Chicago Symphony Orchestra is still out on strike after six weeks. This is class warfare with billionaire donors wanting to push their agenda onto the musicians by taking away the musician's pensions and adding tiered wages. https://www.wsws.org/en/art... My niece played for a city symphony but finally had to quit because a worker at Costco made more money than she did and her love of music did not pay the rent. People always talked like the 50 to 60 hours per week she put in wasn't a "real" job.
Good point. True story: my dad worked for a city daily. One winter day in 1963, he went to his usual place to order lunch. While he was there, news came over the television that Kennedy had been shot. This kind of shocked silence took the crowd, and then my dad asked the waitress, “Can I get that to go?”
As a fellow former reporter, I would add that you're never really off the clock, because you have to be available for calls from sources whenever. On the plus side, I'm super good at eating while typing.
I still regularly get emails from recruiters who saw COBOL somewhere on my LinkedIn page, even though I haven't used it , literally, since PCs were invented.
I have friends in banking who are handsomely compensated for sitting at their desks twiddling their thumbs because they know how the decades-old mission-critical code the banks rely on actually works. The older it gets, the more knowledge of it is worth, but still not enough to get me back into COBOL!
Dom, thanks for link to Confessore’s remarkable Mulvaney piece. Core of Trump’s base are the very people victimized by their own willful ignorance. They don’t read the fine print on the payday loans/credit cards and they won’t read this article - or believe you, if you simplify it for them. My cold, black heart says ‘fuck ‘em’, but my more rational brain will save ‘em by supporting Warren.
Huh. Funny, now that I think of it. I recently retired as IT for a lumber mill, not an industry known for its early adoption of cutting edge tech. So when I left two years ago, it was set up with an HP-UX (UNIX) database, wi-fi hand held terminals to scan barcode tickets on pallets of the product*, video conference calls, etc. So it's using old tech that's still 20 years newer than some of you guys.
Of course, they may not seriously upgrade for another 25 years...
* To track inventory and location. That used to be done on paper by hand when I started there about 1996, and it took all weekend once a month, using several dozen workers on overtime. Now it's tracked in real time.
IKR. At one job, I had the odd task of training new people on a hybrid windows/dos system. Just the dos part. I was already old, so the kids thought it was funny.I am a funny guy.
I'm glad for what we get from WLRN - good mix of local, regional, state, NPR, BBC, CBC, with one day a month where your Regularly Scheduled Programming is interrupted to bring you the meeting of the Miami Dade County School Board.
I listen to the School Board Meetings with one purpose; it keeps me grateful that I don't have to deal with that level of whattheeverlovingfuck in my day-to-day existence. Don't get me wrong, it's not all non-sentient fleshbags with opinions, but there's enough of that sort to keep me listening....
Chicago Symphony Orchestra is still out on strike after six weeks. This is class warfare with billionaire donors wanting to push their agenda onto the musicians by taking away the musician's pensions and adding tiered wages. https://www.wsws.org/en/art... My niece played for a city symphony but finally had to quit because a worker at Costco made more money than she did and her love of music did not pay the rent. People always talked like the 50 to 60 hours per week she put in wasn't a "real" job.
"...written by 18 angry raccoons and a ferret in an ill-fitting suit....", projected the "President".
Damn. I just sold ours to a movie prop scout. 8” floppies and all....
Look! It's Tuesday again!
Friendster.
Good point. True story: my dad worked for a city daily. One winter day in 1963, he went to his usual place to order lunch. While he was there, news came over the television that Kennedy had been shot. This kind of shocked silence took the crowd, and then my dad asked the waitress, “Can I get that to go?”
As a fellow former reporter, I would add that you're never really off the clock, because you have to be available for calls from sources whenever. On the plus side, I'm super good at eating while typing.
I still regularly get emails from recruiters who saw COBOL somewhere on my LinkedIn page, even though I haven't used it , literally, since PCs were invented.
I have friends in banking who are handsomely compensated for sitting at their desks twiddling their thumbs because they know how the decades-old mission-critical code the banks rely on actually works. The older it gets, the more knowledge of it is worth, but still not enough to get me back into COBOL!
Dom, thanks for link to Confessore’s remarkable Mulvaney piece. Core of Trump’s base are the very people victimized by their own willful ignorance. They don’t read the fine print on the payday loans/credit cards and they won’t read this article - or believe you, if you simplify it for them. My cold, black heart says ‘fuck ‘em’, but my more rational brain will save ‘em by supporting Warren.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c...
Huh. Funny, now that I think of it. I recently retired as IT for a lumber mill, not an industry known for its early adoption of cutting edge tech. So when I left two years ago, it was set up with an HP-UX (UNIX) database, wi-fi hand held terminals to scan barcode tickets on pallets of the product*, video conference calls, etc. So it's using old tech that's still 20 years newer than some of you guys.
Of course, they may not seriously upgrade for another 25 years...
* To track inventory and location. That used to be done on paper by hand when I started there about 1996, and it took all weekend once a month, using several dozen workers on overtime. Now it's tracked in real time.
IKR. At one job, I had the odd task of training new people on a hybrid windows/dos system. Just the dos part. I was already old, so the kids thought it was funny.I am a funny guy.
That's smart.
I got rid of my landline 6 yrs ago. I have somehow survived.
I'm glad for what we get from WLRN - good mix of local, regional, state, NPR, BBC, CBC, with one day a month where your Regularly Scheduled Programming is interrupted to bring you the meeting of the Miami Dade County School Board.
I listen to the School Board Meetings with one purpose; it keeps me grateful that I don't have to deal with that level of whattheeverlovingfuck in my day-to-day existence. Don't get me wrong, it's not all non-sentient fleshbags with opinions, but there's enough of that sort to keep me listening....
I also, too, get a lot of my news from Wonkette.
Shit. Now I've got that song from Moana in my head. Again.