Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Infrastructure week. at last.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

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65Comments

  4. 4.

    cain

    So, it’s been one year since I’ve lost my job.. good times. I almost got one, but got beat out by an internal candidate. Next week is all interviews. Wish me luck. going back to being technical has been a major chore. I can do it, but the interviews are such bullshit.

  8. 8.

    geg6

    @cain:

    Good luck! It sucks but I’m sending all my best vibes.

    And Betty, I adore your pups. Love their sweetness that comes through all your pics of them.

  9. 9.

    raven

    I recovered enough from the offshore trip to drag all my shit down to the beach. It’s really windy and the surf is churning so my rig won’t hold the bottom. We have through the weekend but it’s not supposed to get any better so I have to figure out some bay fishing. We’ll probably make a run to Pensacola tomorrow for our usual mid-vacation road trip. Here’s one of our beach dogs,

  12. 12.

    JPL

    @cain: Good luck and you can do it. Just visualize a friend across the desk. I’m kinda old so maybe they don’t use a desk anymore, but you can do it.

  14. 14.

    efgoldman

    @geg6:

    Pens/Caps may just finish me off. Can’t take the stress.

    Definitely rooting for the meteor in that series.

  16. 16.

    Schlemazel

    @cain:
    I went through a period of unemployment in 07-08, it is brutal on a persons spirit. The interviews and the not hearing back are wearing and soul crushing. It is trite but stay strong, it may take longer than it should and hurt more than it should but a job will land on you and you can go back to bitching about your rotten boss & lazy/crazy co-workers. Good luck

  18. 18.

    Corner Stone

    @cain: Did you willingly take time off or is that just the timeline that happened after you lost your position?

  20. 20.

    mai naem mobile

    @cain: best of luck. I didn’t know you had lost your job. I had a friend looking for a job for a long time because he was older. His trick in interviews was to try to get the interviewer to talk about themselves to 1/ eat up time and 2/ most people like talking about themselves and you are showing an interest in the person. The job he finally landed seemed to be because the interviewer liked his personality and felt he would be a good fit in the organization.

  22. 22.

    JPL

    I’m not a social media type of person, but do/did have a dummy facebook account with four friends. Last night I commented on the mayor’s facebook and now in order to continue using facebook I have to produce a birth certificate.
    Maybe some of you know my mayor, since he gave an unflattering review of my city to the New Yorker. By unflattering I mean that he questioned Jon Ossoff’s heritage, and whether or not us old white folks would vote for someone with that name.
    How many of you have been required to give paperwork to facebook because of a comment made to a mayor?

  23. 23.

    Jeffro

    I am watching Rachel Maddow and you have to wonder if Mike Flynn isn’t going to bolt for Russia at some point in the near future

  25. 25.

    TenguPhule

    @Jeffro:

    you have to wonder if Mike Flynn isn’t going to bolt for Russia at some point in the near future

    Doubtful.

    Putin doesn’t like loose ends.

  27. 27.

    Quinerly

    @JPL:
    They have been cracking down on fake/dummy accts. Had a friend who was using a name different from his real name (because of work). One of his FB “friends” busted him. I guess reported him. He was asked to produce docs saying who he was. He couldn’t.

  28. 28.

    JPL

    @raven: I will .. All I wrote on his post was that it might be time to do another interview with the New Yorker. Who would take offense with that.

  29. 29.

    cain

    Thanks everyone who responded! Much appreciated. The lack of job has been trying for my parents, brother, (ex) wife, and extended family. They’ve been hitting the temple and what not hoping that I will get employed. I guess I am more sanguine about it than they are.

    @Schlemazel:

    Yes, definitely. I do thank the people who respond back with a personal note rather than a form letter. My prospects has started to get better, just having trouble clinching the deal. But I have a great support system. Last year was trying due to my separation from my wife due to an affair (of which I have forgiven her for), unemployment, and all the associated ups and downs. But given that my wife continues to support me, parents, brother, friends, it has turned into a remarkable story of my relationships with people more than anything else. Also, dating, and all these other things. Definitely has been an interesting 18 months. :-) BTW today is the anniversary of when my employer canned my ass. :-)

  32. 32.

    JPL

    @Quinerly: Yeah the only time that I commented besides my four friends was on the local mayor’s facebook last night . lol
    I was only complimenting him on his great article in the New Yorker.

  34. 34.

    cain

    @Corner Stone:

    @cain: Did you willingly take time off or is that just the timeline that happened after you lost your position?

    That was the timeline.. I started looking immediately because I don’t like unknown and I didn’t know what the job market was like and I haven’t had to interview for a job in 20 years. Even that job, most of the interviewers were friends of mine. I’m learning a lot more about how to present myself. I’m already a public speaker, but I suck at talking about myself.

    I don’t know if I told y’all about how I got fired.. it is a bit nutty. I got fired for not having getting enough stock for my compensation. if you read my review a month before I got fired, it was perfectly fine. In fact, the entire team was looking to me for achievements for the rest of the year.

  36. 36.

    cain

    @mai naem mobile:

    @cain: best of luck. I didn’t know you had lost your job. I had a friend looking for a job for a long time because he was older. His trick in interviews was to try to get the interviewer to talk about themselves to 1/ eat up time and 2/ most people like talking about themselves and you are showing an interest in the person. The job he finally landed seemed to be because the interviewer liked his personality and felt he would be a good fit in the organization.

    Some of these jobs are ridiculous. I interviewed at Amazon as an engineering manager. So I get this 90 minute test where I am supposed to code two different things. There was no interviewer, it was just like “GO!” So basically they were looking for someone who was some kind of uber coder. I felt pretty insulted. I am likely not going to interview with them again. Sadly, I have an interview with Facebook next week, and I was not shy about expressing what I think of technical interviews that are just timed. If my employer is just going to look at me as something to be abused, they can fuck right off.

    ETA:
    I would do very well in an interview like that. While I’m technical, I am also a community manager, so I like dealing with people. Not many can be an outgoing personality and be a technical person or rather someone a technical person would feel comfortable with.

  37. 37.

    Quinerly

    @JPL:
    Somebody figured out you weren’t using your real name, I guess. I wouldn’t know anything about this but for this friend a couple of weeks ago. He’s a young Trans guy, uses a different FB name than his real name (not out at work and with family). Someone in his circle busted him. FB contacted him asking him to prove who he was. He closed his acct.

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @cain:

    Remember, you’re interviewing them as much as they’re interviewing you. Make sure you like them and think they’ll be good people to work with/for.

    Your firing story sounds like G’s layoff story — his reviews were too good so they had to eliminate his position entirely to get rid of him. And, surprise, getting rid of him didn’t magically fix the 20+ years of problems at the company! Who saw that one coming?

  43. 43.

    cain

    @Virginia:

    @cain: Cain, is that even legal? Talk to a lawyer, it sounds fishy.

    It’s legal, it’s basically death by database search. Basically, they did some data modeling and figured out that they can get rid of older people (allegedly, this is speculation on my part) by focusing on stock compensation. Most older people prefer to have cash to build their retirement fund and not stock which vests like every quarter over 4 years. So using some twisted logic, they determined that you sucked and needed to be voted off because you clearly didn’t have enough stock, because you they didn’t like you otherwise we would give you more stock to keep you here in the long term. This plan was done without consultation from any of the management chain. So entire divisions got swiss cheesed, and managers lost people they never intended to fire. Never mind the emotional carnage of getting someone fired. It was a mess. The people who stayed had survivors guilt. They did this last year too, but it was if you had poor stock compensation for two years in a row. They changed it last year if you only had one. The other thing they did was that they blacklisted me so I can never come back again (cuz I suck), not even as a contractor. This entire scheme was hatched by the CEO and the legal department. Nobody else was consulted. The kicker was I got fired 10 days after my 20th anniversary :D

    I was a very valuable member of my team, and the manager kind of shot himself in the foot because it hard to find someone like me and he’s trying to figure out how to make things work without me. All and all, it was a lose lose situation.

    Anyways, the difficulty of clicking is that my skills are a little specialized so it is taking longer.

  44. 44.

    different-church-lady

    Is this an open thread? May I now publicly announce that I am in the correct mood to stab the entire universe with a fork?

  46. 46.

    Central Planning

    @cain: a few years ago my employer did a RIF purely by some algorithm. The manager of the top performing sales region was one of the ones let go. Morons.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @cain:

    Did you ever see the movie Margin Call? You might enjoy watching it because the thing that kicks off the main plot is that they fire the manager of the quant department, only to discover that he’s the only one who can fix what’s going disastrously wrong with their numbers, and it has to be fixed in the next 12 hours or the whole company collapses. Whoops!

  49. 49.

    mai naem mobile

    @cain: from what I’ve seen,unless you’re in a governmental position, they can fire you for almost anything and get away with it. Maybe if you have some outrageous sexual harassment with sufficient proof and a pattern, you might win in court. Otherwise,it’s move on.
    I know this sounds dumb but there’s a TED talk with body language you can use before and in an interview situation that is supposed to make a difference. It’s the Wonder Woman Ted talk.

  52. 52.

    CaseyL

    @cain: If you can prove age discrimination, you might have a case… but companies are very cagey about that sort of thing.

    I know the public sector isn’t hiring much these days, but have you checked into university tech departments? It seems they always need people, and someone who has people skills as well as technical skills might have a good chance there. A large university that’s been around a while is also likely to have special tech projects: modernizing some systems, consolidating other systems, getting rid of old stuff and installing enterprise systems.

  53. 53.

    efgoldman

    @Mnemosyne:

    only to discover that he’s the only one who can fix what’s going disastrously wrong with their numbers, and it has to be fixed in the next 12 hours or the whole company collapses.

    Shortly after I joined Enormous Brokerage & Mutual Funds LLC in 1996, with the market going straight up and looking like it was never going to stop, one of our customers shorted a substantial quantity of Microsoft shares (for the uninitiated, that means he was betting that, and would make money if, the stock went down), then he left on an Asia Pacific cruise.
    By the time we were able to find and contact him, he was in the hole for nine million bux.

  54. 54.

    Mnemosyne

    @efgoldman:

    You might enjoy the movie as well — I freely admit I didn’t understand all of the machinations and was glad the screenwriter was wise enough to include a character who kept saying things like, Explain this to me as though I were a child.

  55. 55.

    efgoldman

    @Mnemosyne:

    You might enjoy the movie as well

    It’s on my very, very long list of things I wanted to catch in the theater but never did. I’ll catch up some decade.

  57. 57.

    seaboogie

    @cain: It sounds like you have great perspective on all of your life changes, including the big whammies of ending your marriage and losing a long-time job.

    You mentioned going to temple, and with all of these shifts happening in your life, I encourage you to have a dialogue with the universe (at temple or on your own) wherein you clearly lay out what your desires with a very focused intention on the fundamentals of what you seek.

    This can look something like:

    – a work environment that is cooperative and supportive
    – opportunity to apply my skills and learn new ones that expand my knowledge in areas that are interesting and creative
    – compensation that allows me to maintain my lifestyle

    Intention that you put out there can be deeply empowering, in that you have a vision of not just having any old job, but a job that serves you as much as you serve it. Once you are clear on your goals, you can start from a position of greater clarity and strength, relax a bit more during the process, and start to turn the tables in the interview in that you will be interviewing your prospective employers to see if *they* are a fit for you.

    So glad you have such a great support system in family and friends and are able to appreciate this in your process.

  58. 58.

    cain

    @Mnemosyne:

    Did you ever see the movie Margin Call? You might enjoy watching it because the thing that kicks off the main plot is that they fire the manager of the quant department, only to discover that he’s the only one who can fix what’s going disastrously wrong with their numbers, and it has to be fixed in the next 12 hours or the whole company collapses. Whoops!

    haha. nice. :-) If it matters, everyone in that business group is willing to give me a letter of recommendation. :-)

  59. 59.

    cain

    @mai naem mobile:

    @cain: from what I’ve seen,unless you’re in a governmental position, they can fire you for almost anything and get away with it. Maybe if you have some outrageous sexual harassment with sufficient proof and a pattern, you might win in court. Otherwise,it’s move on.
    I know this sounds dumb but there’s a TED talk with body language you can use before and in an interview situation that is supposed to make a difference. It’s the Wonder Woman Ted talk.

    Oh yeah I’ve moved on.. I dont’ care about them. I’m off to seek a new adventure. I am not even mad, it’s just a fun story to tell. Honestlly, they don’t owe me a career or anything. It was a two way street, I’m grateful for the experience and training that I got from them. It was time to move on anyways. I just rather have looked for jobs while I was employed. :-)

  60. 60.

    cain

    @CaseyL:

    I know the public sector isn’t hiring much these days, but have you checked into university tech departments? It seems they always need people, and someone who has people skills as well as technical skills might have a good chance there. A large university that’s been around a while is also likely to have special tech projects: modernizing some systems, consolidating other systems, getting rid of old stuff and installing enterprise systems.

    I have one opportunity at Portland State University.. Waiting on the position to be available before I applied. I also hoepfully will have an interview with the EFF. I lwas a finalist for a job with the Linux Foundation. I could have been the executive director for the GNOME Foundation, but glad I didn’t take it because a much more awesome person got hired.

  61. 61.

    cain

    @seaboogie:

    So glad you have such a great support system in family and friends and are able to appreciate this in your process.

    Actually, I never went.. my family has been going though. Especially my uncle. I’m not particularly religious, but I do believe in karma and dharma. I have a fantastic support system. This is kind of why I want to stay in Portland. It would suck if I had to move out and leave behind my support system and go somewhere where I don’t know anybody. But you know, sometimes we have to do that.

    In the meanwhile, I am working on my tech skills, marketing skills and all the other stuff I’ve been doing. I work on my non-profit. I’m also trying to get involved with teh local tech events. Just keeping my name out there. Eventually something will click.

  65. 65.

    SWMBO

    I have never commented on a mayor’s facebook. A few years ago, FB went around trying to delete dummy accounts. My family has several and we use them to play games. When they started making noise about shutting down the dummy accounts, we told them we could go straight to the website and play without FB. Oops. No clicks, no revenue.
    Tell them to fuck off and if they give you grief, open another account. They can block you from their end so they shouldn’t be able to shut you down for criticizing the mayor.

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