, these functional idiots, these irrational-by-choice lunatics will still be out there.  Well, the people will still be out there, but people can change.  Consider that most people don't support slavery anymore, or that they don't (openly) demand racial segregation.  The downfall and discrediting of the Republican Party, along with maybe (crosses fingers) Fox News falling into disgrace and going off the air, could do a lot to change the culture.  Denying climate science, or promoting trickle-down economics, or wanting to shut down the government when the American people don't vote for your party, might one day be seen as signs of stupidity and a moral deficit, not just by intelligent people who are paying attention, but across society.

One can hope.

Half-Empty Nest

Friday morning, I took Lucas to the University of Washington with some of his stuff, basically dropped him off, and he moved into a dorm.  For the first time since Jarrod came home more than 14 years ago, only three people live at our house.

Sure, Lucas will come back, and this is still his permanent residence, but this is a big step, more for him I think than for me and Jackie.  For us, the bigger step will be when Lucas gets a job and starts paying his own way.  Sure, he isn't physically here, but we're just renting an apartment for him really.  He's still under our care.

But for him, it's a big change.  Lucas has accomplished plenty for someone his age, but Jackie and I (especially Jackie) were always there to back him up, push him, help him succeed.  We are still here, of course, but now a lot of responsibility shifts to him.  We aren't going to know what assignments he has been given, where he might need a suggestion or some prodding.

I think he's ready.  I know we would have been happy to drop him off at the beginning of summer if we could have, as he seemed to get a bit tired of us months ago.  I think he has been looking forward to being on his own.  I have a few concerns, mainly that he is too much like me, and like I was at that age, and that is not necessarily good.  He's smart enough, but he doesn't relate to other people easily.  He doesn't like to ask for help, thinks he's smart enough to solve everything on his own.  He has an anger inside him that he keeps contained pretty well, but every once in a while it flashes.  All those things are like me -- a little different, but no so different.

Fortunately, Lucas has had more success than I ever had.  He is more responsible and much better at sticking with a goal and following through, and I think that will be enough difference that he will do well at UW.  I'll be surprised if he fails.

So I took him to the dorm, and I tried to give him some last words of advice on the way.  He listened politely enough.  Mostly, I tried to tell him not to waste his talent, that he was born with a good brain and has had good opportunities up to now and a great start, and now it falls on him to make the most of it all.  When we got there, he loaded all of his stuff on a single cart.  They asked me to stay with the car, but the car was empty by then, and I knew Lucas didn't need me to help him set up his room, so I took a couple of pictures, shook his hand, wished him luck, and left.

Don't waste it.  Don't do what I did.  You can do so much better.

Up and Running

I'm working again.  Got a call last Wednesday, interviewed Thursday, started Friday.  I have worked three days already, and all I have done is accounts payable filing.  I don't mind, but it's expensive filing, for them.  For me it's kind of free money, and I like free money.  Anyway, I am 90% complete with the two boxes of invoices they gave me to sort, so tomorrow maybe I will do some accounting.

Since May, I have worked with one recruiter, and she has kept me busy most of the time and has suggested several other possibilities.  She has found more work for me in five months than all other recruiters found for me in the previous 13 months.  It could be that she can keep me busy until one of these employers hires me.

During my brief period of unemployment between Alaska and last Friday, I gave some thought to what we can do to live more frugally.  I read a blog post recently that was written by a guy who says he spends about $10,000 per year.  He owns his home and his car outright.  He also grows some of his own food, says he hates monthly fees, never eats out, and would never buy shredded cheese.

I sort of want to be that guy.  Not quite so extreme, but I like the idea of living cheaply.  Living way below your means would give you the freedom to feel like your job was optional, instead of the constant stress of feeling that you have to make more, more, more, the stress I have lived with almost all the time for 20 years or so.

However, I don't think anyone else in my family likes that idea.  In any case, we are not capable of it, or even of moderating our spending a little.  If you can't lower your spending, the only alternative is to increase revenue, so working is good.

May You Live in Interesting Times

If you know why this picture goes with the post title, you should go get an AARP card -- 20% off the whole check at Denny's!

I only learned recently, from Wikipedia, that "May you live in interesting times" is a curse.  More specifically, it is said to be an old Chinese curse, although the only known sources of the phrase appear to be British.  The idea is that interesting times mean change and turmoil, so boring times would be more comfortable.

When I was young, I always felt like the half-generation before me lived in more interesting times than we did.  If you graduated from high school between 1962 and 1968, more or less, you were in the middle of a decade of really radical social change.  There was the civil rights movement, anti-war protests, riots, political assassinations, long hair, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.  Those people changed this country.  By the time I graduated in 1975, the Vietnam War had ended, Nixon had resigned, and Gerald Ford was President.  They had Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, and The Graduate.  We had streaking and John Denver.

But now I think the times have gotten a bit more interesting, and this is why:  We have two very old dominant political parties in this country, and I think soon, within the next generation, one of them needs to go.  The rational people of this country are so at odds with the Republican Party that I don't think we can continue to coexist anymore.  The Republican party needs to be destroyed, burned to the ground, wiped out of existence, and replaced with something more viable.  I don't mean that we have to burn their offices and hang their politicians; the model I have in mind is the Dixiecrats.  There are still a few adherents out there, but they are marginalized to the point that they don't run for office, and almost everyone realizes that they have nothing of value to say.  No one talks about them anymore.  Republicans need to be brought to that point.

And here's why:  We need to have intelligent discussion of political issues in this country, different ideas, solutions for our problems.  And I don't believe that what the Republican Party has to offer right now includes intelligent discussion, ideas, or any solutions.  They are, to put it succinctly, nuts.

Just a few quick examples:  Suppose I am a Democrat sitting down with one of millions of Republicans across the country to find a solution to some problem.  Like more than half of Republicans, this one thinks that global warming is a hoax.  Like about half of Republicans, this person believed, maybe still believes, that Barack Obama was not born in this country and is therefore not legitimately President.  Like about half of Republicans (52% in one poll), this Republicans believes that ACORN, a relatively small organization that worked to register minorities to vote, stole the 2008 presidential election, apparently stealing millions of votes across the country.  In fact, like 48% of Republicans, this one believes that ACORN also stole the 2012 election, even though ACORN had ceased to exist a couple of years earlier.

Am I supposed to discuss something serious, like the deficit, with this idiot?  I can't.  I just don't have any faith that anything he thinks or says has any basis in reason or reality.  My political counterpart is what I like to call "functionally stupid."  He may have a high IQ, but it doesn't do him any good, because he refuses to think rationally, making it hard to distinguish his ideas from those of someone who is truly too mentally challenged to understand any better.  I can't trust that anything he says will be anything other than utter bullshit, leaving me to try to evaluate both his thoughts and mine.  I might as well just leave him out of it.

As a practical example, Republicans are vehemently opposed to the Affordable Care Act.  Honestly, I don't personally know all there is to know about the law.  Still, when Republicans criticize the law, it sounds to me like their usually BS.  More than likely, people like Karl Rove know that the law will help people and be good for Americans, but it is his job to convince the conservative masses that everything Democrats and Obama do is terrible.  While he gets rich laughing at them, the Fox News watchers and Rush Limbaugh listeners mindlessly follow along, learning to hate the law because, uh, Socialism!  Any discussion of actual ideas is lost.

I have more thoughts about this, but I'll save those for another day.

Last Day, Again

I suppose something is wrong with me.  I don't think I will try to change that though.

Maybe it's because I was harassed too many times by other kids in school.  With a July birthday, I was one of the youngest in my class each year, and there were always a few bigger kids with IQs about 40-50 points lower than mine who would bother me.  Or maybe it was my mother.  Mom could be very negative sometimes.  Freud would say it was Mom.

In any case, I reached a point somewhere in my life, long ago, when I decided that I really didn't have to ever be treated like shit again by anybody, ever.  I'm kind of sensitive to that.  I fight back when I'm treated poorly, or I walk away.  This brings me into conflict with the corporate world, where treating employees like dirt is seen as a right handed down by God and is built into the HR handbooks. 

I left another job on Monday.  It was kind of winding down anyway, but I wound it down a little faster.  My boss had fallen into a mode of judging everything I did by how fast it was, trying to make sure that the company was getting maximum impact out of every dollar they spent on me.  The problem is, you can't supervise a senior accountant by trying to measure output per hour, any more than you would try to measure a lawyer or a novelist that way.  Not me anyway, not for long.

This had been going on for a few days, so I arrived at work ready to call it quits if it continued.  Things started out well; I was working down a list of reconciliations.  Then around noon my boss decided that she personally needed to be sure that she was getting the absolute most bang for her buck, so she  asked what I had been working on and suggested particular items I could complete.  Then she made the mistake of asking what exactly I had accomplished that morning and how long each item had taken.  Then she asked how I had gone about it, suggested that there was a more efficient way, said that we needed to do everything as efficiently as possible, and told me I needed to think about these things.  Mistake, mistake, mistake.  You kind of crossed the fine line there between supervising a professional and treating them like a teenager on their first day picking orders in an Amazon warehouse.

I was, I suppose, humiliated, although I'm not sure that's exactly it.  I was most certainly pissed off; I'm sure of that.  So at the end of the day, I told her that Friday would be my last day.  She asked why.  Maybe she should not have.  I told her, word for word as well as I can remember, that the next time she asked me what I had just been doing, how long it had taken, and exactly how I had done it, I would walk out mid-sentence.  And of course that was the end of that.

She was surprised.  She seemed not to grasp that I might not like being micromanaged, redirected and admonished on a daily basis.  But I think also that employers are simply not used to employees who feel they have a choice.  People just take it, because they figure disrespect is built into their pay.  I don't do that so well.

Next

Next could be Microsoft.  I have an interview this afternoon, and I am really looking forward to it for some reason.  I have read a lot about working at Microsoft, and some people are not so enamored with them, but I would be fine with the opportunity.

What it mostly means for me is a one-year contract, which means one year of steady paychecks plus the chance to get health insurance.  Also, a year of contracting at Microsoft should help establish additional credibility for me as a contractor.  I think the chances of getting something permanent there are low, but Microsoft likes contractors with previous Miscrosoft experience, so maybe I could work there again if I can get through one contract.

I am writing during lunch July 29, the day of the interview.  Now that I have written this much, I will stow this post away until after I hear the results from this afternoon.  If anybody can find my blog and associate it with me, Microsft can.  I don't have bad things to say about them, but still, better not to give them anything.

I google-imaged the word "Next," which mostly results in a bunch of signs that say "Next," very dull, but apparently the bridge in the picture was designed by NEXT Architects, so it was easily the best picture.  Cool bridge actually.

OK, interview did not go so well, may as well post.

Cyber Concerns

Jackie -- and some others, but especially Jackie -- has warned me about my blog.  Her concern is that potential employers will find it, and they may not like my politics, and they may really not like what I have to say about the real-life Dilbert scenarios I observe in working environments.  The truth is that I don't want to be silenced by fear, but what I usually say is that it would be hard to connect me to my blog, because I don't attach my full name to the blog or my posts.

Of course, it's wise to test that claim.  I Googled "[My Name]"* a few months back, and my blog was not on the first page, but it showed up a few pages into the search results.  The reason for that is that I posted my resume, back in April of last year, not long after I left my job at Farmers, and of course it has my name on it.  At the time, I just filed that information away.  No need to be too paranoid.

Yesterday I went into my blog and posted something for the first time in over a month.  I noticed that I still was getting a fair number of hits.  And the post with the most page views from the last week?  That post of my resume from April 2, 2012.

So who in hell is looking at my resume within my blog?  And why?  And how did they find it?  Was someone really curious enough about me to Google my name and click on my blog link?  11 times in the last month?

So this is a concern.  I kind of like that post because it's called "Contact" and has a nice picture of an array of dishes pointing to space, but I don't want it to be easy for employers to find this blog.  Maybe I can just change the name on the resume to "Mickey Mouse."  One way or another, I have to fix that.

*First pass, I actually wrote my name there.  That would have been kind of stupid.

Busy busy

I have not posted anything for about 40 days, and I'm going to say it's because I have been busy, even though you probably should not believe that.  At least I haven't been what most people would think of as particularly busy, but my standard of what seems like a lot to do is lower than most.  In truth, I have been about as busy as most people are, but I'm having to adjust to working full-time and commuting well over an hour each way.  Still, during those 40 days I watched eight episodes of Breaking Bad and a full season of The Newsroom plus the start of the second season, and I'm sure I did lots of other leisurely things.  Busy is a relative term.

One thing that has taken my time is getting Lucas through his Eagle Scout project.  Last weekend we worked on that almost the whole weekend.  Then we had a scout meeting Monday night, then completed the project Wednesday evening, hanging 21 bird houses on a wooded property in North Bend.  Now he has to do a project report, present it to a committee, finish his last merit badge, and get his Eagle Scout application in by August 4, so it isn't over.  The biggest part is over though.

A few other things have conspired against me:  I have wanted to do some political posts, but those take time, because I try to make my points well, so I take more time with the writing, and I usually do a little research, so sometimes I just don't get started.  Work is pretty mundane; it looks like they will not be able to afford me full time, so I just keep putting in my hours and collecting a paycheck.  Good, but the same.  My kinda-sorta best guess is that I will be there until we take a cruise to Alaska the last week of August.  I take a 30-minute lunch; if it were an hour, I would probably write some days, but I would rather go home sooner.  Also, Lucas has been using my computer a lot lately, because it's better than his and it's farther away from Jarrod, and most of the time I just let him stay on it rather than kick him off.

One good thing is that I will be getting up at 5:15 tomorrow (that's not the good part) to take the boys to North Bend, where they will take off to a week of Boy Scout camp in Idaho, so Jackie and I are looking forward to a bit of quiet.  Tomorrow might be a post about being one year older.  Then I'll think about those political posts.

The Impossible Dream, Accomplished

Update:  I replaced the screen print of some other person's victory with a photo I took of my screen when I won.  That is actually a photo of my monitor, because I could not capture the screen image.  Umm, yay!  I have not played the game even once since -- went out on top.

I was not able to take a picture of the final screen, so this picture is someone else's*, but I won, finally beat Zuma's Revenge Iron Frog mode.  It took me 503 tries and over 110 hours just on Iron Frog, plus over 50 hours on other Zuma's Revenge modes.

This game is really hard, and it takes a lot of patience to sit and play game after game after game, knowing that your chances of winning are tiny, just trying to improve a little over time.  I have been playing a few games almost every day for the past several months, and more than a few some days.  But because it is so hard to beat, it was really a great feeling to finally win.  You really have to dedicate yourself to something this difficult in order to make it happen.

Which led me to have a little chat with Jarrod about how nice it might be to dedicate yourself to something actually useful with the same kind of enthusiasm.  Imagine what you could achieve.

And then I told him, "Naahhh."

But seriously.  The most important thing I could do for myself right now would be to lose weight, lots of it.  What if I pursued that with the same kind of intensity I used to pursue Iron Frog?  I wonder what that would be like?

*  [Hah!  Not anymore!]  My time was over 28 minutes, so this woman beat me by less than one minute.  I think that I will let her keep her little victory.  And, by the way, the picture is from her blog, exulting that she finally beat Iron Frog after months of playing.

Unemployment Chronicles: Moving in a Good Direction

I started working at City University May 9. My last official day at Farmers was July 31, but my last day of work was March 9, 2012 (a day that will live in infamy...), so that makes a nice even 14 months between Farmers and City University.  During those 14 months, I worked 3.5 months, which is a nice even 25% of the possible time I could have spent working.  If I had worked something like 75% of the time, I might still be considering contract work as an ongoing occupation, but because of the 25%, contract work has become a means to an end -- the end being a permanent job -- and a better-but-not-great alternative to being unemployed all the time.

By the way, I couldn't find an interesting picture that related directly to this post, so that's a picture of the Fremont (the Seattle neighborhood, not the California town) Troll.

The good news is that City University stands a reasonable chance of providing that permanent job.  I have talked seriously about it with my would-be boss, although there is no position open yet and nothing is certain.  Still, positive signs so far.

If I do get something, I will have to deal with the long commute.  My strategy would be to start early, finish by 4:30, and be home before 6:00.  I find it is less disruptive to get up (and go to bed) early than it is to come home late.  City U. will pay for a bus pass, so it wouldn't cost too much.  Otherwise, the work seems about right, and the boss likes me so far.  If they can afford my salary, the benefits are pretty good:  they pay 100% of medical, dental, and vision for employees, and they have 15 holidays (including the whole last week of the year) and 20 PTO days.  Not bad.

Meanwhile, I am at work for the foreseeable future, with a chance for something more.

Healthcare in a Backward Country

The backward country being the United States of America.  My own healthcare experiences, though not exactly crippling, have helped me realize how much our healthcare system is a big detriment to those of us living in "The Greatest Country in the World."

I am in a better position than a lot of people. I am working intermittently as a contractor for now, but I worked full-time for 25 years as an accountant and made a wage that put me in the top 20% or so of Americans. I have health insurance as a result of early retirement, although it is expensive and has a really high deductible ($3,000 just for me.)

Still, right now I find myself trying to balance my health needs versus the costs in a couple of important ways.  For my diabetes, I am trying to take as little insulin as possible, allowing my blood sugar readings to drift a little higher than my doctor would like (though still within American Diabetes Association guidelines), because insulin alone was costing me $20 per day.  I have it down to $10 per day, but I am taking some risk to do so.  I hope the risk is pretty small, but I cannot really be sure.  My mother died from diabetes, and I saw what it does to people; I really don't want to go down that road.

My father died from colon cancer, and that is the second risk.  Colon cancer is very treatable if it is caught early, and due to my family history, I have colonoscopies every few years -- a little more often than most people -- but I am a couple of months overdue for my latest one, because I know it will be expensive, and I don't want to spend that much money right now.  Not a huge deal for the moment, but still, I am balancing my medical needs against cost.

And it all seems just crazy to me.  Other countries -- almost all other relatively wealthy countries -- have found better solutions to the healthcare problem.  If I lived in Japan, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, or any number of other countries, I would just get the treatment I need without having to worry about cost.  Instead, I am trying to weigh treatment and prevention of the two diseases that killed each of my parents versus what I can afford.

It is easy enough to blame Republicans, and people who reflexively hate Obamacare but agree with its individual provisions, and certainly they deserve blame.  But I think the biggest obstacle to a better healthcare system in the US is American arrogance.  The smart thing to do would be to study the solutions other countries have tried, evaluate what works and what doesn't, and then build on their experiences to re-engineer our whole system.  But of course, The Greatest Country in the World doesn't have anything to learn from Canada or Germany.  God forbid we copy the French.  Better to just put the blinders on and pretend we're doing great, because hey, we're America.  We're the best.

The Long Commute

My current job is a little north of downtown Seattle, so I am taking the bus to work again.  In fact, I am taking the same bus I used to take, but now I take it two more stops, then get off and walk 10-15 minutes, so my total commute is about an hour and twenty minutes, one way.

I decided a while back that I would not commute any more than one hour each way, but I am finding that I have to keep lowering my expectations.  It's part of the life of a contractor that you have to be flexible, and I have not exactly been overwhelmed with opportunities closer to home, so my options are limited.

I have decided that I can live with this as long as I am doing something constructive while I am travelling.  I'm stretching the word "constructive," but anyway.  I drive about 25 minutes each way, and during that time I listen to books on CD.  Right now I'm listening to War and Peace, believe it or not, and if my CD player holds out (it's acting badly, but not dead yet), that will keep me busy for a long time.  I am on disc 18 of 25 of part one.  Rumor has it that part two contains 35 discs.  It's not bad, by the way.

During the bus ride, I read.  I am reading the last book of The Belgariad now, and I have an Elmore Leonard and a random Sci-Fi/Fantasy cued up behind that.  I will probably finish all three of them before War and Peace.  After the bus ride, I walk, and it's good for me to get some exercise each day, so that's not really lost time.

I agreed to a couple of other jobs that maybe had better commutes but did not pay well at all, but fortunately did not get them.  If I have to choose one or the other, the long commute is better than crappy pay.

The job is for an indeterminate length and could result in something permanent, although I don't think the employer (City University) really has its ducks in a row to hire me.  Meanwhile, I am going to great lengths, literally, to stay employed, and getting used to the idea that that's the deal.  You do what you have to do.

A Job

I got one.

It is at City University in Seattle, starts tomorrow.  I should be more than well-qualified, just need to get up to speed quickly in order to make an impact.

As of last week, I had three possibilities going.  I had a phone interview last Friday for a Cost Accounting position.  Yesterday I heard back that they liked me, but they chose someone else.  A recruiter submitted my resume for an inventory accountant position at Starbucks, but they decided I was overqualified.  I'm sort of past getting annoyed about being too well-qualified for jobs, as it just is something I have to live with, but still, they don't want me because I could easily do the job?  OK, maybe still a little annoyed.

Then the job with City University came through.  I'm delighted.  Jackie is more delighted.  My unemployment is running out, and I could use the income.  The pay is good, and I'll actually be an independent contractor receiving a 1099 instead of a W2 for the first time.  This works well since I already have medical insurance.

The Director of Finance indicated that this might lead to a permanent position, although that sounds pretty shaky.  However, what she is really missing is having a go-to senior accountant she can rely on to deal with whatever comes up.  She had one, but that person quit.  I understand the need; as a manager, I felt that my top senior accountant was the key to my success.

I could potentially fill that type of role.  Certainly, it is what I saw myself doing at Farmers if I could have made it happen.

For now, it's money coming in.

The Interview

This post is another in my series of things that corporations do that could be done better.  Today we look at the interview process.

I recently went through a set of interviews with Symetra, and after a phone interview with HR, an interview with the hiring manager (a VP), and a second round of interviews with three VPs (I think there are a lot of VPs at Symetra) and a Director, they decided after each spending 45 minutes with me that I did not have the right personality for the particular job they had in mind.  The HR recruiter sent me an email saying that they were looking for a strong leader to take the group through upcoming changes, leaving it implied that I was not a strong leader, and she asked if she could save my resume and consider me for future opportunities.

I told her no.

That was crazy of course; anyone would tell you so.  Nuts.  And yet...

Let's think for a minute what they were asking me.  I was totally qualified for that position, had already held a very similar job for years, met every single qualification they asked for, including the ones they said were not required but would be a plus.  I spent time filling out their application, applying for the job, and arranging the interviews with HR.  I researched the company and the people I would talk to before each interview, spent hours preparing for questions.  Then I got dressed up and spent about six hours total driving to Bellevue and actually interviewing.  All to be told that, sorry, your twenty years of work history are nice, but after spending a very short time with you, we decided it's not a good "fit", meaning you can't be in our club because, based on purely subjective criteria, we think you have the wrong personality.  But if you want, maybe you can come back later and try again.

Well, sorry, but screw you.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not questioning the decision.  Probably they ultimately chose someone who will do about as well as I would have, or maybe better.  My point is more that they put me, and several other people, through a lengthy process that, in the end, is about equivalent to rolling dice.  I have been on the other end, and I always thought that choosing someone based on an interview was a crapshoot.  I used behavior-based interview questions provided by HR, like you are supposed to.  Didn't matter.  Also, when I have interviewed in the past and gotten the job, it usually seemed just as random.

So let me propose an alternative:  unless you are interviewing for a really high-level position, like a CFO (in which case I really have no idea what to do), pick about three people based on their resumes.  (You need a couple of extra in case one or two turn you down.)  As a courtesy to them (a foreign concept to most companies), interview them on one day, but get a few opinions if you want.  You are looking for two things: First, do they seem OK?  Most people are fine, especially in an interview, but occasionally you will get one that comes off as hard to get along with, or seems stoned, or whatever.  It isn't very common.  Second, do they know the stuff their resume says they should?  It's not terribly unusual to find someone who is a fake; somehow they have held jobs in the past, but they don't really know anything.  Hard to spot in an interview, but worth a try.

Then, hire the one with the best experience.  And here is the important part:  Now you have 90 days to interview them.  At most companies, you can let someone go in the first 90 days without giving them a warning or producing a bunch of documentation.  After that, it's a lot of work to fire someone, but in the first 90 days, it's pretty easy.  Companies under-utilize this free-look period; at Farmers, I can remember two people in the eleven years I worked there who were let go during their probationary periods, and neither was for incompetence.  On the other hand, I saw some woefully incompetent people who sailed through their 90 days long before someone realized something was wrong.  So companies reject perfectly good candidates based on a short, scripted discussion, then can't be bothered to evaluate new employees during their first three months.

Will this method get you the best person?  No, but neither will your long interview process.  Will it get you better people?  Yes, actually it will, because instead of using the interview process as the gatekeeper to decide who works for you, you will be using the work the person does over a few months.  That's pretty much guaranteed to improve the process, and as a bonus, you won't waste as much time and effort trying to make uneducated guesses based on an hour asking canned questions.

The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective People

When I thought of this post, I realized that the first article with this title probably came out about two days after Stephen Covey's book.  Sure enough, a search of the Internet finds books, posters, articles, everything.  Still, I have something to say on this topic.

1.  Procrastinate

This one habit is so pervasive and so powerful that I suspect it is the one thing that nearly all ineffective people have in common.*  Any task, from the smallest to the largest, from picking up your socks to a big work project, can be screwed up by putting it off.  The wife will end up picking up your socks, and you will probably get the project done, but just won't be as good as it should be, or someone else will have to help you finish it.  Need to exercise?  Start tomorrow!  Tomorrow you can put it off again.  Going to start a diet?  Finish off those M&M's first -- you already bought them, can't let them go to waste.  Procrastination can be applied to nearly anything, and it is guaranteed to make you less effective.

*I say "nearly" all because I recently met a highly ineffective person who was a type of  anti-procrastinator.  Any problem, no matter how complex, she would come up with a solution within minutes, if not literally seconds, and would be hell-bent on implementing it if no one stopped her.  I suspect that this is even more ineffective than procrastination, because it means trying to solve problems without actually thinking about them first; however, it is very unusual in my experience, not a common trait of ineffective people.

2.  Go for the B

There will always be people who want to excel at everything they do; from school to work to everyday tasks to their hobbies, they like being the best.  That means, by definition, someone has to be not as good as they are, and this can be you.  Those overachievers are working their buns off to do everything as well as they do; with considerably less effort, you can just be OK, hopefully doing enough to keep your spouse from leaving and your boss from firing you.

3.  Failure Is an Option

On those occasions when even going for the "B" seems like too much effort, you can actually fail altogether, and the world won't come to an end.  Didn't bother to pay the bill?  They'll send you another with an extra charge next month.  Don't want to fix dinner?  You can eat out.  Didn't do that project at work?  Maybe you can find another job, if they bother to fire you.  It's hard to screw up so badly that your life falls apart completely.

Sure, when astronauts returning from the moon are running low on oxygen, and you need to make sure they don't run out, failure is not an option.  But let's face it, if you can master even a few of the seven habits of highly ineffective people, no one is ever going to give you that kind of responsibility. You won't ever find yourself in that type of situation.

4.  Be Afraid

Be afraid to take a risk, to try something unfamiliar.  Whether it's something small like learning to cook, or something larger like moving across the country, fear of the unknown can keep you from moving forward.  I think this habit is an underrated reason why some people manage to avoid accomplishing all they could.  Many of us (and "us" most definitely includes me) go through life generally making the safe choices, taking the path of least resistance.  Go to school, go to school some more, get a job working for someone, put money in your 401K, make safe investments.  Fear keeps us from starting a new business, changing careers, running for office, or becoming on-line poker players.  Those things might not have worked out anyway.  We'll never know.

5.  Dabble

Try a lot of different things, but don't put too much effort into any one of them.  Keep moving on to something new.  The important concept here is "diminishing marginal returns."  Here's how they work:  Let's say you want to learn to play golf.  It's a tough game; if you just go out and play, you'll be pretty bad.  However, take a lesson or two, hit some balls at the range, play a few rounds, and you will start to improve.  But to get to the point that your scores are consistently under 100, you are going to have to do much more, probably devote time every week to playing, take some more lessons, lots of practice.  And by the time you try to get your handicap down to single digits, you are going to be playing golf all the time and probably spending some serious money just to make the slightest improvements.  The better you get, the more work it takes to get even better.

It's a lot easier to just take up skiing before you get in too deep.

6.  Sleep In

The corollary to sleeping in is usually staying up late, and what are you doing during those late hours?  Working in the yard?  Running errands?  Exercising?  No, usually people who stay up late are pursuing some leisure activity, watching television, Facebooking, playing video games, reading.  And this is the secret to sleeping in; you are trading potentially productive time for time spent having fun.

7.  Video Games

I know that we wasted lots of time when we were kids, but it is almost hard to imagine how we managed it as well as we did without this incomparable time-wasting invention.  Video games are just the perfect way to sit and waste hours, days, weeks, years, and they have the added bonus of allowing you to isolate yourself from other people.  This is one area where you don't have to go for the "B" or dabble to be ineffective; feel free to waste your life away becoming the very, very best at Angry Birds, Everquest, Zuma's Revenge, or whatever your favorite obsession may be.

Video games can also be your go-to activity when you are exercising the other six ineffective habits, the thing you do when you are putting off something more important, avoiding being the best, staying up late.  Video games can be the mechanism that makes all of the other habits work.

Unlike the seven habits of highly effective people, the seven habits of highly ineffective people are easy to implement.  If you have read this entire post, you have already found an alternative to doing anything useful for at least a few minutes.  Now just keep up the momentum!