Retired/Not Retired

 Last June my contract expired, and I chose not to renew it.  I had given my client about 8 months warning that I wouldn't seek to renew my contract, that I was going to retire.  When pressed, I told the manager that I might be willing to come back and help occaionally for short term projects.  I haven't yet decided if that was a bad idea.

I went ahead and initiated the process of disolving my business.  I had to keep it open longer than I had intended because they were much slower than usual paying my last two invoices.  Still all the paperwork was finally moving along nicely when I got a call asking if I would please come back for a tiny little project.  Can you see where this is going?

So I gave a call to Cherry Road.  I don't mind giving them a plug because I had worked with some of their people before and was impressed with their skill and intelligence.  And I knew they they were already an approved vendor with the client.

Have you ever heard the term scope creep?  I am now three months into what when described sounded like a one month project.  Yes there was some of that "While you're here can you...?" but I am not all that pissed off because my upcoming vacation is now more then payed for and I never have to go into the office.  Work really is easier when you are in a robe and slippers drinking coffee.

I am approaching what I think is the end of this project, and am trying to figure out a good exit line.  The message I want to convey in the most polite fashion is that I would be happy to come help them again sometime, but don't call me before June.  That's not unreasonable, is it?

Still working from home? Here's a tip.

 I keep my laptop in a backpack next to the bed.  It is leaning against my nightstand.  I will sometimes read a bit or attend to some correspondence, or even pay a bill or two before going to sleep.  It is handy.

Now I retired at the end of June, and immediately set about dismantling my business,  Short year tax returns, one last 941, shredding documents older than seven years.  Then I got a call in September asking if I would come back for a short project.

No longer having a functioning business (I finally closed the bank account today) I called up a company that had supplied contract programmers to my worksite in the past, and arranged to be a part time employee, and let them bill for my time. 

Getting back to the laptop issue, don't do it.  Don't have your laptop within reach when you go to bed.

Sometimes I sleep till seven or seven thirty.  Sometimes I wake up at 5 AM.  It's cold here at that hour.  Too cold to get out of bed, but not too cold to reach for that laptop.  And that's what I do, I reach for the laptop and start working.  And often leads to working 10  hours when I can only bill for 8.

After scope creep, and the inevitable "while you are here can you also..." a one month project looks like it will be three months.  And a significant amount of those hours will be free ones because it is just too easy to just start working when I wake up.

Right to work laws

 I have a different perspective on the concept of labor unions and right to work laws than many who may write about this.  I have never had a union job, nor have I ever been in a position of hiring an employee.  

Up until I was drafted at the age of 20 I had done mostly menial jobs.  This included a reasonable amount of farm work that was often sub-minimum wage and some that were piece rate. After the army I had some short term jobs (via day labor agencies) before I started going to school full time and a couple of short term jobs during school.  Then I got my first job in IT.

From that point on my salary was the result of a direct negotiation with my employers.  That continued until I began doing contract work, which I continue to do to this day.  I went the contract direction because it was a way to increase my salary without having to go into management.  I have never had the desire to be a manager.  I like inventing things, not telling people what to do.

My take on right to work laws is actually very simple.  Labor is a commodity, in the same way the product I deliver under contract is a commodity.  So if a law states that you may not have an exclusive arrangement with a union to supply specific commodities (job specialties), then how is that different from saying that Ford may not enter into an exclusive arrangement to supply rear bumpers for F150s?

Requiring that certain classes of positions are filled with union members is no different than any other exclusive contract.  And the law should view them the same way.

The Electoral College has outlived its usefulness, but elimininating it won't solve our problem.

Were it not for the Electoral College, we would not have been stuck with Trump.    There is no question about that.  But even without that we would still be stuck with gridlock.  We are polarized.  That polarization is not about how, collectively, the American people feel.  That is how we are organized.

We have a two party system.  If we had a multiparty system representing the entire spectrum of American political philosophies then there would be more negotiation and compromise.  That just doesn't work in our current form of government.  Intentionally or not our system of choosing our leaders is organized in such a way that the most a third party can do is screw things up for the party they are closest to in beliefs.  The election of 2000 was one such example.

What is the alternative?  How about the parliamentary system?

It can be just as ugly and absurd as our own system.  There is no question about that.  But it has the advantage of making multiple parties and therefore multiple points of view viable.  And in a country as diverse as the United States that is important.

You would no longer vote directly for the President.  You would vote for your local representative.  And the collection of local representatives would select the president.  In a diverse collection of representatives, that president may well be a compromise.  I do see some features of our current system that could be maintained.

The presidency continues to be for a fixed term, as are the terms of the elected representatives.

The President is still limited to two terms.

The legislature continues to be bicameral, with a House and Senate.  The major parties would tend to dominate the Senate but the House could end up being quite diverse.

 And then the changes...

Only the House would be involved in selecting the President and Vice President. Either of them could be sitting members of the House or Senate, or someone from the outside.  They could be a sitting cabinet member, a prior cabinet member, the sitting President or Vice President (provided they have not already served two terms), or anyone else that the House chooses.

Any person entered for consideration would need to sponsored by at least 5 percent of the House.  They would be required to completely open their finances to a House committee.  They would also be evaluated for a security clearance.  The purpose of the committee would be only to eliminate those unfit for the office due to criminal activity, finances that would subject them to undue influence, conflict of interest, or the inability to be granted the highest level of security clearance.  And the reasons for them being disallowed would have to be published.

The Vice President would be a real chair of the Senate.  The position would have no votes except to break a tie, but actually running the Senate and enforcing the rules would be their only job.  Their job would not be to carry water for the President.  And if the President dies in office, then the Vice President would be a caretaker in the position, but only until the House fills that position again.  The newly elected President would serve out the term of the deceased President.

Would this work?  I think it could.  Would this be better?  At this point, I do think so.  There are genuine conservatives in the county, and as much as I disagree with them, their voices deserve to be heard.  There are also out and out fascists.  And while I think they should rot in hell at least they would be separated from the real conservatives. Think Lincoln Project vs Trumpists.

Some of those of us on the left would likely join with some of the more centrists from the conservatives to form a more vaguely liberal party. The rest of us on the left would be something more like Democratic Socialists.

Might there be other flavors?  Sure, and I don't have a problem with that.  The point is, everyone's view is represented and negotiation and compromise is restored to the system.

Working in the Year of the Plague

This is a dual post, it applies to both my personal and business blogs.


I no longer set an alarm.  My body was used to getting up at 5:00 AM but I don't need to do that anymore.  Unless I stay up very late reading I am generally awake by 6.  I put on a robe, move to the desk in my bedroom, and fire up my laptop.


I don't work the hours I used to, when I would arrive at my desk at about 7:30 and depart at 4:30.  And I am available 24 hours a day, as my work emails and messages come to my phone as well as my computer.  And there are  the text messages that the server may send me in the evening if the backups run into a problem.   All this is no different than before.  The main difference is that without the hour long ferry ride each way I have reliable internet all day.


Although I can only bill for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, without prior authorization, I often find myself working longer.  Particularly if I am in the middle of something, now that I no longer need to rush to catch my ferry, I will work until I arrive at what seems to be a logical stopping point.


The department where I work did not have a policy that permits telecommuting.  Instead we are working from home.  I am not going to quibble about terminology, but it is a little amusing.


Now for someone working in IT, logging into a server remotely to do some work is not in the slightest bit unusual.  But this time, it is not only IT that is working from home, it is a cross section of the workforce, here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and across the country.  And I suspect things will never be exactly the same.


We still have meetings, we still interact with our co-workers.  We are not watching soap operas or smoking pot or drinking rum and coke all day.  We are getting the work done.


When this is over, managers all over will look back at this and realize that many of the objections they have had in the past to people working from their homes instead of traveling to a central location were really not valid.  If someone is not going to do the work, that will not really change when they are in the office.  They may look busy, but if someone is a bad employee they will be bad at home or in the office.


There will always be the need for people to assemble.  There will be hands-on training.  There will be in person meetings.   There will be documents to sign, and sometimes materials to be shared that may not leave the room.  There will be many reasons why people need to be physically together.  But all these things will in many cases be exceptions rather than the norm.


And let's think about this for just a few minutes, about what this could mean.


A parent can be home when their children return from school, meaning after-school care is not required.  And yes they will probably take a few minutes to get the kids something to eat or get them started on their homework.  How is that less productive than going into the break room to get another cup of coffee and talking for a few minutes with a co-worker about the house they are buying or their new dog?


If I am going into the office only occasionally, then the reference material I have always kept there, much of it my own, belongs here not there.  When I am able, I will go into the office and retrieve that.  And it will probably stay here.


The department where I work is a retirement system.  Part of that operation includes counseling members.  Those members make an appointment and take time off their jobs to come see someone to learn about their potential benefits and their options when retiring.  Seminars are also offered, for both new members, and groups of people thinking about retiring soon.  These are all virtual now.


Remote work like this opens up other potential opportunities.  What if the pension plan members had the option of an evening virtual counseling session, because each week one of the counselors worked from home and was available outside of normal working hours?  The counselors need not work overtime.  Once a month each counselor works one later shift, starting at one or two in the afternoon.  Everyone has occasional chores that can only be accomplished during the workday.  This integrates that into work life.


I can envision a conversation with my accountant or an investment advisor or a mortgage lender all fitting this model.  Would I buy a car without test driving it?  Absolutely not.  But the last car that I did buy, I spent an hour on the dealer's web site reviewing their prices and inventory so that I knew what I wanted to test drive before I got there.


You cannot build a house working from home.  You can't prepare meals in a restaurant or give speeding tickets.  There are any number of jobs for which a virtual work environment just doesn't work.  But for those where it does work, the genie is out of the bottle now.  I don't think we are ever going back to our old way of working, at least not completely.

Telephone Fantasy

"Your computer has been hacked, press 1 to speak to a Microsoft technician now."

(presses 1)

"This is Microsoft technical support.  Your computer has been hacked."

"Which computer is that?"

"Your Windows computer."

"Can you be a little more specific?  I have several."

"It is Windows 10."

"OK, that narrows it down to two.  Desktop or laptop?"

(pause)

"Your desktop."

"Thank you very much.  I just got a text message on my cell telling me that I can hang up now,  they have traced the call."

OK, so this is a fantasy.  There is nobody you can contact that will trace the calls of those people preying on the vulnerable, the elderly, any of the non-technical people out there who would not recognize that these calls are a scam.  Trace the calls and then bring them to justice.

But there should be.

Today it was Apple, telling me my icloud account had been breached.  That I don't own any Apple products was a pretty good indicator that it was a scam, if I had needed an indicator that is.  They called a few times.  I was busy and couldn't pick up the landline.

Here's how it should work.  You get one of these calls on your landline, but don't pick up.  Then you call a number, and give then your cell number and landline number.  They give you a callback number.

When the scammer calls again, you text 'now' to the callback number.  When they have the caller's real number, they text back 'got it'.

With so many of us working from home, now would be a perfect time to recruit a few hundred people across the country to be volunteer bait.   In the meantime, I will play the game anyway, and let the caller think, if only for a moment, that the cops are on the way.

Something else I didn't write.

I didn't write this, but what he is saying has been on my mind for a long time.

Many of my parents generation died fighting Fascism.  In an old photo album I inherited is a picture of a young woman, a cousin I will never know because she was killed in the blitz.

Anyway this came in an email today:

Rewatching The Story of Fascism in Europe 

One summer evening, the American president ordered a park next to the White House to be cleared of peaceful protesters. He had just declared himself “the law and order president” and announced his intent to mobilize the US military to subdue dissent across the country. And he was about to show off with his own display of force. 

The militarized police's rubber bullets and choking gas drove back throngs of people who were in Lafayette Park lawfully, to protest police brutality. Once the smoke cleared, that president marched through the park, with an entourage of sycophants, and stood before one of the most historic churches in America. There he held up a Bible for a cynical photo op. He brandished the book (upside-down) as if he had never read it. "Is that your Bible?" a reporter asked. "It's a Bible," he replied with a smirk.

If I described this scene even a few years ago, you would never have believed that it was real. And yet here we are. As a Christian and a humanitarian, this scene offends me deeply. And as a privileged white man in America, the events of the last week have been a painful but important reminder that so many Americans are denied the basic rights that people like me take for granted every day. To me, “law and order” should mean that Black Lives Matter and all Americans deserve equal protection under the law. 

Challenging times — like right now — call for strong leadership: a voice of unity, compassion, and mutual understanding. True leadership is nonpartisan, and in my lifetime, I've seen both Democrats and Republicans succeed in bringing together a fractured nation. But that's not what we have today. 

Two years ago, I produced a public television special called The Story of Fascism in Europe. I was driven by what I saw as uneasy parallels between our current political reality and the climate in 1930s Europe that gave rise to Hitler and Mussolini, and by my belief that we need to learn from that history. Today, those parallels have become impossible to deny.

The first 15 or 20 minutes of the special, as the seeds of fascism are planted in Germany and Italy, feel especially relevant in today's America. Notice how the militarization of police and the scapegoating of "others" are textbook stepping stones in tipping a nation toward authoritarianism. Pay attention to Hitler's "Brownshirts" and Mussolini's "Blackshirts" — goon squads who hijacked otherwise peaceful gatherings to stoke dissent. Tune into how they called into question the legitimacy of a democratic system; how they, too, held up an unread Bible; and how they reassured supporters by offering simple solutions to complex challenges. Pay attention to how a fascist takes advantage of a crisis — or several — to consolidate power and to sow fear and chaos. And remember how Hitler and Mussolini both insisted that they, alone, had the answers for all of these problems. As they say, history may not repeat itself. But sometimes it rhymes.

One thing I learned as I researched and produced this special is that there are pivotal moments in a nation's history when good and caring people can stand up against the rising tide of anger and fear that can lead to fascism. Or they can be complacent and wake up having lost their freedom. Our country is not too far gone...yet. But these coming weeks and months would be a good time for anyone who remembers the fate of Europe in the 1940s to organize, speak out, and vote in a way that helps keep us off that course. 

For starters, be sure you and your loved ones, friends, and neighbors are registered to vote. (And during a pandemic, consider requesting an absentee ballot.) https://vote.gov/ 

Many ask, “What can I do?” Here’s one answer: In response to the systemic racism woven into our democracy, and to let the murder of George Floyd inspire us to bring something positive to our troubled society, this month my company is donating $50,000 to Lawyers and Collars, an initiative spearheaded by Sojourners that is working to defend voter rights in states where people of color are targeted. The goal: to support 1,000 black pastors and their allies who are ready in key states to protect the vote. In Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, they will mobilize their congregations and communities. If you'd like to join us, with even just a small donation, you can do it here: https://give.sojo.net/page/18833/donate/1

Those of us who have the privilege of traveling to Europe have been blessed with an opportunity to get to know other societies — including ones that have lived through fascism — and to learn from them. Let's bring those lessons home, and let’s do our best to provide grassroots leadership, as we find a way to heal our fractured country — with compassion, empathy, and real progress.