Showing My Age

What is the big deal in finding people to do programming in Java? Twenty-five years ago GE Lighting staffed their IS group by hiring bright persons who may have taken a college course or two in programming and sent them out for eight days to learn COBOL. I programmed a major part of an online order entry system after a year and a half of experience. Where is the vaunted ability of contemporary software development products to produce dramatic productivity increases when the learning curve is so steep?

I have tried to find employment with several of the companies in your series. I am very willing to negotiate salary. I answer the ads in your paper or elsewhere and I never hear back unless it is to hear I lack one quality or another over my competition. So obviously they are finding talented people. If they talent pool is not up to their expectations, let them organize the training that will make things happen.

What's the name of that professor at CSU who funnels students into Brandmuscle? Were any of those students over 40? There is an implicit age bias at work in concentrating on recent graduates, even if they live, breathe, and sleep their work.

I am thinking of four associates who showed pretty equal abilities. One still maintains large mainframes, one successfully transitioned to web development, another is now an Oracle DBA and one now drives a truck for a living. Personally, I've never interviewed superlatively and I am still unemployed.

There is still a lot of chance and circumstance for both the employer and applicant. Both have to be willing to take a chance under sometimes desperate circumstances in order to make a match.

"Ohio's Economic Equation"

This was an unpublished letter to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Or if they did publish it, I certainly missed it.

It is curious that Les Vinney and Dorothy Baunach took this week to tout the achievements of NorTech (“Ohio’s economic equation”, PD 2/22/2005) while ignoring the injuries to be suffered at Glenn Research Center in the next federal budget. What does Julian Earls, Glenn’s Director and Northeast Ohio Technology Coalition member, have to say about the role NorTech will play in sustaining the research center’s programs and pre-eminence?

“Ohio ranks 22nd overall in federal R&D funding, receiving only $164 on a per capita basis versus the national average of $269. At only 61% of the national average, we have lots of room for improvement. Increasingly, opportunities for new federal funding require cooperation among multiple organizations which NorTech, as an independent and trusted third party, can help broker or facilitate. NorTech engages outside experts as needed, and works closely with the region’s universities, councils, and corporations to determine those areas and activities where that will bring more federal dollars into the region. (http://www.nortech.org/#agenda_nort)”. This quote comes from the NorTech website. But exactly what they expect to do is absent.

NorTech could be organizing a consortium to bring the construction of the International Linear Collider to Northern Ohio rather than Northern Illinois. It may not be too late. I am writing about what will be the world’s largest machine. A multi-billion dollar package of electronics, metals, ceramics, and polymers placed in a tunnel 39 kilometers long. Local manufacturers could be supplying a number of components, materials, and infrastructure. But will they? Not if business leadership ignores a potential goldmine. Or should I say salt mine? Because one place to consider placing this construction is in the geologically stable salt bed under Lake Erie.

Scientists and engineers could be working here, rather than in Chicago, engaged in research about the nature of the universe. That is an endeavor as sublime as a Cleveland Orchestra performance and more demanding than Cleveland Browns football. More office space downtown could be inhabited instead of vacant, although I’m hardly aware how many researchers and administrative staff a supercollider requires. The power requirements might expand and rehabilitate the Municipal Power Plant. Steel mills may reawaken or be kept busy for several years.

It is too much to dream for and apparently NorTech leadership does not dare to dream.

Jewish Buddhism

I received this recently in an email and if someone knows the source I would gladly give it the correct attribution.

THE PRINCIPLES OF JEWISH BUDDHISM

1. Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the wooded glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with such round shoulders.

2. There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?

3. Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.

4. To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the
following: get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?

5. If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

6. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget to do this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

7. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao is not Jewish.

8. Drink tea and nourish life. With the first sip, joy. With the second, satisfaction. With the third, Danish.

9. The Buddha taught that one should practice loving kindness to all sentient beings. Still, would it kill you to find a nice sentient being who happens to be Jewish?

10. Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all things faster.

11. Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?

12. Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkes! [i.e., "a hill of beans" or "nothing" -- for Yiddish-deprived people].