Vocational Testing

Let's bring everybody up to date:

October 2008, Scot and about 17 others were let go when their company didn't handle the client's expectations;or the client was going to steal 'proprietary code.' I think it was the former rather the later. The 'proprietary code' was a simple flash reader that allowed annotation...exactly...ten years old. The other stuff in the application was simple database and UI implementation of the client's business rules. Complex as all get out, but not real hard. And nothing any other Java or .Net should couldn't have replicated very easily.

November 2009 (yep, a full 13 months) Scot got a short -time contract- great people, enjoyed it and there's a possibility of a the company calling me back.

In the mean time, I either have to find something more stable or freelance. I'm, of course, doing both.

So part of the deal is getting training. I was thinking about getting PMP from PMI (Project Management Professional certification from Project Management Institute, so, I applied. Last September.

They got back to me this week. One of the bazillion links in the packet to get your voucher included a 'skills assessment,' which turned out to be a list of personal values. Kind of like the Minnesota Multiphasic meets The One Minute Manager in Senora, Mexico, Bizarre and warped. I think Salvidor Dali wrote this thing.


Now, by looking over around 100 values (not skills, sorry, U of G but that's probably one of the reasons you guys are so low academically) and selecting five values that I get "a great deal of pleasure from,' ten values that give me a 'moderate amount of pleasure' and 20 values that give me a little pleasure (but not pain).
 

They rank each result 1 to 100. There's only one over 50: 61 for Industrial Production Manager. Hmmm. This 'tool' thinks there's a clipboard in my future.
Police and Detective Supervisor? I hate mysteries. I used to cover cop shops all over the upper Midwest. No thanks. If I want paramilitary, I'll rejoin Civil Air Patrol.

Agricultural Engineer? That's U.S. Bureau of Labor-speak for farmer, right? Or is the Extension Agent with which I always ended doing a monthly interview, in all the markets I worked? Good call, Georgia! I'm probably the only person in the U.S. that says subsidizing farmers is wrong. They call it a lifestyle. My rejoinder is simple: no one subsidizes my lifestyle, why in the world should I subsidize yours?

Curator? Just shoot me.

Technical Writer? OK, that's one good one. But they don't make enough cash for the mental anguish.

Business Executive? I couldn't stop laughing.

Human Resources? Don't think so, I worked with a GREAT HR director and that ain't gonna happen.

I have no idea what an Operations Research Analyst is, unless that's the guy who shows his butt crack when he  removes the PC that fouled up on your desk because they wouldn't give me admin rights.

Economist? See Curator

The IT stuff? Second good call

Arbitrator? I'd just knock heads and rule for the little guy all the time. Besides, that's just a baby Arbitrager, right?

Numerical Control Tool Programmer? Dunno. If there was an Alphabetic Control Tool Programmer, I might think about it.

Aerospace Engineer--- actually all the engineers:  I was a child of the 60s and if I was involved, that time a programmer switched decimal to hex and the satellite was like at Mars already? I would have done that four or five times so it wouldn't have made any difference. It'd be a toaster now.

Historian? Yeah, OK. Third good call. One of my B.A. Minors.

Sociologist? Maybe, another minor.

Storage and Transportation Manager- I've seen those guys. They're bigger than me. No Thanks.

So, your help is solicited- I'm thinking a PMP boot camp and ITIL. The state pays for the test and the trainer helps you put the freaking Vitae together (which is why I never tool the CBAP test- I resent having reviewed the Business Analyst Body of Knowledge and then spend five or six weeks getting details together. I figure PMI makes sense, since the Project Manager function is pretty set, the BA rols is still in a state of flux now that Agile is the method of choice for good shops.

Leave a comment. You may have a better idea than I do!

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An End User's Experience with Cataract Surgery.

So the eye doctor's office called twice with time changes for me to head to the hospital. They finally settled on the original time. I liked being in the loop, but good lord!

Brian, youngest son, drops me off at the curb. He's gonna stay in the car, play the radio and play with his new Android phone. Hmmmmm.

I walk in, go to the Outpatient Services Desk and say, "Okay, I'm here. Cut me."

Both ladies behind the desk laugh and the one closest to me says turn around, walk to your right, past the gift shop and go to Outpatient Surgery Desk.

This is not looking good.

Same joke gets same reaction. Please sit down Mr. Witt and we'll call you when we have a room.

Have a room, I say to myself, what was all the dicking around over times all about then. As I reached for my phone to play BubbleBlaster (no clue why I like it, it's a dumb game but I love it) a lday comes up to me ascorts me to my room. No bed, just a lounger.

This won't hurt a bit. She's right. The IV needle didn't hurt at all. I want her to do all my sticking from now on.

We're going to put the goop into your eye now. Goop?

Lidocaine in a gel. Now I know what lidocaine is from the TV shows.

Three times. Goopy crap. But my eye is numb as a post now.

"Hi, I'm Tim, please get up on the gurney and we'll wheel you in." Turns out- he's the anesthesiologist. He keeps telling about the 'couple of cocktails we're going to give you.'

He straps in the blood pressure cuff, inserts the O2 hose in my nose and says he's starting now.

Nuthin. The only good part of the procedure was the professional grade drugs. Yes. I am a child of the 60s.

My eye doctor opens my lids with a contraption that looks like it came out of the Marquis de Sade's basement. Eye's numb, no problem.

15 years ago he went in on top of the cornea. This time it was the side. Either way, the procedure (see? I can talk like a Doctor, too) lasted all of ten minutes. And they let me out of the hospital five minutes after I got back to the room.

No glasses. Didn't really need them now. It was like looking through a quart milk bottle (remember those?) with about a half inch of milk still in it. It seemed fuzzy as well so I went to the mirror and looked through the eye. Just as good as the other one in terns of acuity....at least when the haze goes away.

Now, I have a few follow-ups and have to put prednizone drops in my eyes every two hours (they sting, but make the eye feel better. And a few more drops. Drops, lottsa drops. I had on bottle of drops 15 years ago.

Maybe they haven't advanced the science so much...

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School Days, Dear Old Golden Rule Days.

Youth is wasted on the young. Mark Twain

For some strange and interesting reason most of the Class of 1973, Rich Township East High School, Park Forest, IL are up on FaceBook. It suprized the hell out of me. I occaisionaly searched the goofy alumni websites but there'd only be one or two folks up there and I didn't know them very well. If I remember correctly, we had around 430 graduates. I could be wrong- I often am.

What I find exceedingly and embarassingly interesting was how wrong, way, way wrong I was about the people in my class, how we all stuck to our little cliques to protect ourselves with people exactly like us. I heard someone recently call High School the only place you protect your body AND your soul. How right that was.

Here's just a few of the things I've found out in the last three or four months that amaze me and make me sad I was such a dope back then:

• I thought my best friend and I were the only liberals. We'd canvassed for McCarthy and a couple of more local folks and found out our hometown (Park Forest, IL) was a Republican Bastion...sort of like Wheaton without the College. Almost every single one of the folks I've found up here were (and are) just as liberal as Chris and Me. And I never knew. Yeah, there are a few neoconservatives in the class, but most of them moved to Southern  or Western States where they're probably more comfortable anyway. I just simply don't talk politics with them. I already have heart disease.
• We had a  lot of spectacular looking young women at that school. I *always* felt out of my league. Turns out- they're all extremely warm, intelligent and still very good looking. Don't get me wrong, I love my wife and have absolutely no plans to leave... but one *does* wonder what might have happened if one wasn't so self-aware, scared, intimidated and had a few chips on the shoulder. Do all kids go through this? I know we all think puberty sucks, but I saw a lot of poeple having parties on the weekends and suppporting each other. Could have made a difference in my own experience.
• I've been invited to vacation at about a dozen places by these folks. Even if we can't plow through and see some of them, it made each of my days when that happened. Not so much for a free meal or a jam session, but to think they'd go out of their way for me when I was in some really narrow and goofy cliques.
• One young women for whom I was rabid (remember them days of constant hormone movement?) called me a 'geek.' Now, I've never worked for the circus and certainly never cut off chicken heads with my mouth, so I asked her what she meant (it coulda been extremely embarassing). She said- oh, only that you're smart. Me?!? Boy I musta pulled the wool over the eyes of a buncha peoples' eyes (she and I hardly mixed, weren't in many classes together) because I never, ever thought of myself that way. My former best friend in the entire world said the same thing a few years ago. I remain astonished, embarassed and foolish. If I was so smart, how come I didn't get a scholarship or get on the It's Academic Team or last more than a year in Debate? Looking back, I think it was immaturity and excessive competetiveness. And being a jerk, of course.
• Music. Suprized the bejesus out me when one of the popular women from 4th grade through graduation told me she now lives near Teluride and invited me out to jam. She also said her mother was going to the same anti-war rallies Chris and I were going to (!). Another friend came over the house one Saturday and jammed with my music friends and freaked me out- he was doing much of the same stuff I do- except he knows barre chords and stuff. When I posted a YouTube clip of a Pete Seeger/Wood Guthrie promotional film on my facebook page- I got a LOT of comments. And most of them have stayed current with the music as well. That's soooo coool in my book. Music has always my raod to spirituality- not classical stuff, stuff you can play in your own living room with friends- share and enjoy. It took me 40 years to realize that and a second time to get my calluses back (never, ever, again) but I did.

I don't think my classmates are all that unusual. Well. Now that I think about it, it IS unusually for 54 year old men and women to hop up to FaceBook, expecially with the lousy numbers we keep getting from women on use of th einternet ((but the numbers are getting better). But other than that, they'r enjoying their kids and grand children just like I am and preparing for retirement, which I can't do yet.

We all pretended, though, that the town we grew up in, a post WWII bedroom community and the first planned community ever (Take THAT, Leavittown) was special. But it was only special for the white, suburban ethos which many communities have. While our town was desegregated and pretty much welcomed everyone and had a complete housing inventory, we had very few black familys, Muslim Familys or Chicano Families. They simply couldn't afford to live there. So it was privileged. And everybody could stay out late at the playground, guys, we're talking the 50s and 60s here.

I have enjoyed reconnecting with people whom I'd only nodded to in the hallways or whose lockers were next to mine. And I'm glad I have a much better picture of them. Before this, I thought my time in high school was the worst period of my life- isolated, scared, falling in love every hour and a half with someone new and keeping it all inside. I even wrote a year end column for the newspaper that was, um, caustic. I was pissed off for 30 years that the Speech Coach forced me to audition as a Senior against a Sophmore for state competition. I think he was angry at me for the way the Debate Team (when I was on it) brought his effeminant  mannerisms to ridicule, He was actually the first MetroSexual I ever knew, but I couldn't care less. I think he was punishing me for the Debaters as well as getting his own boy (our former head coach moved to another district high school my Senior year) state experience. I was 40 years old before I let that go. He wound up at one of the local high schools here in the western suburbs. He was a principal. I think often about stopping by and beating the shit out of him. But I didn't. I should have. I wanted to. He deserved it. But what would that say about me? And I could imagine the headlines: Radio News Guy Beats Former Coach. Not good. That's when I let it go.

So.

I am enjoying my classmates immensely. They are far, far better people than I thought, even though I knew intellectually that sterotyping is stupid.

I may even show up at the next reunion. I gotta get back on that diet...

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Working Retail

Well, I finally got me a job. It's consultant work, but the pay's pretty good and the people I work with are great.

The job is for a large retailer with a lot of stores. My six week gig (over yesterday, 12/31/2009) was to get enough documentation together so they could price it. I initially suggested a high level functional and technical document combined with a Function Point count.

Typically I use a PowerPoint template I stole...um...borrowed...er...folk processed from a former company and Functional Requirements Document (usually around 5 to 10 pages). I usually leave the technical paper to the architect or lead developer. What do I know about which indexing system to use- typical Relational Database or Data Warehousing standards? I'd be guessing.

Turns out the Project Manager is hell on wheels and did most of the documentation. After some requirements gathering sessions, I began to understand what the business wanted: a tool to tracking and assign work to retail stores with some sideways bells and whistles. Since my previous work there had major governance issues, I figured they would use Waterfall. Hence the Use Cases.

Wrong.

The first one almost created a riot. 13 pages? Sub-Use Cases? Diagrams? And you want me to sign off on this IT stuff?

Well, first of all, between the front matter and the sign-off forms in the back, it's only 7 pages. And of those seven page, all of them are beautiful color graphics which leaves two pages of text- the Step Action table of the actual Use Case and about a dozen business rules which I inferred from our meetings.

No! A thousand times no, you pathetic excuse for a BA.

Hmmm. How about an Agile approach. I'll give you cave drawings and you sign off on them?

Yes, that's better, BA Boy.

So I created eleven major wireframes and defined all the fields, buttons and controls in a two column table, complete with bolded headers and bullet lists.

• I don't like these icons.
• This stuff is not at all intuitive, you need to change this (two days before my contract ended)
• Where did you get these dashboard numbers, just make them up so we could see what they looked like (yes)?
• I know we said we didn't want Admins and yes we need to turn Key Performance Indicators on and off depending on the last stop light remaining in Fartwest, Idahpo, so how are we gonna do that?
• How did you do that Admin Page so fast?
• Can we change the color of this crossbar? It's too, I dunno, too red, I guess.

Every thing's back to normal!
God, I love being a BA and helping people.
My manager's gonna try to get me back in for a longer contract in a week or so.

Agile, Waterfall, business analysis

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