11.11.11 In service

Living in the Valley they call Silicon, which is at some distance from any military installation, there’s nothing here except department and furniture store sales to remind one of Veterans Day. Without a big federal workforce, the traffic won’t even be lighter than usual.

But I’m still thinking of the men and women who do the dirty and dangerous and dreary jobs that encompass providing for the common defense. Those in the service.

I often wonder how it is they stick it out, because in general we (through our elected officials) underpay them, begrudge them healthcare, welsh on financial commitments wherever possible and pretend we know nothing about them at all.

Except today, when the pols will be waving flags and declaiming their undying gratitude And blah, blah, blah, because it’s a sound-bite photo-op. Tomorrow they’ll go back to fundraising and obfuscating and relishing their self-importance.

The rest of us—unless we know someone in the armed forces—probably won’t think much of it at all. Especially if we’re in urban areas and don’t see the uniforms.

But they’ll feel it in the small towns, where any loss is marked and remembered. For the day, let me give you the funeral procession of Specialist James M. Kiehl, of Comfort, Tex., who was KIA in Iraq in 2003, age 23.

Kiehl made the ultimate sacrifice, along with, well, untold hundreds of thousands over the years. And you should think of him and those others.

But also spare some thoughts for those who wore the uniform and bore arms in our behalf. It’s called “service” for a reason.

Business box

I’m not going to be able to hear the beaten-to-death biz phrase, “think outside the box” without picturing Business Cat’s take on it.

Actually, every time I hear another bit of jargon endemic to the organization I work for—like “deep dive” (for “go into detail”), “solve for that” (like we’re in a chem lab instead of yet another bleeding con call), “tee up” (instead of “prepare”), “decrudify” (meaning “refine”) or “have all the hooks in place” (I don’t even know—possibly a replacement for “get your ducks in a row”, even though the only application I know for lining ducks up is to shoot them)—I’m going to picture the box that Business Cat at least can put to good use.

Recruiters 23

In the past few days I’ve been contacted six times by recruiters about an "urgent requirement" for a part-time contract product manager position with Adobe.

Four of the emails have come from a single job shop.

Two of them were from the same recruiter, each time as though he’d personally just discovered me.


(Here's the sad thing: even part-time, with the rate one recruiter said it would run, I'd still make $200 more a week than I am now.)

This whole business is just whacked.

Surgical strike Pt 4

Arthroscopy report, continued:

As the saying goes, so far, so good.

As long as I don’t put weight on a leg and then twist it, I’m fine. No problem using the clutch in my car. (Oddly, I had to shift the position of my right foot on the gas pedal because I had it at an angle from the ankle, which must have put some torque on the knee. Once I straightened it out, I was fine.) Which is good, because I had to drive up to Redwood City to see the nurse practitioner.

(For my DC readers, that’s like having to go from Annandale to Bethesda, with the beltway being the crapshoot it is. I did a lot more shifting gears on the 101 than I’d have liked because of traffic.)

She removed the pressure and gauze bandages, so now I just have four square band-aids over the actual incisions. She was surprised that I was driving the manual transmission and that I clocked 4500 steps on Sunday (more than 5000 yesterday). But it’s not like I’m power walking; I’m paying attention, so I’m okay.

(BTW, I did finally get a check-up call from the surgery centre. Two of them. Yesterday at 0824 and 1036. More than three days after the procedure. By that time I could already have had maggots munching the wounds.)

I start PT on Friday and can now shower with the aid of Glad Press-n-Seal. And, since my PCP can remove the sutures next Monday, I don't have to return to the Redwood City office of AJ, MD, which is even more of a factory than the San José one is.

I will say that I was hunting out some green tea yesterday afternoon in a lower cupboard, and I quickly aborted my attempt to kneel on the floor. Fortunately, I found the tea before I had to floor-flop on my butt. Getting up again might have been a challenge.

Money games

I have to say that I don’t get Zynga—they’re the instigators of those God-awful –ville games that infest Facebook. FarmVille, FishVille, MafiaVille—whatever. Until FB enabled blocking the damned “I need a sack of manure for my farm” and “I iced t’ree hoods” status updates my only recourse was to block the people who sent them out with unbelievable frequency.

(And does it seem odd that FB regularly allows crap to circulate, or crappy UX, only to make a big deal out of fixing it “because we value our members”?)

A while ago I read somewhere that the biggest players of Zynga games are women of a certain age, which I also find astounding. I expected better of them.

But now NPR reports that not only does the Zynga portfolio account for squillions of hours of wasted time online, it’s raking more than a billion of actual, real dollars. Because people who play those moronic games are buying virtual goods with real-world money. The company's obviously headed for a great IPO.

I just do not get it.