Archive for December, 2008

The Snow Storm & Employment Test

{ December 31, 2008 @ 5:09 PM } · { Musings }
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Yesterday was an eventful day.  We were in a snowstorm and I had to take an employment test 36 miles away.  I almost cancelled the test, but it was the last day for it so I braved the onslaught of white fluffiness, I need a job.  Not sure how much snow we got in all, however, when I reached my destination at noon, it was reported 8 inches by ten a.m.

Anywho…after whiteout conditions I was ready for a warm latte and a warm room to take this important employment test in.  I am not divulging who/what the test was for.  I will just say that it was a general skills test.  It was comprised of general knowledge, picking out definitions for words, comprehension by reading a paragraph and answering questions, some addition, subtraction and one multiplication question, the rest were setting you up with situations in which you had to pick the correct answer using given information.

I arrived at exactly 4 minutes to one.  The test was to start at one.  There was already a woman in the testing room.  I went in and the facilitator had me sign in, asked for my forms of identification and handed me an application.  The application was the standard name, address, ssn, dob and education.  In fact it was much less than many applications as you simply had to check mark what your highest education completed was, not actually state where you went.  And then it had a few other questions about felonies, drug charges and etc.  Standard stuff.

By 1:15 we had another tester and I was done with the application and the I-9 and had read the pamphlet.  By 1:25 the facilitator wanted to start the test but the other two testers weren’t done with their application yet.  It took the facilitator 4 minutes to convince the other two that it would be alright to finish the application after the test.

So the facilitator started, she had to explain the test, how it was structured, how to fill in the bubbles on the answer sheet and how to NOT write in the test booklet.  I had flashbacks to 5th grade…but understood it is part of her job to explain how it works.  She also explained that there were 28 questions on the test and 30 minutes to complete the test.  Just after she stated, “So that gives you a very good idea how long you have for each question.”  The guy that was in there for the test piped up with, “Really??”… and he was seriously confused as to how you could tell how long each question should take.

So…the test began.  It wasn’t very difficult, but actually could be confusing if you went too fast.  Not that they were trick questions, just that some were very involved.  Around question 13 the math questions started.  There were five of them.  The most complicated one was multiplication of two numbers, one having a decimal point.  I was on question 26 when suddenly the man blurts out, “OMIGOD! I HATE MATH!”

When I was done, I looked at the clock and saw that I had 8 minutes left for the test.  There were two questions I went over simply because they were complicated with wording so I took the time remaining to go over those two questions to make sure I was satisfied with my answer.  The last four minutes I spent darkening my circles on the test sheet.

When the facilitator called time’s up, the other two people were not done with the test yet.  Which caused them some grief since they didn’t know and were not told how that might affect their results.  In fact the facilitator claimed ignorance as to how the scoring is done, which I am sure she doesn’t know or at least isn’t supposed to tell prospects.

The one thing that really concerned me was that this man was an EMT….and the woman was at least ten to fifteen years older than I…and they had problems filling out the application about themselves.  I understand that everyone is different and that people have issues.  Perhaps the woman is dyslexic so it takes her longer to read and make sure she is reading correctly, or something.  I don’t fault people for that.  It just totally struck me as odd, you know…all of it.

It made me feel uncomfortable.  Especially when the test was over and they had not been done, the male tester looks at me and asks me if I finished.  I said yes.  The facilitator smiled and I instantly felt uncomfortable….as if I thought that he suddenly thought I was a genius or that it was some sort of amazing feat.

And this sort of thing also saddens me….because after all this time, all these applications…all these different tests….I still don’t have a job.  Worse, the facilitator could not tell us when we would have results and also stated that even if we pass the test, it does not mean that we will get a job because there are so many qualified applicants.

Fix My Computer – That I Fixed

{ December 31, 2008 @ 4:45 PM } · { Technology }
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Caution: Genius At Work

A computer showed up:

The power supply had it’s original casing removed and was screwed with some sort of home made bracket to the top inside of the case….backwards…so the power plug attached inside the case and came out through an additional hole the man bored through the back of the case.

He had decided that taking the original casing off made it so there was no airflow, so he took an 80mm fan and hot glued it to the powersupply with the idea that it would suck air away from the power supply. And it would have, if he would have installed it the other way ’round.

His other major upgrade…was to add an additional harddrive. This engineering genius (I’m not kidding, he’s an electrical engineer) used duct tape…yes duct tape to tape an additional hard drive to the front inside of the case, which promptly blocked the air flow from the fans in the front of his case not to mention start immediately suffocating the hard drive. Now, he did not merely use one or two pieces of tape…oh no…he wound round it several times, covering the entire thing in four total layers of tape.  Hermetically sealed in silver stickiness.

Realizing what he had done to the front fans…he decided to make his computer into a wind tunnel by cutting holes at the top and bottom of the case and installing two more fans….however, he had a dilema.

How to get power to all these new fans. Did he use a molex converter? Oh no, far too simple of a solution. What he did do, though, is rip off the LPT port and fashioned some new power connectors on the motherboard.

Now….then here he was in front of me, showing off his upgrades. I made one comment, “This computer is not going to work.”   This prompts my customer to go off on a rant about him being an electrical engineer.  For several minutes I got to listen to his circuit board expertise. Then I made another comment, “These, alterations aren’t done right and this computer is never going to work this way, you will need a new motherboard, power supply and hard drive.  I can tell that without trying to boot it.”   Which made him turn red and demand I configure the hard drives right, as he was convinced that the only reason the computer was not booting up was because there is something “TOO TECHNICAL” about jumper settings.   Then he once again stated his demands and stormed out of the store.

The next day, when I told him he needed to buy a new computer, I got to listen to how I don’t know anything about computers and a whole slew of insults and that he’d get his 16 year old neighbor to fix his hard drives.

Go for it, buddy. For the record I did try. Everything was fried….except one hard drive and the good ole, sturdy floppy drive.

The Problem With Women in I.T

{ December 26, 2008 @ 10:41 PM } · { Technology }
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Yeah.  Lately I have been seeing a lot of blogs and discussions about women in the I.T world.  Usually the topics are about discrimination of women in I.T, sexualization/objectifying women in general, and mostly a lot of ranting and raving.

I know there is discrimination of all sorts in the Information Technology industry.  There is discrimination of all sorts in every field, every job, every-everything.  There just is.  It is done.  People don’t get jobs because they have boobs or maybe because they have a penis.  Some people don’t get jobs because of the color of their skin or because they blog more than the hiring manager thinks they should so they don’t get hired on the notion they will spend more time doing private blogging than actually working.

People are discriminated against because they have a lack of formal education, and the ten years or more of actual real experience gets thrown out the window.  They are discriminated against for having too much education or being over qualified.

If you can think of a reason, absurd or not, someone has been discriminated against because of it.  Do the employers or people that do this say this is what they are doing?  Not if they are smart.

 I actually got released from a job on a construction crew because I split up with my boyfriend.  The reasoning was that a single woman on a construction crew of married guys wasn’t something they thought was good (even though many of the wives also worked on the crew).  Apparently the boss figured that married people only cheat with single people.  How absurd is that?  Although I wasn’t about to be “hooking up” with people on that crew anyway.

The real problem with women in I.T is usually the women in I.T.  What I mean is that they make issues out of things that aren’t really issues.  Making the rest of us that just want to do a good job and get a paycheck look like a bunch of simpering, whiny idiots.  Women are objectified just as much as men in any industry.  Same as they are discriminated against just as much in any industry. 

If I really thought that because of a few advertisements of scantily clad women that is geared toward the technology field makes people believe that all women who are in I.T are buxom babes that run on the beach half naked while a man who is dressed in a suit does all the work, then maybe I would have an issue.  But I really don’t think most people that have a few brain cells are really that stupid.

If a person holds the belief that women are simply decorations without a brain where men actually do all the work, then they hold that belief across all industries no matter what.  And no 30 second commercial is going to matter.  They thought that way before, they will think that way after simply because they are ignorant.

So… being beautiful AND a woman AND in I.T makes me what?  It would seem, according to some posts out there, it would seem to make me supposedly pissed off when I am not only recognized as a smart person, but also a woman and also beautiful.  Oh, yeah.  I’m so offended when someone calls me beautiful and smart…I deck everyone that says it.  Sooooo completely offended.  Cause for a throw-down on the spot.

THIS is not an issue, not a problem for women in I.T.  I have never met a woman who has told me that she got her UNIX System Admin job because she had huge tits and did a layout in Playboy.  Perhaps they are out there…but I highly doubt there are that many.  In fact, I would tend to say that a truly beautiful woman might actually have a harder time getting a position simply because she may be too distracting.  This is not an issue I face, however.  But I can imagine it happening.  Especially if she is single.  Because, you just know that a gorgeous, smart and single woman is just looking to have sex with anything that walks on two legs…right?

I also doubt there are as many issues for women who don’t get hired simply because they are a woman and the man who is hiring thinks women are inferior.  I am sure there are some of those pigs around, to be sure, I just don’t think it’s an epidemic.

What I think probably is more of an epidemic is a female who is married with small children.  I could see someone hiring for a 75% travel I.T position would balk at hiring an individual in this situation and be apt to hire her husband rather than her.  Simply because it is a common belief that if a child is sick, it is the mother that will take off work for the child.  As ignorant as that is, it is reinforced by exactly that happening …at a guess… 7 out of 10 women. And probably for single mom’s it would be worse.  I’m a single mother and proud of that, however my daughter is 17 and if she’s got the flu she can take care of herself.

Hey… I’m a woman with many years of technical experience…I am unemployed.  I have been unemployed for two years.  I have filled out over 287 applications.  I have had one job interview and was not told why I did not get that position either.  Do I think I am not getting hired because I am a woman?  No.  I am not getting hired because I haven’t finished my college degree…however, I have ten years experience in running my own successful I.T firm. 

So what’s the problem??  I haven’t actually figured that out yet…but I highly doubt it is because I am a woman.  I know it’s not because I don’t know what I am doing.  Those 287 applications did get me temporary project work with a few temp. tech. companies.  But just not enough so far to make it a full time job.  Apparently I am just extremely unlucky.  However, I prefer to think that the “dream job” simply hasn’t been available yet.  Of course, I can be wrong.  Maybe I am not getting interviews because I’m a woman…I just don’t really think that is the issue…I think it has more to do with the uncompleted degree and no one out there has the intestinal fortitude to actually take a chance on someone and have them prove themselves.  Perhaps they have and they have been burned…perhaps it is just company policy.  Perhaps I am too good to be true so they figure it’s all a ruse.  Don’t know, doesn’t matter.  When it’s the right time and the right company it will all work out.

Hey, I don’t have any answers.  Maybe there is more discrimination out there than I am aware of, but more and more I just think there are so many things that are blown out of proportion.  I did have that one interview last February.  Maybe I didn’t get hired because I am a woman, maybe because I was a foot taller than the man interviewing me, maybe because I am single, maybe because my Jeep had a rust spot on it, maybe because the woman interviewing me thought I was prettier than her and didn’t want competition, maybe because I was nervous and they interpreted it as “shifty”…or maybe…just maybe because they have a policy about people without degrees.  Maybe my business suit wasn’t the right brand.  Who frickin knows.  All I know is I want someone to hire ME for ME…for what they see in ME and what they see I have done.

If the fact that I have tits or am tall or look better or worse than someone else throws them off…I don’t want to work there anyway.

Walmart Throws Out Man Spreading Cheer

{ December 26, 2008 @ 9:33 PM } · { Money, Money, Money! }
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So, you know, I was appalled.  Here we have a financial situation and this year, more than ever, retailers are feeling the crunch with no one able to shop like usual.

One man, who lost his job, decides to spread a little holiay cheer and “pay it forward” and gets accused of soliciting and thrown out of Walmart.  You can read the whole story here.  In summary, this man purchased $1300.00 worth of Walmart gift cards, dressed as Santa and started handing them out to people as they went into Walmart.  Walmart employees accused him of soliciting and threw him out.  The best part is that it was reported that Target contacted him and said they would exchange the Walmart cards for Target cards and he was welcome to hand out the Target cards in front of their store.

What I now want to know is if I get any Walmart gift cards for Christmas, if I can take them to Target and exchange them.  Because if I can, I would without batting an eye.  I’ve had a long time to get upset at Walmart I guess,  mostly I just don’t agree with a lot of their business decisions but the thing that really irks me is the quality of their products.  Especially clothing.  The clothing section simply ticks me off any time I have gone in there.

The largest gripe I have, as a woman, is their selection of bra sizes.  When I was a DDD cup, there is absolutely nothing.  Yet they will sell clothing that is large enough for a DDD sized woman…you just can’t buy anything to hold your tits up.  Then, when I lost weight and went to a DD, they had those but I was a 38DD at the time…smallest I could find ever was a 44DD…wtf.   This is not just looking at one Walmart though, it’s looking at three of them.  I did manage to find a 38DD once at a Walmart….it was basically hidden.  I had gotten the idea they probably order like three of them each month and I just kept getting there at the wrong time or something.  Now that I am down to a 36D, they’ve lost my bra business.  I buy mine at Shopko now, 36 miles away.

Another problem  have with Walmart is their shoes and the quality of those.  Some of the dress shoes look nice…but I don’t know a human that has feet shaped that way, not to mention that they have absolutely no support or cushioning.   The one that really got to me are the Dr. Scholl’s…I used to wear them all the time, swore by them.  Then I found out Walmart had them.  They must make them differently for Walmart….they make them cheaper.  They have to because normally a pair of those would last me 6 months.  Walmart made shoes last about a month and they wear out weird.  It’s like they get bigger.  Then they just start falling apart.  But yet, if I go to a regular shoe store and pay more for the Dr. Scholl’s…I’m back to the quality and longevity that I remember.  So…no one can tell me that Walmart does not force manufacturer’s to make an inferior product.  I buy my shoes 36 miles away as well.

That is why I stopped buying dog food at Walmart.  Usually I buy IAMS or Beneful.  Both what I consider good and healthy brands.  In fact, when searching for dog foods those were the two that seemed to satisfy them the most and most of the food was not left on the lawn in the form of poo piles and the brands that didn’t cause their hair to fall out.  Which are all signs of foods not having enough nutrition.  But when I found that the dang shoes are made different, how can I trust that the dog food isn’t a more inferior product as well?   I found out that I really can’t trust it.  My big dog consumes about 50lbs. of dog food every two weeks.  I purchased a 40lb bag of Beneful over at Walmart and gave him the same amount of food…but yet after each feeding he seemed hungry. So I started giving him more at each feeding.  That 40lb bag was gone in a week.  This isn’t right.

So I continue to buy dog food from 36 miles away as opposed to going to Walmart that is 8 miles away.  This just means that I go shopping every two weeks and get everything I need over there in that town because I don’t trust Walmart.

I think shopping at Walmart is a waste of money.  And don’t even get me started on their food.  I’m afraid of their raw meats they sell.  They don’t even have a butcher shop in Walmart….I have to wonder how long that “fresh” beef has been trucking around the United States..or if it even is from the United States.  My father was a butcher and for a while owned his own butcher shop.  I know for certain that there are ways to preserve raw meat and other little tricks to making it look fresher than it is.  Which is one of the reasons my father started his own shop…because of what he had to do in the large grocery chain where he managed the meat section.  Some of it is not as fresh as you would hope.

Anyway…I’ll stop complaining about Walmart.  But if you decide to shop there…start paying attention to the quality.  Not everything at walmart is a bad deal, just a lot of things.

The One

{ December 24, 2008 @ 9:04 PM } · { Musings }
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You remain so close, yet so far away
Forever in my heart you will always stay

To remember your touch, the look in your eyes
Soothing your fears as I come to realize

I told you everything though sometimes I shouldn’t
You said much even when you couldn’t

Blessed as I am with you in my life,
Sharing our joys, heartache and strife

At the height of my fantasy you are always with me
Accepting you as you are and however we will be.

 

~MagiAwen

Fox

{ December 24, 2008 @ 8:59 PM } · { Musings }
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Sly fox
So clever and bright slipping through shadows in the velvet night
To spy on me or so it seems stopping only to rest just inside my dreams
Quiet paws they do go faster through the wood
Following sensite nost looking for something good
Is it I that you seek, to hunt or destroy or may it be to teach me a joy
What could such a small creature tell me that is not already known
Perhaps it is to say that I am not fully grown
In my mind sometimes you seem useless to me, is this what you want me to see
My own imperfections they do lie in the back of my mind like a little spy
Little spy, little Fox….my aren’t you smart
You teach me to open my mind as much as my heart.

 

~MagiAwen

The Raven

{ December 24, 2008 @ 8:58 PM } · { Musings }
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Raven calls to me….tells me of shiny things as the sea
He tells me there are more lands to be
If I fly as far as I can
Will raven see me as though a man

When Raven comes he is cocky and sure
On the post by my window he comes to endure
All the things that he sees waiting for me
The Raven has told me where I should be

Fear not, my love, the cold is almost gone
And soon it is you that I shall rest upon
The Raven, he says so
Calling to me
The Raven has said where I shall be.

 

~MagiAwen

What I Did Before the Economic Crisis

{ December 24, 2008 @ 10:45 AM } · { Lifestyle }
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I feel weird now, because I have said this many times on forums and discussion groups…so I’m starting to feel like I’m saying “I told you so”…but I’m not really.  It’s just that a lot of Americans saw this crisis coming.  And I do NOT mean militia, Freemen, conspiracy theories and doom and gloom reports.  I simply mean that where I am at had started to be affected before they were plastering it all over CNN.  Before it was declared a crisis.  Several of us…meaning my family and people I know did things to lessen the impact before it hit….and we continue to do so, because – it’s not done yet.  It will get worse.  Better to be prepared as much as possible.

Some things I did before the economc crisis:

No Television Service. 
Everything I need to know is on the Internet.  News, movies, television shows….whatever.  Why pay for two separate services when one gives you what the other does plus more?  I’m cheating…we have not had television service for several years…but it is one thing a person can do right now to help lighten the monthly load…especially since no one and no job is safe.

No Telephone Service.
Skype through the Internet.  I talk to Skype people free and for $3.95 per month I can call everyone I know with a land or cell phone in the United States and Canada.

Prepaid Cells.
Everyone got a prepaid cell.  No more service contracts, no more running up a bill and finding out later what it is.  No money, no talkie.  Easy enough.

Renegotiated Loan.
Not convinced this can still be done, but you aren’t losing anything by trying.

Renegotiated Credit Cards.
Very hard to do right now.  Most card companies refused and nothing was made better. I did get one to take a few percentages off and resolved to pay the ones that refused right quickly and not use them anymore.  Actually as soon as every one is paid off they are going to be held for strict emergency use only…strict.  Actually they are locked in a lock box at home right now…no temptation in purses and etc.

Start Going More Green.
When I started doing this it was not in direct response to what I thought was going to happen, I just wanted to do it.  But since utilities keep going up here…water increased by 80% last month (it’s what they call infrastructure services) there has been much attention being paid to consumption of everything.   Currently we are using dishwater and bathwater to flush our toilet….yes, it’s true.  With an ice cream bucket.  One ice cream bucket of water poured in the stool flushes it…you  don’t even have to take the tank top off.  However that may gross people out…it is only until we get a better graywater system that takes less user interaction.  Should be soon.

I also figured we were losing money with the electricity.  We have a motion detecting security light in the yard.  Sometimes I wake up at 2am and it’s on…sometimes I don’t think it goes off…rabbits and what not browsing around.  So.. for$13.00 I ordered a solar kit that hooks up to a car battery and put it on the security light.  That is the only thing that battery will power…but…it will last a long time.  I plan to get a gel battery for it soon..but pricing and availability at the moment means I can check it so often to make sure it doesn’t go dry.

The car battery was a reconditioned one from a friend. It was $24.00.  So for about $37.00 I have a solar powered security light.  Electric bill was $25.00 less the first month it was installed.  And the next as well.  So it has paid for itself and I can use the extra $25.00 a month on something else.  Cool huh? Three more times and I will have $100.00 extra a month.

Sell and Trade Extras.
I traded an extra double bed and frame for a truckload of wood.  That’s a week or two of my ass being warm for a bed that was keeping me from working in the garage.  A woman had to slaughter her chickens not long ago because too many were dying from the cold (first time chix farmer).  She didn’t know how to cut them up or debone them.  I showed her how…she gave me six chickens!  Woot!  Saved on the groceries.  Damn good chickens too!  I traded three hours of computer troubleshooting and networking for three hours of labor to fix my truck.  Cost me three hours…saved me $150.00.

Everyone has something they can sell or trade.  Get rid of the extras you don’t need for something that you do.  If you do it before you need it, all the better…save the money…get things taken care of.  Like I said…no person or job is safe.  Even when the country is not in economic crisis.  Doesn’t mean to be paranoid…it means be prudent.  To think that you are infallible or not expendable is a fallacy and always was…again whether or not the nation is in economic turmoil.

Stop wasting what you have…keep what you have.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  You cannot imagine how much you waste until you objectively examine it.

More Water Tips.
Wash everything in cold water with cold water rinse unless you absolutely cannot.  Detergents today was just as well in cold as in warm water.  Jeans are less likely to shrink as fast with cold water…so are some tshirts.  I only use hot water when I do whites because it activates the bleach. I cut down on how much bleach I use as well…I tested it…the recommended amount on the bottle is a guideline…not an end all be all.  Only use as much water as will cover the clothes.  Washers have knobs…use them.  Don’t stuff washer too full…puts a lot of strain on the machine and you will end up with some dirty clothes and have to re wash.

Don’t run the tap while you brush your teeth. Wet the brush…brush…turn on and rinse…done.  A lot of water is gushing into your sewer.  A lot more than you think.

Put insulation over your water heater. What you say? You already have it?  More…did you know that you can get thicker insulation?  Most places sell ones that are like 1 inch..you can get 2 inch.  What? You don’t need insulation because it’s inside?  Uh huh.  Yeah you do.  A water heater turns on to heat the water when the thermostat says it’s cooling off..not just when you use hot water.  This means that it will fire up and heat then shut off…after a while it will be on again…whether anyone is using it or not.  The insulation keeps it warmer longer…decreasing the times the thing fires.

Turn down your water heater.  We have three people in the house.  Two take showers at night…one during the day.  Washing is done in the middle of the day.  Doing this there are no conflicts about running out of water with a lower temp. setting.  And all these seemingly trivial things do help.  Every bit helps.  They accumulate…and when you get your bill…it becomes exciting…just to see how much less it is this time because of what you implemented.

If you hand wash dishes…don’t let the water run for washing or rinsing.  Two sinks or tubs…don’t fill them full either..no point. If you use a dishwasher, why pre rinse dishes?  Most dishwashers today get the water hot enough and are powerful enough to get everything off the plate…with some exceptions to hard crusted stuck on foods..maybe you need a cooking lesson instead of soaking the pots and pans for an hour just to pry the food off :)

Well those are my tips for now.  I’m sure I’ll think of more…I’m getting pretty good at it.

SAVE THE BAG!

{ December 24, 2008 @ 9:57 AM } · { Money, Money, Money! }
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Right. You have heard the phrase spend a dollar to save a nickel right?  If not, it goes on the premise of people actually spending more to save something that is technically worth less than what they are spending to save it.

My favorite example….washing out ziploc bags.  Now…I’m a bit of a “greenie” and like to save money and I do reuse ziploc bags…but I have my limits.  For instance, if I have a baggie that had crackers in it. I probably will use it the next day to put crackers in for my lunch.  If I put left over bacon in it…I’m NOT using potable water and dishsoap to clean it and reuse it.  I mean…come on. (but I know people who do this)

I hear a lot of things, you know, and most of the time I am not surprised at the nutty things people do.  But one I heard tonight had me simply cracking up. 

Imagine this.  We have a n owner of a tavern.  She has no driver’s license (I did not ask why she didn’t have one…I am just assuming…you know what I mean).  Alright.  So…she had the bar open on Sundays for football games but it was getting slow…so, she decided to close on Sundays.  For several months she has been closed on Sundays.

Now…she has decided to open again on Sunday.  No advertisements about it anywhere. Wants the bartender to open at 1pm.  The game starts at Noon.

This is the same woman who wants employees to dump the garbage into the dumpster and then SAVE THE BAG.

Has it hit you yet?  She is going to pay someone $7.00 per hour for 8 hours to sit in a bar on a Sunday when she has been closed on Sundays for over a month.  She is not advertising a reopening on Sunday.  This means she is going to shell out $56.00 (before taxes), plus lights & heating and whatever else her running expenses are.  And she’s worried about saving a trash bag?

Is it only hilarious to me?

This reminds me of something I heard on National Public Radio this morning.  At least I think it was this morning…it was around 5am and coffee wasn’t done yet.  It could have been yesterday.

I don’t remember the whole story but there was a woman they were interviewing in California.  She was distressed and teary while talking.  She said her bank would not work with her to lower her mortgage payment.  Her mortgage payment was $4500.00.  She said that if they could lower it to $3000.00 for a while, they could make it.  But as it was, she was losing her home.

I understand what it is to lose a home.  I understand what it is to be so close to making ends meet but no one willing to give a little and help you out.  But…it really seems to me, if you could not arrange or see it coming (that you would not make your bills) to do something about it before it got bad.

I arranged a smaller interest rate with my bank this past May.  By September they were refusing to lower anyone else’s.  Good thing I thought ahead I guess.  When you have lost one home that you worked hard to provide for you and your daughter, you just aren’t going to let it happen again.  Not going to happen again.  Course my second house is not nearly as nice as the first…but the payment was lower than most people’s rent…and now it’s really low.

What is it Worth?

{ December 23, 2008 @ 8:01 PM } · { Money, Money, Money! }
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Unfortunately I spend a lot of time thinking about money.  Mostly about how I can live without much of it due to many reasons.  I think of self sufficiency as a personal challenge…not so much to “beat the system” or to do a responsible thing by the planet.  But if you think of it…if you figure out a way to live on less money then the demand that you have it is not so great and you can get down to the business of enjoying life….instead of working working working to build money up to HOPEFULLY enjoy later.

A friend of the family worked for Merrill Lynch.  She made sure just out of college that she secured a position in a large company and intended to stay there until she retired.  This is what she was taught was the prudent and responsible thing to do.  So she did what she was told was what she should do, secured the job, made sacrifices to keep that job, worked hard, put money into her 401k.

Now… it’s all gone.  All the money she worked so hard for, so she could enjoy her life later…..gone.  Twenty five years of saving…..gone, in one fell swoop.  Of course…this has happened to thousands of people over the years and thousands of people in the last few years.

And now…her situation is like anyone else who has worked all their life but didn’t put into a retirement plan.  She was told she must make a retirement plan because so many people don’t or can’t and that it is the responsible thing to do…and now gone. 

There are many things my father told me.  He told me that the easiest thing to do in America is make money.  Right after that he told me the hardest thing to do in America is keep the money you make.  Some more words of wisdom from my father, “The value of what you have is only worth how much someone else values it.”

This became a stark reality when my mother, many years ago went to a bank to ask for a small home equity loan.  They had purchased a home and had two vehicles.  They put approximately 15000.00 into the home in rennovations.  One vehicle had died…she needed a few thousand dollars to get a used vehicle.  The banker in town said, “You don’t have anything worth anything.”  Personally I think he was just being an asshole.

These types of things still go on today, even before the economic crisis.  When you are told what you have worked so hard for has no value, it demeans you as a person.  You have thoughts like…then why am I working so had if there is no credit for it in the future.  Just like the gal at Merrill Lynch…why work so hard if it’s all just going to be taken away.

And I think the most regretable thing about all this with her losing the 401k…..is that we have a whole bunch of people working damned hard, most of the time at the expense of their family…to not enjoy life NOW…but to do it “ONE DAY”. 

One day I will get to take that vacation.
One day I will retire and be stress free.
One day we will travel the world.
Sometimes that one day does not come….or if it does come…have you worked so hard your body is wrecked and you cannot enjoy it?

Face it… you don’t know what is going to happen.  You could have a car accident tomorrow. You could have oodles of retirement money saved and when you retire find you have medical issues and now you cannot do all these things you have waited 40 years to do.

I live in an extremely small community.  If I happened to tell people all the things that I have done, places I have went and experiences I have had, they would not believe me.  Why?  Because I am too young to have done all of it and, by their assumption, I would not have had enough  money to do all of it.  Small minds.  Plus there are so many people around that want everyone to think they are important so they claim to have done things they have not done.  I’m not a bragger…I feel fortunate to have had the experiences I have had so far, I am lucky to have been in some of the situations that I have been it that afforded me to do many of the things I have.

It’s all where you put yourself.  If you put yourself in a place that is going no where, that is exactly where you will go.  As I see it…no matter where you are, you can go anywhere from there.  People here in this small community say that if you are here you are trapped here.  I don’t see things that way…there are highways here that lead to other places….just like everyplace else.  If I drive far enough I can get on an airplane just as I could get on an airplane if I lived in a city of 3 million.

I am not sure how it is that people think this way.  You are only stuck if you let yourself be stuck.  Yes, there are things out of your control but you are in control ultimately in what decisions you make…and if you have made wrong decisions…make a new one and hopefully that one works out.

Winston Churchhill once said,”True success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

I’m not saying I do not have my moments, but I try to live up to that quote in my life.  To the best of my ability no matter what is happening I try to keep up entusiasm, things can turn around at any moment…and most often they do.

To me…even though your property and possessions may only be worth what someone else is willing to pay for them…and today it’s not much considering the economy.  I guess you just have to decide how much it is worth to YOU and only you and consider that each time you make a decision.

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