MikesThoughts

Its the weekend. weeeee! Well its time for another weekend of projects. But the up side is one day of sleeping in. Lots on the table for this weekend. Hardwood floors to complete in the dining room, windows to install, and finish the walls in the bed room. Also, start work on building the new bed room furniture. No way that it will all be done but here is for trying. But Church on Sunday and maybe I will try to take in a movie. The Matrix #3 starts on Sunday. Wish I had someone to go with me but who knows. The first week of the 2000 roll out went better than expected. No real big problems so we hope that next week will go as well. I have to start brushing up on my Visual Basic because projects are starting to appear on the horizon. Well, off I go out into the sun and un-filtered air.

The countdown begins. A visit to my attorney to find out that the deposition of my wife is on November 10th and the divorce trial is November 14th. It now appears that I only have 15 days of marriage left. The end of 32 years of trying to hold it together and placing her on a pedestal. 32 years of trust that was shattered with my discovery of the emails and affairs. 32 years of us and we, now soon to be me. I am mortified of being left single the rest of my life. Everyone keeps telling me that I will get over it and things will be better. What they do not realize is that this was my life and I am not ready to change. But they say there is a fine line between love an hate. Jules Verne best stated it in his novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" that the heart can be filled with hatred just as easily as love. So why do I not hate my wife for all that she has done to me? Why do I not hate her for the affairs and the lonely nights setting at home worrying a

End of another week. Yes, it is finally Friday and the work week just about to end. I am going to treat myself to a quite dinner and then come back to work three hours of overtime on my servers. Updates and Security Patches seems to be my life lately. A big weekend planned. Saturday I plan to put in a full day working on the Money Pit of a house. On Sunday, the family is planning to come to dinner. Right now it is my Brother, his wife, my Mom and Sister, and my Daughter and Grand Daughter. So that makes a total of 7 people. Wow, what a day. But most of the tasks for Saturday are small and I should be ok.

The Great Migration begins Well I have been busy getting all my users ready for the Windows 2000 upgrade. My organization is very behind the times with Office XP out for over two years and we are just climbing out of the dark ages of Windows 95. However, I do understand that trying to create a stable environment for 284 thousand workstations is a daunting task. I do not believe that we would have made the jump to 2000 if it was not for Microsoft stopping the support on Windows 95. But I also understand that Microsoft can not continue to support a product for ever. They also have to move on. So technology continues to push, claw, and sometimes trip forward. My grand-daughter has oral surgery today and all I can think of is her laying there while the yank her teeth out. But I know it is for the best. I will be spending this evening trying to neuter her back to the happy kid I left last night. Planning another big weekend on the Money Pit. My goal is to finish the remod

Saying goodbye to much lately. I am starting to feel the impact of saying goodbye to those who I care so much about. With my father passing away in February and finding out that my wife and sole mate for 32 years has found someone else that she wants more than me and now Plain Lane, the blogg that I read every day closing out. Life is getting hard to handle. I know that putting a blogg up against the other traumatic events of my life pales in comparison. But it is just another small event that brings the other events back to the top of my mental activities. I try to stay focused but when the day is done and you set alone watching TV, the loneliness sinks in. This is not the way I want to spend my life. I had always thought of growing old with someone I care for. That was shattered in May. Now as I set in church on Sunday and look around, all I seem to see is couples, not singles. I am embarrassed and in many ways ashamed that I am single at 50. Some can handle this w

Training feeds the mind. Well I am on my way home from Port Washington NY. Actually, Roselyn NY, home of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The trip so far was quite uneventful. Last night I mustered all my courage and took an adventure into the city. Went to the top of the Empire State Building, had dinner at Time Square and generally walked my legs off. But one general observation was that everyone that I meet was friendly and considerate. Not at all what I expected. It is my observation that people are people. Good and bad no matter were you go. I expected to see a lot of homeless or pan handlers hitting up on me for money or setting around on the sidewalk. But I never seen one and I was looking. The other observation was that the people in the stores were very nice and treated me with kindness. I expect that from the people at home but I had pre-judged the New York people to be very rude. This my exist but it did not in my experience on this trip. The technical training

One the road again. In my sometimes-warped observations of the world around me, I find that good customer service does exist. I realize in today’s corporate environment of quick profits and the bottom line, customer service is considered an expense instead of an investment in the future. Most companies have forgotten that customer service pays off in customer loyalty and long term customer retention. However, today I seen good customer service and just had to mention it in my blog. When starting out today I made a serious error and misread my antennary. For some reason I read the arrival time of my flight as the boarding time. I arrived at the airport an hour before my flight only to find out that my flight had left about 20 minutes before I arrived. To make things worse, this was the last flight that day that could get me to New York. The ticket agent could have just said you’re out of luck, but he didn't. He escorted me to a competitors airline and convinced them to

BLOGGING ON A PDA This is my first Blog that was totally written on my Sony Clie using the new Sony portable keyboard. The Clie is one of those pieces of technology that still amaze me. As most of you know from reading my blogs, I work in technology and have for most of my life. I am blown away by how technology has changed our lives. Some of the changes are for the good and some not so good. I often wonder what people talked about in restaurants before there were computers. I cannot help but overhear conversations about some software or hardware or the Internet in every conversation going on around me. And I do not live in Silicon Valley. This week has been especially intense with all the anti-virus patches, security issues, and general failure of technology in one form or the other. It seems if someone’s computer is down you might as well have nailed them to a cross. However, you know, life does go on and problems do get fixed. Another one of my strange observati

Insurance Companies... You have to hate them. I am sure in my mind that the terrorists are not in Iraq but are here in the United States running the Insurance Companies. What we need to do is pull our troops back home and surround the Insurance Companies Corporate Headquarters and drag the CEOs and Agents out in the street and arrest them for conspiring to harm Americans. If you have ever experienced anything to do with an insurance company, you know what I mean. The hungry money grubbing monsters find more ways of getting into our pockets than the drug companies. I had a laptop computer stolen from my car when I was on business travel in Florida. Now I need to get insurance on my new home and all the insurance companies are saying because I had a claim in the last two years they have to charge me more. OMG, why??? It does not seem to matter that I had homeowners insurance with the same company for 30 years and without a claim. And you ask, why did I not just get insuran

The sun comes out in Wonderland. With what seems to be days with rain, there is finally a prediction of some fair weather over the next few days in Wonderland. Today I stopped into my breakfast place; you know the one with the big -M-. Well, today just as I made it to the counter, their computer went down and you know, the employees at the Big -M- do not have a backup plan. They simply are out of business until the computers are back on line. No paper method and do not even ask one of these dunderheads to figure out what a total would be for a biscuit and a soft drink much less figure change. All that is a lost art. I went to the doctor yesterday. This was the first time going to this doctor as my other doctor has decided to find a warmer clement. Anyway, the doctor walked into the exam room and introduced himself. He then stated “I can tell you right now you need to loose some weight� My response was “How many years of medical school did it take you to figure that o

Why does it seem to me that I am the only one who sees the storm on the horizon? Technology seems to be failing all around me and out of control. Pressure is on for programmers to produce deliverables faster than ever before and with more complex tools. Add the fact that there is no budget for travel or training. Put this with the fact that businesses and government wants to do more with less and out source what ever they can. Then everyone seems to want instant communications that is built on 50 year old wires in this country. Now add in the virus problems, data warehousing, and more and more users who do not have a clue as to what they have there hands on. The result is fast becoming a exercise in crisis management. With our increasing dependence on technology, we never seem to take into account that at times things just do not work. Over the past few years I have been telling my employer, at high levels, that I see a problem with designing applications that have a

Who is protecting the American People from Big Business? I never get overdrafts so I had no idea what they charge until today. My bank mistakenly did not post my deposit and I ended up with three overdrafts. They were very nice about it and agreed to remove them. However, I was shocked to see that they charged $29.50 for each one of them. That’s almost $90.00 bucks for three overdrafts that the amount of the payments on each totaled about $25.00. Overdrafts are a way for banks to feed on the poor and at the same time make tones of money. What I want to know is who decides what amount to charge for an overdraft. Why not make each overdraft $1,000.00 bucks. Is it because that would be ridiculous? Well, some ware between 0 and $1,000.00 buck some smuck decided that the customers would bare the charge of $29.50. I mean why not make it $29,51, that’s only a penny more. Is there no one who is protecting the American people? What ever happened to the consumer protection a

Hatred over rules reason. Well the vote is in and the union workers said to hell with there jobs they were not going to let the company go on and not support the retirees as well as ask the workers to take cuts while management gets rich. So now, it is up to the bankruptcy judge to rule next week. Everyone now believes that they will lock out the plant and scrap it. 900 good paying jobs leave Wonderland and a long time icon of a business is no more. This country is loosing 75,000 manufacturing jobs per day and have lost more manufacturing jobs since the Democrats of been in office than in any other time in American History. Its time for a change. On the personal side, I am trying to muster enough courage to ask someone out on a date this weekend. This would be the first time that I have asked anyone for a date in 32 years. Well, more to come on this.

The Big Day - Keep it or kill it. Today’s the day we find out if one of the oldest and largest employers in Wonderland will keep its doors open. Its funny how emotions rule judgment. The union employees vote today to see if they are willing to take the pay cuts and concessions that the company is requesting. The company is in bankruptcy and the court awarded management huge bonuses while they ask the workers to take it in the rear. But what are you going to do, close the plant and work at Wal-mart for 5 buck an hour or put emotions aside and take the hit on the pay and hope things will get better in the future. I am betting that these employees feel so hurt that they will vote no on the contact. More to come in Wonderland. Now for some personal stuff. I am realizing how lonely life can be without a mate. I find that I am missing my soon to be X even though I know that she abused me and took advantage of me. I still had someone to talk to and go to dinner with. I now ha

It's Hot - Hot - Hot. Today will prove to be another interesting day in Wonderland. Today I have an appointment with my lawyer “The Keeper of the Forms!” I do not know why but I always feel worse after I visit with him and he is my attorney. He just wants me to blood let for my wife and let her have what is left of my dignity. When I say that I was a devoted monogamous husband for 32 years, everyone says “right!!”. Well it is true. I feel pathetic and have like a zero social life. But it’s over now. I just cannot accept a wife who likes to sleep around on me time after time. Its bad enough that Im not getting any but she seems to be giving it to every male in Wonderland. Well enough about my pitiful excuse for a life, what about my observations of Wonderland today. Well it is hot and humid with no relief in sight. It is interesting how everyone leaves for work at the same time only to set in traffic. If you leave 15 minutes early no one is on the road and you ge

Changes going on in Wonderland. I am starting to discover how to make programming changes in my BLOG. I just found out how other bloggers were able to set there blogs so that visitors and readers could leave comments. More to come. Back to ASP programming today. Many Arrays to work on. Just could not leave without leaving a new observation of the world of Wonderland. I have been watching the demise of another American great steel producing company. Names are left out for obvious reasons. But locally there is a steel plant that has been part of Wonderland for my entire life. Most of the people who live in Wonderland have worked or known someone who has worked for this plant. A few years ago, the plant sold to a company who had hopes to turn it around but did not have the experience to make it happen. The company went bankrupt. Here is the rub. The company management goes to the court and convinces them to pay them multiple millions of dollars in bonuses to stay on

Just another day in Wonderland. Its been a very busy time in wonderland and I have been very negligent from my blog. Time to catch up on things. Today I am going to start looking at new home for my blog or a way that I can have friends leave public and private messages on the blog. More amazing observations of the degradation of America. It seems that employers are finding out new ways of circumventing the laws. Let me try to explain. My daughter had one of those thankless minimum wage jobs at the mall. You know the ones were they want you to camp out in the parking lot with a cell phone and be ready to come in to work an hour within minutes of a call. You see these poor people every time you go to just about any store at a mall. No one works full time and employees move from job to job or company to company like nomads in the desert. Forget benefits, the only benefits are that the employer has a pool of hundreds of unskilled workers to select from and it only take ab

Alice and the Hatter (Total Rhetoric). After reading this and you still support the Republicans and President Bush, you need to go see the queen, Alice. President Bush and the Republicans have proposed a bill that would do away with overtime for over ½ million American workers. If you have any education and you work for a company, you could find that work over 40 hours per week would be exempt from overtime. Now the Federal Wage Laws require companies to pay overtime for work performed over 40 hours per week at the rate of 1 and ½ times the normal pay rate. If this law is passed, companies could require you to work as many hours over 40 per week as they deem necessary and the worker would not get any pay or compensation for this work. Now, many companies pay overtime to current workers instead of hiring new employees in order to save on paying out benefits such as insurance and workers compensation. The president (The Hatter) believes that by eliminating the law and al

Just another day in Wonderland Alice. WHAT EVERY HAPPENED TO CUSTOMER SERVICE? I have been negligent in updating my blog so let me catch up. The house closes on the 15th of this month and I will be moving into my first apartment in my adult life. I hate to admit it but it is a little scary. Not that I am afraid of living in an apartment but with all the changes. I spent today contacting all the oligopolies “Big Buck Companies” to turn off my services to the old homestead and turned on at the new bedding stable. One of these huge conglomerates with their multi-million dollar CEOs has determined that customer service is a liability to the company and does not produce any revenue. Without naming names, the company to which I speak is known as Verizon. I contacted Verizon to have a new phone line installed with the new speedy DSL. After an hour of trying to get someone on the line and after going through phone tree hell, only to get a busy signal or try your call late

Good Morning my Blog. Well its Thursday and for me a Friday before the big long.... holiday weekend. My brother told me of a bumper sticker he seen that said “If you are not enraged, your not paying attention.” So very true! Yesterday with a stroke of a pin, the president wiped out a two billion dollar industry in the United States. Most of us hate telemarketing and getting those calls just about dinnertime. I must admit that they do drive me crazy. But in West Virginia, it means more loss of jobs and no where this army of unskilled workforce to go. I do not believe that even Walmart can absorb this number of people. The president is now moving on to eliminating overtime and wants to allow businesses to offer comp time in place of overtime. Most people know that this is not good for the worker. First, you will get one-hour comp for one-hour overtime. Now the American worker gets one and one half hours of overtime for all work over forty hours per week of work. To put this

Sorry blog , but I missed you on Friday. It was a very busy day of supporting our users and getting a few lines of code in on the latest project. Do not know were to begin. My heart has been heavy lately but I am still striving to stay positive. I feel that it is very important at this time to do the best I can on the basics, i.e. work and my grand daughter. Kind of low lately on the amazement scale. I know that I just have not been looking very hard. Did not even have time to read the paper over the weekend, so this may explain why I do not have a lot of content for my blog. Mom is doing better and I did come to a decision to try to build the new home, even considering all the recent obstacles. I do miss the illusion that I was living under with my wife. Even though deep down I knew she did not care or even like me, It was somehow comforting to play the game and fantasize that she would show some sign of affection toward me. Well, now that the divorce is in the works, the

Just another day in wonderland Alice. Today I get a new programming card for my cpap breathing machine and a note that my prescription had been changed. I thought that was odd since I had not been back to the doctor for almost 2 years. My question was “was the prescription wrong all this time or do they just change the prescription after 2 years.” Well a call to the provider was in order. When I called, I was informed not to change the card and leave it the same. There was a mistake in sending out the new card and that they had not received any order from my doctor or a change in the prescription. What if I had just followed the instructions provided without first questioning the change. What damage would have been done? Off with there heads, I say. Alice, off with there heads!!!

Well reality started to set in last night when I realized that I will not be living in the home that I have been in for the past ten years. Mixed emotions. I loved the house but it just does not meet my needs now. And with the divorce going on, the house would have to go anyway. The house inspectors and termite inspectors are to look at the house today. I hope that everything turns out fine. Kind of like going to the doctor for a check-up. More troubles and activities in the family. Mom is still in the hospital and not doing well. I believe most of the problems are due to her medication but still have not talked to the doctor. My niece-in-law had a baby girl yesterday. 5 pounds and 6 ounces. Cute. My sisters son is going to jail for up to three years because he was driving without a license or insurance. My sisters daughter is coming back home after being on her own for a number of years. And the republicans are still in office. Getting hard to hang in there.

Politics --- Over the past few years I have become increasingly interested in Politics and a understanding of the differences between Republicans and Democrats, their agendas and values. I have been so very disappointed in the current administration and the decisions that have affected all of our lives. As a veteran I strongly support our troops and understand that they do the job that is assigned by their commander and chief. I also believe that you can support the troops while still disagreeing with the president and his agenda. Today, I read the Howard Dean announcement speech for President of the United States. Not only does he state the problems with today’s administration but he proclaims that it is time for the people to take back their government. Its time to have a president that listens to the people and not call them a “Focus Group”. Dean speaks of the importance of reducing the debt and health care. He talks about values and the role of America as a moral leader

Survived another weekend. Sure glad there are five days in the week to recover before another weekend begins. Worked a total of 24 hours this weekend on the house but finally believe that it is ready for the house inspection. Worked 2 hours overtime at work. Still can not see the value in just 2 hours but that’s part of the game. Wife helped take care of the grandchild this weekend. This helped a lot on Saturday. I had her all day Sunday while I continued to work on the house. That was a challenge. The weather held out and no rain. Need to clean the gutters but that’s another task. Now I can concentrate on getting my other house ready to sell. Lots of punch tasks on that list.

Saturday is here at last. Well here at work on a Saturday morning. Hope that the two hours proves to be productive. Got my chess move out of the way and read some Blogs but now to update mine and move onto some JAVA. Time is clicking away and only have a little more than an hour before they release me back into the real world. Find that these blogs are very therapeutic. I forgot to pick up my grand daughter from day care. Mind was slipping out of gear. Plan B kicked in and she was rescued. Have to do some task on the house today but hope to have them finished up by early evening. Maybe time will allow for a movie or some type of recreation this weekend.

Sold my home yesterday. Got what I wanted for it and netted 81,000.00, to bad I have to give my wife ½ of it in the divorce. But still will be enough with the sale of my dads house to start building my retirement home. Not a lot going on in the news today. Never seem to hear from the President since no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Kind of hard to go before the American people and say anything now that justifies our Sons and Daughters being killed in IRAQ. Well, hope to learn a little JAVA and do some ASP coding. Take care of my users and answer a few phone calls.

Just another day of amazements. Today I heard Hillary Rodham Clinton interview on NPR "National Public Radio" She stated that when her husband was president that he was getting the same type of reports about IRAQ and weapons of mass destruction as the Bush administration got. The difference is the Democrats did not go to the extent of a preemptive strike against another country. War is an admission of failure in diplomacy. I still think the day we went to war with IRAQ was the darkest day in American History. It was the first time that America attacked another country that did not attack us first. Now the president is being investigated for not being honest with the American public. Keep in mind that I am a veteran and that I do support our troops even though I do not support the Republicans and their insistence in WAR!

Frustration – I purchased and paid full price for a Disney DVD movie for my grand-daughter. We had to set through 15 minutes of promos and ads before the movie started. There was no way to skip forward to the start of the movie. Come on, if we have to watch the ads then make the DVDs free. No wonder people copy DVDs. The businesses are there own worse enemy. I would have loved to have been part of the meeting where some Disney executive said that they believe the public will tolerate about 15 minutes of ads in order to watch the movie.

Constant Amazement - I read in Men’s Health Magazine that an American Soldier was captured in Afghanistan and was held for six months in captivity till he was finally freed. When he returned to the United States he was arrested for not paying child support during the six months in captivity. The judge told him he was sorry but the law was clear and sentenced him to six months in jail. "Have we all stopped thinking in this country!!!" What ever happened to common since?

Good morning cyber community. This is my personal diary of daily thoughts, insperations, troubles, and amazements.