This was only one of many recent tricks gone bad. In the past few years, I’ve done myself a lot of damage with unplanned acrobatics. I know that some of our physical prowess diminishes with age, but I just don’t want to admit that I may need to tone it down a bit.

Do they really think they are going to find someone who sat down and coded Javascript for five years straight, never looking at another language? That would be a job that would quickly drive you to despair. Yet, that’s the way hiring managers seem to think.

We missed the Columbia River Gorge, the trails, the ocean beaches, and the greenness everywhere you looked all year long. To be honest, some months aren’t as green as others, but there’s always green. Columbus has lots and lots of dull grey and brown.

I worked in a half-height cubicle. Next to me was another contractor from another company. He called my name, intending to ask me a question. As soon as I stood up, he busted out in a raucous and long laugh. It took him a few minutes to settle down.

He said, with other people gathered around, “When you stood up, you looked just like some giant mutant prairie dog from hell coming out of its hole.”

Another weather front was coming in and my flight was cancelled. I asked for a room in a hotel until morning when they said I could flight out. They said they didn’t provide hotel rooms for acts of God. I said something like, “Well, if God were here, would you give him a hotel room?”

Just when I thought I would be relegated to quality assurance hell, I saw an ad in the paper that looked just like something I wanted to do. They wanted someone with experience doing database administration (DBA). I really like indices and queries. They are beautiful things. Be the first to like. Like Unlike

After my contract with the State of Oregon, I had a short dry spell. The rain fell again in the form of a contract position where I was to create a bug-tracking database using Sybase and SQL with a front-end product called Scopus. This is not the same as the current product called Scopus. Be […]

My layoff from Volt Energy Systems when the Portland office was closed down left me unemployed in an economy that was floundering. I tried my hand at consulting, but I’m just not good at marketing. If I wanted to be a salesman, I would have been a salesman. I’m much happier being a nerd. 2 […]

My first paying job was teaching programming classes at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) to children and adults. This was back when it was located next to the zoo in Washington Park. I made only minimum wage, but really enjoyed it. There was such a marked difference between teaching adults and children. […]

When I graduated high school, I ended up in various jobs: flipping burgers, folding linen at a hotel, warehousing, and working in a plasma donor facility spinning blood in a centrifuge. It was at the Fred Meyer warehouse in Clackamas, Oregon, that I had a back injury that set my life in a different direction, […]