Stories's Log
This log represents the Life and Times of the Las Vegas Dude.
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Mon 
11/28/2005 07:15:21
 jim  I should add, that Firefox users can’t enter blog
This blog lets people enter in Formatted text. EG: FORMATTED
Which means a user doesn't have to know HTML to get a highlighted message across.
I suppose that I should be grateful for these differences in browsers.
Complicated machinery requires education to build and repair.
In my opinion, displaying and formatting a screen should and could be simple.
A designer, should not have to concern himself with HOW FAST something is displayed. That should be done by the rendering engine. It shouldn't be a consideration in every line of code written.
I started to use Dreamweaver, Frontpage, Word, Publisher, and Flash.
I chose to write all of the code for this system by hand.
The problem was, they keep you away from the code, and they generate tons of unused code.
When I get done with this system, I'll know exactly what every line of code does, unlike those guys, and my system will contain 90% less code.


With Tandem Cobol, the SORT command is a pig.
People still use it. Yes, it's in the manual. The alternative is simple. Create a key sequenced file, let Tandem manage the speed of the indexing, and it will not only be quicker, the sort will be rerunnable. For small files, it will never hit the disk. The Tandem is the best selection for online databases, meaning it can handle keyed files much better than in-memory sorts. And using key-sequenced files sure beats the heck out of writing a whole program to sort a file in an unrerunnable fashion.
People still use indexes and other ancient concepts presented by Cobol.
I just can't become one of those people. My code must be compact, readable, and efficient.
I don't know why I'm getting off on this tangent.
I guess it's because I'm seeing what a mess the internet has become. Instead of getting simpler, its getting more complicated. There is absolutely NO REASON to create another language for displaying a screen or to access a database.

Wed 
11/23/2005 04:38:17
 Jim  What motivates me is this, there’s one last thing
I could have retired. I could have wasted the rest of my life. I could have been out of the rat race.
There is something I'm supposed to accomplish. MY GOD told me this.
My god is nature, and nature doesn't speak English.


Nature makes you hungry, makes you have children and then protect them, all without words.
Nature's told me there's something I'm supposed to do, in the form of an instinctive feeling. I'll know when I've done it.
Then I can fade away. I give my body perhaps 10 more years.
Whatever is going to happen, it'll happen in the next couple of years.
It won't be me doing it though. It'll be nature doing it through me. I'll just doing what I've been told to do.
Maybe it's my destiny to save someone's life, I don't know yet.
Hopefully, I won't be a pawn anymore in ending other people's lives. I hate being the messenger of death.
For some reason, I've been given the understanding of what life is and why we are here.
But I can't share it with anyone, simply because, they just can't see it. You have to know it.
You have to listen to the god that created every cell in your body.
And God doesn't speak English.
I still don't understand why people don't marvel at a blade of grass.
I saw that it was a miracle when I was a child. Why would god have to do a magic show better than that?
We all have been risen from the dead. Why is that so hard for people to see?
Wed 
11/23/2005 04:17:37
 Jim  I talked to my Dad, and Mikey yesterday.
They both left me with a negative feeling about myself.
Dad, once again, compared me to the person whose roof he lives under.
His wife's son is a computer professional. According to Dad, he gets contracts all of the time.
So, what's wrong with me.
I could try to tell Dad that I'm not a coder, I'm a designer.
My goal is to create a product that doesn't need my high rates, or a high level of competency to maintain.
If I get contracted to write a report on a system, it won't be just a report.
It'll be the most efficiently written report in the entire system. It will be the best report they have.
I would consider part of my job to be writing a report in such a way, that a 6th grader could modify it.
I could write code that only I could modify. I could even write code with hidden bugs in it.
But that's not my style. I don't want to make a living off of a set of programs.
If his wife's son is always getting contracts to make updates on the same set of programs, it's probably crappy code.
He's making a living off of being sloppy. His code is unmaintainable by anyone else.
My legacy to Las Vegas is a series of Tandems that sit in the basement somewhere.
One person updates it. He does't need any eduction. He runs a menu.
There is no programming expertise needed to maintain it.
I talked to Mikey. He said talked to Kevin.
Kevin told me there wouldn't be anything out there until after the holidays.
He told Mikey something was coming up in Washington and that they'd be willing to train Java programmers.
I put that together like this, fuck em. I've never used headhunters in the past, except for this one time. I learned their tecniques back in the 70's. I know what they do. I know how to they get jobs for people. It's not rocket science.
But I'm not looking for a job right now.
If I was, I wouldn't be using a headhunter. I'd be using my time to make my own contracts. I'd cut the middle layer of incompetency out of the process. A headhunter, an employment office, a job councellor, none of these people are necessary in obtaining work. If they get in the way, they are useless.
About the Raymond James interview, one more time.
I was glad that I didn't get a job working there. They seemed too slow and too incumbered by unnecessary details to be a place where I could be creative. If I worked like that on this website, I'd be spending most of my time filling out forms I created. On this site, I can create more in one day, than I could in one year working there.
About M2, one more time.
It may be fine, for someone else to sit at a desk, and write code exactly as they had been told to do. To me, doing that would make me unnecessary for the project. Why wouldn't the person who wrote the code and showed me exactly where to put it, just write the code herself? Billing comes to mind. They need a body to say that they wrote the code, so they can bill for that person's time. In other words, I'd be useless following marching orders like that.
I'd be last chair, last clarinet, in the band. And that is just not my style!


Every day in this life should count. We have 30000 days to live here. We can decide to waste or not waste each day.

Wed 
11/23/2005 03:36:16
 Jim  When you work, work hard. When you play, play hard
That would be my formula for a good life.
I wanted Becky to be involved in the evolution of this website.
We went to Walmart and bought some cheap desks. Now they are sitting side by side in the bedroom.
I want Becky to help me accomplish something cool. Any female can give birth to a child. Thats as natural as breathing.
Very few people give birth to ideas.
She's already helped me bunches and she doesn't even know it.
Becky's biggest contribution to this sites development, is her not understanding how to use it. |
Everyone has talents. I need her talent to finish this site. If this site can be broken, she can show me how.
She'll try to do things on it without reading the instructions. She doesn't see the functionality of this site, she see's the flash and pizazz of it.
Henry Ford was a genius of sorts. I think they called him "The Father of the Assembly Line". 
His accomplishments wasn't so much the Ford vehicle, it was the assembly lines where the Fords were built. To make the assembly more efficient, he didn't study the hardest worked, he studied the laziest one. The laziest people figured out how to do the same amount of work, with the least amount of effort. They thought about what they did.
He turned Mass Production into the science it is today.
Wed 
11/23/2005 03:14:58
 Jim  Fun day. It was full of clashes.
I got irritated at Becky because she didn't seem to know anything much about setting up my website.
I told her we have a choice.
That's to be poor, or not to be poor. The way to be poor was to waste each and every day.
The way to get ahead, is to make each and every day count.
If its spacing out the days until the end that she wants, then we should go into truck driving now.
To me, that is slow suicide.
I want to make each day count. I want to do things most people don't do. I do not want to be normal.
Life is a gift. We have a choice. We can appreciate it, or we can take it for granted.
I think most people take life for granted.
Sat 
11/19/2005 11:08:49
 Jim  I may find out who hires for the Starship Cruise L
It seemed to me that I'd be a good fit for one of those boats. I can deal, maintain their systems, and fix things. Everything there was so familiar. I know I could improve their marketting strategy too. The boat had mainly drive bys (like us), and bus people on it. Most of the people their would never be the targets of a Las Vegas casino.
I was dying to fix half the things I saw. I was this || close to fixing one of their toilets
Their slot enrollment wouldn't let you combine points. It couldn't handle joint memberships. Data entry was rough.
Their cruise reservations was clunky. After signing someone up, you had to search for their name in the database and pull up a change screen to see what you had entered. It looked like a cheesy system.
Tue 
11/15/2005 09:48:59
 Jim  I’m taking a Brainbench test for Cobol 74
Mon 
11/14/2005 03:57:51
 Jim  Feeling kind of lost
Reloading my laptop has left me with some strange feelings. I keep asking myself "What am I doing?".
There is no right or wrong way to do anything in this life,
and in a sense, the future is as much written as the past.
But still, trapped in the present, I feel like I may be doing the wrong thing.
I wonder what would have happened if we never came here. I wonder what would have happened if I didn't quit M2.
I only proved one thing by quitting M2, which was to myself. 
I won't let anyone demean me for any amount of money. I'll alway choose to keep my integrity intact.
The direction I'm headed doesn't seem to be as clear cut as I'd like it to be.
I'm wondering though the present.
Sun 
11/13/2005 09:29:26
 becky  Saturday
Hi Babe
I had a great time last night at the dog race. I would like to go again
but let's try the one in Daytona it is a lot bigger. I was very suprised
that we won. You are right about the people there were pretty wierd
looking. I liked the Aquarium with the big fish at the Oyster Bar. The
guy Smitty was a nice there
.


Love Ya
becky

Sat 
11/12/2005 09:31:35
 Jim  Net info
0A0B0C0D0E

Fri 
11/11/2005 15:39:51
 Jim  HP Chat
Sammy: Hello Jim,
Sammy: Welcome to HP Total Care for Pavilion Notebooks. My name is Sammy. How may I help you today?

Jim Cutlar: This my 3rd time back today. I have a HP Pavilion ze4600 Notebook PC (AMD) 
Sammy: I am sorry for the inconvenience caused to you, Jim.
Jim Cutlar: The laptop's monitor started blinking on and off. The dvd's decoder seemed to be having problems. I installed some softpacs from the HP site. Then, after flashing BIOs...it fails to work.
Sammy: Have you flashed the exact BIOS?
Jim Cutlar: I just hooked an external monitor to the laptop. It had no response. The power light is on. The special keys blink.
Jim Cutlar: I believe something may have gone wrong wit the flash. I waited for it to finish for over an hour.
Sammy: Jim, I have just been through your previous chat session.
Sammy: Are you able to download the service manual?
Jim Cutlar: I downloaded it, and read it. From what I read, the chip is not replacable, and may be reflashable.
Jim Cutlar: The laptop won't boot with a USB floppy though.
Jim Cutlar: I started to follow the instructions for removing the motherboard, but, unless I can rejumper it to go back to factory spec, I'm not sure what good that would do.
Sammy: Jim, I suggest you to take the notebook to nearest Authorized Service Provider and have a check by a technician.
Jim Cutlar: That sounds like a great idea. I wonder if there's one in Orlando.
Sammy: Sure, I will help you with this.
Sammy: Could you please give me the zip-code?
Jim Cutlar: 32714
Sammy: Here is the information:

Altamonte Springs CompUSA Superstore (4 Miles)
Store # 607
130 E. Altamonte Drive
Altamonte Springs, FL 32701
Store Hours Mon - Sat: 9am - 9pm | Sun: 11am - 6pm
Phone Numbers Main: (407) 339-8009 Fax: (407) 261-4098
Service Center: (407) 261-4075

Sammy: Orlando CompUSA Superstore (15 Miles)
Store # 309
7802 South Orange Blossom Trail
Orlando, FL 32809
Store Hours Mon - Sat: 9am - 9pm | Sun: 11am - 6pm
Phone Numbers Main: (407) 438-1270 Fax: (407) 852-2298
Service Center: (407) 852-2275

Jim Cutlar: Thank yo very much. I'm worried that I may have invalidated my warrentee. Do you think I did by trying to fix the CDRom problem?
Fri 
11/11/2005 01:14:20
 Guest  .Just great! My laptop is toast.
Possible linux bootable os from disk or imige for furtur? kanotix is nica.  run os off disk entire no installation, parting.
Hey , this is old posto, 2005, never mend.  Mebbe you bios was scared of wat it see when u flashed it , he he.
anyways, its me, wRren.  Im not loaded yo, jest baked.  like by the mother of all suns.  hey what a nutty place ..
im watching a nice dvd on Lenny bRuce.  Lenny, Jimi Hendrix, Layne Staley, such courageously naked people.
anyways. peace. 
Tue 
11/08/2005 07:30:10
 Jim  With computers, people use jargon to create whole
To use words like OOP in a sentence even sounds stupid.
OOP is not a computer command. Its not a program. Its not a language.
It's a magazine's description for something we've been doing for years.
Just because someone says its new, doesn't make it new. It only makes the word new.
Until this century, Shakespear added more words to the English language than any other entity.
Microsoft and Ibm have more than doubled the number of words in the English Language.
Sun 
11/06/2005 16:54:46
 Jim  Just to clean off my desk
Tuesday at noon - Lunch with Enricci 407-551-1319 or 213-408-0236
Tommorrow at noon - Raymond James interview in Tampa.
Remain calm, if they ask about M2, say:
- M2 wasn't what I was looking for.
- I'm looking for personal growth in a challenging environment.
- I'm also looking for stability and long term employment.
Sun 
11/06/2005 16:49:19
 Jim  I bought a suit (pants to match) at Sears today.
Jimbo, man, you look marveloussss.....lol.
Shoes, suit, pants, and two ties cost $160. That's not a bad price to pay to look snazzy.
We also got a portable Dvd/Cr Reader/Writer.
If I don't back up some of this stuff, I'm going to lose it.
Fri 
11/04/2005 19:43:54
 Jim  I talked to my good ol buddy Jerry Newberry today
What a great guy! We think alike. Its nice to talk to a like mind.
I needed to find some kind of solace in my decision. He gave it to me.
He was a Tandem guru since it first came out, so he understood everything I told him.
And it was nice to hear from another developer.
He said he absolutely.hated doing maintenance code.
He did it at Bank of America on Base24.
Same thing I was doing...add a chunk of code, then talk or document it for days.
He said he talked to Kevin McDonald and he's the head of some IT department for BOA.
Good ol Kevin. What a die hard. I should call his butt an give him a hard time.


Hmmmm. Its nice to be known by people in high places.

Fri 
11/04/2005 14:03:10
 mike  Linda flaxed your timesheet to STJ
So there.......haha
Fri 
11/04/2005 06:45:12
 Jim  When I think about a job, I think about where I’ll
With this job, I saw myself doing the same thing I was doing on the first day I started:
-  30 minutes: Being told about a line of code they want added
-  10 minutes: Adding that line of code and recompiling.
-360 minutes: testing that line of code


-  25 minutes: documenting it that line of code, in the code (5 lines), in a document, a time sheets and a task list.


-  60 minutes: talking about that line of code, if I did anything other than exactly what I was told to do.
From the times above you can see that one programmer who just coded could replace all of the other programmers.
But, that's what maintenance programmers do, I guess. They don't code, they test and document. Thats messed up.

Development programmers use their time as follows:
- Designing and programming are interactive with the user and takes up about 90% of the time.
- The users are almost always happy to create the documentation. The design specs change in the development cycle.
- It's typical to write several hundred lines of code each day.
I can honestly say I didn't learn anything new in the last month.
If I stayed, I would have learned how to mindlessly write sloppy code. I can't do that. I care about the quality of my work.
The worst thing I saw about this job was: myself slowly going broke with no reputation to show for it.
In programming, if you don't gain new skills, you are almost worthless.
The only way to keep a job without learning new things is to lock yourself in. You can do that working for the government, or some big corporation where noone knows what or how you do what you do.
Usually, the people who have seniority in a programming shop, are the people with the fewest skills.
They haven't learned other ways of doing things, and they usually think their way is the only way.
They almost always say, "Thats not the way we do it here". 
Any programmer who reads this, should realize it is the truth.
Bad coders get promoted, while the good coders move on.
About job recruiters. They're great for when you don't know anyone, and you haven't established a reputation.
However, once you've been at a place for awhile, if you do exceptional work, people will talk about what you've done. When you leave a job, people will call you wanting to hire you. If they don't, then you have either a bad reputation or none.
We all sell ourselves by what we do. If we don't care about what we do, others will see that.
And there was no way I was going to get a good reputation at a place that controlled every thing I did.

Thu 
11/03/2005 13:56:03
 Jim  We’re gonna go to St Petersburg Monday
I got a call from Pete Strickland (702-425-413-1580)

I have an interview on Monday 11/7 12pm, at Raymond James
Ask for Lisa Tomberlin in the IT Contracts Group, she works with Brian
It's at 880 Carillon Pky, St Petersburg, Fl 33733
I should dress up and the interview may be somewhat technical.

                  

Thu 
11/03/2005 08:01:13
 Jim  Yesterday, I worked on two tasks.
It seemed like the third part of the task was missing, forgotten or unassigned.
I asked Jeff about it and he told me he had the third part of it.
No one told me, and I've learned I'm not supposed to assume anything.
Now thats just fucked up.
Wed 
11/02/2005 09:43:05
 Jim  It irritates me how little people think for themse
Once again, someone has said something demeaning about Smoking
I've known hundreds of smokers in my lifetime. Of them, only one has died from cancer.
Only one. I don't know if she smoked, but she almost died at my house on Gabriel Drive.
They've died of heart attacks, accidents, sucide and pneumonia.
In my opinion, several of them would have lived longer if they didn't have surgery.
But, that's just what I've seen with my own eyes.
Please note that the following does not mention deaths caused by old age, or deaths occurring after major surgeries.
Leading Causes of Death in the US (2002):
 1-Heart Disease: 696,947
 2-Cancer: 557,271
 3-Stroke: 162,672
 4-Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,816
 5-Accidents (unintentional injuries): 106,742

 6-Diabetes: 73,249
 7-Influenza/Pneumonia: 65,681
 8-Alzheimer's disease: 58,866

 9-Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 40,974
10-Septicemia: 33,865


11-Suicide: 31,655
12-Liver Disease: 27,257
13-Hypertension: 20,261
14-Homicide: 17,638
15-Pneumonitis: 17,593
Other Causes: 407,900

What you don't see is this:

http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/Editorials/Vol-1/e1-4.htm


Journal of Theoretics Vol.1-4
Oct/Nov 1999 Editorial

Smoking Does Not Cause Lung Cancer

(According to WHO/CDC Data)*
By:  James P. Siepmann, MD

Yes, it is true, smoking does not cause lung cancer. 
It is only one of many risk factors for lung cancer.
I initially was going to write an article on how the professional literature and publications misuse the language by saying "smoking causes lung cancer"1,2, but the more that I looked into how biased the literature, professional organizations, and the media are, I modified this article to one on trying to put the relationship between smoking and cancer into perspective. (No, I did not get paid off by the tobacco companies, or anything else like that.)

When the tobacco executives testified to Congress that they did not believe that smoking caused cancer, their answers were probably truthful and I agree with that statement.
Now, if they were asked if smoking increases the risk of getting lung cancer, then their answer based upon current evidence should have be "yes." 
But even so, the risk of a smoker getting lung cancer is much less than anyone would suspect.  
Based upon what the media and anti-tobacco organizations say, one would think that if you smoke, you get lung cancer (a 100% correlation) or at least expect a 50+% occurrence before someone uses the word "cause." 

Would you believe that the real number is < 10% (see Appendix A)? Yes, a US white male (USWM) cigarette smoker has an 8% lifetime chance of dying from lung cancer but the USWM nonsmoker also has a 1% chance of dying from lung cancer (see Appendix A). 
In fact, the data used is biased in the way that it was collected and the actual risk for a smoker is probably less. 
I personally would not smoke cigarettes and take that risk, nor recommend cigarette smoking to others, but the numbers were less than I had been led to believe. 
I only did the data on white males because they account for the largest number of lung cancers in the US, but a similar analysis can be done for other groups using the CDC data.

You don't see this type of information being reported, and we hear things like, "if you smoke you will die", but when we actually look at the data, lung cancer accounts for only 2% of the annual deaths worldwide and only 3% in the US.**

  

Tue 
11/01/2005 18:34:35
 Jim  So Here’s The Plan:
- My last day at M2 is Friday.


- Next week I want to finish our tour of Florida.

- I may end up getting a job at Raymond James working on Web Development. I want that.
- If I don't find work, I'm going to work on my website, with marketting being my goal.


- If, by January, I haven't made any money off of my sites or found work then I'm going to take a Truck Driving School. 


- We'll live either here or in Las Vegas, depending on our money situation.
- If do go into Trucking, my goal will be to own a truck, then a fleet of trucks.

Tue 
11/01/2005 07:45:36
 Jim  Friday’s my last day at M2
Dang...I really wanted to talk to Mike Muscato (the owner).
His resume reads exactly like mine.
All I wanted was 5 minutes of his time, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get even that.
I think I'll bust a nut to see the man.
I know if we talked about the old times with the ATM's and the switch networks, he'd place me someplace more appropriate than the change one line of code and talk about it for an hour position I've been in. There's a chance he's even heard of me. The Inn switch is probably as well know as the Star Network in Nevada (I think).
Mon 
10/31/2005 07:51:19
 Jim  As much as I enjoyed last weekend, there were some
The condo was nice, but I felt like we were imposing somehow. It didn't feel right.
Plus my aunt wouldn't let us pay for anything. She insisted on paying for 2 lunches and a dinner.
It was hard to get her to smile. I was being my perky self, and Becky's always perky.
She like Becky a lot, but, I suppose all of the things she'd heard about me from my Dad and Kelly got in the way of things.
I bought her a Billy Bob Big Mouth Bass Plaque. She said her cats would like it.
She kept going on about how we were killing ourselves by smoking.
Both her and her husband had smoked. She still drinks a little. He died this year.
I kept saying that we all die from something when we get old. Old age is never listed as a cause of death.
She implied that I wanted to die. I just told her, no...I'm just not afraid of living.
Then we got on the thing about the medallion. She said her mom made a mistake by letting dad have it.
Then she said she was surprised Sonny let me take it out of his safety deposit box. My jaw dropped.


We openned the box and put it in there. It got stolen when I was documenting it. Someone broke a window to get into my house. I have a police report...sheesh!
When we talked about Kelly, I mentioned how Kelly could be dangerous.
She told everyone, including people I worked with that I dropped LSD and drove 24 hours her to Colorado Springs, which is stupid. I said, I had tried LSD, but that was long ago, and that Kelly mistook NoDose for drugs.
Kelly was badly mistaken.
My aunt got stuck on the LSD part. She asked why I did it and I said, everybody was doing it back then. She said, her kids and grand kids never did drugs, but her son might have smoked pot. I wanted to say, yea, right.
Then she got off on how poorly my Mom must have raised me.
How I must have gotten a lot of my traits from the Rogers.
I told her the Rogers were basically dull but very dependable people.
They'd get a job and work it all their lives, and they were very predictable.


I don't think Becky heard a lot of this because my aunt is such a low talker.
I doubt we'll be going back up there to visit any time soon.

Thu 
10/27/2005 13:53:12
 Jim  CBHLD
I reduced the code by 66% in RCBHLD. By removing cluttered logic.
In SCBHLD, I reduced the code by 41%.


And, I added functionality.


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