danielcolomb.com » Rants

Employer-Employee relations

Dan — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:37:39 +0000

While I might still be a youngster when it comes to working in the corporate world or knowing how management and employees are supposed to interact, I still think common sense should apply. An employee is expected to perform certain tasks for pay. When asked to take on extra responsibilities the employee is within his or her rights to ask for more pay. If more pay is agreed upon, the employer is then ethically obligated to fulfill their end of the bargain. Not doing so does more than just upset the employee, it sows the seeds of mistrust and resentment.

Having an employer that follows through with what they promise typically has happier employees who would do more for the company than one where the employer constantly breaks promises.

Employees who work for a company who doesn’t value them, or treat them with respect and dignity also won’t recommend the company to others. If everyone knows that a certain business has shady practices and often abuses it’s privileges, soon that company won’t have any customers or referrals from employees.

It just makes sense to me if management makes promises to an employee, such as a raise. They should keep that promise, especially if that employee has taken on the extra responsibilities for which the raise was promised.

Lying to employees only breeds disgruntled employees. And we all know that’s not a healthy work environment.

As a note for anyone concerned, this has nothing to do with my current employer. Where I work people are treated with respect and decency. I wish every place could be this awesome.

A New Start

Dan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:18:51 +0000

Today was my first day at iPay. We did the usual stuff you do when you start a new job. You fill out paperwork, you get oriented to where everything is, you meet your supervisor and the people you’ll be working with, all that fun stuff.

Tomorrow (or actually today since it’s 4am and i can’t sleep for some reason), we’ll be doing more onboarding as they call it. And we’ll also go more in depth into what the company does and how i’ll be part of that. The setup they have is similar to where i worked before in a few ways. First it’s a secure site, meaning only people that work there or have business there are allowed access. Second, they’re watched/audited quite a lot since they deal with moving money (electronic payments, not literally moving cash).

I’m a little anxious to actually start looking at code and tables, I want to know how big my learning curve is going to be. It always sucks knowing that you’re going to have to play a bit of catch up, but you don’t actually know how much.

Ugh. My brain is tired but my body isn’t. WHY IS THIS?!

Anyway, tomorrow is day two! I can’t wait to get in there and start doing stuff!

End of the Year wrapup

Dan — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:30:58 +0000

A lot of stuff has happened this year. I’ve gone from single, to in a relationship, to single again. I’ve worked on some really great ideas, though most of them haven’t really taken shape. I’ve gotten really close to getting violent at work (ok, not really, but i wished i could get violent at work ). All those things seemed to climax into the events that have occurred in the last few weeks.

I’ll start with a quick recap of my previous post. Zach and I have been job hunting for the last few months, since the end of September/beginning of October. We’d even enlisted the service of some recruiting firms — TEK Systems being one of them. We had some meeting with our recruiting representative — or whatever they’re officially called — and talked about why we wanted to leave our current job, what we’re looking for in other places of employment, what kind of qualifications we have, etc, etc. Along with that we’d also put our resume’s up on job searching sites like Monster and Dice, and we even applied at some local positions online. That choice bared fruit in what happened next. iPay Technologies got in contact with both of us, as we’d both applied for some of the positions they had posted. We had our phone screenings, we even got interviews! Meanwhile back at work, nothing seemed to change. We’d told our management months before that we were job hunting, and now we’d told them we were interviewing with a company. They still didn’t seem to be doing anything — like collecting resumes or putting feelers out.

About a week later, Zach and I had another phone interview with someone else from iPay, and the next day there was an offer letter in our inbox. At first we thought the amount they were offering was a monthly salary until Zach noticed it was bi-weekly! So needless to say, we told our boss that we’d both found a new job, and we’d be starting there at the beginning of January. We then accepted the offer letters. Now is when things start getting interesting. We told our bosses that we’d go through all our projects and document everything and write up abstracts on the projects themselves — we did this not because we were told to, but because it was the right thing to do — and we’d even screen any people they found as possible candidates. All these actions were done out of kindness and professionalism.

One Friday Zach calls me to tell me what he’s just overheard, management talking about how horrible we were, how none of our projects ever worked how they wanted, how all the reports were always wrong, how apparently we were just big pieces of shit! Even though it was Zach telling me this, I could feel that flame of anger building inside of me. We were going to help these people out, find them replacements for our positions, and they’re going to stab us in the back? In the big picture i shouldn’t really care, as i have a new job already lined up, and they’re expecting me after the new year. But just to hear what people really think of us after working with them for almost three years.. it just hurts. I thought some of those people were good colleagues if not friends. So in response to that action, i moved my final day of work up to yesterday. I still did everything else I’d promised, documenting code, writing overviews of our projects, going over submitted resumes. But i wasn’t going to work there for another few weeks in that kind of environment. I also wanted to cash out all my vacation time in one paycheck, heh. That’s almost 2 1/2 weeks of pay on top of my week of pay this week. Should be a nice paycheck indeed.

Now i can’t wait until my first day at my new job. I’m kind of anxious and nervous, but i think it will be a big step in the right direction for my career.

This is some scary shit

Dan — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:46:59 +0000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8278026.stm
While I totally support any country wanting to become self-sufficient, when that country has a history of making threats and posturing against the country where I live.. that’s a different story. For years the world has been working toward getting rid of nuclear weapons, and now Iran is just the latest to try and develop their own nukes. And with long range missiles it’s really scary.

If they were really wanting to use the radioactive material for nuclear power, more power to them. But weapons? Don’t we have enough on this planet already? ..stupid humans.

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Dan — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:29:12 +0000

Something I saw online.. It’s not that I don’t like anyone who’s Christian/Jewish/Muslim, it’s just the fanatics/maniacs/hardcore ones that can’t seem to even entertain the idea of intelligible debate over any topics religious.

I thought i’d clarify this, before assumptions were made.

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Death Cab

Dan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:57:22 +0000

I bought tickets for Death Cab for Cutie this weekend. I haven’t seen them live in quite a while and i’m stoked! It’s gonna be good music, good people, and booze. Really, what more can you ask for? The show will be at the Louisville Palace, which is supposed to be a nice venue. I’ve never been there, i don’t think. The last time I saw them play it was at the Brown (Browne?) Theater, and that was very nice It was built in the early 1900′s and supposedly there were still secret passages that were used by bootleggers in the ’20s. I love places with actual real history.

I’ve also been looking at getting new wheels for my car. Currently i have some crappy snow tires on, which were put on to try and protect my current wheels from the dangers of Kentucky roads during the winter. But lately i’ve been thinking of just plain replacing my rims with something new and not as worn and damaged; the rims that came on the car aren’t bad but do have some damage and the chrome is missing in some spots.

The new wheels i’m looking at are black 18″x8.5″ in the front and 18″x9.5″ in the rear.
You can see them here. I’m going to save up a few more paychecks before i get them, since I have to make sure that I can still pay the rent, car payment, cell phone, interwebs, etc etc. For just the wheels with no tires it’s going to run me about 1000 dollars. I think it’ll be worth it though, Silver car with black rims and dark tint.. *drooool*

*a wee edit*
I’m bored again at work. I figured I’d talk about some of the stuff i bought this weekend. I got 3 albums.
The lastest Cut Copy.
The new Pierce The Veil.
And the latest Digitalism.

I’m really digging Cut Copy. It’s got a bit of an 80′s feel to it, like a mix of the Cure and electro. Pierce The Veil isn’t bad, a bit on the cookie cutter side of things. I’ve been trying to find their cover of MJ’s Beat It, but it’s turning into a difficult find. Digitalism is pretty good, a bit lacking in vocals, so it’s not as good as, say The Presets.

And now back to work

Why can’t we just use common sense?

Dan — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:51:48 +0000

I guess i’ve been thinking about that a lot. While at work I get bombarded with FOX News all day long, constantly spinning their web of blah blah blah.

Ok, i get it. People will have different opinions about this, about that. But most of the time the opinions being conveyed are very narrowly focused and don’t take into account any other situations or topics that have an impact of the topic being opinioned over.

Lets take this talk about taxes. One side is saying, “To help fix the economy, let’s tax the rich!”. The other side is saying, “How is taxing people going to fix the economy? You have to lower taxes!” Each side has proper points. Each side has their view of the world and to them their statement is the only way. But in reality what probably should be done is take a bit of each side and find a solution that will work for more people than just one side of the divide.

The issues with taxes. Democrats want to help bail out every industry that seems to be getting into trouble. I get it, help the struggling industries get back on their feet, and the economy will fix itself since they get to keep people employed. Republicans on the other hand want to have taxes lowered so citizens have more money in their pocket, and as such have more money to spend on things which will in turn fix the economy.

Both are valid ways of looking at things, but which one will work quicker, and which one will be more effective?

It’s a tough topic, because this one issue ties into so many other things.

Let’s say that the government bails out some of the struggling industries (auto, banking, etc etc) and now the country is in debt passed it’s eyeballs. So the country now needs to increase it’s income. The easy way to do this is to raise taxes. Simple, everyone just chips in a little more of their hard earned cash. The problem here is that people have less money in their pocket and now the economy slows down since less money is being passed through consumer purchases. Another solution? How about cutting back on imports?

Currently the US is importing much more than what it’s exporting. Another problem now though is what does the US have that others would want to buy? Personally I have no idea. Take the (and all of this is my opinion, none of it is hard fact) auto industry, the quality of American cars isn’t as good as imported brands like Toyota, Audi, BMW, etc. While we in the US buy American cars, most other advanced countries, especially those in Europe and Asia don’t buy American cars. What about electronics then? I don’t think I really have to say anything about that, when was the last time you saw an American-made HDTV or DVD Player or Computer? Everything comes from Asia.

So what does the US sell? Without having to go into actual research a few things pop into my head. Entertainment (music and movies) and textiles (ie: cotton). That’s about all i can think of.. Basically, if we’re going to fix our economy we need to bring money in from outside our country, export our stuff, import monies. Once that’s done the economy can truely recover.

And then on top of that there’s the spending on other things that the government does, and while we all hate the financial bean counters, i think they’re a necessary evil. Especially when you give money to areas that don’t have good enough sense to spend the money wisely (ie: Military spending, I’ve seen plenty of Plasma screens and software bought just because someone had left over money at the end of the year and was about to lose it). But that’s a rant for another time.

Anyway. The big topic is that to fix any issue you have to take a look at how and where that issue connects with other issues and problems. Then find a fix that doesn’t cause those other issues to worsen. It’s hard, but it’s the only way to permanently fix anything. Do it right the first time and you don’t have to go back and do it again. ..or.. Do such a horrible job the first time that we throw a coup-de-tat and install a new government. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened.

Enough ranting for now, i’ve got to get some work done.

Web Lingo and Rules of the Internet

Dan — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:20:38 +0000

Warning!! THE LINKS LABELED NSFW IN THIS ENTRY ARE NOT SAFE FOR WORK (or those easily grossed out)!!

So i recently commented on a friends’ blog with some commonly used gamer and internet lingo just to be replied to with, “WHAAAAA?!?!” So I’ve decided to put together a quick list of expressions and abbreviations that are commonly used across these intertubes.

Interwebs – Internet
Intertubes – Internet
wtf – what the fuck
lol – laugh out loud
“WordPress is made of win and kitteh” – win refers to the fact that WordPress is awesome and is hense made of win (awesome things). Kitteh refers to the LOL area of the web and the religion born from there.
EPIC! – when something is epic, it’s well, erm.. EPIC?
fail (insert term) is fail – means something sucks horribly

Ok, on to rules of the internet.

Do not talk about /b/ (NFFW!!)
Do NOT talk about /b/ (NFFW!!)
We are Anonymous
Anonymous is legion
Anonymous never forgives
Anonymous can be a horrible, senseless, uncaring monster
Anonymous is still able to deliver
There are no real rules about posting
There are no real rules about moderating either – enjoy your ban
If you enjoy any rival sites – DON’T
Any carefully picked arguments can easily be ignored
Anything you say can and will be used against you
Anything you say can be turned into something else – fixed
Do not argue with trolls – it means that they win
The harder you try the harder you will fail
If you fail in epic proportions, it may just become a winning failure
Every win fails eventually
Everything that can be labeled can be hated
The more you hate it the stronger it gets
Nothing is to be taken seriously
Original content is original only for a few seconds before getting old
Copypasta is made to ruin every last bit of originality
Copypasta is made to ruin every last bit of originality
Every repost is always a repost of a repost
Relation to the original topic decreases with every single post
Any topic can be easily turned into something totally unrelated
Always question a person’s sexual preferences without any real reason
Always question a person’s gender – just in case it’s a man
In the internet all girls are men and all kids are undercover FBI agents
There are no girls on the internet
TITS or GTFO – the choice is yours
You must have pictures to prove your statements
Lurk more – it’s never enough
There is porn of it, no exceptions!
If no porn is found at the moment, it will be made
There will always be even more fucked up shit than what you just saw
You can not divide by zero (just because the calculator says so)
No real limits of any kind apply here – not even the sky
CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL
EVEN WITH CRUISE CONTROL YOU STILL HAVE TO STEER
Desu isn’t funny. Seriously guys. It’s worse than Chuck Norris jokes.
Nothing is Sacred
The more beautiful and pure a thing is – the more satisfying it is to corrupt it
Even one positive comment about Japanese things can make you a weeaboo
When one sees a lion, one must get into the car
There is always furry porn of it
The pool is always closed.

Guide to Internet Usage

So as you can see the internet is like another universe with it’s own rules and society. Interwebs are the future, and we must learn to lurk with the best or GTFO.

For more practice about how the internet works, you can always start trolling forums, or hell, 4chan

New Phone Pics

Dan — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:25:10 +0000

So like I promised, here are pictures of my new phone! It’s beautimus!

When it first arrived!

Another box inside the box!

ooooooh! pretty

Still with it’s protective screen on

With the keyboard exposed.

I’ve only had it a day, and so far i’m very happy with it. It’s my first real smartphone so i don’t have anything to compare it to. Well besides the iPhones that i’ve played with. This has a similar feel in some ways, but in other ways it’s totally different. I do admit, i like the keyboard even though it’s tiny.

I’ll give more impressions as i find them. I might even be able to post from my phone to my blog! that would be very nifty!

New Phone!

Dan — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:37:56 +0000

Yesterday I ordered a new phone. I haven’t gotten a new phone in years. I seriously can’t remember the last phone I’ve had, so this is a momentous occasion! I order an HTC Touch Pro through Spint with a new account. That means I got some nice perks, like not having an activation charge and getting some extra discounts for ordering online. For whatever reason they offered free Overnight Shipping, so I took it. I’d never use Overnight before, and apparantly it’s fast, I pulled up the tracking page for my shipment and it says the phone is out for delivery already! That’s less than 12 hrs turn around! I LIKE FREE OVERNIGHT SHIPPING!

I’ll post more once i get my phone and i can take pictures of its’ sexiness.