The Jaded Tech

Boy, I’m going to love working at my job! The amount of material for this blog will be astounding! So here we go:

We license out the software our company makes. A client has a problem with a type of license he is trying to use.
I tell client that it has to be set up a different way than what he is trying. The client says he doesn’t want it that way, doesn’t need it that way, wants it the other way.

Just so we are all clear here. The client is telling ME how our product product works. Umm, I thought he was contacting us to ask how it works….

I tell client how it can work the way I originally told him. 2 days later, still no response from the client.

Nothing is more satisfying that us techies being able to say.. “I told you so…” 

I really got to ask this question.  See, I’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend due to the poor education on the uses of technology, specifically in the entertainment sector.

I just called a friend, his wife answered and said “He’s not home, can you call bck in 20mins I’m just in the middle of watching something?”.

That little innocuous reply is the result of mis-placed importance of entertainment distractions.  Think I’m blowing this out of proportion?  Ok then, example #2.

My mother-in-law asks my wife to call back because she’s “In the middle of her show.”  Usually Survivor or some other such ‘reality’ show(which is farrrr away from ‘reality’, but that’s a whole other topic…).  See, my inlaws live in a different town and we don’t get to see them very often.  So my we call to say hi and how are things but apparently this is a bad idea because TV is much more important that speaking with you own daughter.  On top of that, my mother-in-law was quite upset that she was going to miss the season finale because she would be in England visiting her sisters/mother.

I mean does this just scream something is wrong with our society?  I mean, hey, I’m a damn big geek when it comes to gadgets and such, but never would I let them take precedence over the people I love.  Geeze, that’s what VCR’s were build for…so you can watch them later!  Now you have PVRs and BitTorrent to make sure you never miss an episode!

It seems that society has been groomed for that ‘instant satisfaction’ and damned be anything that gets in the way of stopping that!  See, this is where I have a great little perspective on life and technology.  See, tech is here to help us mature as a species, no de-evolve into being so distracted by the ‘pretty pictures’ that human interaction takes a back seat.  It’s actually very painful to watch.

So I ask you, what is more important to you?  The technological pretty distraction or the human race that is looking for someone to talk to?

On the flip side are the people who reside in the category of “a little bit of knowledge makes you stupid’.  A friend of mine lives with her parents.  She’s not allowed to use the Internet to read her hotmail or use any Instant Messaging programs because ‘they could damage the computer’.  What??!!  It gets better.  She’s not allowed to get her own comptuer and use their Internet connection because “It’ll slow down their connection.”  WHAT??!!!!  I mean damn, I should be heading up to them, with my external 2400 baud modem, and beating them till they bleed ones and zeros!  And I’d do it with the mantra “The Internet makes you stupid!  The Internet makes you stupid!”  It would be a righteous act of retribution!

Ok, so maybe you are thinking that someone of an ‘older generation’ has mis-guided concepts on how technology works.  You could be right, except that besides hydrogen, stupidity is the next most common element in the universe.  I did a cleanup/reinstall of a badly infected and severely fragmented system (I’m talking 97% fragmentation here!).  So when the lady, who helps out her sun run the bar, asks me what happened, I told her.  There was a virus and the system was nigh-unusable because the HD was so fragmented.  I asked what Anti-Virus she runs at her work (she’s some sort of IT manager…keep that in mind when you read the next few lines…), she said “Norton”.  Oh boy!  here we go.

So I ask her why didn’t she use AVG?  She said” it didn’t work, that’s why the system was infected.”

To whit I replied “Guess what I used to remove the virus?”

“What?”  she asked.

“AVG.” I said oh-so-smugly.  ”You didn’t update it so it got infected by a newer virus.”

Just in case you missed that underlying tone, I’ll sum up.  We have an ‘IT manager’ who didn’t update the Anti-Virus definition files then blames the Anti-Virus program for not doing it’s job.

While that is the ultimate of moronic thinking, I still feel that beating the luddite parents with an external 2400 baud modem would give me slightly better satisfaction that what I felt when I told this ‘IT manager’ where she screwed up.

(I’m willing to bet that people think I don’t really own the modem….heh)

We all hear the depresing news about the economy and how ‘bad it is’ out there.  The biggest problem is that the ‘mob mentality’ sets in and everyone starts believing it and they act accordingly (cut backs, reservedness in habits, talk about it) .  Let’s say we rate a problem on 1-100 (one being the best, 100 being the worst).  The current problem is somewhere around 60 in reality.  When people start seeing it, they react and then the ‘perceived problem’ starts to look like a 90.  So what happens?  Well, since belief preceedes reality, that 60 starts to actually become a 90 just because people believe it, then act accordingly.  Talk about the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy eh?

So waht does this have to do with me and my blog?  Tons.  See, I subscribe to the age old axiom ‘half of what you see and none of what you hear.’  While this certainly puts me in, what I call, the enlightened few, this does not mean I am not affected when I go out and apply to jobs.

A little background on me.  I’ve been playing with technology since ‘79.  Anyone recall the Pong consoles?  Yes, I said that….Pong Consoles.  Basically the size of a keyboard with two knobs (paddles for moving the little bars up and down) and two switches (one was power, the other was for level of difficulty (1,2, or 3) I think…) .  My parents got one for Christmas and since I was into ‘taking things apart’ (being the curious guy that I am, I even took apart a Mickey Mouse watch…never got it back together….), rebuilding 10-speed bikes, making go-karts and the like, they asked me to hook it up.  Ok, no problem.  I unscrewed the two screws for the UHF antenna (heh, let’s see how many kiddies understand that!  Geeze…kinda sad when I’m proud of that actually….), hook up the two leads and tighten up the screws.  Turn on Channel 3 and turn on the game.  Voila!  Instant babsy-sitter for the parents!

Well, my tech ‘training’ grew from there.  Commodore Vic=20 (with a tape drive!  Yup, “Load 8,1,*”), C=64, then onto PCs…286/386/486/586/6×86….) and so forth.  Eventually I decided to get into the IT World, and got serious about my career.  Suffice to say, I’ve got a lot of experience and quite an interesting perspective on troubleshooting.  makes me damn good at what I do.

So, back to the modern economic world.  I’ve already ranted about the poor hiring process that many companies are using (”Tell me about a time when…”).  We’ve all heard about ‘how bad it is out there’.  So hwo does this all relate?

To sum up my recent job hunting excursion:

• Time spent hunting for a full-time jobs in earnest:  2 months
• Number of jobs applies to:  30+
• Number of interviews granted:  2
• Number of follow-up interviews hinted at during one of the above:  3
• Number of internal sighs during above interiew:  20
• Number of repeated questions at same interview:  1
• Number of  ’inside connections’ (aka the ‘hidden job market’) used:  6
• Number of places where the above was used:  3
• Number of job offers:  1 (accepted)

For comparison, last year at this time I was able to apply to 5-6 jobs, get 2-3 interviews and get offered 1-2 jobs.  This was a constant patteren I’ve had in the last 3-4 years.  This year was different.  I mean seriously….3 interviews for a tech support job?  Talk about going wayyyyy past cautious and into ‘waste of company resources’ swing!

The upside of all this?  I got a job that does better in a ‘down economy’ than an up one!

Now that’s out of the way, I can get back to my thing here.

Enjoy!