For a three weeks we have been working from home. My wife and I are both doing this. We have a excellent garden, well stocked larders, freezers, and refrigerators. We both have a substantial amount of work on our horizons. We are both healthy. We wish that the shelter-in-place was not necessary. We wish others could do as well in light of the layoffs so many have experienced.
Our agreement on the issue of the perils of everyday life, especially the present day’s newest ones, is that we have always been so aware of what could go wrong, what we were able to overcome, and how in the end we survived, that we are very much less concerned for ourselves than most folks.
This does not mean we are not concerned for ourselves and for others. Our concern is for the people that have not ever worried about the perils surrounding them and how they remained oblivious to the danger. This current crisis is going to interfere with their life. How will they react? The greatest danger may be their awakening!
PUTIN TRUMP 2020
2020 Go with the REAL winner!
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NPD vs Disaster
Narcissistic Personality Disorder versus a world disaster is the subject of this epistle. We have a leader who self-deals so extensively that a pandemic is dismissed as “in control” and represented in direct contradiction to medical experts around the world. As a result of this individual’s efforts to cut CDC funding in previous years we are unprepared as a nation to react to this virus spread in our country. The very part of the CDC that was set up to deal with such things was dismantled by that same individual.
The nature of this pandemic is also been misrepresented. It does spread prior to an individual showing symptoms in up to 66% of the Covid-19 exposed individuals. The most adverse outcomes manifest themselves in older or immunity challenged individuals. The governmental reaction is to order sequester.
The most extreme example of the profound ignorance associated with our NPD damaged leader is the refusal to test for Covid-19 after being exposed to individuals with the virus. One can only hope the virus can correct those undesireable behaviors.
Impeachment
Today the House has conducted the debates among politicians, largely lawyers, that argued rules, policies, constitutional law, moral law, and the basis for impeachment.
When the guy on the top of the executive branch deals for himself, however and in whatever form, he is violating the laws of the people. This is not arguable through manipulations of language. To go further and slander and debase his critics is uncivilized.
The American democracy has very few political parties. The arguments being offered right now by some of the parties speaks to the lack of moral integrity that most of those folks enjoy. It is obvious that politicians will argue. Look at how little they have done in the last several decades.
The fond hope of the powers that are in charge at this moment is that they can wear down the American voters spirit, hide the real dealings going on, and otherwise exhaust us. This tends to keep folks away from the polls.
We need everyone to make it to the polls this next November. We cannot be indifferent, lax, tired, to busy, confused, or in any way diverted from our duty as citizens.
Bernard Lambert – December 18, 2019
What About Us?
What About The Citizens?
In the political frenzy being paraded in front of us let us not forget the purposes for which we elected the representatives and senators. Critical issues close to the safety, comfort, and health of individuals, their communities, their states, and their country are at risk of being ignored or “back paged” during these next months.
Our municipal, county, township, borough, state, region, and nation are not attached to the issues touted in the media or by the politicos. Quietly the money powers are redirecting our attention away from fundamental issues.
Human need starts with safety at the base of everything. If you’re feeling safe right now they have sufficiently redirected your attention.
If you feel like you belong to something, ask whether it is a form of shelter from the outside influences on your life. If you feel you belong to something ask whether it is shelter or enhancement of your life quality. If it is enhancement then the redirection has diverted you once again.
The air you breath, the water you drink, the havoc nature is wrecking on your surround, the nervousness you feel about affording anything, the lack of work and life balance, health, and countless other serious human issues are what our congress men and women are to be working on.
We have received none of these from the current government in Washington. Woe are the people who do not get out and vote in the next election.
- Bernard Lambert Friday the 13th of December 2019
The 70’s Miniseries
I just finished watching the miniseries The Seventies produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman. They also did The Sixties. It reminded me of what I grew up in and what went on around me. I highly recommend these.
The presentations provoked thoughts that had remained dormant for these many years and renewed how my present life was formed. I played in a band, I protested, I played sports in school, I went to concerts, I enjoyed all the youthful experiments in drugs, marijuana, sex, music, cars, motorcycles, and cohabitation. Our ideals were dismissed roundly in the early years. Many things have made it into the mainstream. The real loss has been our youthful optimisim.
While I remain optimistic about our lives in this world, I am convinced that there are large capable forces at work erasing and diminishing the hopes of the 60’s and 70’s.
Please comment on this subject.
BLL 2019-09-26
A Good Read On Facebook Use
I had this pop up on an index page:
It seems UC San Diego and Yale researchers have identified how emotional health deteriorates with Facebook use. The nature of the virtual social environment creates an adverse emotional sense of well being.
It is probably better for you to talk to the person next to you in the coffee shop… BL
Core Competency…REALLY?
I was engaged recently in a project to identify the traffic on a global network to solve slowdowns in the work being performed by engineers on high performance workstations.
The most difficult part of the work was the total lack of tools. The second most difficult thing was the failure of the management to be concerned about that.
The mission was to gather requirements to be submitted to enterprise network plan, build, and run teams so that the slowdown problems could be remediated.
As I began the requests went in for basic information like a global network map, monitoring tools, and access to machines in order to place probes.
Network maps, either physical or logical, were non- existent.
The monitoring tool was a well known more than adequate management and performance monitoring system that I had used for many years. It was not set up properly, it could not retain much information for analysis, and custom reporting access was refused. It was installed in three regions without any joining together of the database backends.
Requests to get access to the machines to place probes was refused.
While this is going on I learn that the purchase of undersized, out of specification, equipment for a remediation of a site that was a decade overdue was being done so that a schedule was met and the money spent before the end of a fiscal cycle. The kind of work to be done on the site had no bearing on the decision.
One other interesting thing was that all datacenters were to be consolidated by collapsing them into fewer and fewer sites all colocated off-site from existing corporate sites.
Everyone in every technical discipline was concerned that the plan was inadequate and that given past practices the future was not going to be good.
The corporation was grown by acquisition. It was not grown by innovation. Decades old talent that had worked at the acquired organizations left in droves. Those that remained were waiting for their retirement.
When asked about why the organization would place their data centers into another organizations hands the reply was “It is not our core competency”.
Given the experience one wonders what is their core competency? I know! Pass the buck.
Two Civilizations?
History tells us that civilizations rise and fall. Typically the nation state rises as it conquers the surrounding countryside and resources. Peoples are assimilated into this. The cycle is to pioneer the frontier, civilize the outlands, redistribute the resources and wealth, centralize power and distribution of the wealth, and tax production until the resources are overrun and go into decline. Concurrently government and its infrastructure further burdens the populace and the available natural resources.
Fast forward to today. We no longer make anything, as individuals, from the natural resources. Corporations have been formed to do most of that bidding with a scant few “hardy individualists” left to attempt it solo. With this love of the corporeal entity has come a furtherance of the civil and criminal rights of the non-human to the point of creating two civilizations.
If the corporation cannot feel pain and is only obligated to generate wealth at any expense then it is free of the normal human encumbrances like pain, hunger, love, empathy, and many other such feelings. Running roughshod over people and protecting their well being is not in corporate policy for the most part. Policy is sculpted to provide legal protections and not human protections.
The work of the marketeers, spindoctors, and politicos then becomes catering to the deep pockets of the corporations. Altered states of awareness are pushed onto the masses by every means imaginable in order to gain acceptance for the behavior of businesses and their representatives.
The general population is kept distracted by finance, need, manufactured want, and entertainment. As in Roman times; bread and circuses. Today it is popcorn, nuts, beer, hot dogs, halftime shows, and sporting events. And it is all sponsored by the corporeal entities.
Two civilizations exist and the general population is NOT the one benefiting the most from the experience.
What My Cover Letter & Resume Should Say
The resume is too long. Yes the resume is long because I have worked for decades and all of it is relevant.
When using the Internet for collecting job offers one places resumes and cover letters on myriad sites. The fond hope is that carefully crafted work fits the requirements of the individual looking for talented people.
Unfortunately in this day and age the process is layered with several people or web forms prior to getting to the actual individuals that can judge one’s abilities.
This brings to mind thoughts of what I would rather have said when wordsmithing the erudite cover letter and resume.
What follows is a mixture of venting and fun at the expense of the reviewer of my submitted products. It is in the form of their response followed by my response.
1. The resume is too long. Yes the resume is long because I have worked for decades and all of it is relevant.
2. An inventory of skills is just a list of “buzzwords”? No you idiot they are the actual hands-on devices, applications, and systems used in my experience.
3. The form of the resume is not in the correct “person”. May I point out that the form is not in the correct person’s hand?
4. There are too many jobs in a short time frame. Yes consulting work runs a few months to a year or so; seldom longer unless hired into the organization.
5. There needs to be more narrative. Wait a minute. You just complained it was too long.
6. The content is too technical. Duh! Who is reading this?
7. I do not see any relevant experience. Could you if I gave it to you in any other form? A documentary maybe?
8. There are only successes shown in the resume. What?
9. You should have a professional write you a resume. Would you recommend your secretary?
10. You should have a professional write you a resume. You were right…….and the massage was fantastic!