New Post if by "Post" we mean "Whine"

This title was directly ripped off from Roy. I changed it a little so as to be guilty of a lesser form of plagiarism. Much worse than George Harrison's when he allegedly borrowed the tune of the Chiffons' "He's So Fine" for his big hit "My Sweet Lord". I think they went overboard on that. I was listening to country the other day and heard what I swore was a country rendition of "Shooting Star" (Bad Company) except they'd made some major changes, it wasn't the same song at all, and I realized, huh, that's a total rip off. Yet so far as I know no one's said a word about it.

I looked up old George on Wiki and I thought it said he was an influential satirist but no, they said sitarist. If I had a sharper wit I'd make something of that, needles to say.

So anyway my employer, a division of IMC that was supposed to lead the corporation into a new marketing space by acting like a start-up, instead acted like a start-up run by a corporation and went through some pseudorandom head cuts and the heads cut included mine. But I still have an office and go to staff because I am still an employee until Jan 2. This is to provide me some benefit for being full-time employed throughout the year, has to do with bonuses and health insurance etc.

It was fun to sit in staff yesterday and hear the boss say we're in pretty good shape, got allocated this many millions of dollars, and though we're headcount constrained we can hire contractors and consultants as needed. Needles to say, I mean needless, I very nearly pointed out that contractors generally cost more than in-house engineers unless of course your staff is expected to keep shrinking. But I said nothing. It's unprofessional to be snarky and besides, the remaining heads need to figure that out for themselves and take steps. Some did so a few months ago and have jobs in other divisions. I now wish I was as smart as them.

My whine is that I am now in my last week. The holiday season effectively shuts everything down, so there will be no more interviews and hiring decisions after this week until I am officially out. So to stay employed, to stay within the inconstant embrace of the mother corporation, the people I've been talking to need to decide to hire me within the next few days. No one's said yet they won't, but no one's said they will either, and Christmas is right around the corner, and I just haven't been able to get my mind into it, and my wife has run the numbers and determined we can't afford for me to be unemployed after all, and it's cold and rainy outside, and when viewed from the outside with the path ahead rapidly crumbling, the world looks very cold indeed. Yes, I have many blessings to count, but I have also often looked at the world through the eyes of my inner homeless person, aware that but for a few lucky chances I'd be at my rightful place under a blue tarp at the river, watching the rain hit the water, and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do.

There are so many ways I could explore that theme.

One of them would require a very rugged typewriter.

I am still trying to produce the Christmas-gift DVD. Never mind the details, I've been working on this thing for months. It overtaxes the old desktop I got maybe five years ago. Finally, I appropriated yesterday the machine my son and I rebuilt last year. Cleared a space on the backroom desk and set it up. It is a Core Duo with a big SATA hard drive and is working out much better. Wish I'd done it months ago. Last night I was up until two trying to get video to render. Still getting errors and errors, but I am getting them faster, and that helps.

My coordination of the Christmas tree pick-up fundraiser is working out, at least. We make a couple grand off of that typically, or used to, to pay for badges and supplies and defray the cost of summer camp etc. But every year, sales are down. People have artificial trees these days and don't need the Boy Scouts to come round after the holidays and take their trees away for a small donation. Those small donations add up but they don't add up like they used to. Maybe next year we'll station scouts at a few tree lots to solicit sign-ups. The grocery store isn't yielding enough customers. We have learned that every shift needs a cute new scout to offset the older cynical scout, and that properly asked, people will make donations even if they don't have a tree. But still.