April 1, 2005

           Arnold Maloney was at the shop, he is very curious about my impressions of PC Professor. They (the employment people) are very sensitive to schools that design courses mainly to qualify for the government money, and although I have no reason to think this school is any different than the others, something funny is going on. All the information taught in the course is available for free at the Ft. Lauderdale public libraries. It is not good enough to say so is a lot of academic stuff, because I joined a trade course specifically for the non-academic part that is missing at university.
           I have taken both software and hardware courses aplenty in my life, and hardware is at least 50% hands-on, usually a lot more. We have not even set foot in a lab during this course. I said as early as 1971 that computer software was going to be a favorite of lazy instructors, because it would be hard to say they didn’t teach something if they even casually mentioned it once. Now I’m experiencing this with hardware.

           On the other hand, the school obviously knows that I am the smartest sumbitch that ever walked in their doors, and they are telling the shop I am a very good student. That does not necessarily mean I’m smart. But if I can’t fix computers when this course is over, plus the 120 hours of “technical repair”, I will not be happy no matter what they say.
           Marilyn called to cancel our lesson. I don’t mind, it is such a perfect day. When I got home to change, I wound up on the phone for an hour with kforce, the employment agency. I was asking questions, like, “Do you sell or distribute any personal information about your applicants?”
           Plainly not, but I got a sharp lady named Lilly, who was able to guess the exact agencies I was referring to by similar complaints others have had. The worst offender is, predictably, Robert Half, which you can read about in these journals over the years how bad they really are. She cited a couple of cases of their arrogance and wrongdoing, that if she had not said they happened elsewhere, I could have sworn it was my story exactly. My main objection was with Half, you have got to give them all your information, not just what is relevant to the job. I don’t like that one bit. Half won’t process your form unless it is complete, and they cross-examine or want proof of everything. Fine, until it has nothing to do with the job. I really don’t think it any of their business where I was born or my mother’s maiden name. And so on.

           I was responding to an ad that wants a spreadsheet guru. Except for pivot tables (which I call database for dummies) and VBA (which is programming), that would describe me. They want somebody to make order out of chaos and invent new formats to report this data to no-techs. Except they don’t call them no-techs, they call them upper management. If they want to pay up to $70,000 a year for this, I’ll organize anything they could ever desire including the next moon shot. I want to talk to these people early next week. Why, I’d even do it for $60,000. Not because I’m cheap, but because that is the equivalent of $100,000 per year in Canada and it would give me smug satisfaction.
           The text is not that great on networking. There is a way to hook two computers together to simulate a simple network but I can't remember how it is done. It is 100% certain we won’t do it in this course, so I am stuck. I will keep hammering away. I spent twenty minutes trying to get that scanner to work, and in the process discovered that the Lexmark Z13 printer I bought used, for some reason, does not have the installation software on the accompanying CD. It is recordable (read-only) but has no INF files, nor will it read in a regular CD drive. I was about to take the scanner in when Richard called.

           Richard owns a whole string of ATMs. Hmm, is this coincidence or what? He has a Dell computer with a service contract, but the contract does not cover the problem he is having. What a surprise, huh? They want another $600 to $800. They are so full of surprises. Dell, you knock me out. He has a new drive in the package, what he needs is both an installation and some way, if possible, to recover the data off the old drive.
           He was surprised I knew that the ATMs had a recall modem that dials him when the money is getting low. All that data is on the drive that crashed. He got my number from somebody, female, named Jean or Gene. The appointment is set for 10:30 AM on Sunday. I’m going to try a software recovery, then a hardware recovery. It sounds like his Windows XP is acting up. If I get over to Mark’s on Sunday evening, this could be a very good week.

           Author's note 2015-04-01: This was written before it became apparent I would never work again.