Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars

Programming Job From Hell

I’m an avid reader of craigslist.com, because that’s where I find clients. Every once in a while I stumble across an ad like the one below.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The client has, admittedly, developed a complex application in Actionscript… a video player. I’m with them so far. Everybody wants to develop their own brand of video player in Actionscript.

The problem here is that the client needs help to “… debug, and rewrite some of [their] coding issues.” What does this mean? It could mean that they built their application to a certain point, and then things fell apart. This is the most likely explanation.

The possible reasons for this are too many to cite. If the client’s programmer doesn’t have the sophistication to debug and rewrite his own code, did he know what he was doing when he started this project? I doubt it.

To summarize what this client is saying, they screwed up from the beginning of this project. Their programmer didn’t know what he was doing. I’d bet that the architecture of the project was not properly planned. Now, they want to be bailed out at minimal cost.

And, get this… the client wants a guarantee that the new programmer they hire will correct their problems for a “fixed fee!” At this precise moment, the client doesn’t even know what the problem might be.

A programmer would have to be very stupid, or very desperate, to take on this job. The client doesn’t want to spend any money for the time the programmer would spend analyzing the application. They just want a fix. And, they want it done in a week!

Imagine this scenario. Your car breaks down and gets towed into the garage. You tell the mechanic that you don’t have a clue what’s wrong with the damned thing, but you want a guarantee that you’ll get it back tomorrow, and you won’t pay a cent over 100 dollars!

That’s precisely what this client is doing.

On top of the other hellish elements of this job, the client wants the programmer to sit in their office so that they can badger the poor bastard with their complaints and anger. This isn’t really a job. It’s a human sacrifice. Somebody has to be to blame for their failure to hire a competent programmer, but for some reason the client’s in-house programmer can’t be blamed. Why?

Who would take on this job from hell? Wish there was some way I could follow up on this story.

Benny Goodman’s Jersey Bounce

The Karaoke Queen constantly tells me that I should focus on solo piano. She’s probably right.

So, here’s a tune I recorded this morning… “Jersey Bounce.”

Jersey Bounce

The song was written by Myron C. Bradshaw, Edward Johnson and Bobby Plater, and became a number one hit recorded by Benny Goodman in 1942. Hard to believe that such a literate, sophisticated song could be at the top of the charts, isn’t it?

Check out Goodman’s version at YouTube… very cool.

I recorded this song directly into my port-a-studio.

Just for laughs, I also recorded a string background over my piano tracks.

Jersey Bounce with Strings

Sometimes, I wonder how many songs I’ve played in my life. Time to put them all out there.

Batter Up in the Subway

I traveled to New York yesterday to visit a client on Wall Street. On the way back to the Port Authority bus terminal, I took the subway to 42nd Street. I ran into this performance artist standing in front of a mural.

I have a very low opinion of performance art. It seems like a way for rich kids (called “Trustafarians”) with useless humanities degrees to waste their time. But, this guy really intrigued me.

As I approached, he blended into right into the mural. With his throwback costume, he looked the part of the 19th century baseball player. I’m old enough that I can remember when baseball and New York City were synonymous. The city had three teams before 1950... the Yankee, Giants and Dodgers.

I took these pictures with my iPhone. For once, I didn’t bring along my Canon Digital Rebel. In the low light conditions of the subway, the Canon would have produced a far better picture.

I tried to find a better photo of the mural.  This site displays various murals in subway stations. I couldn’t find my mural.

I thought that this guy deserved a tip, so I dropped a buck in his bat. He responded by taking a swing. Then he resumed his pose.

Planet Fitness in Kingston

I joined this fitness club a few weeks ago… 10 bucks a month.

Planet Fitness is just for cardio and weights. Yesterday, I warmed up with 45 minutes of yoga, rode the bike for 30 minutes and lifted weights for 30 minutes. Sweated like a hog.

I was so proud of myself that I bought two chocolate chip cookies and wolfed them down on the way home. There goes the weight loss program.

Planet Fitness doesn’t have any of the amenities the Karaoke Queen’s club in Jersey provides, like a spa and basketball courts. But, that costs 45 bucks a month. I’m a member there too.

I’d like to lose 20 pounds, but I’d have to stop eating. We’ll see how that goes. Big Joe is counting his calories on an iPhone app. He’s lost 40 pounds! If he keeps this up, he won’t be Big Joe much longer.

McCarthyism in Woodstock!

Woodstock’s voters displayed uncommon common sense in rejecting Liz Simonson and electing Jeff Moran as Town Board Supervisor.

Now, Simonson’s backers are screaming that McCarthyism was responsible for their defeat. This accusation is a little difficult to understand, since McCarthyism generally means unfounded accusations that a political opponent is a communist.

Simonson briefly allied herself with a complete nutjob extreme leftist group known as the Middle East Crisis Response.  This is a group that, literally, calls Israel an “apartheid” state.

Knowing the constituency of this group (and I do know them), I can tell you with some certainty that the members are, indeed, communists. They call themselves “progressives,” because they don’t understand that they really are communists. Every generation of extreme leftists convinces itself that it has discovered some new ideology, which ultimate turns out to be the same old communist doctrine. It’s like the temptation of the devil. Satan cleverly dresses up his temptations in attractive clothing.  “Human rights” and “agrarian reform” are the usual temptations used to sucker our extreme left.

Communists aren’t new to Woodstock. The Communist Party U.S.A. held its founding meeting in Woodstock in 1921. Woodstock’s extreme left admired and supported the communist revolution in Russia and the Soviet Union. Through the decades, the extreme left in Woodstock has always supported the enemies of the U.S. in wartime.

Simonson insisted on turning Woodstock Town Board meetings into forums on foreign affairs. In the usual bonehead fashion of our extreme left, she played out her delusions of grandeur in a forum that really should be focused on garbage collection and taxation issues. Our Town Board passed a resolution favoring the impeachment of President Bush, and decided to run a local business through the wringer because it produced goods for the Israeli army.

Simonson probably is a communist, although she would be the last person to know it.  She’s cunning, but not bright. She undoubtedly thinks she’s a “progressive.”

What I can’t understand is this: if you act like a communist, talk like a communist, and embrace the enemies of the U.S. like a communist, why cry McCarthyism when you are fingered as a communist?

If the shoe fits, wear it.

We’ve gotten rid of one extreme leftist and America hater on our Town Board.  Next, let’s rid ourselves of Jay Wenk, who is even worse than Simonson.

Fall of the Berlin Wall

Twenty years ago, President Ronald Reagan delivered his great speech at the Berlin Wall. Dutch was born less than 200 miles from my hometown.

President Obama refused to attend the celebration in Berlin, and released this bit of bureaucratic pablum instead.

Obama manages to avoid even mentioning the role of Reagan in bringing down the wall. Amazing.

In Woodstock, our extreme left is celebrating the great triumph of the West and freedom by trooping off to this week’s hate America propaganda and indoctrination flick at the Tinker Street Cinema, Michael Moore’s “Capitalism.”

The left spent decades arguing that evil does not exist. Here, in Woodstock, the extreme left championed the Soviet Union. They argued that the U.S. was just as bad, if not worse, than the Evil Empire.

That tradition continues in Woodstock. The extreme left has taken up the cause of the Muslim terrorists against the U.S. Some things never change.

Thankfully, enough sane people reside in Woodstock that the Muslim terrorist sympathizer running for Town Board Supervisor was defeated.

Woodstock Obsessions

Took a drive into town yesterday to run a few errands, and I found a few Woodstock oddities to photograph. I replaced the lens on my Canon Digital Rebel for 70 bucks, and that seems to have solved the autofocus problem.

A few weeks ago, I posted a picture of our local bagman who had turned his trash cart into a campaign sign for Liz Simonson, a candidate for Town Supervisor. As you can seen in the photo above, he’s expanded his display. He’s discovered some election law violations, and he’s ready to go to the FBI.

Simonson, our ultra-left candidate, seemed determined to turn our Town Board meetings into foreign policy debates over the conflict in the Middle East. She lost, thank God, to what amounts to a conservative candidate, Jeff Moran. Conservative in Woodstock is very liberal in just about any other place. Here’s hoping that Mr. Moran can focus our Town Board meetings on garbage pickup and other such mundane matters.

Organic, antibiotic and pesticide free meat has been all the rage in Woodstock for the past few years. Even our good old boy butcher shop is getting in on this action.

Sunfrost Farms, our local high end fruit market, has long been on the organic bandwagon. They’ve also ventured into the “pure fed” meat market. Hipper-than-thou always sells in Woodstock.

I’m making light of this, but I do understand the concerns. When I was in the Philippines, the meat was all organic, hormone and pesticide free, and as free range as you can get. This was the result, not of hipsterism, but of poverty. Filipinos can’t afford grain feedlots and hormone treatments for cattle. Even in Cebu, a large city, a family might stake a cow out in front of the house. Organic, free range meat was cheap in Cebu. And, it does taste better than U.S. meat.

The problem in Woodstock is that free range, organic meat is prohibitively expensive… three to four times the cost of meat in the supermarket. Peter tells me that this is because feedlot meat in the U.S. is heavily subsidized. For her part, the Karaoke Queen won’t pay the prices in Woodstock hipster shops.

At Age 60... Pain is a Fact of Life

As I approach my 60th birthday, I’m becoming accustomed to chronic pain. I’ve been struggling with arthritic pain since my mid-50s. That pain is minor compared to lower back pain, which has just made its appearance.

Lower back pain is so common that there are many websites devoted to it, like “Back Pain | Back Relief” and “Back Pain Expert.” 

A thorough set of yoga (about an hour and a half) used to take care of the arthritis pain, but it doesn’t seen to do much for the back pain. I’ve taken up serious weight lifting in an attempt to strengthen my back. The jury is still out on that one. Jump rope and abdominal exercises seem to help.

The Karaoke Queen stuck a Salonpas patch on my back the other night.  Developed by the Japanese, Salonpas delivers heat directly to the spot that hurts. It helped me sleep for a night, but it didn’t offer any long term relief.

Could be that I’ve developed sciatica from my new job as a nurse’s aide. Many of my patients are grotesquely obese. Moving them tears at my back. One of my patients seems to take a perverse pride in deliberately going limp and diving for the floor. I’ve been catching him so far, but the stress on my back is beginning to make me think I’d be better off letting him hit the floor.

The only long term solution to this beating on my back is to finish my LPN program so that I graduate to an easier job that doesn’t involve so much heavy lifting.

The sciatica pain radiates from my lower back and down the back of my right leg. Although I’m not aware that I’m doing it, I seem to have altered my stride to relieve the pain. Apparently, I’m putting more weight on my left leg. The result is stress and pain in my left ankle and calf.

I’m working out more strenuously than I did when I was a teenager active in sports. I take hour long walks several times a week, lift weights twice a week, play basketball once a week and practice yoga for a least an hour almost every day. All this just to attempt to remain pain free.

At age 60 the breakdown of the body accelerates. It’s a fight just to slow down the degeneration. Of course, the best thing to do would be to lose 30 pounds to take stress off my frame. That’s not an easy thing to do. I’m pretty good at motivating myself to work out. Not so good at limiting the intake of food. I like the Karaoke Queen’s cooking.

Illini beat Michigan for Second Straight Year

Well, unless you’re a graduate of the University of Ilinois, you don’t care. That’s Illini QB Juice Williams celebrating the victory below.

Both teams are dead awful. Michigan is 9th in the Big Ten standings. Illinois is 11th in the Big Ten. How do you do that?

I watched the game on TV. How did this game between two bottom feeders in the Big Ten even make it to national TV?

First time since 1983 that the Illini won on their home field against Michigan. We’ve beat those bastards two years in a row. First back to back wins since 1957 and 1958. Ron Zook’s job may be safe for another year.

In real sports news, the Yankees seem to be on the verge of winning the World Series. 2010 will be the Cubs’ year!