Rusty's Blog

Cloudy, with no precipitation. Above freezing, but not quite t-shirt weather. (Well unless you grew up in MN, in which case you’re one of us anyway.)

Early in the day, but it is already a beautiful morning. Need to get out and get some pictures I think. Not having much luck with the phones, so time to get out for a bit.

There’s a long running gag about life being what happens to you while you’re busy making plans. It’s not quite that simple. The reality is that plans are how you compensate for the fact that life really doesn’t care what you actually do, but you do.

Why do we make plans? Because we realize that the car ain’t going to wash itself, or change it’s own oil. The dogs ain’t going to pour out a measured volume of food and limit themselves to that. And we learn over time that certain things won’t all happen ‘at once’ but will take work to accomplish and that work ends up being done better if there is some organization around it.

My sister probably remembers who the family is, though I don’t recall their names. But when I was in school, there was a family in the community who was building their own house. They had no building plans, or designs for what the house would look like when built, except as God directed them. Every nail they put in was placed as god directed. OK, I wish them the very best, and hope that all went well for them, but it’s not a method of construction I would be comfortable with.

On the other hand I do know quite a few people who seem to respond to the world around them, drifting with the wind, never seeming to do anything with a plan or purpose towards their future. You probably now a few as well. Many of us call them teenagers, but that’s not really fair to many teens.

Assuming I take care of myself, treat my cronic conditions as directed, and don’t loose a significant amount of more ground, I can reasonably expect to live for another 40 to 55 years from now, and possibly longer. It’s not something I personally expect to accomplish, but that’s based more on a lack of confidence in my own handling of situations, rather than how my physician or the medical community handles things. All that said and done with, I’m looking at about 20 to perhaps 30 years of employment before I should look to retire. I have serious reservations about how much of what I know today, will apply to this variety of jobe in 20 or so years, but a long time ago I realized that flexibility in how one applies nowledge is the key to being able to deal with a changing infrastructure.

When I was in school, there was a common question. How much should the annual sallary be for a database manager? Answer, a databaase manager is a piece of software thaat handles the actual management of the database. The software may not have a salary, (though annual recurring charges may apply) however the person being though of as a database manager here is probably the database analyst, engineer, or the like.

I bring this up because netorks are begining to get to the same variety of levels. I help to manage a network for a rather large employer. Over the next several years, I expect to see the actual management of the network begin to mmigrate faster and faster towards a piece or collection of software that handles all the management of the network. Moves, adds and changes are the things that seem to take up the most work these days, and these should all be easily automated, including automatically adding and modifying the systems that monitor and alert people to problems in the network. By the time I retire, I suspect that most businesses large enough to really need someone with the specialized knowledge of how to do these things will realize that software can handle all of that for them. However it won’t come from within the large organizations. There’s too much corportate inertia. It will happen because small companies will be looking for competitive edges, and will have employed such solutions, and will grow large as a result. It’s long been known to have hapened within database systems, and at some level, network administration is very much an extension of database administration.

Oddly enough, that’s not where this started out going. I’ve noted elsewhere that I’m an amateur radio operator. One of the things that I occasionally do as part of that is to participate in radio contesting. I was going to do a bit of that this weekend, but before the contest would have started, our systems were not ready for it. So, my plans ended up in limbo for the weekend. I’ll have to see about taking in a movie Sunday or something to compensate I guess.

One of my thoughts had been to see if I could help out up in Fargo. It’s almost a day’s drive for me, and this weekend would have been good as I could drive up on Saturday, hellp Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, then drive back Tuesday night or Wednesday, and go to work Wednesday night. However I don’t have someone ‘ready’ to watch my pooches for a few days like that, and while Mindy would very likely have been welcome and made friends with several people there, I don’t think Nick would have been as handy.

In looking over the situation however it occurs to me that as much help as people needed in preparing for the flood, they will need a heck of a lot more help in the comming months with recovery. Cleanup after a flood is not just take down the sandbag walls and dump out the sand. Oh, there’s some of that as well, but there’s a lot more involved. Some people will need help dealing with property and equipment that was damaged by the flooding. Others will need help repairing landscape that was damaged, and a few people are going to need help with preparing their land for planting.

Next year, probably not this one, we will start to see bumper crops for a couple of years as the floods put down a significant amount of nutrient rich topsoil across the entire flood plain. But it also will drop a significant amount of sand and rocks in some places, and those will affect crops this year. Additionally the nutrient rich topsoil is going to end up in people’s basements, against their walls, and in furniture where their homes were not protected fully from the flooding. That’s going to be a big, and expensive issue for the entire summer, going into fall.

Somehow I think that there will be a need for volunteers most of this summer. I’m hoping I can be a part of that. We’ll see.

Ok, it’s yesterday’s, but.. Lots of sunlight, ground unfroze during the day. Not warm enough for me to go out riding yet though.

You remembered to celebrate earth hour tonight right? un-necessary lights out from 8:30 to 9:30 your locala time? Yes I did, took a nap at the same time.

Partly to mostly sunny today, high far enough up to get above freezing. Mud can be found, though it takes a bit of work for most. I have 2 dogs, it wasn’t work at all for me.

…My new project.

For several years, my nieces and kids, all knew roughly what they were getting for christmas from me, and as often as not could have checked it out for themselves in the weeks or months before Christmas. I would consider each person as I would look through the calendars at the mall calendar kiosk.

So my niece who happens to have an active interest in Star Trek and other science fiction would get one calendar, my son with the interest in Artimus Fowl would get something else, and so on.

Last year I decided I had had enough of that. Calendars were running in the $12 to $25 range, and other than the theme being selected for the person, they were not really personalized.

On top of that, My dad had taken many pictures through the year, and had shared many of them with me. I decided to take a hand at making my own caledars, and ended up with a couple of options, including portrait and landscape calendars.

Along the way I discovered a couple of things. Whether it is a basic flaw in the printer, or with the replacement toner cartridges, I don’t know, but even though my color laser printer does a fine job with a wide variety of materials, photograps are not it’s cup of tea. I picked up an inexpensive color ink-jet printer at Wall mart, and discovered that an ink cartridge was good for about one year’s worth of full page images. I also learned that when you print images with a phaser 8400 printer from Xerox, you really want to have printed the laser printed side first. (Seriously. If you discover my mistake the same way I did, quickly run 40 ro 5 sheets of several grades of paper through your printer right away. You may as a result save your printer.

Ultimately I got about 5 calendars printed. 1 went to my sister and her family, one went to my dad, one each to my kids, and one hanging on my wall. I learned how to use some of the tools a little bit better, and what not to do with some of the other tools.

When it comes down to it, calendars or rather the events dictated within them can be as simple as the day and date, or as complex as fully filled out series of events for every day, moon phases, julian date for the day, number of shoping days till christmas, etc. In general, I happen to be somewhere in th emiddle. Moon phase, fine. Record the solstaces and equanoxes, federal and national holidays, and one or two religions holidays as fits the needs you have. And make sure that your family’s birthdays are listed. Then scatter af few events of historical significance, or personal interest through each month, and you end up with a calendar that lists the events you want remembered through the year, That tends to leave a calendar with enough space on most days to write any notes you might want to remember as the month goes by, yet still leaves you with a calendar that has interesting things throughout.

There’s also an interesting mix for most of the various holidays out there. Some are on the same day of the year, every year. Starting obviously enough with New Years Day. Never seem to see that as happening on the second. That said, quite a few are ‘floating’ in the sense that what day they are this year is not necessarily (or for that matter even likely) to have much to do with next year. President’s day, Memorial and Labor day, and that great event Thanksgiving. All have specific days of the week, and which week of the month the day falls on, but not a specific day of the month.

Religious holidays are a different interesting bunch of dates. Ash Wednesday, Easter and Ascention day are all related to Passover, but that doesn’t mean that they have any relation to the modern Jewish holiday. The Jewish holiday schedule is based off of a lunar calendar that is not necesarily matched up with the modern Gregorian calendar. The first day of Spring for example, on the Gregorian calendar is not necesarily matched up with where it appears on the Jewish calendar, and the discrepency can put Passover a month (lunar variety) off from when Easter shows up. Other christian holidays are set up related to much more pagen holidays, All Saints Day follows All Hallows Eve, or what we recognize as Holloween. Christmas is about the time that many pagans celebratd the first day of Winter.

And while we have a general idea on the gregorian calendar when various christian holidays happen, even if some of them are related to various lunar calendars, that is no help for some other religions. I decided not to add Islamic holidays, not because I have anything against the religion, but simply because I had already added both christian and Jewish holidays, and already had a large list of events, and as I said erlier, I like to have a bit of free space within the calendar for people to write events that they need to remember in.

Speaking of writing things on the calendar. I decided this year that I wanted to protect the images within the calendar from spills, etc. As a result I decided it was time to laminate the calendar. The down side of nearly every laminating system is that they all want to laminate both sides. So I

Freezing again. ground surface frozen, no mud. initially no accumulation of snow, however by the time I headed into work snow was noticiable in gutters and at curbs, along with on the grass and on vehicles that had been parked. Snow falling, but not a hinderance to driving.

Freezing, dusting of snow on the ground. gusty winds. cloudy.

Notes: Not recording absolute tempretures, may in the future note wind speed.

…or things not to do while blogging.

Ok, this isn’t strictly things not to do, there are things that can be done as well in the list.

1. Never blog in anger. – If you must rant, and at times you may decide that you have too, let your anger settle down first. You never want to have to go back and say ‘I really shouldn’t have said that, I can see that you might have taken it personally now, and you’re a person I would rather didn’t take that personally.’ Spend time, do the research. If you write something that could be taken personally, make sure that it’s the thing you want to have taken personally.
2. Try to be creative and complimentary about things. – ‘Due to the high concentrations of energy in the supersized meals at various Scottish named fast food purvayors, the average american is now walking around with more stored energy than at any time in American history.’
3. When being critical, come to the point, and don’t flower it up. – We’ve all seen them the movie review that just goes on and on about pretty much the entire movie, and ends with a ‘don’t bother to see it.’ statement at the end. The only real effect of the review is to use up that daily quota of words that the review has to get written. If you’ve seen this variety of review from a movie critic in the past, save yourself some time and go to the final paragraph.
4. A ‘good’ blog is focused. This applies to the over-all blog that is being maintained. I’m not saying that my own blog is any sort of an example of this, pretty much about as contrary as you can envision. But then as you might expect, I don’t claim that this is a ‘good’ blog either. I tend to write about whatever comes to my mind. At times that may be of interest to you, at others, probably not. If you are hanging on every word I write, you’re being even more obsesive than I am about my writing.

Who knows this may be a recurring theme.

We live in a materialistic society, and as a result are looking to turn what we want into what we have, on an almost continuous basis. I Want a different computer, mp3 player, home theater, dog, cat, home of my own, etc.

I look around me however and see a pretty serious mess of stuff. Some is trash, and needs to get taken out. Some is stuff that a friend may be able to make better use of than I am. Other stuff is taking up space that I’m not sure it’s the best use of, but it is valuable to me.

And there are the ‘job’ wants and haves. I’m already in a position where I happen to like the work I do, and I’m getting paid well enough for my needs at the moment. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t appreciate a few changes, just that for me at the moment, things are pretty good. They haven’t always been that way, and lessons I should have learned about getting here work wise, can very likely be translated into other parts of my life, and I’m hoping that someone else can gain from the lessons as well.

And yes that should be taken with the grain of salt that is my opinion that people rarely learn from their own mistakes, and almost never from someone else’s.

In any case, we all know that life is a journy of omving from one point to another. Sometimes where we end up for a period is not where we would like to be, however it needs to be remembered that as long as we are alive, we can learn from where we are, and use those lessons to get someplace we would rather be.

Elephants are known to live a long life. It turns out they have very long memories as well, longer than the perception of an elephant never forgets gives us. We have long nown that in humans, memory is a product of what we experience, and how we interact with what others experience. If you don’t provide knowledge in a way that others can use, the lessons you’ve learned are only going to be of use to you. If you listen to Feinman’s lost lecture, you’ll encounter the fact that with the development of calculus, the mathematical and physics communities lost a large body of knowledge regarding arcs, elipses and conical sections. Much of this knowledge was used by Kepler and Newton to develop the three laws of motion, by obsservation of the planets and aplication of their knowledge of conic sections, in a way that physicists and mathematicians are not able to easily reproduce today, even though we do have advanced calculus demonstrations that bear out the truth of those discoveries. Elephants on the other hand, without any known method of writing things down, and storing memories in that way, appear to have the ability of transfering knowledge from one generation to the next, as has been evidenced by matriarchs taking their heards to wattering holes that their ancestors had used, even though they had never been there themselves. The only obvious means of transfering that knowledge would be by speach or auditory means, though another possiblity which needs to be considered is through genetic methods. The reason the latter needs to be considered is that so far as we are able to determine at this point in time, elephants do not have a language capable of passing this level of information from one generation to the next.

What you have.

In most cases, even if you don’t have a job, you very likely have a variety of skills that you can make use of. You very much would like those skills to be earning you money, however it’s not a given that you are going to be able to make a direct transfer of having those skills, into getting paid for them. In the job market we are in at the moment, very highly skilled engineers, software developers, and others are finding themselves out of a job either because the business they work for has moved some of those jobs elsewhere in the country, or sometimes for harsher reasons. Most professionals who have joined the ranks of the unemployed are not there because they were bad at what they do, however people looing to hire someone often have to take a worst case perspective on why that person is unemployed. Fundamentally, this is why it is always better to have a job when looking for work, then to be completely unemployed. There is also the consideration that even a low paying job can pay better than unemployment, especially if the job includes external benifits. I know one guy who morned Circuit City passing, not because he lost his job there, which he did, but because several businesses had agreements that allowed him to save significant money when making purchases with them, simply because he did have that job. In short, some jobs may seem menial to take, and may lead to better jobs elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean that you have to leave them for another job in all cases. Having a job you put 16 hours a week in on the weekend, or less, but that saves you money elsewhere, isn’t necessarily something that you want to give up on quickly.

But that’s not really where I am thinking this blog should be pointing people. Most of us have an ‘ideal job’ that makes the best use of the skills we have today, while giving us challenges to develop those skills in new areas. It’s rarely the job we have. The problem is that most of us do not put together a plan on how to get from where we aree, to where we want to be.

There are two types of plans that can be put together and followed. There’s the open ended forward planning method, and the end focused backwards planning route. Latter method first. (I’m not going to discuss the take what’s dealt plan because even that can fall into the open ended planning method, and it’s also more of a non-plan.) Backwards planning is honestly very handy. You set a target date to do something, say bring home a million dollars, or get married, and you look at all the things that have to be done to get to that point by that day, and you start working towards that objective. There are some basic problems that need to be addressed, namely that you need to be pretty confident as to what exactly each step is going to be, and you have to be willing to ignore unrelated activities that may detract you from that objective. If you have a goal of getting married on the 1st of May, and you haven’t sent out the wedding invitations to the 500 guests you want at the church you haven’t gotten scheduled yet, I’m thinking now might not be the time you want to take that vacation to the Mexican coast for spring break. On the other hand, if you already have the invitations out, the dress ordered, the church registered, as well as the reception hall, the gift registry at Target and Sacs, perhaps now would be a good time to hit the beach and get relaxed to start the windup for the final events.

Remember though, the objective of backwards planning is to make the things that need to happen by a certain date, happen in the order and limited time you have scheduled for them. You are going to find that you have to work against what is called a critical path within your schedule, and it requires very detailed knowledge of all the steps involved.

For most of us looking to meet long term objectives, we are looking for a somewhat different plan. I’m looking to retire at age 70, with $xxx,xxx.xx sitting in low risk investments that pay a healthy dividend. For me that’s a bit over 20 years from now, so if the first x is replaced with an 8, I’m looking to average something like 40k a year in investment income. That may seem a bit much for most people, but it’s an ‘average’ not a minimum. Presumably the money I’m putting into my retirement funds now, which are somewhat less than that $40k figure are going to be working for me over those 20+ years.

So, I’m a reasonably competent engineer with some experience working on help desks, and implementing network solutions on a one off setup. Or I’m fresh out of school, looking to complete my education but need to find a way to feed myself, and keep a roof over my head. Long term I want to make use of the skills I have, but the immediate goal is to earn more than an unemployment check. Preferably taking some advantage of my skills base. I’ve posted my resume to all the job search companies, and I’m not getting all that many hits. Time to take stock of the situation, and start looking at what else I can do. First up is to find any sort of a job. I would rather not shovel coal dust at the coke plant, but if that’s the only thing available, I’ll take it. I’m a bit over qualified perhaps, but it’s better than simply sitting waiting on the phone to ring or an e-mail to come in to set up an interview. At the same time I’ll be looking at the job postings within the company. Perhaps I’ve given my word to my manager that I won’t try to jump ship without letting him know that I’m looking for something. Or perhaps I’ve commited to 6 months or a year before I can apply internally. That gives me a period of time where I can use my free time to work on a few ideas related to what my long term goals and objectives are, and who knows I may have an idea that I can pattent, or turn into a profit along the way. But always in the back of the mind is the long term plan of where do I want to go from here. What’s my next logical step, and how am I going to convert what I’m doing into doing that next step.

If this were ‘easy’ you could just take the cards that you are dealt, and you would just lay them down, and always win. Right? Any poker player knows that almost any card that you are dealt can be used to win any given hand. There are some cards that are better than others, but the true skill comes not in knowing which cards are most likely to be out there, but in knowing how to take that knowledge and decide whether the Ace-Queen in your hand is likely to be beaten by someone else having an Ace-Ace or Ace-King, or making 2 pair off the river. Living with the cards that are dealt you almost always involves looking at where you are, and deciding how to use what you were dealt to improve your situation. At times it means going all in on a hand that is less than perfect, and at other times it means throwing a pair of face cards in as not being of value for this hand. Learning which is which will probably cost you some money along the way though.

The general rule is never to gamble with money you can’t afford to loose. That’s true whether the money is in your 401k retirement fund, or the cash you take to the Thursday night poker game at your budies. It also applies to taking jobs. I’m all for people getting experience at fast food stores, gas stations, and other retail businesses. But you have to look at it as ‘experience’ not ‘I’ve got a job!’ At some point you will be asked in an interview what the toughest situation you had to work on was, and how you resolved the situation. Spend time looking through the standardized HR questions, and be prepared to answer them honestly. Think about your day at work, and how you can leverage what you did, and learned, to hand that information off to people who can work for you to help you get towards where you want to be.

Of more importance than anything else however, talk to people who are doing what you would like to be doing. Get to know them, and let them get to know you. You may find that while what they are  doing now is something you would like to be doing, it’s not going to be a viable occupation when you are looking to get there. You may also get a referral that you are not expecting. Let these people know what you are doing now, and what you like about it. Some will have no idea what it’s like to have worked at that specific job, but more than a few will have done that, or even more menial jobs along the way, and are going to be far more interested in what you are learning from the job, than what bothered you the most today. The other really big reason to be doing that networking is that you want to know where what you have been studying is going. If you have been studying how to build better widgets, and the people working on that problem today are all talking about an exciting branch off those jobs where people are building a new series of frobules, you will be in the ‘know’ as it were. You have the opportunity to look into frobules on your own, and perhaps you can voice your observations on the subject. And that can ultimately be your ‘in’ into the field.

Getting from here to where you want to be, whether it’s from a perfectly good job, to a better one, or from an apartment in the city to a vacation home in the mountains, takes planning. It takes a strategic plan of the steps that are going to have to be taken to get there, and it takes tactical planing in how to accomplish each step. Take some time, research how to make and execute an effective plan. Build the plan, and work in the ‘what if’ situations. Have contingencies. “What happens if the entire industry collapses? Can I take the experience someplace else?” Then Do.

Some places to look at for references. “7 habits of highly effective people” as well as several other of the Franklin-Covey books. “Time Management for Dummies”, “The 4 hour work week.” “Getting Things Done.” “How to make friends and influence people.” “Think and Grow Rich.” Much of this is very old knowledge. All of it is being re-learned and re-written every week, if not every day.