Java EOL
Pipewelding pays more than a Java Job and sucks less
- Today I sent an even dozen emails to prospective employers or their recruiters for various advertised Java Jobs.
- I only got a few responses and fewer still with something with a pulse over the phone.
- The phone replies were pretty much geared toward making sure I don't qualify for an interview.
- The only call I got where there was some genuine interest is for a welding job I had applied for earlier this morning.
- A 10 year Java veteran has little to no chance of getting a job because all of the employers looking to hire want cheaper and easier to control emplyees and so somebody with my background has very little chance getting past the interview screener.
Dean and Novus Ordo Seclorum
The New House Rules
- On Monday 24 March Helen and I went to J.P. Masden.
- We obtained an Eviction Notice form and an explanation of how it works.
- We did not file the form and so we have no teeth in the document but Dean does not seem to be aware of the consequences of not filing the Eviction Notice right away.
- What we do have in terms of leverage is a Word doc I created for Dean to read and sign: house_rules.doc. I have this document uploaded to the server.
- The basics of the document are four bullets that Dean must maintain or else the a call to 911 ensues.
- The four bullets to be maintained by Dean are supported by the 10 house rules that follow the bullets.
- Tomorrow is one week since the: New World Order was imposed. It remains to be seen if Dean is determined to measure up to the new standard.
Dean #14
911 after a lot of verbal abuse
- This morning had ominous overtones to the beginning of the day as soon as I realized Dean had gotten up @ around 0700 hours. This is too early for a guy that had been partying for some days and lots of drugs.
- Little did I know how the rest of the day would play out.
- I got lucky because Dean kept badgering me for the phone. Ostensibly, he wanted to call around for drug friends and therefore drugs.
- I need to backtrack: Dean got up and was still high and not all that hungover. Dean knew he did not have any more drugs and that he did not have any money.
- Like a fool I forgot to secure my wallet by fetching it from my hiding place that is n ot a hiding place from Dean. I went to check on my wallet and Dean had already lifted the $50.00 dollar bill from the wallet leaving behind the $5.00 dollar bill and some ones thiniking I would not notice.
- I confronted Dean with the question of: where is my $50.00 dollar bill you stole out of my wallet. Dean replied with a lie and said he did not take the bill.
- The previous bullet is interesting because the officers summoned when I called 911 easily extracted the truth from Dean along with what drugs he has been using in recent history.
- The Final Analysis in all of this is Dean finally became abusive enough to where I was pointing the fungo bat at him. Dean was reacting with something of like: "go ahead hit me..."
- Of course Dean would have liked for me to hit him because he knew he was on the brink of a 911 to summon the police. Dean's mindset is such that if he is not going to get what he wants in terms of drugs he just might as well stir up some trouble even if it leads to his own demise.
- Dean got his wish: I called 911 and waited outside until two cruisers showed up with two officers and a very nice young lady educator.
- The cops quickly went to work after talking to me outside the house in the driveway. The two officers entered the house and went to the back bedroom where Dean haunts.
- From Dean's room the officers got Dean outside and began questioning Dean:
- What day is it? Dean answers: Friday (hesitates).
- But what special day is it? Dean: the day that guy says it is (meaning me).
- What month is it? Dean: March (hesitates)
- What year is it? 2008. (hesitates).
- Who is the President of the United States? Dean: Obama. (young lady barely contains laughter and Dean snickers himself).
- What day is it? Dean answers: Friday (hesitates).
- At the last answer to the last question they allow Dean to sit on the stoop and come back to me to ask questions. They also questioned Karl.
- At this juncture they get Dean over closer to me. The officers realize that he is beginning to get abusive again and then they handcuff Dean and put him in the back of the patrol car.
- The officers realize they are dealing with a chronic drug addict and got me to sign a waiver to search Dean's room. The officers only found a Lunestra but little else. At this point the officers where not able to book him on anything including an attempt to get the DA to authorize something but the DA convinced the officers that nothing would stick. The cops know Dean is dirty but have no evidence to hold him.
- The Final Analysis was the same old story: if we had attained eviction papers from Judge Masden then the cops would have all they need to take Dean to jail.
- Monday morning will be an all-together different day. I will pay for an eviction notice from Judge Masden and post the document on the cork board.
- Sometime after I post the newly acquired eviction notice Dean will have only 2 options:
- Get and stay sober and do what he is supposed to do the get off probation: no alcohol and no drugs.
- Or, he can hit the road which will be the end of him because he does not have the ability to think ahead far enough and plan ahead far enough to leave the house without being destitute and homeless.
JMonkeyEngine
Very impressive graphics framework
- I finally broke down yesterday and created a JMonkeyEngine project in Eclipse using: CVS.
- I am very impressed with the graphics or the so-called JME SceneGraph capabilities.
- I have gone through many of the demos: tutorials and test examples.
- I plan to keep studying the JME framework until I am proficient enough to create a game (preferably a MMO).
- I just need to get creative to think of the game type I want to play and how many players I would like to see involved.
Dean calls Sunday
The Alley Cat returns
- Holding true to form Dean calls me Sunday night about 2030 hours.
- Dean instructs me to fetch him at the McDonalds at 2978 and 1488.
- I was in the middle of my work-out when Dean called but as usual I drop everything to go and fetch his miserable butt.
- As I expected Dean looked like a Tom-cat that has been out all night when he suddenly appeared from a red Chevy compact truck.
- Later that night I called the Montgomery County police with the business card that was left by the officer that processed the missing persons report that I had given to the officer as a written statement.
- Also, when Helen came home she called the P.O. and reported that Dean was back home.
- One of Dean's drug buddies (Chase Stokely) called here today and asked for Dean. I asked who was calling. The reply was: Chase. I replied: Dean is sleeping. Chase asked if Dean had lost his job and I said: Yep and Chase hung-up the phone realizing the drug party was over.
- I drove Dean to see his P.O. He was in the P.O.'s office for about an hour. Dean was not happy when he came back to the truck. I don't know what transpired between him and the P.O. but I suspect she gave him a drug test and instructions to get a new job <or-else>.
Dean yet again
Left work early yesterday
- I went to the EZ tag store yesterday to straighten out my EZ tag violations and tolls. I paid $80.25 and I got the old Visa card number replaced with my bank account # for EFT instead of plastic. I did this thinking I would go ahead and wait at Dean's job to pick him up.
- I went to Gas Light and waited. I went to sleep and I was awoken by Mark (the owner). Mark let me know that Dean had clocked out about 1400 hours or so that afternoon.
- This makes sense because Dean called me about that time to say not to pick-him-up until he calls. Dean clocked out at Gas Light on the pretense that he had been called by the P.O. to show up for a drug test according to what Mark had to told me while I was waiting in my truck.
- The next day (today) I called Dean's P.O. but she said that Dean had called her and wanted to come in to talk to her but he never showed up.
- According to the people I called and talked to at Planet Ford Dean was slated to buy a '06 Dodge Charger with a Hemi. The Planet Ford sales personnel I spoke to said he never showed up a Planet Ford.
- Dean withdrew $500.00 bucks yesterday from his account and some more unspecified amount today according to Helen. Helen said she transferred the rest of the money to another account.
- We don't know where Dean is. Helen discovered a phone call from Chase Stokely and reported this to Amber the P.O. Amber has since reported that Dean is not with Chase.
- The mystery remains.
Prosource/CEVA Logistics
Day #4
- In: 0830 hours. Out: sometime afternoon.
- Marc O'Conor met me today right while I was having lunch and as I suspected he said it was my last day.
- I have to admit that I was lucky to work for CEVA just a few days because meeting Marc gave me some new hope for the salvation of the human race. Marc was somewhat upset that I did not make a full 3 days with CEVA. And, Marc ask me a lot of questions about what I think happened to lead to such an early demise? I just told Marc the I.T. industry truth that so-called all-India workshops do not employ Americans. If your name is John Smith you might as well give up on trying to work in the all-India shop. And, trying something like a discrimination argument will not work either because there will always be at least one token American in the shop to thwart any discrimination arguments.
- To quickly sum up what has transpired in the past fews days, weeks, months and years I will list those companies that have I.T. departments that suck because these companies have very much manipulated all-India I.T. departments with a few token Chinese and Americans to present the image that there is no closed-shop activities going on in their company:
- ABS (American Bureau of Shipping)
- Bear Stearns
- J.P. Morgan
- Germania Insurance
- Louis-Dreyfus (all offshore with a few token Indias)
Prosource/CEVA Logistics
Day #3 GPS SDLC failure worsens
- In 0900 hours. Out: 1630 hours. Total: 7 hours.
- Today I collected the GPS project as a folder from Qasim from the share drive.
- I migrated my Eclipse and JBoss to the C:\ drive.
- I downloaded both JBoss 4.0.2 and 4.0.5 as new install.
- The SDLC has now worsened. There is a JBoss deployment failure at tmp/deploy.
- I spoke with Marc from Prosource about the situation here at CEVA. We agreed that I need to be up-and-running with GPS by the end of tomorrow afternoon.
Dean Drunk and High again
It never stops
- Today I got a call from a Spring or Montgomery County constable.
- The constable had Dean with him. Apparently, Dean was standing on the side of the road very inebriated and flagged down a cop.
- The constable was very concerned that Dean was under the influence of something but was hesitant to arrest him.
- The constable said that Dean said I was a schizophrenic.
- The cop left Dean at the Kroger on Rayford road and I picked him up about 2000 hours.
- Dean slept all the way back home and now he is very belligerent because I won't let him get on the computer.
HCTRA Buracracy
How a system fails: let me count the ways.
- For a period of some weeks I received 10 if not numerous snail mail letters from HCTRA.
- For the uninitiated the acronym stands for: Harris County Toll Road Authority.
- The snail mail letters where the HCTRA's automatic electronic system kicking in and sending out snail mail to the violaters of the HCTRAs road system. What would you expect from an organization that is running OAS? Their Sun/Solaris system is OK but their business software sucks!
- In an effort to alleviate the above described situation I went to a HCTRA so-called EZ TAG store last Sat. 1 Mar. 08. I paid $110.60 in a check issued on my Wells Fargo bank account. The check covered all violation fines and unpaid tollroad fees and recharged the EZ account to the tune of $40.00 bucks which is the maximum.
- Now, one week later I am still getting email from HCTRA that my account is suspended. And, I now have someone using my account against a license no.: TX5DKM54. Needless to say my EZ TAG account has been exhausted (over just 6 days use!).
- Now, today (8 Mar 08) I call the EZ TAG store to see what has happened. The call center type on the other-end-of-the-line bluntly said the system is down and I cannot do anything until Monday morning. In the meantime I will incur more charges and violations before I get this straightened out.
- Anyone reading this blog will see that I am a Software Engineer. I have been a programmer for 19 years and I have built Java based business systems running on the web for 10 years. The HCTRA.ORG debacle has erected one of the worst electronic transaction systems I have ever seen. Referring to the last bullet I have never seen a system that affected so many people dependent upon it that could just annouce that the: system-was-down as a reasonable answer for why nothing is working.
- The systems I currently manage would get me very fired if they were designed to fail. And, if the systems I design did not pass muster on performance and tuning testing my job would be equally in jeopardy.
- To get some help in solving this situation I went to my bank and talked to a banker. The Wells Fargo banker also has an EZ TAG account and he uses EFT with an account he holds at his own bank. I asked the WF banker what would happen if the Wells Fargo systems just went down and nobody was responsible for fixing them any sooner that Monday morning? He did not reply except for a telling grin that let me know that heads-would-roll if any responsible persons were implicated in the temporary demise of their systems. I asked my banker what would happen if Wells Fargo messed up my bank account? Answer: it would not be very long before I would attain another bank account elsewhere and move all of my money out of Wells Fargo's dominion. The same cannot be said for your local Toll-Road organization. If your local Toll-Road organization wants to make like misrable for their patrons: well, no-problemo!
- The bottom line is: HCTRA's electronic transactions systems SUCK! And, whoever is responsible for this mess needs to get fired. But, wait, the whole bunch are county workers of some nature or another. Therefore: they can't get fired! Like Desi used to say: Ai-Yi-Yi!
Prosource/CEVALogistics
Day #2: install of Ant and Eclipse
- In: 0745. Out: 5:20. I worked 8 hours.
- By the end of the day I had the GPS application built and running from within Eclipse.
- But to no avail attempts to login to the GPS app failed. Manju did not understand why it failed. But I think I know why it failed.
- Shavran and Manju have asked me some very pointed questions. One of the questions was: do I like Admin better or do I like development better?
- It appears that I won't be at EGL very long before they find a way to make it appear that I am not doing my job. I must add that the Indian guy sitting next to me at EGL was probably sent to EGL as H1B visa.
Prosource/CEVALogistics
Time/Work journal for project: TP/GPS
- Introduced to everybody by Donald.
- Got a badge and login to my machine.
- Only issues: no Outlook login and unable to view Sharepoint doco covering the project.
- I have gotten a Solution Proposal from Donald. The proposal outlines the new features as wanted in their TP/GPS application. I have read most of the requirements document but I find the going a little sluggish. I also received an email from Donald for my machine name and IP address.
- I received several emails from Qasim with links to various required resources for development of the TP/GPS project.
- My phone #: 832-601-5478
- Accomplishments: 1) did a PVCS get of the entire sourcecode for the TP/GPS project. I now need to download JBoss and Eclipse and Ant.
- I was able navigate most of the links sent to me today from Qasim.
- I will need to get the project number such that I can enter my time into the correct project (TP/GPS).
- The major questions are: 1). what is the servlet container used and version? I will have to make an Ant build to see what is the build target output. 2) what versions of the JDK and servet container are used on the development/testing box?
New gig @ CEVA Logistics starting tomorrow (Formerly EGL)
Java.net/Netbeans/Metro based web services
I start a new gig tomorrow at: CEVA Logistics.
End of a weekend
Getting ready for CEVA Logistics
- I spent most of the weekend trying to master Photoshop and Gimp. I suspect I did a better job with Photoshop than Gimp. The two applications appear suprisingly similar in functionality: (layers, channels, the various tools).
- Notwithstanding, I was able to get most of the images that I wanted on my new website index.html processed with the appropriate backgrounds. The backgrounds were the most difficult. I finally figured out the magic wand tool, the eraser, layers and channels, and transparency (most important) and the images came around as needed.
- I also investigate the Java.Net Metro WS framework and Netbeans. I downloaded both technologies. And, I will begin studying Metro and Netbeans tomorrow.
- Dean bought a bunch of beer this weekend and has drank all of by Sunday night. He seems somewhat OK but I wonder if he is going to do this every weekend?
- On a different note: I sure would like to know who the thugs are that are creating a huge racket with their trucks. These punks are flooring the engines with the safety brake on such that the wheels just spin-and-spin and make a lot of black marks on th e road surface and a lot of ugly smoke.
Mixed Bag of events since Friday.
Nothing special only one worry the usual: Dean
- I was getting down-in-the-dumps when the Prosource guy that I inteviewed with a few days earlier called and said CEVALogistics wanted an interview with me the same day (Friday). Donald and a couple of other guys called and I pretty much went through my resume down to the time I was at germaniaagents.com. I felt like I did an OK job and I must have because I got the job!
- Marc Ferruzo sent my a bunch of application and admin documents but none where to be fetched in my email and now I will have to wait until Monday morning @ 0730 hours when I am slated to meet Marc @ Prosource.
- This weekend I will download Glassfish if I don't have it already and begin to look at deploying the Axis Framework on the container. And, just checking out Glassfish in general.
- The downside is Dean has gotten some beer this weekend and I was not too concerned until Chase Stokely called today asking for Dean. I spoke to Dean about Chase's call but I appears it did not make a big impression upon Dean that I am not happy that he returned Chases call.