Deceptive want ads

At lunch, we were reminiscing about the past (our Director of Engineering is leaving to start his own company) and he reminded us of the time the company tried to place a want ad for a "Senior Engineer". What the company wanted was an experienced engineer and not someone fresh out of school. The newspaper staff informed our company that the word "senior" could not be used in an advertisement because it was discriminatory so the ad had to be changed to use the word "experienced".

That reminded me of another story about our hiring a software engineer. At the time (about 15 years ago), we had a specific need for a programmer who was familiar with the Microsoft Foundation Classes and their use in Windows programming. Since you pay by the word, it was decided to abbreviate Microsoft Foundation Classes to MFC. This was how it was most often used among programmers anyway and we figured if people didn't know what MFC meant (in relation to programming), they weren't right for the job. When this was read to the newspaper staff member, they didn't quite get the MFC part and the head of the Software Group repeated it as "M F C - Mary Frank Charlie" to emphasize the letters. Our ad came out that we were looking for a "Mary Frank Charlie" programmer. I don't think we ever found one.

How I'm going to get rich

Do you recognize the picture here? It's a sink strainer basket (or sometimes just called a sink strainer). Have you ever had one that worked? Neither have I. It is very frustrating, wastes a lot of time and causes all sorts of problem with the plumbing. You know how it goes. They may even work for a while but sooner or later, the thing fails to strain anything and just works to block your sink. As a matter of fact, they are terrific at acting as a stopper for the sink. But who needs a stopper in their sink - all the time? So, what usually happens is that people just remove them or tilt them so that water can get through. Then all sorts of stuff finds its way down the drain where it blocks up the drain and then you have more trouble.

I'm convinced that there is only one, true maker of these things and it is probably a subsidiary of the Drano or Liquid Plumber companies. They are the ones who profit when these strainers fail to work. It's like the great Streetcar Conspiracy where automobile, oil and tire companies supposedly bought out streetcar lines so they could replace the electric railways with buses. How else do you explain it?

Well, my idea is to simply design a sink strainer basket that works correctly and is easy to use. How hard could it be? You just need something with a screen or strainer that doesn't block the drain. My design will be foolproof and inexpensive. My design will just work and it will always work. My design will be the only one, apparently, that can do this so I will be rich. Don't worry, I will continue to write this blog so you won't miss any of my future Earth-shattering announcements.

Disclaimer - In case you haven't figured it out yet, this post should be taken as a joke. I don't believe in the conspiracies mentioned here and I probably won't be designing the Great American Sink Strainer Basket. But I sure wish someone would!

"Take Your Cats on Vacation" week

As I mentioned in my last post, we were on vacation last week. Whenever we go on vacation, we always miss our pets. This time, though, we decided to do something about it. My wife, Cindy, got an idea to print near-life-sized images of our cats and attach them to cardboard cutouts and pose them in our own pictures. We included a cardboard stand in the back so the "cats" could stand on their own. We couldn't do the same thing for our dog Charlie because the near-life-sized picture would have been too big.

Having the "flat" cats along didn't completely solve the problem of missing them  but it certainly was a lot of fun. We enjoyed looking around for places to pose them and had a great time setting up the shots. But the best part was the reaction of other people to what we were doing. As you can see in the top picture, even the busy workers were happy to be in the pictures. In the bottom picture, there was a group of people watching us as we prepared the shot. I heard a number of people saying they were going to do the same thing on their next trip. As with all of my pictures, just click on the picture to get a larger view. You may have to do that in the bottom picture to see the cats at all.

Another side effect of only having cat pictures with us was that unlike our real cats, they didn't cry during the night keeping us up. The motel beds did a good job of that.

For more views of our cats on vacation, go to Cindy's blog and see her post about it.

[Update: Cindy has another post with pictures of the "flat cats". Oh by the way, Emma and I are in the pictures, too.]

National "Take Your Dog to Work" Day

We have been on vacation for four days (more on that in another post) so I found out about this too late. Plus, our dog, Charlie, had been in the kennel for those four days and he wasn't himself after we picked him up yesterday (or "breaking out" as he puts it). So, I probably wouldn't have have him to work today anyway. But two of the guys in the Software Group did bring their dogs in today.

I guess the news story that prompted me to write my "Dogs at Work" post was looking forward to today. They didn't mention that this was a special day, though. Go to this link for a news story about it. It has a funny picture, too. The first picture (on the right) is of Max, the Cockapoo. He was very curious about what goes on in our office. He made sure to check everything out and sniffed everything to make sure no danger was lurking in the corners. He was very well mannered and didn't cause any problems. By the way, yes, Max does have two eyes. The other is just covered up in this picture.

Our other visitor was Rocky. He is in the second picture (on the left) and was a little more hesitant about being in the office. He is part boxer and part something else. You could tell he wasn't used to being in a room of cubicles. He was especially wary of me! I hoped he would smell my dog on me and relax a bit but something about me worried Rocky. Like Max, he was very well behaved and didn't cause any problems. I was just a little disappointed. I like to think that all dogs everywhere like me. It's humbling when you find out that isn't true.

It's no different than when we find out that we won't be liked by every human we meet, either. Try as we might, we are just not going to be liked by some people. Just as we don't necessarily like everyone we meet. Some people just rub you the wrong way. We are admonished to love everyone but it doesn't mean we're going to like everyone.

My father at my age

I don't know when this thought came to me but one day, recently, I started to think about what my father was doing at my age. He was born in 1922. I am 61 years old now. So, he would have been this age in 1983. At that point, he was still very active and, since he was in construction work, still very fit and strong. He operated heavy machines like cranes, bulldozers and that sort of thing. Due to the nature of construction work, though, he often went long periods where there was no work. During one of those periods, he took the time to come and help me work on the house I had bought.

I bought the house in 1982 and was very optimistic that it would take no time to fix up. The house had been built in 1928 and was in very bad shape. Plus, there had been a fire that I wasn't told about and neither of the house inspectors I'd hired had found out about. There was practically no insulation in the house and there were a lot of tiny rooms that I wanted to turn into fewer larger rooms. I was so naive! I had no idea what I was getting into. It didn't take long, though, for me to realize I was in way over my head. My parents both knew I was making a mistake and tried to dissuade me from buying the house. They hadn't even seen it (they lived in Pittsburgh and the house was on Cape Cod) but knew from my description that it was going to be trouble.

Anyway, at 61 years old, my father came up to help me. We shared my apartment while we worked on the house during the day. We tore down the interior walls in the three small rooms on the first floor to make it one big room and bought a huge wood beam and posts to hold up the second floor and installed them. We tore out all of the plaster walls (the inside walls), put in insulation and put up Sheetrock. Putting dormers in the roof to expand the second floor was beyond us so I hired a contractor to do that part. My dad worked with me for about 2 -3 months and I had a hard time keeping up with him. I had to go back to work after the first two weeks so he was working all alone during the day and we worked together at night. I don't know if I could do what he did at this age. I try to keep active but I don't have the strength and energy he still had at 61. The only thing I have on him is that I have more hair at 61 than he did.

About 15 years later, after my father had died at 71, I was working in the basement using my big ShopVac vacuum and was going to change the filter. As I opened up the housing that held the filter, I noticed a handwritten note. It was written by my father when he had been here helping me. It explained how the filter was mounted and how to replace it easily. After all those years, my dad was still helping me. I still miss him.

Dogs at work

While watching the local Boston news this morning, we heard a story about some businesses allowing dogs in the workplace. Here is a link to the story at the Boston Business Journal website.

I like this idea but I could also see where you'd have to take a firm hand and not allow all dogs in. Having a dog fight in the office wouldn't be a good thing and having dogs who aren't trained could lead to some smelly problems. We do have one dog in our office, though. The fellow to the right, Craig, has a certified service dog who has recently joined our organization. The dog can do a lot of things including opening the door and getting items that are out of reach. He is a very well behaved dog and normally you can't even tell he is in the room. Craig brought him around to introduce him to everyone and let us know what we should expect. The hardest part is to not bother them while they are working. He is a very friendly dog.

Pets in our office go way back. When there were only twelve of us in the company and we were still working in the barn behind the owner's house, their dog Sally would often come in to spend time with us. Later, they got two cats who enjoyed roaming around and investigating what we were working on. One of the cats, Garnet, liked to jump up and sleep in my lap. But only when he'd been outside in the rain. I was a good place to dry off. But for as bad as that seems, I really looked forward to rainy days. Garnet would listen to my problems and purr away. Nothing seems so bad when a cat is telling you, "Everything is going to be OK."

Sometimes luck works for you

Yesterday, on my walk in the woods behind our office, I startled a mother Ruffed Grouse and her chicks. This has happened before (see this post) so I was prepared for the hen to make a lot of noise and a "hurt" sound to distract me and draw attention away from her chicks. Even though I was ready, I was still surprised when one of the chicks flew right in front of me. Another chick flew off in a different direction. All I could do was hold up my camera and click the button. No time to hold it up to my eye and aim. Fortunately, the auto-focus worked pretty well.

It's hard to see in the picture above. It looks more like a picture of trees and bushes. You will have to click on the picture to see it full scale and then look in the left side of the picture and a little over halfway up. I've also included a second picture on the left that is a cut down view of just the chick. As you can see, it is bottom heavy and is really having to work to stay in the air. It only flew about 10 feet but it was enough to get away from me. The hen continued to make noise in the bushes to try to draw me away from the chicks who all stayed quiet once they landed.

I never know what I'll see on my walks. Mostly it's just a chance to get out in the fresh air and get some exercise. It's always nice to be out in the quiet and peacefulness of the woods. But once in a while I get to see something worth telling others about.