I picked up a load of those annoying newspaper inserts in Boulder,CO that were going to Baltimore. Let's just say when I finally contacted the receiver I wasn't impressed when the instructions included 'turn left at the burned out van.' When I finally got there it was a store front operation. The 'staff' consisted of the owner walking up and down the block trying to recruit people sitting on the stoops drinking Mad Dog.
The inserts were on pallets, probably 800 pounds each. The equipment consisted of one two-wheeled hand truck. The technique was to roll the pallets end over end until they fell off the truck when they would be wrestled onto the two wheeler. The tires looked like they were about to blow. I pitched in to help, hoping to get out of the neighborhood while I still had 18 wheels. I overheard one of the recruits muttering 'never seen mf'ing truck driver work before'.
That also illustrates one of the problems of cheap (relatively) transportation. Print inserts in CO to go into the Baltimore Sunday paper? Nobody in say, Maryland, can print advertisements that will wind up in the trash?
We got paid a minimal flat rate for a stop but were getting paid by the mile, so no. Some union drivers get paid by the hour but most OTR drivers are by the mile. Doing the necessary paperwork, waiting for the next load, and hanging around while the truck is loaded or unloaded is on your own time. While the yearly income isn't bad realistically you're lucky to make the minimum hourly wage.
That's what I did back east. I had all the work I wanted from established clients and word of mouth so I didn't have to go out and sell myself. That's not one of my skills.
I did 'retire' when I was 40, got rid of most of my stuff, and hit the road west. I mostly traveled around the west for a year, then volunteered on a Forest Service mule ranch for a year, then had a fling with trucking. Not having any contacts in Montana I went back to direct employment. I've enjoyed it and still do but am currently negotiating a part time status. I'm not ready for real retirement but don't need 40 hour weeks either mentally or financially.
Yes, the weird hours. I lived in a small NH town that mostly shut down at 9 PM except Dunkin Donuts and one convenience store. I'd take a break at Zero Dark Thirty, go to the store, play a few games of Asteroids, and wander around town for a while.
Email wasn't much of a thing in the '80s. I did come home once to find a meeting request thumb tacked to the door. Never liked phones. About 9 years ago the company redid our end of the building. Through an oversight the phones were never replaced in engineering or QA. Nobody has complained.
First order of business was to lift a pallet jack onto the truck (hoping it wasn't packed all the way to the back door!)
Folks experienced with a pallet jack can move a pallet in the space the pallet occupies -- plus a smidgen. (Folks INexperienced will prove to be mildly entertaining... for the first 10 minutes!)
[I always dreaded having to spin a pallet *on* the liftgate... they always felt like they were "sloped downhill" and far too easy for the pallet to get away from you if not vigilant]
Hmmm... I guess *paper* wouldn't mind.
I always used to wonder why this national chain would ship ALL of their kit to us; surely there must be folks who could process it "locally"?
But, I think they owned their trucking fleet (thousands of stores, nationwide, that would need to be restocked regularly). So, after dropping off the latest load of merchandise, I suspect anything that had to go back to corporate was loaded on the empty truck as it returned to the distribution center. Repeat from "regional" to "national".
And, wherever "corporate/national" happened to be, they could obviously push kit to the closest regional center near us (or any other destination).
I assumed he was an employee of the company giving us the donations. Never asked but others had offered suggestions ranging from "he's a lazy f*ck" to "liability insurance" (if he was injured doing something that technically wasn't his job).
<shrug> Dunno. Don't know how that industry works nor how the corporation was structured.
With a helper (one on pallet jack, other on forklift), it doesn't take long to empty a truck -- as you can just pile stuff up <wherever> and move it to its intended destination(s), later.
Without? It gets old REAL fast!
I let friends/colleagues point clients to me with projects in which they thought I might have an interest (I'm not the sort that wants to solve a problem *twice*... move on to learn something new!). They also tended to know when I was getting off a project and not likely to want to start on another, any time soon.
No family? Makes it a LOT easier (and more affordable) to call your own shots. Real estate is another boat anchor.
OTOH, it's easy to accumulate lots of "stuff" which makes moves tedious (and costly). I filled an entire moving van, once.
Getting *rid* of stuff is a tough discipline to learn. SWMBO claims I have to live another 20 years as it will take that long for me to shed all the stuff I've accumulated! <frown>
[Presently working on figuring out how much stuff I can "store" *inside* other things (e.g., drives/memory/boards *in* workstations, paperwork
*on* disks, etc.). While I've yearned for a basement, I can only imagine how much *worse* the volume of my "collection" would be! :< ]
Yeah, I've become far too "unsynchronized" with much of the world around me. I sleep when I'm tired and work when motivated. The position of the sun and day on calendar are largely immaterial (I try to "visit" my other half at least once each day). The idea of being "somewhere" at a particular time hasn't been a part of my routine for ~40 years, barring doctors' appointments, etc.
I've found that I can't work "part time" -- on some schedule. E.g., "20 hours a week". Rather, I prefer taking on a job and working on it how and when I think best -- knowing what commitments I've made to its completion. So, if I feel like doing "something else" for a week, I don't feel like I owe someone 20 hours. I think that would require a lot of discipline ("OK, I put in my 20 hours for this week, now I can do something else...")
I would do my grocery shopping in the wee hours while staff was restocking shelves. No hassles with traffic, parking, other customers, etc. Fresh produce was a problem but there are ways around that.
I would log in (modem) to client "bulletin boards" and check my mailbox for anything of interest. Not quite as anonymous as today's email (e.g., their sysop could tell when/if I had checked my mail) but still allowed me to decouple from "their schedule".
When I started on my own, I *assumed* it made sense to set up a business line (so I could ignore calls after hours AND keep my home phone private).
But, I learned clients and potential clients would want to "shoot the shit"... ON MY DIME! ("Hey, I'm not getting paid to talk to you. All this time is coming out of my pocket!")
And, too often, would posit "what ifs", looking for off the cuff estimates ("I'm not going to hold you to it" Yeah, sure!) for changes, other work, etc. "Look, I'm not your engineering department. Bounce your ideas off THEM during YOUR work hours"
Email was a huge win as it cut all the chitter-chatter out of the interaction. An, it forced them to think about what they wanted to ask instead of trying to refine their questions interactively.
(If you want me to help you develop a product concept, we can do that under a contract, but we're not "friends" who can bandy about ideas "for free")
And, any technical issues were self-documenting. Including any disclaimers that were introduced in the discussion. (More than once, I'd refer to something that we'd previously discussed/agreed IN WRITING to "refresh" a defective/opportunistic memory)
Phones exist for the convenience of the *caller*. If you keep that in mind, it makes your "phone discipline" a lot easier to codify: "Do I want to field this call *FOR* this caller? Or, can he wait until it's convenient for ME?"
[I have an "automated attendant" that screens our calls, here. So, we only hear it ring when it is someone that we want/need to talk with *NOW*. All others can be dealt with at our convenience (if that annoys the caller, then they can imagine how annoyed we are with their thinking that we should respond to *their* wishes!]
Definitely. I should have bought property here thirty years ago but I wasn't sure I was done roaming.
The move from NH was easy -- if it didn't fit in the pickup it didn't go. A guy was trying to flesh out a high school computer lab so he got all the hardware and books. Other books went to the library. A few hundred pounds of vinyl records may still be in a basement in Concord MA. I gave a friend the Sprite and a rowing dinghy I'd built was left on the beach above the high tide line. Other stuff went on the sidewalk.
I've lived here for over thirty years and have collected too much stuff but I'm not planning to move again.
That's part of the ongoing negotiation that will resume Monday. It might be 5 hours, it might be 50 depending on what needs doing and my enthusiasm, with a day or two where I will be available, if not necessarily working. Unless something is burning down they can save their issues up until Wednesday between 9 and 4 or something like that.
I fell on the ice and broke my hip the end of January and was in a rehab facility for seven weeks and was putting in about 20 hours. The therapists were amused when they'd come for me and I'd say 'Wait a minute until I punch out.' If nothing else it was wonderful for my mental health. I'd been thinking about cutting down for a while and that showed it was feasible to work remotely on an irregular schedule.
I don't see it as "roaming" but, rather, "not having ties" (despite having ties "left behind" in many of the places I've lived). I used to love the lushness of New England. Now, find it confining and prefer the open spaces (and black skies).
My first move out of school cost the employer $15K. He wasn't prepared for THAT! :> (probably figured he was moving some kid out of a tiny dorm room)
I moved 80 "Xerox boxes" (10 ream paper) of *paperbacks*, here (I read A LOT!). Not counting my reference texts, paperwork (back when it WAS paper), etc.
A friend had a son who was into science fiction. I offered them to him. The Dad was chagrined when he saw that it overfilled the back of his pickup truck! (make sure you understand what you're "accepting" before you accept it!) I had culled the ones I wanted to cherish down to about 4 boxes by that time.
I've probably got 50 or 60 boxes of reference texts, still. But, have switched to epubs for my "recreational" reading as I can store thousands on an ereader that I can then store in a desk drawer! :>
I have probably a comparable amount (plus laser video discs). And, a Beogram 8000 stored in a box for the day I think I need to digitize them (most being boots). Who knows, they may be worth money, at that time! (what's old is new)
I worked for Stanley for a while so have a boatload of handtools (a couple thousand pounds). It's next to impossible for me to discard/giveaway tools so that "collection" just keeps growing. (I can fill two of the 6 ft tall rolling toolchests, easily -- without putting anything that is powered in the mix!)
I'm interested in assistive technology so have quite a collection of such appliances/tools -- including a pair of electric wheelchairs, braillers, etc.
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[You *really* don't want to ever NEED such a device! Aside from the initial novelty of "personal-scale motorized transport", it is a dreadful way to exist!]
Lots of "bigger" bits of kit for my automation system (e.g., 5KVA UPS w/battery boxes).
And, my "recreation" is fixing things that are otherwise headed to the tip. Recent additions are a power washer and (today) a little 42cc chain saw (clean carb, fix oiler, "make pretty" and then set aside)
But, by far, electronic things consume the most space. As I have ready access to lots of discarded kit, I can't help but pull select items to tinker with (as "distractions"). And, once fixed, put them on a shelf. (I've some 20 spare monitors -- plus another 10 deployed; several LCD TVs -- discarded the plasma as it throws off too much heat; 6 workstations; a dozen UPSs; a few servers; hundreds of disks; etc.) In my line of work, much of these things become "references" (e.g., I have half a dozen different commercial speech synthesizers against which to evaluate my own; different development systems to check for code portability; etc.)
[Presently working to convince myself that I *don't* want the three
10ft wide motorized projection screens I've been offered! ("Shirley, there MUST be a use for them??")]
And, that's after discarding (donating) most of my test/prototyping equipment (I kept a Leister, a couple of DSOs, a couple of logic analyzers and a programmable power supply)
[Amusingly, there never seems to be an "empty" space after going on a discard binge! <frown> ]
In my case, its consideration for my other half; she lives in fear that I'll drop dead, some day, leaving her with all this "stuff" to sort out.
"Throw it all away; I'll be dead, what will *I* care?" "Then why can't we throw it out NOW?!" "I'm not dead, yet!" <grin>
I'm usually involved in a design (or specification) process. So, it's hard to just "turn off" those thought processes. And, not fair to any other projects that are running concurrently if they have to compete for gray matter.
So, I prefer to do fixed-cost quotes ("Sorry, no changes!") where all I have to do is ensure I finish *that* work before the agreed upon deadline (and discipline myself not to get too "creative" exploring odd design options)
"Ice"? What's that?
Bummer. I'm told hips are a real pisser.
I was laid up for several months -- couldn't even use a laptop as that would require sitting up. I dug out a tablet and did my work with that. Tedious (stylus without keyboard) but at least gave me an "outlet"!
PHBs are often the biggest impediment to such work. I guess they must feel that if they can't *see* the folks "under" them, then what purpose do THEY fill?
But, personal discipline also plays a big role. I've known folks who couldn't cut it "solo" because they couldn't focus on the problems they'd contracted to solve -- always finding distractions, instead.
Others never knew when to "settle" ("shoot the engineer") on a design.
Still others never "challenged" themselves... settling for the same ol', same ol', over and over (never trying anything revolutionary or that has a significant probability of failing!) until they were just rehashing old designs and of little value.
[Doing fixed cost jobs means I can cut the client out of the decision making loop. If *I* want to take a risk and explore some new approach, the risk falls entirely on me, without his potential to veto!]
Good luck with your negotiations. And, more importantly, finding a way to then make any such arrangement work for *you*!
I do get nostalgic for forests with other species than Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. This last time I was back to the area was 2004. It had been an exceptionally wet summer to start with but the humidity was oppressive. I was looking for information about a historical gas house in Troy NY when I clicked on a Zillow link out of curiosity. Of course you'd have to see the houses but there was a good selection for under
100K. That confirmed by 2004 observation that everybody had left and never came back.
Tell me about black skies... Sun has been optional for a while. 'We need the water' is partially true Lush undergrowth in June tends to lead to hellish fires in August.
You've got me outclassed completely. I seldom buy a hardcopy book anymore. I've used about 2GB of 4GB on my main Kindle and I have no idea how many books that represents other than 'a lot'.
I've even stopped buying hardcopy references. In the software field, except for the basics, they're obsolete before the ink is dry.
A friend is quadriplegic and while it's in no way optimal it's better than the alternative. He has enough mobility that he can drive a converted van with the chair latched into place and type using pencils in custom splits. Still it sucks. I've often made little repairs to the van's ramp or latching mechanism. He knows what needs to be done but can't. Of course there is the frustration of depending on PA's for transfers, shopping, meal preparation, and so forth.
The irony is he would be economically better off vegetating than choosing to remain productive.
One thing that saves me is limited square feet. If I had unlimited area I would be screwed. At one point I contemplated buying an old filling station, the sort with a couple of bays and a life. I'm a minimalist so converting the office and storage to living space wouldn't be a problem and I'd have plenty of work space. The fly in that ointment is they have EPA time bombs with the underground storage tanks that gets passed to the current owner.
My grandmother broke her hip in the '50s. Back then they might as well have taken her out back and shot her. Now they nail you back together.
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There are two small incisions, each about 1" long. I asked the surgeon how he pulled that off and he started talking about jigs and reamers. The whole deal looks and sounds like something I might do to fix a break on one of the bikes.
I had to accept that I realistically couldn't return home without being a burden on friends so I went into a rehab facility. Fortunately I could get around with a walker. The surgeon restricted me to 25% weight bearing, which the PTs reminded me of whenever I started getting around too well. When he moved me to full weight bearing as tolerated I switched to a cane and was out in a week. Not long after I discarded the cane although I do bring my trekking poles when I'm out on trails just in case.
The rehab was a wing of a nursing home so I got to see that side of life. I watched 'Wild Horses' with Robert Duvall last night and there was a trailed for another one of his movies on the DVD, 'A Night in Old Mexico'. One of his lines was "I'm more afraid of winding up with somebody spoon feeding me oatmeal than dying". Yeah and hell yeah.
Fortunately I could get up and sit in a chair, using the overbed table for a desk. I had a Dell laptop and the rehab had a solid WiFi connection so I was good to go.
Even before covid we had some people working remotely. That would come up in the conversation frequently -- what exactly is xxxx doing. When most people went remote for covid they had to submit daily reports of what they were working on. When they were physically on site it was always assumed as long as everything was going smoothly people were doing what they were supposed to be doing.
That can be a problem. One person I hired was going to move and be on site but because of covid remained in Boise. Things were getting done and we cut him loose. That happens when people are physically in the office too. The rule of thumb is you're lucky to get 6 hours of productive work in an 8 hour day.
That works better with hardware projects with a stated, quantifiable goal. There have been a lot of fancy project management schemes over the years but with software the real process is:
Client tells you what they want
You prepare a proposal and submit it
Client signs off without reading it
You proceed to implement the agreed on design
You deliver the product
Client realizes that wasn't what they really wanted
rinse and repeat
Agile gets a lot of hype and often becomes a mantra for management rather than being practiced but it does recognize the design process as being highly iterative.
In the classic waterfall process the requirements and design phases tend to be so protracted and bloody that the delivery phase happens regardless (q.v. F-35, Zumwalt, ...)
Admittedly prototyping battleships isn't as feasible as prototyping software systems.
Thanks. I've reached that point in life where stuff has to work for me. It's not being a curmudgeon, just realizing compromises for long term goals are a moot point when there ain't no long term statistically.
It's not "childish" when whether a person has their ticket punched or not is the difference between a white-collar job that pays well, and only being able to find menial work the rest of their life. Wages at the low end almost never rise.
Hence, parents and students cheat. Society runs on people bending the rules (and sometimes using violence in addition) to "get ahead" and in America these are regularly tactics that work.
So the parents and students ask themselves why the hell am I playing the game by the book when it seems like everyone else who's getting ahead threw the book away a long time ago.
JL subscribes to the "America should be ruled by the people who own it" philosophy, and tends to figure that "the people who own it" were destined to own it by their genetics
It is, but John Larkin doesn't seem to have understood what it was saying.
It clearly doesn't say anything of the sort.
Harvard gets to pick and choose its students, and can cream off what looks like the pick of the crop, not that any mode of testing students is all that reliable. Harvard can afford to make their courses demanding without running the risk of washing out too many students who can't hack it - and irritating the student's influential parents.
Not all the time, and clearly not often enough to wreck the system.
Cheats and psychopaths are always free-loading, and systems evolves to become better at squeezing them out. The US seems to be evolving a bit less rapidly than it might .
The Ivy League was never any kind of "pure meritocracy". It runs on reputation. If you have enough bright students wanting to buy into that reputation, you can select only the most promising candidates, and even a fairly unreliable selection tools will give you enough genuinely bright students to sustain the reputation.
Or like to think that you didn't. Robert Plomin's book "Blueprint" didn't say what you claimed it did either, so you didn't understand what he said any more than you've understood what you said.
It's an informative book, but it is difficult to see it changing anybody's prejudices. I suppose the idea that intelligent parents have intelligent children because both parents have thousands of genes that all individually boost intelligence very slightly, so your kids are never going to be intelligent in exactly the same way as you are, may upset people who talk about having their grandfather's brain, but that doesn't look much like a prejudice.
Sociology hasn't got to the point where they can redesign society in a way that works better, so they aren't going to be highly paid. It follows that people who do study sociology do it because they like the job, and probably do enjoy it.
Other academic studies can generate higher incomes.
Just so long as you don't have to spend time with them. That kind of work is satisfying, because you do give the customers what they want, but it isn't intellectually stimulating - which isn't a problem for a lot of people who - like you - don't have much of an intellect.
Elevator maintenance or plumbing perhaps isn't as hard on the body as a number of other trades like construction, railway/power line maintenance, auto and truck service, etc.
Sadly the rehab/disability centers I've seen have many guys in their
50s, 40s, and occasionally younger who've had a serious injury or a deteriorating joint and can't do their trade anymore. They may have worked in construction 20 years and have only a high-school education, what do they do then is the question.
Some of the trades are like an NFL player, you'd very much hope the job pays well because your time horizon may be significantly less than 65.
There isn't a necessity in the world for that many plumbers or elevator maintenance personnel. There seems to be a lot more availability for meal-servers and taxi drivers, and software engineers and managers, anyway.
At least the 2019 admission scandal, probably only the tip of the iceberg:
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revealed about high-end universities what a lot of people already figured, it's pay-for-play. Though I think we weren't expecting it to be happening quite that flagrantly..
When poor in the US the phrase "It's better to ask forgiveness than permission" resonates. If your gamble whatever it is succeeds people tend to forgive you for any rules you bent, because it was a successful gamble and in the US success tends to be admired in whatever forms it takes.
If you fail and bent the rules in the process you'll take a hard fall, but the US tends to let its poor take hard falls anyway, even ones who don't take big risks or bend the rules.
The hospital campus in Providence RI takes up about a quarter of the city proper, the complex is at the lower left of this pic:
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So "down the street" is a bit relative as in that town just about everything is about three blocks from everything else. She could sleep right through the sirens and car stereos at night, I've spent most of my life living in rural-ish suburbs so never really got used to it.
Inpatient hospital rooms IME are lousy places to sleep, beeping machines and nurses coming in and out every 20 min to check this or that. Anyone resting for very long in there is likely receiving sleeping pills. Probably helps convince people to move on out who don't really need to be there.
OTOH I've rarely had food that was that bad in a hospital in New England, breakfast is usually the best.
The only real enmity I remember were some Greek and Armenian friends who really hated Turks. Moot point since there were no Turks.
That applied to churches too, the Irish church, the French church, etc. I miss the North Boston festivals. You're not going to find scungilli salad around here. For that matter I doubt you could find a canolli. Even the vanilla offerings of Johnny Carino's only lasted about three years.
Same as the Indian place Geraldo's, run by an actual Mexican, went out of business although Cafe Rio lives on.
I suppose you could grill kielbasa but it never occurred to me. We always boiled it. I was going to check but I assume the markets around here carry it although you can't get too exotic. Blutwurst or boudin rouge is something I haven't seen in a long time.
I should make a batch of golumki.At least I know I can find the makings. Dolmadakia ain't going to happen.
At least I can get manakish until the nice ladies running the food truck starve. They're trying to start a fixed restaurant with another group that does kebabs and falafel. That tends to be the kiss of death. Food trucks have drawbacks particularly in Montana's climate but you're not paying rent and utilities 365 days a year either.
After you mentioned it I watched a video. The dealer was pretty but it looked too complex for me. A friend tried to teach me cribbage but she eventually gave up. Lack of interest more than anything else.
I have a taste for Schwedenkrimi and a lot of it gets translated to German before it makes it to English if ever. Crime novels don't employ an extensive vocabulary but every now and then I run into a word I'm not familiar with and the instant definition is easier than digging out a dictionary.
No, it's not like buying a recliner. You're going to be in the thing for
12 or more hours a day so it better be right.
Too easy. The same friend has a UPS for his bed. It sounds weird until you realize if the lights go out he's stuck in whatever position he's in for the duration.
I'm surprised they don't have a head pattern designed to keep meddlers out. When I went to replace the thermoswitch on a Mr. Coffee I found the screws were Tri-Wings. I suppose the American thing to do is buy a new $25 coffee pot when a $4 part fails but I'm stubborn. One more set of bits added to my collection.
No fun. When Harley went to Torx they used a #25 on the chain inspection plate and a #27 on the clutch derby. A lot of Torx sets didn't include a #27 and using the #25 almost works until it strips the head out.
Then there is the mixture of metric and SAE to keep you on your toes.
Yeah, I always did have a problem with my grade school report cards with the 'keeps desk neat' check. 'keeps busy at worthwhile activities' was another problem. That one was because my definition of worthwhile and a sixth grade teacher's weren't in the same universe.
The city water is all wells. I'm out in the country on a private well but they're all relatively shallow. I'm not a fan of string trimmers so I'm liberal with the Spectracide but stay away from the pump house. I prefer diquat to glyphosate as slightly less toxic.
We lived on a creek. The septic system of most houses along the creek was very simple. You learned to swim with your mouth shut. Compared to what the factories were pumping into the creeks and river that was nothing.
There was one swimming hole downstream for a dye works. When the whistle blew you got out of the water because they were getting ready to dump the dye vats. Regardless of Pete Seeger's overall politics he did a lot to promote cleaning up the Hudson. By 2004 when I was back in the area Albany had a very pleasant riverside park something that would have been a joke in the '60s.
I think it was three years ago when I first crossed the new bridge at Hoover Dam. I've lost track of the years with covid. I stopped and played tourist, admiring the spillway that last saw water in the Reagan administration. Even then LV was getting ready to dig deeper to keep the water flowing. Now they seem to be literally finding out where the bodies were buried.
More convenience uber alles to say nothing of stupidity. Things like retiring, moving from Michigan to Phoenix, and wanting a lawn just like back home. For that matter growing cotton under irrigation in Arizona while they're turning cotton fields in the Mississippi Delta into catfish farms. 'Cadillac Desert' is very dated and could use a new, revised edition.
Maybe it's time to reread 'The Milagro Beanfield War' too.
I worked for a company where the owner's son was a Harvard Business School graduate. His first triumph in the real world was driving a successful Boston runners' store into the ground. Needing a new victim he went t work for his father and managed that one to a chapter 11. Not impressed.
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