- If you have a S-Corp, go 1099. You'll have more write offs and will pay almost half in taxes.
- If  you can go W4 and you live out of state, get your contract amended to include Per Diem as part of your wage.
Never fall in love with a contract.
Outsiders usually know whats going on inside your company before you do.
Insiders may know whats going, but will be reluctant to talk about it.
Reviewing Monster and Dice will tell you a lot (query your position and area). Company websites often tell you a lot.
In this information age, truth can be extrapolated from bits and pieces collected through various resources.
In most cases, contractors are frowned upon
It looks like they draw more income, which isn't true.
Full Timers and Salaried Workers may do better than Consulants, even though they make less.
Judging income by looking at hourly wage is a bit bone headed.
A full timer at $30 an hour may end up doing better than a contractor at $40 an hour.
- In most cases, contractors usually don't get paid a vacaton, sick days, employer matched 401k's, and worst of all group health insurance
- 1099 Contractors pay full state taxes, FICA, health insurance (if they can get it) and may have to pay unemployment insurance and workmans compensation.
- The big perk for being an hourly contractor is, you get paid for every hour you work.
Salaried employees often work 60+ hours a week, uncompensated.
I think in general, if you are a programmer, there are no stable positions.
Unless you move up the ladder, you are expendable.
Since outsourcing became popular in the 90's, both salaried employees and consultants have become major targets of budget cuts.
- I've seen situations where almost all of the salaried programmers were laid off, and the contractors were kept.
- I've seen situations where an entire floor of an apartment building was rented to house foreign contractors for an all expense paid contract. 
These foreign contractors make far less in wages. Often, they send most of what they make back to their families. Its almost impossible for natives to compete with that.
However, with the rise of foreign contractors, comes the rise of communication failures. I believe Business Analyst have become popular for that reason.
For these reasons, with management overloading, what used to take a week to impliment, may now take 6 months.
Plus, unlike 10 years ago, when I had one boss, I now have many.
It is important to maintain a network of contacts
Whether salaried, full time, or contracting, everybody is subject to the ax.
In the end, maybe half of the people I've known end up on the street.
The best thing you can do to remain stable is to find a niche.
I think that in the struggle for management to quantify what programmers do
- the cost has been dead paperwork
- documention that no one looks at
- meetings that sometimes involve over 100 people most of which don't have a clue about what is going on
- Constant updates of your status
- Paranoid procedures have been developed. Often, security procedures are created by people who do know the application.
The following is a good story to share.
I made an error, or so it would seem. I wasn't allowed to see productions configuration until implementation day. Its configuration was different than our test system.
I could have fixed the configuration in one minute, but instead, I had to back my programs out and do a workaround. That took 3 months.
I got a black eye for that, but I don't blame myself. I blame poorly designed management procedures and horrible security implementations. To much management means slower responses. Too much security may mean months of red tape to cut through.

It looks like another wonderful day in Pittsburgh.
I can't begin to describe my feelings.
I wake up in the morning and a cardinal is peeping at my door. I toss it some peanuts. Then out comes Scats, our friendly chipmunk, who fills up his ever expanding cheeks with peanut morsels.
Life is everywhere and it seems boundless. From critters the size of a speck, to the bounding deer traversing the mountain slopes, it's incredible.
My contract should end in September.
And when I go, all my memories of this place, and its beautiful people, will be frozen in a place where there's no space, and no time.
So if you catch me sometime,
looking at nothing with a smile on my face, that is where I'll be. These last few years have been the best of my life.
I want to leave this life happy,
in my sleep like my Grandfather, and not like the other people in his car yelling and screaming.

While creating a log called Obits, I came across a letter that is very special.
This letter was written by my Mom after my Grandfather died.

My Mom was a beautiful person.
I remember leaving her hours before she passed on. I kissed her, told her I loved her so much. She waved at me with one of those red, glowing sensors on her finger and smiled so big.
I never thought she was going to die in her sleep hours later. My wife (Ruth) and I had prepared a room for her at my house, for when she got out. Mom seemed to get around just fine.
But I was so busy in those days. I had to reinstall almost all of the applications at Caesars that month.
Maybe I saw, but I didn't notice that my Mom, my best friend in this life, was slipping away.
Mom died 10 years to the day, after her husband (Dave Leblanc) died. Dave, Mom, and my Grandfather died just before their insurance ran out.
Dave was my step-dad, and what a great guy he was.
Almost all of the people I loved from that period are gone now. Only my brother and I are left to honor their memories.

Is reality what we experience?
If others don't experience what we do, is our perception real or imagined?
All of those voices in our head, what are they? Do our dreams tell us what to do in our daily lives?
I've seen things that I rarely get a chance to talk about.
Because this blog offers mostly my perspective of life, through pictures and words, I feel I can voice freely some of what I've seen.
I know that there is much more to this life than I can imagine.
I see an intelligent force around me every day. It must be millions, if not billions of years old.
And I know that our brain holds the knowledge of how are body was built as well, and this knowledge is denied to our consciousness.
I've seen animals that learn to walk much faster than humans after being born. Do they dream about walking before being born?
We aren't given the tools to understand reality.
Why? I will never know using this brain with its senses. We are severily limited in our thinking.
Sometimes I think our brain is like a 20 year old PC. We can't do a lot with it. One person is gifted with math, another is gifted with music, but nobody has it all.
Its nice to know others have gifts, and I'm not just talking about people. I'm talking about every living thing I see.
Perhaps, nothing I do in this life really matters to anyone here today, including myself, but it will matter millions of years from now.
It seems sad that eternity simply can't exist for this brain. Its amazing how much this body has changed forms since I was born.
It makes sense to me that I've been here, changing and having many different forms for a very long time, long before my body and mind existed. 
It always amazes me that I was once a small fertilized egg. Logic tells me that when I was born, everything in the universe worked its way up to my creation.
If everything hadn't happened exactly the way it did, I wouldn't be here.
If my Mom hadn't met my Dad, if my grandparents didn't ride a trolley together in New York...and so on, if anything had been different, I wouldn't exist in this form.
That seems clear to me.
And I believe we die every day. Our skin dies, our memories die, our body is constantly replenishing dead cells with new cells everyday.
We host over 30 trillion living cells in our body. Our perspective changes all of the time. We aren't any single thing. We are part of the universe, and we are many.
But if someone sees life as being something different than what I see, who am I to say they are wrong.
All I have is my perspective on life.
I like this article.
Almost everyone writes better than I do.
Anyway, click here to read something a little more eliquent than what I've wrote.
Its comforting to know that after 100s of years, few things that were said today will be remembered. However, everything we do today is part of a chain of events that will create a different kind of future. Everything we did, will matter.

I hear rain falling. Cars are treading their way through the flooded roadways. It takes me back to a timeless place in my mind and its a good feeling. I feel young again.
A friend has layed down for her last time. She's counting the hours. 
All of the old times in our past, the partying with the gang, picking each other up from the floor and falling down again, us laughing at ourselves.
We had crazy times of constant fun, with never a bad word to say.
Almost all of the old gang is gone now. They came and went like an afternoon dream.
And I'm left here, listening to the rain fall, remembering with a smile...
while counting the days.
 

Last week was HOT! It got up to the high 80's. All of the trees that were brown the week before, are now green. Where do the bushes that looked like sticks the week before get all of that green stuff! I'm awed by the event. Plants are full of action. All you have to do is notice them.
Magoos Bar and Restaurant
Magoos is just up the hill from our apartment on Old Perry Highway.The food was excellent and they have live bands every Tuesday and Saturday.
Near there, was an ancient bowling alley hidden in the back of a small, self deteriating mall. It was full of leaguers.
Walnut Grove
Wednesday, we rendevoused with a coworker at Walnut Grove in Cranberry They have live jazz at 9 pm on Wednesdays. The food, music and company were GREAT.
Mt Pleasant Drive-In
Friday, we ended up at a drive-in 65 miles south of Pittsburgh. You wouldn't believe it. There were three screens surrounding a grassy field. The burgers were hand shaped (old fashioned style), and the ambience was festive. We caught the tail end of Hannah Montana (which was surprisingly good). People clapped at the ending! We came to see Witch Mountain with the Rock.
Rita's Ice Cream
We swung by and tried some of Pittsburgh's famed ice cream. I figured it must be good if people are lined up there in the winter time. I had my first Gellato. I don't know why I was thinking it would have Jello in it, but it was delicious. One of Pittsburgh's various surprisings is its Ice Cream College! Strange, but true.
New Glasses for Becky
Let's see, what else did we do? Oh, I bought Becky a new pair of glasses (expensive little boogers). She was in tears, she was so happy. I didn't expect that.
It was beautiful.
IBM Thinkpad for work
Yesterday, I finally got my laptop for support work. Its old, but does the job. I like Thinkpads. I especially like the mouse stick they put on the keyboard. Its light, has a docking station for work, and now I have two monitors!!! Now I have an excuse to stay at home on the weekends...and not wander the country aimlessly, looking for new and exciting places.