Daynotes On A Budget, V6.0

I got up this morning and got to work on a major construction project I've been fighting with for a month now, fired up to get going.  Resolved a few problems, then the day turned. I remember in the late 1980s the biggest perceived threat to our way of life was the various little militias grumphing around, trying to change this country to their needs.  Whack jobs and more who wanted to change this country. Then we did.  Whether or not it was done legally and under all proper rules, we'll never know, but it sure does look, these days, like the orange baboon has replaced all those small potato idiots with his small hands, smaller intellect, and greater failures.  And there are those who lack absolutely anything in the brain department follow him straight to hell.  Which is what came to Minnesota today. I've lived here my entire life, and I have known people who take utter leave of their senses and intelligence (that is, assuming they had any to begin with), and pu...

 My friend and another former Daynoter David Farquhar has a post up about Babbages , one of the three big software retailers (the other two being Egghead and Software Etc.) in the 90s.  My history with Software Etc. was, well, kinda brief.  Like many of my previous jobs. I had been in college, working towards a degree in Math, Computer Science, and Business.  Unfortunately, I had not been able to get into the classes I needed to finish my degree before I ran out of money, so I went to work at Wendy's.  I started out as a grill closer, which was where they started most of the guys.  I don't say this because I'm sexist, but because back in the late 1980s, it was pretty much assumed guys would have the upper body strength to clean the grill, the fryers (including the chicken pressure fryer) and other things.  Yes, there were women who could do the job, but working in Wendy's back in those days, a closing crew in our area was typically a manager, who was ...

Been a bit, and we've had a fair amount of stuff occur around here. Right up at the top, yes, I have another new job.  This is a good one, which starts next week.  It's a work from home job, pays more than the job which laid me off in January, and a job which I know how to do well.  It's also going to be a reunion with some former co-workers, so I'm looking forward to that.  I'm NOT looking forward to letting go of the Grocery store job I just got, but it's not something I am going to be able to do.  The physical demands of running around on concrete floors and dealing with 300-400 degree ovens and fryers just aren't something I can do at this time.  No, it's not the work, it's my body's reaction.   I was not aware of one thing which is a bit of a major issue.  I am an old fat man who takes blood pressure control medication.  This does mean I am also wearing what are called "compression socks".  These are basically knee-high socks w...

I'm starting a new job.  It's not one that's going to require what my previous job did, but that's OK.  Sometimes it's not about the work you do, but the income you have that will allow you to continue to maintain a few luxuries, like eating, living indoors, and staying sane.   My previous position was seated, which is yes, a joke.  I've had some jobs that involved sitting some of the time.  When in IT, I learned very early on that when I was supporting other people, it was my job to be visible.  Not just walking past someone's cube, but doing it slowly, stopping by, and, if their work permits, say Hi.  Not just because I'm that outgoing, which I'm not, but because I learned that there are quite a few people like me who might deal with a small annoying problem with a work-around they've figured out, but there may be an easier solution. One person whom I would regularly pass by and pass the time of day eventually mentioned an annoyance.  When ...

Thirty years ago I was a young father.  I had a one-and-a-half year old daughter, I'd been married for four and a half years, and the day was pretty bright, with clear skies.  I'd gotten up at 4 am and gotten into my car, drove three hours south to LaCrosse, Wisconsin.  I was installing a time & attendance system for a client who had a large number of locations - I was doing the corporate office first.  Because I was the only person in my office who had been trained on the particular version of the software, I was kind of The Guy.  Any support questions, any problems, any issues - it was me.  My employer was still coming to terms with technology, which was both a blessing and a curse. In the previous year, I'd been sent to Dallas to train on this new software.  The company we distributed for had purchased another company that wrote a time and attendance system which ran on the IBM AS/400 Minicomputer.  Now, before you start yelling at me, it's...

I get it.  I'm old-fashioned.  Just how old, though...  You might be surprised. I do remember very clearly hopping into the VW Beetle my parents owned when I was very young and riding, unbelted, in the back seat, the half-mile or so to my grandmother's house for the occasional Sunday Night dinner.  It was a chance to see my grandmother, yes, and her house on the bank of the Mississippi River, and her COLOR TV.  We'd watch the Wide World of Disney, usually, whether it was a Disney movie, a nature program, a tour of the park under construction, or ... Well, anything else in color was cool.  Our TV at home was black and white, which was how I later saw Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. But the media I consumed, as it was, back then was all local.  Mom usually kept a radio on in the kitchen, tuned to the local AM radio news station, WJON.  They would deliver local weather every 15 minutes or so, farm prices, local news updates, and they had regular...

I did mention this to my wife, but a week ago last Saturday, February 15th, marked the 37 anniversary of the date upon which I offered up to my wife the ever so romantic proposal to marry me.  I do suppose that whole thing demands context... So we met in the fall of 1987.  I had attended the wedding of some friends and watched the Minnesota Twins win a World Series.  I had also run a business selling and building lofts for students at the university I attended.  The business came about through sheer dumb luck, as I believe it's called, because a good friend of mine and I broke the unwritten rules.   That's a much quicker story - we decided we were going to improve our upcoming dorm rooms by building better lofts.  The rooms we had obtained, on the third floor of Benet Hall at St. Johns, were, like most dorm rooms, quite small.  These rooms were eight feet wide, fifteen feet long, and twelve feet tall.  Each room was dual occupancy, so as you ...