Cyber Security...CyberWar Is At Our Door

We now know (actually already a year ago in 2017) that a 757 sitting on the tarmac can be weaponized through cyber attack. Trains can be weaponized. We have a problem that needs an answer... yesterday.

Boeing 757

This makes me sad. I was part of a cybersecurity group in the late 90s early 2000s dedicated to bringing business, police and government together on issues of cyber security. We did good work, we made advances.

We decreased the distrust between government and computer experts, "white hat" (good) hackers and law enforcement. Those efforts continue to this day. But I have retired and am onto other ventures and adventures. I did my time. I no longer have to live that frustration and yet today? I find I still am. Only now from a distance.

We tried to warn people on both sides going back twenty years and yet, we are still now in this situation when we had so long ago had warned so many! Our issue back then was in part that corporations paid too little or no attention to actual cyber security issues. Those were the days when it wasn't as big as some of us knew it would eventually be. Just as it is today.

Why didn't CEO's and government listen? Government has special issues that slow things down and for good reason for the most part. But business can and sometimes does move as they wish ,if they wish it, and yet... they mostly have not.

We argued in part back then that corporations weren't even spending 1% of their budget or even of their IT budgets, on cybersecurity issues. When it should have been closer to 10%. That may have been extreme, but in light of today, of reality, was it really? Invest and innovate, or pay later.

IF they had done that, back then? We would not be in the position today that we find ourselves in. And that, is a fact.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's motto of "Move fast and break things" and his explanation of that in 2013: "We want to build our culture and our infrastructures, that we just try to move, you know, one or two clicks faster than, than other companies. And, you know, sometimes we go to fast and we mess up a bunch of stuff and then we have to fix it. And that's cool."

Really Mr. Zuckerberg? Because that actually seems to exemplify a vast misunderstanding of how the internet works. That may be how it worked back in the 90s. Maybe. When security was low and "black hat" type bad actor hackers and criminals were still gearing up, learning how to abuse a good thing. But today you really have to KNOW exactly what you're doing online. Especially when you are responsible for literally billions of people on your platform.

An article came out this week from Axios Codebook about this related to our Congress:

"Only 6 House candidates spent $1,000 on cybersecurity"

"The defining moment in the 2016 election was Russia's breach of the Democratic National Committee. Two years later, McClatchy reports that candidates for Congress are knowingly underspending on cybersecurity — with only 6 spending more than $1,000."

As we've seen, there is also the potential for very bad things to happen IF you... 1) don't know what can happen because you haven't fully planned out the potential for good AND bad things to happen, and 2) you have to fully understand that business as usual as you have planned it out, in order to make money off that platform, off those people, can indeed damage not only those individuals using your platform, but also entire countires.

Because, there are bad actors out there, predators, whose lives are devoted to finding ways, people and platforms to abuse, with no moral or ethical concerns. When you have a platform that large, you also have an oversized responsibility to be not only fully aware of how your platform and your business model can positively AND negatively affect people, but you also have to be better possibly, than you even are capable of.

And that is a serious concern.

Rather than increase their cyber security efforts and budgets smoothly, easily, over the years to more than they thought they needed it (and their cyber people knew they needed but were ignored or given miniscule, fly by night amounts to work with), they could by now have organically prepared over those past years (if not decades) to have spent less money overall. Consider what it cost Sony in their North Korean hack for the film, The Interview.

Rather than the cost now a days as well as having their reputation dragged through the mud and in losing even more money because of their lack of attention and resources and due to such bad actors as China, North Korea and Russia, just to name a few of today's major players.

Why? Capitalism run rampant? Defective corporate thinking? Yes, to be sure. But also a business as usual desire, based in greed and funneling too much money to shareholders and other such types. Rather than putting money into hyper serious concerns that merely weren't a concern to those in power at the time. Not until it was too late.

Maintaining bottom lines where the risk was considered worth it and they could not see that not only was it not worth it, but that risk was far greater than they could be made to understand, or even imagine.

Because the threat wasn't just for that year, or the year after, but in future years. It was the difference between simply installing a piece of software protection, or a method, and having a mindset that evolved over the years to come, to orient the corporation or government department in a certain way.

To see the future, then. To have build a paradigm, a mindset that would endure and evolve over time to protect and defend and protect profits and the American citizen, way of life, and national health. Both economically and emotionally.

Too often companies were saved only through the dedicated and excessive workloads of their computer IT departments. Not because they were there but because they had to make themselves overworked.

Rather than those typically overburdened, over educated, overdedicated IT workers receiving the necessary funding (which seldom happened) as well as confidence from management. The corporate attitude from on high so typically was (and still is):

"We pay them, so do your job!" Rather than "We delved into it, then give them what they needed to DO their job. We compensated them "appropriately." And we have confidence in them as they have gratitude in us for going that extra mile, for them, for us, and for our stock holders, customers, or citizens."

But that isn't the case.

It would be disingenuous for typically lucky management to point and say, "But we didn't have a devastating hack!" While they may not have known what they barely avoided, perhaps too many times. All because of the dedicated overworked efforts of their security IT people and perhaps...just good luck,

Those far too many times, they did have a successful hack against them. All too often, even. It has in fact been the point of many companies, credit card companies that the way they protected their card holders was simply to forgive their having been hacked, and absorb the cost.

Having set aside annually so much loss for fraud and hacks and yet, they still made billions of dollars overall. Simply in part, because they did not put the money and resources into handling things correctly because it seemed to frequently to those who did not understand, at the top, that it was simply money thrown away to protect themselves properly. To research and develop proactively. To overburden their IT shops rather than hire enough people and expend the money necessary to truly protect themselves.

Ignorance. It is the mainstay of business and the political party of business in this country. In all countries.

LUCK is NOT how you win wars. Be it cyber or otherwise. Nor is ignorance. Something we see as a governing body today in our current conservative Republican Trump administration.

We are now beyond that point while Russians and others have already tested our systems and have a good idea what to do if and when they choose to do it. To truly attack, on a massive scale. But again we are still protected by MAD (nuclear weapon Mutually Assured Destruction). Because a massive attack would surely need to lead to a nuclear war. It would have to. And they (Russians, North Korea, etc.) now that.

And so they attack under the wire, under the trigger point, in hitting our social media, oru elections and other things. Some of which we seldom hear about in public due to "national security issues."

And so our primary perceived protection? MAD, still. Physical war when a cyberwar is perpetrated upon us. Does that make you feel all warm and fuzzy and secure? Because, it shouldn't. Look what Russia did and what our response was and has been to cyber attacks on our 2016 and soon (and still) 2018 elections. Pathetic.

To be sure, we are more protected now than we were during the 2016 election or the previous one before it. But that does not say we are safe enough yet, and we do have a lot of work left, costly work even, to get there.

It's time already, time passed twenty years ago when we were first warned.

Stop looking only at profit. It's destroying this country in a counter intuitive paradigm anathema to  the purposely ignorant conservative, corporate, capitalist mind.

Tough beans, people. This, is reality.

On My Retirement - The Beginning - Part 2

Now that my retirement papers have been turned in, everyone notified, the news made public that I am retiring, I have to consider my out of workforce position, and my next steps.

I have to remember several things.

I have lived a very structured life with getting up at 5AM for a decade, ending work at 3PM. Originally then commuting from Seattle to my home in Squamish, a two hour journey that including walking through Seattle to the ferry, a 35 minute ride to Bainbridge Island, a bus ride that was anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour for the 11 mile trip, depending on traffic, weather, and accidents or road work.

Or that stupid house on the north side of the road that every year put up an unbelievable amount of Christmas decorations that people couldn't help but to slow down and further impact commutre traffic home. Everyone pretty much on the commuter bus hated that when all we wanted to do was to get home and traffic was always too slow anyway without that light display that we had to deal with, year, after year, after year, winter after winter.

I have to remember that my job in IT work, working on front line servers to the public for a four state not for profit corporation on their software, applications, web servers, supporting web site developers, programmers and others, required a high level of functionality. The problem solving skills it required, the attention to detail, the starting and finishing things, the responsibility to the team, the company, the mission, the responsibility to proactively do what might never be noticed but should be done, the being aware of things related to things related to things, related to issues outside of those things, all this and more adds up to how I am now mentally and emotionally (and physically, being the downside in sitting all day long, in being sedentary in a job), all these things add up to how my minds is now pretty well honed to do anything.

When I graduated from Western Washington University in 1984, I knew I had pushed myself for four years to learn, to absorb all I could, to sharpen my mind, to get the most for the money my VA benefits, our country's citizens taxes, were paying for me to get. While my friends were out partying much of the time I was still in the university library, many times until they kicked me out. I wanted to learn...everything.

I knew I left college with my mind being as sharp and informed as it ever would be all the rest of  my life. Just like I knew when I left the military that my body would probably never be in that top of shape ever again. Both mind and body in the future of those times, I could try to keep in top shape, but might never see those levels of peak performance again.

But I knew I could try. I admit I've paid more attention to my mind being in shape than my body, but I've done well in that department too. Aikido was a wonderful way to exercise both mind and body. But because of my knees years ago, and my ankle, I had to give up practicing. Still however, I am on the dojo's Board of Directors still, for that non-profit school. I have also been donating to them, in matching funds from my job.

I now will definitely have the time to get in more exercise in a more broad sense than before. I have work out equipment at home, weights and an elliptical but I've wanted to do more. And now in having moved to a metropolitan location, I have much more and easier access to all this.

Why do I mention all of the above?

Because I have now moved from a structured, corporate environment to a private, small business environment. There is no CEO, or CIO filtering down our agenda to the working grunt on the front line. I no longer have my Director, or Manager, nor my Lead to manage me and my workload, my direction, my goals, and so on.

I now do that all for myself. Whenever you go into your own endeavors, into a small business environment, something that escapes many, something that a lot of people are not aware of is what I have been saying here.

My previous job that I just left took a turn. We were headed into Amazon AWS services from hardware and virtual servers that we maintained, into new technology where we used the "cloud". I was against it at first for security reasons until I attended the Amazon immersion day event and walked out of there very impressed. But it would mean we all at work in IT had to re-educate ourselves.

It meant that we would need to get certified, to study new information, then pass a test. To work extra hours, to work extra hard during the work day, to push the company into a new era, into new technologies, hopefully to refine our process, to save money, to make a better company.

I realized I was at a point where I could do that for them, or retire and do that for myself.

I decided I had given twenty-one years to this company and now I had the opportunity to do it for myself, to seek what I truly wanted to do, to "seek my bliss" if you will. To finally now that my family life was just myself now, my kids were raised and out into the world, I could break away and take the risk to do what I wanted to do.

And what was that?

Basically, to write. To be a writer. To be able to say, "I am a writer", when asked, and not, "Well I work in IT to pay the bills, but I'd like to be just a writer, to write full time." And here I am, finally. Now it's up to me.

So many make the mistake at a time like this to take their time, to not have the motivation others either inspired of them at a job, or demanded of them, depending on the work culture and environment. I have the skills, I have the motivation, I have the past spurring me on into what I want and not what I have to do. I have the mind for this, I have proven my skills,

I have produced products: short stories in horror, science fiction, books, ebooks, audiobooks, screenplays that although they haven't sold (yet), have placed in reputable screenplay contests. I have studied cinema since childhood and in college and on my own. My life has been a study in cinema, I have everything I need to do what I want in this area. I just need to do it.

Time will tell where this will lead.

However I have taken steps to set myself up for success. I have sold my house and I'm now renting. I am unencumbered by mortgage or debt. I have purchased equipment for producing films. I have not just time now to write full time, but to write when inspiration strikes me.

The gold standard of a writer who wishes to be a writer. That ability to jump up out of bed and write when inspiration hits, when your muse calls out to you, without worry for having to be up for a day job at 5AM, to be sharp all day long.

I now have to remember to use all these things, motivations, skills, a sharp mind, a habituated work ethic, the need to work extra hard, extra hours only now for myself, not for others, not for a large company. When I find a team to do this with me, to take this journey with me, I will expand all this to include them in the hope they will have their own inspiration, or will find mine infectious, a positive force to join with.

So many new small companies fail. Much of the reason for that is in not treating it like their previous jobs, where they had to answer to someone, to see much hard work applied to the mission. When they can finally choose their own mission, to succeed or fail on their own, they fail, because they do not realize how much harder it is without external influences monitoring them, riding them, wanting deadlines met, products produced, people supported.

I've revamped my old production company, LGN Productions. AKA, Last good Nerve Productions. A company started by a friend and myself, where we brought in a couple of others and produced a documentary in 1993-4. It aired twice in the Pacific Northwest. Then my life changed drastically and it all fell by the wayside. I moved out of Seattle.

I spent the next twenty some years being married, raising my kids, and working toward building a retirement that has finally come to fruition. Perhaps too soon, but I don't plan to simply sit on my laurels.

One might ask why, if I wanted to do this so bad for so long, why it took this long to get around to doing what I wanted to in life?

I tried. Trust me. I worked for a production company for some years and finally quit because I could never get anything I wrote on screen. I touched base with famous people when the opportunities arose but never did that pan out for me. It took years to get my first short story published. I tried from 1984 to 1990 when I sold my first story to a horror magazine. I'd been published in local computer rags before but they didn't pay.

Life kept taking over. I put things on hold. Finally when I realized my kids would be moving out soon, I started writing day and night. That was in 2010. We now have more outlets for people because of the internet and social media. Things started to turn for me. At some point I had gotten my mind into doing what I'd been practicing doing for so many years until finally it just seemed like the only thing holding me back was, my day job.

The job that was paying the bills. I realized I'd have to quit. Retirement was arriving and so I started working toward that. A situation where I'd have at least some income but could put all my time, energy and well, time, into doing what I wanted, what I thought I should do, what I was best at. I've established my name, my brand. I've gotten as far as I can, without quitting my job, my career. Finally, it was time.

And so, here we are.

I plan to act, to produce...stuff, to offer...something. Something worth paying attention to. Perhaps to change opinions, give laughter, share a nightmare that is fun to behold in a safe environment such as a story, a book, a film. Time will tell where this leads, and if I'm worthy.

Stay tuned....

On My Retirement - The End - Part 1

I wish you all a pleasant Veteran's Day.

UPDATE November 11, 2016 - 2:20PM PST - turned in my equipment at work. Had lunch at Kell's Irish Pub, pint of Guinness, shot of Jamesons 21 year old whiskey, clam chowder and enjoyed it very much.

Took the ferry home on my first and last commute ride from Bremerton to Seattle. Didn't realize I had the radio AND the dash fan on and killed the battery. Ferry worker gave me a quick jump and I zipped off the boat. Got home, trickle charging the battery to condition it happy and having a shot or two of Taliskers. Retirement, is here. Now the hard work begins and as I designate it. I'm a tough taskmaster, too.

UPDATE November 11, 2016 - 8:47AM PST - I am in Seattle. Took the Bremerton ferry over with my car, to drop off my things and retire from my company. Seeing old friends, experiencing nostalgia. So much here has changed since I was in town to work a year ago. Seattle it is said has more boom cranes putting up buildings than any other city in America, even San Francisco. It's noisy, there's a lot of people, many younger people probably in high tech companies. Amazon and Google are right next door. But then Amazon is everywhere it seems, even has entire floors of this building. I have turned in some of my stuff, my monitor, peripherals, my cell phone for being on call. I still have only my laptop and my ID badge which I'll turn in as I leave. Twenty-one years here and so much has changed. I had a family, a wife, two kids when I started here in 1995. I was a tech writer contractor for nine months before being hired on April Fool's Day. Once I leave here today, that is all behind me.


"A new life awaits where you can begin again." Blade Runner film reference. Love that film. I have new adventures. My son's gold mine which he just got the claim on. Video productions with my new equipment. And massive amounts of writing I can finally delve into. All I can say is thanks all and Cheers!


And now, back to reality....



I am crestfallen. But humor will help...some. Trump was voted to be president. America is in disarray. He has damaged us, with more to come. Capitalism will run rampant now. Republicans are in power. I won't say we are doomed, or that some good may come of it, if we don't all die instead. But dark times are ahead of us.

I wrote this blog and the next, part two, last week when I thought Hillary Clinton would win. I voted for Bernie, I voted for Hillary. There was no way Trump, a real sad person for a president, could win. He's Vice President Pence is not a good person either. Both guided by Gods. Trump by money, Pence by a Roman tradition in the Catholic church (maybe the Pope who is awesome most of the time, will have some sway with him).

Please world, wish us luck. Many of us are for America, for the World. Not for capitalism at all costs, not for conservative beliefs, but for progressive beliefs. We want to push the world into a better place, not go back to the defective and delusional 1950s.

Returning to our regularly scheduled programming now, today I start my retirement heading into uncertain and possible miserable times. I will write. I will not be censored. Stay tuned. I will always be honest with you, or you will know if I can not be and I will make it painfully obvious.

Putting aside now for a moment all the dark in our world,..

Cheers! I'm retiring!

I was in the Air Force in the late 1970s. I like to take today off for my years in service, for my friends I knew back then in the service and for the many friends I've lost who have been in the service. So I have today off.

Today is also the day I retire from the general workforce.

I am now sixty-one. How can I be that old? I have stayed mentally young because I have an open mind, I embrace positive change, and I seek truth. I had wanted to retire by fifty but I can't really say that I actually had tried to achieve that. It was more wish fulfillment. Family and life kept me from retiring that young. My own inattention perhaps kept me from it.

In 1995 I had been out of work for months. Fifteen hundred were let go from US West Technologies that January in 1994. But I was kept on, my contact extended for months. Then, I too was out of work. I got a few short contracts, I took on other contract agencies in a desperate attempt to find work, but then things dried up. There were a lot of people out of work that summer who did things just like what I did.

Bills were piled up. Thank God for unemployment as it paid our mortgage. My wife made a little money as a horse trainer but she was stressed out. I was stressed out. Then I got a call about a job but with an $8/hr cut in pay, I turned it down. I had to. Three times over the next couple of weeks they called back about it and I turned it down. Then I got a call from a woman recruiter.

She painted a very pretty picture of a new contract as a Sr. Technical Writer. Suddenly it started to sound real familiar. I stopped her and asked if this was the same job they kept calling me about. There was a hesitation and I knew it was. She then admitted it but talked me into just calling the guy who was the manager hiring and to talk to him.

From that point on as I see it now in hindsight, I was lost. I was hired before I hung up on the phone with her. I called the guy, I went in to see him. I kept hesitating and he finally just said to come in, meet people, look around and then say no if I wanted. So I went in. I accepted the job. I got him to try to raise the pay but they didn't have the money for that. At five and a half months out of work, I talked with my wife about it and ended up taking the job.

Nine months after I started the position, I was hired, on April 1st, 1996. Twenty-one years later, I am now retiring. I have in work there, gone from a subsidiary company, then after being absorbed by the parent company, we then became a part of a four state group.

Originally I had said I would take the job if and only if two things. One, I get my birthday off as I have never, against all odds, ever worked on my birthday. We get one day a year for us and only us and I take it. Although, as my mother was born on my birthday, I have never actually had it all to myself. Which explains much of that mindset.

But, you say, weren't you born on your mother's birthday as you're obviously younger than her?

She had always said that I was God's gift to her on her birthday. A pleasant, sweet motherly like thing to say. My being a smart ass teenager when she first told me this, my response was: I think you should reconsider that because considering I was the gift, perhaps God hated you. She laughed and said, Oh don't say that, you were my bundle of joy."

And at eight pounds, thirteen ounces (the same exact weight my son weighed at birth), it was quite a bundle indeed. When I was born my father called his mother and told her in his confusion that I was thirteen pounds eight ounces and almost gave my grandmother a heart attack.

The other thing I wanted a guarantee on if I took that job was that I would never, ever work for the parents company. This was a thirty person company and I didn't want to work for a big entity. I had recently worked for US West Technologies on a high level development team. It was an amazing opportunity to see corporate workings at such a level. And I never wanted that view point again.

So I took the job. It took me over two years to recouperate from my recently acquired debt in my loss per hour of a sizable sum. But I learned a lot and loved the people I worked with. Then in the last years of the dotcom boom, the manager left along with others. My phone rang so much with calls form headhunters trying to steal me away, I had to stop answering the phone as I couldn't get any work done.

I had wanted to go but my wife was fearful of the months out of work and was looking the current job as a bird in the hand. Others went off, made lots of money, bought hot cars, paid off houses with stock options and so on while I remained.

As each person left, I got their server. I started as a tech writer, but one who could become a webmaster. Then I became by default as other left, the network guy, the DBA, the security guy, the hardware guy, the software guy. I took servers out of the box, physically built them up, installed software, secured them, put them on the network and ran, updated, upgraded, secured them.

At one point I didn't have a manager for eighteen months. I was ordered to see the network assimilated by the corporate group. I was now just part of a team, not what was once a standalone company. Bill Gates stole our president. Paul Allen stole others. We did good work. But the new headquarters in Portland didn't like our little group. We had a bad reputation. Because we did good work. But that's for another time and is part of a previous blog a while back.

I saw that network into the bigger picture. I was derided, ignored, people didn't know me and didn't want me because I was part of a now defunct entity. And yet I continued. Eventually the main money making network in Washington state was part of the overall new network.

The entire company once was hit by a virus and in a teleconference across four states once about it, this being after it was all over, I was derided again. But I was able to point out that of all the parts of the network the only part that was not affected at all was the one I ran. During that time and after I was associated with a group started by our head of computer security. An amazing guy.

I’ve had a secret clearance for nuclear weapons in the Air Force, been involved through the aforementioned company and elsewhere in the past, with cyber security issues and as well being a member from the beginning of our private international Agora, a group started by our head of security for computer security experts and law enforcement, drawing from national and international police forces (Secret Service, NSA, Australian police, Canadian Mounties, etc.).

This was set up by our previous security head in Washington, Kirk Bailey Chief Information Security Officer of UW, whom I worked with in that group for tech setup along with a few others. UW is also one of my alma maters and I worked there for seven and a half years. Worked in the Personnel Office and with the Psychology Department on their Marital Research project and other things.

Over the years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we were given briefings from people like now the famous Richard Clarke (former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism for the United States), the NSA, President’s Committee on the Infrastructure, and so on.

The Agora set up an ad hoc team that built Seattle Police Department’s first cybersecurity unit.

I was a system/network still running that network until we got a new manager. She further restructured things and moved me to another team. A new team of web/internet systems administrators. Finally I would have someone to talk to about my job, about issues and problems.

I am now retiring from that team. I was moved off of it along with many others from other teams in an attempt to build a team of experts on a middle tier team between the initial help you got in calling support, to the engineering teams such as I had been on and am now back on again. That middle level team lasted just over four years.

It is now twenty-one years later from starting at this company. Today is my last day.

The last day working with people I've known for decades. When I delivered the news at the end of our weekly team teleconference, you could hear a pin drop. Then we ended the meeting. I got several congratulations from teammates and one or two, "I'm envious". I will no longer have to deal with corporate issues. No more being, "on call" for problems where a computer could call me any hour day or night for problems.

No more on call. I had my first on call in 1976 in the Air Force for nuclear war. If I got called, we all went to the base, sent of nuclear bombers, and knew that cities were about to be nuked, people melted or disintegrated. Years later I would pull  on call support for medical centers when I worked on the mainframe for two major medical centers in Seattle for their Radiology and Pathology departments.

Then I got his job when I was on call for not cities dying, not people dying, but web sites dying in the middle of the night. People asked me why I was always so calm in this job when I first started it. I could only reply that masses of people wouldn't die, individuals wouldn't die, no one would die, so what's the panic?

Finally, no more on call.

I have for years wanted the luxury of writing at my leisure, or under my self imposed pressure. Of producing artistic things, not technological ones. Of seeking my bliss, not a paycheck. Because working for a company puts you on a fixed income. You do the same things over and over.

Now the sky is the limit. I can turn on a dime. I am the team. My potential now is the sky and beyond, not the corporate boardroom or someone's limited vision. Limited either from lack of vision or corporate restriction. I can delve into art and satiate my desire to follow my passions, my talents, the talents I seem to be best suited for, that have been restrained for so long.

Life now feels...wonderful. Like I can finally breathe, can finally follow my own path. I can post during the day where I want, what I want. I am not restrained by what my fellow workers or executives might see me say online. I can be fully open and honest, restricted by my own good taste and sensibilities.

Retirement. This isn't retirement for me. It is the beginning of actually doing what I've wanted to do, All my life. It is the initiation.

The future is the potential. My energy, my vision, my orientation, my skills, my ability to see, to act upon, to produce...whatever I want.

People complain about retirement. When should it be? Should we raise the age limit. Idiocy. We need to get our economy under control. We need to work toward people retiring younger and younger so they can then turn themselves to what is important to them, what is important to our nation, and humanity. We need to orient them that retirement isn't just vacations, doing nothing, puttering around the garden.

Retirement in that sense is empowerment, self-actualization to do what you can and want to, to seek your true potential outside of the confines of business or government. It should be a point to take risks,

A government should have as focus, empowering it's citizens, raising us as a culture above. It shouldn't just be to maintain, to just keep out heads above water so we don't drown. Days to work per week should be less, hours worked per day should be less. Age to retire should be lowered and lowered until one day you only have to work at all if you want.

However at that point we also need to educated our generations to have a certain orientation at retirement, or in life. To seek passion to produce quality. To seek to better yourself, our nation and the entire human species.

And so I reach for retirement with that all in mind.

I won't be just sitting around on vacation. I have revived my production company.
Stay tuned....

Death of the Human Worker? IF Computers here to stay start acting like it!

The other day read this article and my blood pressure rose exponentially:

Bank's Severance Deal Requires IT Workers to Be on Call for Two Years — Without Pay -
"Employees of SunTrust Banks in Atlanta said their severance agreement requires them to remain available for two years to provide help — and to do so without compensation."

SunTrust Banks in Atlanta is laying off about 100 IT employees as it moves work offshore. But this layoff is unusual for what the employer is asking of its soon-to-be displaced workers: SunTrust's severance agreement requires terminated employees to remain available for two years to provide help if needed, including in-person assistance, and to do so without compensation. - Computerworld

Q&A about SunTrust’s post-layoff cooperation clause

To be fair, SunTrust told Computerworld for the article that it was just if they have to touch base with an old employee for information. But they don't say if they will actually require work from them. We had this situation at work just recently when they laid off the "big brain" guy on our team and we suffered for it.

Our music for this blog today will be Donovan's old, "Gold Watch Blues."

When they called him for information such as this article discusses, he just never called back and I didn't blame him. If they are going do to that kind of thing after you leave, then they should pay you consulting fees. It's high time corporations stop getting such a free ride. Corporate loopholes? This is just one more. It's just one more corporate loophole of a different kind that needs to be closed before this one too gets any worse.

This is just more nonsense from business that was obvious to be coming from how IT workers have been treated now for years. Not to mention, my home mortgage is through SunTrust Mortgage and my second mortgage is through SunTrust Bank.

We don't get paid overtime in IT work because of being salaried yet we have to pull "on call". For myself I have it monthly for a week at a time 24/7 and also as last week "day time on call" from 7am to 5pm where I have to have my hands on keyboard within five minutes should I get a call and then triage it across our IT department.

The rationale for how we are treated is that we get paid how much we get paid because of things like that and because we're considered professionals. But we're really no treated like that. We're the grunts of white collar work, just as many of the developers are who write the code we support. But when their code breaks in the middle of the night we are the ones called to either fix it, or figure it out. When we can, we wait till daylight hours to call the programmer's up. And that's all okay because our salary is good enough.

But at what point does that stop being justification?

We're human beings too in the end. It is this corporate mindset of these corporations that puts us in this position and it is a mindset that goes from our level all the way on down to the least compensated employee. After all if the company can get away with doing this to us, then how is some lowest base pay or new employee going to be able to stand up about this for themselves?

Research has shown very clearly employees need to get away from work at times, to KNOW they are away from work. To put work out of their minds for a while until they return. To get off work at night and not have to deal with it again until the next day, or to be free of it over the weekend. We know in this job that we can be called at any time while on call, or not. Why? Because they have cut the workforce down to the bare minimum and then some so that there are seldom enough knowledgeable employees available to be able to effective deal with unforeseen situations. Much like is of late in government and just about everywhere.

When will this stop and from what level will that stoppage come from? Blue collar workers? White collar? The executive levels (I don't think so).

I was on vacation in Mexico years ago and got called up and to work, from Mexico! I had been required to take my laptop with me. My wife and kids weren't happy about it. So how was that a vacation? A "working vacation"? A "vacation" because it was a nicer "cubical"? You can almost never get away from work now a days.

Originally, decades ago this law was set to enable computer companies, being the fledgling business they were back then to take off, to help the industry overall to take off. Especially in the Pacific Northwest around Seattle because of companies like Microsoft. So. Do you think it has taken off yet? Is it here to stay, the compute industry? Time for them to start paying their way on things like employee compensation for overtime and on call?

I DO.

There are employees working 80-90 hours a week at times, with no extra pay involved and now a days the higher ups say they don't even want to hear about compensatory time. I worked at one company many years ago and if you worked an hour, you got to take of 1.5 hours that next week, or within that pay period. Then it was equal time off. Then it was "no we don't do that anymore." Why? They wouldn't pay us money as we were "exempt" but now they won' give up time off either to justify, to pay us back for our extra time worked.

There is a site you can read about this for Washington State law. The law had been changed back in 1992, 1994 and in 2004. It seems reasonable at first read, but it does not address what I would consider abuses. When working over a normal number of hours per week, isn't some number of hours too many? I believe 12 hours per day is the limit actually. 12 hours per day times 7 days is 84 hours a week, with no compensation in pay, possibly no time compensation in days off. To be fair, I've seen a day or two given as time off, but not always to be sure. Just a "thanks" and let's move on (and not talk about it).

Law states that overtime needs to be paid to workers in Washington state UNLESS you are specifically a computer worker, the one exemption actually broken out and cited in law.

If they want us to be on call, how about paying for that now? Even a token amount...something? It's not so much about the money as a mental hedge but also a hedge for the company to consider when it is work and when it broaches abuse. When it has too few workers for one thing. When it has cut costs beyond the point of functionality.

Most of us are on call 24/7/365 anyway for what we are responsible for and "on call" merely means who is on point for that day or week. When I worked at the University of Washington, I was hourly, granted. But I got paid if I got a call, two hours work even if it was a minute to fix something. I got paid extra for night work. I got paid extra for holidays, time and a half or sometimes double time.

Over the years I've been interrupted during holidays, family time, and during Christmas eve. All because companies "can't afford" to pay enough employees. Which begs the question, what are they doing wrong? What as a nation are we doing wrong?

It's high time that even salaried and exempted workers are paid for their extra work on things such as being on call. Let's do away with the concept of exemption. Just as we should be doing away with the concept of more than 40 hour work weeks, more than 8 hour days, while we should be shooting for 4 day (not ten hour day) workweeks and 6 hour days (and not 6 day work weeks).

Besides, paying overtime forces a company to see what is truly happening, to do what is right, rather than giving them a false sense of the state of things, or abusing their exempted workforce. It shows them when they do indeed need to hire more people, not just make it through with less and let those few take the burden, to feel they are not capable at times, all because more employees are needed which expands the knowledgebase base of their workforce overall.

It is long and well known that no one can know all the nuances of just about any software product anymore. Systems are fixed by hit and miss much of the time anymore. Employees who by the company's dictate "should know" are really just guessing much of the time.

There is simply too much knowledge on any one element for any single individual in their area to know all of it. So much of the time I know I need to work on something with someone else, and yet, they are seldom there for more than a minute to offer suggestions on a direction to go and then they are back on their own work, swamped, overloaded with their own work.

This is not a secret within the industry, it never has been. I'm not saying anything that will surprise any computer worker. It is held close to the vest of these workers however in order to keep their jobs but I'd be very surprised if the execs in their company or any company, simply don't know all this very clearly. And yet they go on with business as usual.

It is not as it is typically portrayed that computer "experts" know all there is to know. Of those there are very few, though they are out there and we all hold them in high esteem. But they pull a high dollar figure and most companies can't or won't suffer to afford them. And then, as in the gentleman I mentioned above, they lay them off. Three degrees, a "big brain", they are usually too expensive to maintain for long by most companies.

Computer work is more like a doctor who "practices" their field of study. Just like doctors computer workers guess at the diagnosis much of the time, trying things if they cannot find the lines of description somewhere for solutions to problems they come across. Doctors guess at drug levels to fix illnesses just as computer workers guess at various settings to lighten loads and decrease overheads. Putting all these different networks, software and systems together exponentially increases the difficulty of things.

It's a compliment to these computer workers who somehow do their jobs, figure things out and keep at their jobs year after year. Though only because many of us are trapped at that compensation level and cannot now get out. Still, more and more of us now are working to get out, to find ways to live on less so we can leave this nonsense and abuse behind.

Wake up. As a nation we need to start acting like adults, like an advancing culture, to start bettering everyone's work environment in all ways possible and not just do what pleases corporate heads and their stockholders.

Having to continue to work for a company after you have finally divested yourself of the company, possibly one you can no longer stand to be associated with in the worst case example, or in having to keep working somewhere you will miss working at,  all when you have a new full time job to do (possibly with on call associated with it as I've looked for other jobs doing what I do and they all require on call), is ludicrous. In my case I'm just looking for a new industry and in my case, it is writing as I'm a far better writer than anything else.

Of course this is all brilliant for the old company one leaves (to be able to force you into two years of on call after you resign), but as it is now they have refused to pay their way anyway in these kinds of cost cutting tactics where they put the burden of their financial situation, so typically because of mismanagement on the executive levels, upon the worker rather than the CEO, the CIO and the CTO.

It's high time this is addressed as it will remain a hidden issue forever if something isn't simply done about it. And for all involved.