Sometimes I Surprise Myself

[chequita guevara]

As folks may remember, I'm on unemployment. I talked to someone in the Agency for Workforce Innovation in early January or late December. I was told that my extension would automatically kick in as soon as my regular unemployment ended, which was Jan 3rd.

Well, when it came time for me to claim my weeks, I was told by the computer I had no weeks available. :/ Well, maybe I got caught up by the waiting week (the first week of unemployment, you get nothing). So I tried again next week, and then again, and again today. Still the same message.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to call in and talk to someone, but because there are something like 85,000 new people on unemployment in South Florida alone, never mind the rest of the state, suddenly, you can never get a human being on the phone.

Okay, I'll go to the office. :/ Hmmm, little problem, despite one third of the population of Florida living in the three counties of Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami Dade, (I live in the middle one), the nearest unemployment office is in Orlando!?! It's 180 miles from me, add another 30 for people in Miami. WTF!?! (I wrote to my state legislators about that.)

So I start dialing, and redialing, for days. Occasionally I'd get in, and I'd have to play phone tag, being told that no agents were available, going back to the menu, selecting operator again, eventually getting kicked out of the system and then not able to connect for hours.

I got lucky today. I got a human, twice, only to be told the computers were down

Finally, I get back in, and this time I take more time with the menu. I spend about 10 minutes playing tag, when finally I think, well, I never tried this option, "File a new claim." So I go into it, and it tells me that I will need to talk to an agent, it puts me in line and . . . VOICE MAIL MESSAGE!?!

And then a human comes on . . . :hope: the computer's working.

And she fixes everything, I'm getting the whole back month of missing unemployment.



Now I don't have to worry about March rent or February bills.

[DaShi]

We live in frightening times.

[Asher]

You seem to be on unemployment a lot.

What are you doing to improve your skills?

[Blaupanzer]

Frightening because they actually give Che unemployment? Or, because the system is overwhelmed by the numbers asking for support? Or, because the Government is reacting so well that the revolution is not being encouraged?

Congratulations Che on your perseverance.

[BlackCat]

180 miles WTF ??? that's almost crosscountry here add to that, that more or less for every 50 km you'll find such an office.

[MrFun]

Even during economically good times Che, you always seem to have difficulty holding a job, or finding a stable job.

[David Floyd]

No wonder he's a communist. Hmmm...

[chequita guevara]

Even during economically good times Che, you always seem to have difficulty holding a job, or finding a stable job.

I do a lot of contract work.

[Asher]

So do I, but I do so with a company that pays me during times I'm not working...

[chequita guevara]

I've never worked with that kind of contract company.

[Asher]

I've never worked with that kind of contract company.

They're called consulting firms.

Seriously though, che -- what's going on? Living as a freelance contractor is not the way to go. Too stressful, too long between jobs, too little opportunity to network.

What kind of stuff do you do? I don't mean to be presumptuous but if it's still web development stuff, have you considered branching out and learning something new? I can help you out if you want to get into some programming.

I work with some guys in their 30s who don't come from a compsci background but pull in six figures doing software development. Guys that have music and philosophy degrees... there's some tricks to the trade and ways to nail interviews, and once you do that it's pretty easy sailing. Take a week and do some hardcore studying on design patterns and modern development techniques (like agile development, which is a nice word for cowboy coding) and drop some of those in an interview and you'll even have a leg up on most compsci grads.

[snoopy369]

Agile development

Round'er up, cowpokes!

[Asher]

Imagine my surprise when I discovered I've been doing agile development since I wrote my first BASIC program in the mid 90s.

[snoopy369]

lol... if I'd known about that term (if it existed during high school) I'm fairly sure my 'group' of fellow programmer/students would've happily used it Though 'Cowboy' probably would've been more relevant given our location (southern New Mexico)

[Asher]

My current project is an "agile" TDD/test driven development project.

It sounds nice and fancy to the clients, but what it boils down to is we distill the core business functionality of the app into a set of unit tests, then write ugly utilitarian code in those tests just to make the thing work. Some of the ugliest, most redundant, and inefficient code you'll ever see -- but damn does it get written fast.

Then we clean it up after. We spend about 75% of the time refactoring it and just moving things around. Identifying common functionality and extracting it. Realizing stuff like "hey, you know what'd be cool? an adapter class. or a factory. hell, maybe even a facade." It's basically reverse-engineering our own code, and it's awesome.

The client sees this well-architected solution and is impressed, but if they knew how it came to be I assure you they would not be pleased. It's catching on, TDD... especially for short-cycle projects like I usually get put on. But it's so ****ing basic.

Honestly, I'm surprised not more people are jumping on the software dev bandwagon. It seems criminal to me how easy it is versus what people pay for it.