I’m actually an “employee” again…

I inked a deal on Friday, with the contract house that has been finding and administrating my contracts, ITI .

For the past year or so I’ve been an independent contractor, a ‘1099’ employee. While that’s been fine, it also meant I had to keep track of my tax liabilities, provide my own medical and dental as well as set up my own retirement account and so on.

I've had very little contact with these folks over the last year. I met a few people at the start of the contract, but, as it was only supposed to be six (6) weeks long, I wasn't expecting to see too much of them. There have been one or two phone calls, mainly me calling to give them a 'heads up' about contract extensions and so on, but, all in all, they've been very transparent in the process.

I had lunch (for the first time) with the owner and one of the reps this week and during the meal they discussed the idea of me becoming an regular (W-2) type "employee".

I have to admit I was a bit torn. On one hand it’s been nice being independent, I work the hours I want, no problem keeping up with ‘paid time off’ (as there is none) and every hour I am billable for, I get paid for. All in all, a straight up and fair to all parties, deal.

There had also been the possibility (as mentioned to me several times troughout the year) that the client was going to hire me, but last week in several conversations it became pretty clear that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. My manager explained that, for next year I’d been put in the budget as a contractor, not an employee. Not a big deal, in and of itself, to me.

I figured I could buy my own health insurance (as COBRA will be ending soon), continue to fund my own 401K and just continue doing what I’d been doing.

However, when Maryan and I were going through the mail one evening this week my thoughts began to change.

It seems my previous employer had elected to switch health insurance carriers (once again, not a big deal by itself). However, the new plan isn’t in the new insurance company’s “system” yet, and, some of the health care providers we’ve been dealing with for Maryan’s back are not ‘in network’ and the new company requires ‘pre-approval’ for all physical therapy, in, or out of, their “network”.

Well things began to cascade fairly quickly from there. The PT place cancelled all of her appointments next week, citing a lack of approval from the (non-existent) health insurance company. We can’t get any prescriptions filled (without paying full price now and waiting for a reimbursement from the, (again non-existent) insurance company… etc... etc…

So, Maryan made several calls to the previous employer during the week, talked with HR, the President’s secretary, the insurance agent and the insurance company… all to no avail.

Friday morning, I called and left John (the President) a voicemail, asking for a personal favor, that he get this resolved for me. I also called the insurance agent and asked for the same help.

Well, when she called back the insurance agent proceeds to tell me I have nothing to worry about… and I have to stop her right there, and explain that despite what she ‘thinks’, I do have something to worry about. That my wife’s post surgery therapy is being interrupted, that the PT center has cancelled all of her appointments for next week and the insurance company has no information, at all, on this supposed new policy, or, and more importantly, "us".

I went on to explain, as calmly as I could, that if this in any way hindered her full recovery, I would hold, her, the agency and my former employer (who as of this morning, has still not returned my call) liable.

She then started to explain that the company made the decision to ‘switch’ insurance carriers, late… and once again I stopped her.

I asked why, should her inability to get her client to act in a timely manner, or the client’s inability to make a timely decision, be my problem. That this was certainly looking more and more like an actionable situation should my wife be harmed by their inability to take action in a timely manner.

When it was all said and done, she promised to get things straight, today, and call me back.

In the meantime, the folks from ITI (the contract house) called, with an offer. It was exactly what I’d hoped it would be, paid time off, medical, dental, 401K (with a generous match) a ‘salary’ + hourly payment for any billable hours worked past 40!

All in all, net... net… I’m going to wind up within 5% of where I am now. Pretty fair deal all the way around, as far as I’m concerned.

The real bonus in all of this, to me, is that Maryan and I won’t have to deal with the ‘old’ employer any longer. We’ll be finally free of all of that, and trust me, that alone is a big deal to me!! Maybe even more importantly, ITI has Blue Cross as their health insurance carrier, which, in my opinion, is vastly superior to 'WellPath', the company my old employer had switched to!!

So, it’s Sunday morning, I spent a good 6 hours in the garage yesterday, but took only two pictures as I spent the entire time trying to get the last patch welded into the truck bed. (I still have a little more work to do there today!)

It was one of those if it can go wrong it will kind of things. I initially forgot to turn the shielding gas on, and with a MIG welder that leads to all sorts of trouble… Duhhhh… so it was cut the patch back out, refit it as best I could (you may recall I got rid of all the ‘spare’ donor bed parts in the dumpster earlier in the week) and attempt to make up the voids that resulted with thin strips of sheet metal.

Not exactly a masterpiece, but with an hour or so more work, it’ll be a pretty seamless patch to all but a very trained eye. Once I blend it with some body filler, prime it, paint it and then have the bed liner sprayed down, I doubt anyone will ever be able to tell!

I know I promised pictures, and as soon as I start getting all these pieces into primer I’ll definitely take, and post them!

Thanks again for stopping by, and for leaving me comments… I love hearing what you folks are thinking!

Reflections…

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The title of this post, was the title of my first published article. I've been so busy, I haven't had time to tinker with scanning it and then getting it to post in a fashion that's legible. So here's the article, as I submitted it.

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I wasn’t born here, but I often think I should have been.

I distinctly remember my first evening in Alamance County. It actually was a “dark and stormy” night, where I’d flown in a commuter (as in small) plane to Greensboro from Nashville, TN. The last 10 minutes of the flight and the drive to Burlington, had been in one of those ‘they only happen here’ late summer evening thunderstorms.

My destination that evening was the Hampton Inn (the one that used to be off Huffman Mill Road at Exit 141), as I had a breakfast appointment the next morning (a Saturday) with a potential client. My first surprise was the clerk at the desk, she actually told me she was sorry I had to drive through the storm, in all my travels, through all sorts of weather that, had never happened before.

My next surprise was at breakfast. My new client brought his (then) eight year old daughter to our meeting! Now I’ve had meetings with all sorts of executives, all over the country, and no one had ever brought one of their children to a meeting with me. He explained that Saturday breakfast was a regular thing for them as he traveled quite a bit, and he didn’t want her to miss out simply because he and I had this meeting.

I know for a fact that his daughter’s presence was the deciding factor for me in agreeing to take on their project and return to Burlington that September. I remember thinking that for someone that successful, he really had his priorities straight.

It wasn’t until I actually moved here to begin the project that I really began to see how different things are here from what I’d previously experienced.

It’s the people, and the lifestyle here, maybe nothing special to the natives, to them it’s just the way things are. To me however, it was, and remains, very special.

Take how I found my first apartment for example. It was early, before dawn, at the Circle K on the corner of Alamance Road and Mebane Street. I was getting gas before driving home in preparation for a for six (or more) month contract. I’d been thinking about how to find a place to live since signing the contract the day before, but, really didn’t know ‘how’ I was going to accomplish that from 800 miles away.

As I was paying for the gas (this was way before pay-at-the-pump became popular) there was a woman in the store who’d noticed my out of state tags and asked “Just passing through?”. I began to explain how I was leaving, but coming back, and had to find a place to stay in the next week or so. She proceeded to give me the name and number of a local man in the rental management business who had helped her find an apartment. When I got home, I called him. He not only had a place, it was fully furnished, in my budget and available. It turned out it was an apartment, in his home. He rented to me, sight unseen, no deposit, just the check for the 1st months rent. Over the following months he and I became friends and remained so until he died a year or so ago, in fact he helped me find the house I now own!

I’ve lived here for over 10 years now; these events took place back in 1993. The city has changed a lot since then, new stores, new roads, wider roads, more people and many new businesses. The one thing that hasn’t changed is how much I enjoy living here. Not a week goes by that I don’t experience something that reminds me how special a place this is. It might be the woman at the dry cleaner’s telling me about how much she loves Bingo, or the fellow yesterday at the gas station telling me about his son’s love of soccer while we filled up our cars. Something, every week reminds me that here in our little corner of the world we still see, talk and relate to one another in ways that are conspicuously absent nearly everywhere else I travel.

*-----------------------------------*

So there you have it, my first published piece. Certainly no work of literary genius, but good enough to make the magazine!! The Magazine is called "Alamance County Magazine" and it focuses on, of course, life here in Alamance County. The September issue was a 'Welcome to Alamance" issue and higlighted some of the benefits of living here. The piece was written to appeal to the theme.

*-----------------------------------*

Thanks again for stopping by, as the weekend is currently planned as a 'thrash' on the truck project weekend, I should be posting pictures and a narrative on the progress, or lack of it for the next three days.

You've been warned!

I think I’ve scored a paint booth…

Of sorts. Not exactly a ‘paint booth’ but a little bigger garage, possibly a little bigger compressor… more lights… “R…RR…RRRRR” - More power!!

My friend Mike Turner, who is also an excellent contractor… in fact if he’d ever let me build him a website I’d point any of you to him in a heartbeat… he’s a definite rarity... an honest home improvement contractor!!

Well, as a result of checking on his guys while we were finishing up the roof project (and yes, he even let’s me supply some of the labor to save me a few dollars, the caveat is, if I cause it to run ‘long’ that’s my cost not his), we got talking about project cars and trucks.

In the middle of our conversation UPS shows up with my new primer guns, and he’s wondering if I’d let him borrow them when he gets ready to paint his truck this fall. A few short minutes later, and I’ve set up a deal where I’ll shoot his truck, and teach him how in the process, if I can use his shop to squirt mine.

Can you say S-W-E-E-T!?!?

I know a lot of you don’t have the foggiest idea, what painting a car entails, and could probably care less, but I’m going to give you the short skinny anyway….

In terms of the environment you want:

• Air flow, ventilation, pulling out overspray and fumes, will not only keep you healthy, it’ll yield a better finish
• Light, too much is not enough, ideally it would be as bright as daylight, from every angle so you can ‘see’ how the paint is laying down.
• Clean, and as ‘dust free’ as is possible, keeping bugs, especially gnats and mosquitoes outside is also a must.
• Large volume air compressor, something capable of flowing 10-15 CFM @ 90psi non-stop is ideal. Painting takes quite a bit less than that, so the compressor will run cooler, less moisture in the compressed air, less that has to be taken out.

Why worry about all of this?

First, automotive paint is expensive; it starts at around $100/gallon and goes up from there. Even a low cost epoxy primer costs in the neighborhood of $75/gallon, and on a typical project I’d expect to use at least a gallon and a half of primer, a gallon of the base color and another gallon of clear.

So with just the paint, not to mention the additives, thinners and reducers, we’re talking $300, and at least double that if you’re planning on doing anything fancy. I saw a pint of a particular House of Kolor ‘Kandy’ priced at near $100 the other day!

With all this money involved you want to minimize the possibility of problems while you’re applying the paint. Ideally, you’d have a climate controlled ‘paint booth’ that provides down draft ventilation, plenty of lighting and an extremely ‘clean’ environment for the process.

One of the worst feelings in the world is to spend 100’s of hours in preparation, knowing you have an absolutely straight and square ‘canvas’ only to have all your efforts nullified by dust, dirt, water or poor lighting. I remember an ambulance we did once (I’ll tell that story another day), that we had to repaint; because the lighting in the shop we borrowed was so bad, there were actually places the paint didn’t ‘cover’ the primer. A hard lesson, and expensive as well!

Scoring a slot in Mike’s garage means I’ll be able to shoot the truck somewhere other than where I’ve been doing all the prep work. In short, that means a ton less dust.

Also, Mike’s shop is considerably larger than mine. That means we can set up some extra lights around the perimeter of the truck and not have to worry about ‘tripping on them while painting.

He’s got all the air compressor we’ll need and we discussed today my ideas for handling the ventilation.

All in all, I’m very excited (not to mention Mike will probably give me a hand with my project, so we can get to his!).

Work today was a series of nice little ‘wins’. I made some promises yesterday that I don’t think anyone thought could be fulfilled. I got lucky on one project because the fellow I’d been charged with guiding to a solution, not only accepted my suggestions, he got them implemented very quickly, with exactly the expected results! A nice win.

The little POL project I mentioned in yesterdays post is wrapped up and delivered, as promised by the close of business today.

I’m on target to get back on the Duns project in the morning, exactly on schedule. They added a couple items to my list for that project today that they need by the end of this week… If I knock that out on time, I’ll have had one of the best weeks on this project yet. All in all, I couldn’t be happier. My wife continues to recover, a roof with no leaks, a place to shoot the truck and the work projects are on track… does it ever get much better?

I hope you all are well, thanks for taking the time to stop by… by all means leave me a comment and let me know what you’re up to!

Technorati Tags: Automotive Paint - Home Shop - Shop Talk

Some odds and ends…

This isn't one of my 'real' posts, but just some tid-bits that needed saying.

Some odds and ends…

I’ve had a lot of hits lately, by people looking for one (or more) of the string comparators I’ve implemented in Foxpro and VB.Net. So… for any of you that are driving by, and would like a copy of the raw source for any of the comparators, just stop by CP.Solutions, navigate over to the feedback form and request a link to download it. You need to be specific and let me know what algorithm you want:

Levenshtein
MetaPhone
NYSIIS
Jaro-Winkler

They’re free and I’m providing them without any express or implied warranties. The only thing I ask is that you give credit where it’s due and leave the comments in the program headers.

The entire package, along with the POL utility is very nearly complete. I intend to make that available for a very reasonable one time fee ($99/developer). If you’re interested in that, please indicate your interest on the feedback form. Formats will include a Visual Foxpro class library and a VB.Net DLL

Jaro-Winkler Levenshtein NYSIIS Metaphone Percentage of Likeness FoxPro VB.Net

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I’m in the process of revamping my personal website with an eye toward providing a real photo gallery. I like the open source PHP product called ‘Coppermine’, and I’m wondering if any of my readers have any experience with incorporating PHP into an otherwise HTML type site. Any problems or special issues that you’re aware of? Any “gotcha’s” you can give me a heads up on??

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Would the folks who are constantly ( 5 or 10 times a week) dropping by here after googling for “Chuck Gronsbell” drop me a note, or leave a comment? Curiosity has finally gotten the better of me!

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The folks over at Byzantium Shores were kind enough to add a link on their page to my post the other day on Relationships. I’d like to say thanks, and point y’all over there as this fellow has some interesting things to say.

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Things at work are extremely busy at the moment. From what I understand it’s a combination of things, year end approaching, budgets for 2006 being due and several ‘open items’ reaching the end of tolerance levels. For me, it’s meant being included in half a dozen additional small projects, all of which are ‘up against the wall’ and definitely past the due dates.

I suppose I could be stressing over it, but, I look at it this way… work, is work… I’d rather be working than not… and all this additional stuff, makes a contract extension look even more likely!!

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On the home front… the new roof is all but finished, some cleanup and ‘caps’ to nail in and we’ll be calling that a wrap. I’m almost looking forward to a really, really heavy rainfall so we can ‘test’ out’ the results. After 5 years of patching, flashing and repairing, it will be so wonderful to not have to worry about leaks any more!!

You see this roof, has probably leaked since the house was originally built. Every section of roof (there are four distinct sections) has had at least one leak since we’ve been here. Even the section we totally replaced, still leaked in at least two places.

The new roofer, did discover why though, and has fashioned a fix.

My friend and contractor Mike Turner, says this guy has been doing all of his roofing for five years now, and there has never been a leak once he’s done. Y’all keep your fingers crossed, and I’m putting away the buckets!

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This weekend is supposed to be in the mid-70’s, breezy and just beautiful fall weather.

That means I’ll be back on the truck project again and you can expect pictures of all the work this weekend. I’ll be getting the bed floor and wheel wells finished and in primer on Friday, the sides and front in final ‘blocked’ form and primer on Saturday and everything in a coat of sealer on Sunday.

Pretty ambitious, and with any luck it’ll get done. Then I can bring the chassis back in and pull the cab off and start on that!! I’m excited, it’s been too long and I need to beat some steel into submission!!
Truck Project

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New programming projects… well, the two new clients I mentioned a few weeks ago are still alive and “potentials”. I’ve spoken with each and they assure me that as soon as the ‘rush’ is over… they want to get started on their projects.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t counting on either one to pay the bills this month!!

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Blogroll… It’s been brought to my attention that some of the folks I have on ‘my’ blog roll, do not have me on theirs… Ummmm thanks, but that’s not why I started a Blogroll…. I just thought someone else might enjoy some of the sites I do.

I’m very happy to be listed on anyone’s site that thinks they’d like to add me. I try to visit the site’s of everyone who posts a message here, or where the URL shows up in my stats.. If I enjoy the blog and return to read more there when I can, I add it to the roll.

If I’ve somehow omitted anyone from the blogroll, who would like to be on it, drop me an email or leave me a comment and I’ll check your site out, and consider doing so.Blogroll

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Seems the POL utility I’ve written is finding more and more utility at the client site. I’ve been asked to generate ‘best match’ candidates to link several thousand new records in a new table to some existing datastore that contains several hundred thouand records.

I’m beginning to wonder how I got along without it in the past.

I think that so many of my previous clients were not aggregating data, but simply managing their own, that it wasn’t the issue it is here. Any time you attempt to bring together data from multiple sources you have a real potential for duplicates. The POL does a nice job of identifying existing records that may be duplicates of those being imported. It also can ‘preprocess’ the incoming file and write off to a suspense file those records that are identified as having potential matches in the existing datastore.

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So.. that's about it for today.. between the roof and work I'm about worn out today... I'll work at finding something....Ummmmm... more interesting for tomorrow!!

Thanks again for stopping by!!

A Little Rant on Conspiracy Theory…

My rant on Conspiracy Theory…

Today.. something a little different from me… a rant…

[rant]
I’ve never been one to follow the paranoia spouted by the conspiracy theorists among us.

Although, just because I’m not paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me!

However, just the other day, a friend sent me this link so I’d have a laugh for the day. It had the opposite effect; I found it troubling that anyone would spend this much time, attempting to tie the recent Katrina catastrophe as well as the pending effects of hurricane Rita, to this sort of conspiratorial babble.

The basis for all of this is something called the “Woodpecker Grid”, if you’re really interested click here for the results of a dogpile search on it. The thing I find so incredible, is that these folks seem to think it really is possible to do this!

If you’re familiar with even localized efforts at weather manipulation, like cloud seeding (if you’re not familiar with that there’s a good explaination here.). Then you probably already know that after nearly sixty years of study, attempts and funding, that the scientific community is still undecided as to the actual, measurable results.

So, if we can’t reliably, seed some clouds to make it rain, we’re (as in anyone, anywhere on the planet) somehow able to direct electromagnetic waves, to a specific point and generate an event like a hurricane?

When Rita was forecast to hit Galveston as a category 5+ hurricane, these same folks were claiming it was all a plot, to wipe out the oil refining/production facilities of the US.

Now that she’s spared most of the oil platforms, refineries and lessened to a category 2 before making landfall, I suppose they’ll claim that it was their (the conspiracy folks) reporting of the plot that caused the perpetrators to back down. Although, seeing how they were blaming everyone from Russia to Bin Laden, it’s difficult for me to imagine anyone with that type of power to back down…

There are a number of reasons why, I personally, don’t believe any of this is possible, but the number one reason is that it relies on EM waves. The amount of directed (even over an invisible 'grid') EM energy required to generate a storm the size of Katrina or Rita, would shut down all sorts of communications equipment worldwide.

I suppose there’ll be someone to say they’ve also discovered a means of transmitting these waves undetectably… That would be a pretty big deal, undetectable EM waves… you would have thought it would have made the papers, or CNN or something.

Maybe it’s just me. It’s possible I’m just so frightened by the possibility that someone could manipulate the weather this way I refuse to believe it could be done. But, then again, maybe if these all powerful terrorist types who can create hurricanes at will, would create one say in the North Atlantic, (where they rarely, if ever, start) and then steer it west into say Iceland, against the prevailing wind currents, I’d have to take a serious look at it.

It’s sort of like “Aliens from outer space”… I’m not convinced they don’t exist, as the universe is a pretty big place, and the odds of us being alone in it are fairly small (at least according to Carl Sagan). However, if they were visiting this planet, I think they’d do something more, ummmm, inventive, besides making circles in some farmers cornfield.

I’d be more impressed if they did something along the lines of what happened in Sagan’s book “Contact” (or the movie if you missed the book)… at least that showed some ingenuity.

Look, I know there are 'bad guys' out there. In fact, on some days I worry they outnumber the rest of us. Thankfully they don’t. In fact they make up a very small percentage of the humans on the planet. They just get all the press time.

The rest of us, going about our fairly mundane daily lives just aren’t deemed “News worthy”. Just once, I’d like to see an entire news cast that highlighted; the folks who cut out of work early to see their kid’s game. Those who come home after a rough day at work, and instead of dumping on the family, take them all out to dinner… those folks who despite many problems of their own; donate money to disaster victims, give blood to the Red Cross, spend the weekend painting their church instead of fishing, take time off from work to build houses for habitat for Humanity, take “Fresh Air” kids into their homes in the summer, or any of a 1,000 other generous acts performed each minute in this (and other) countries every single minute of every day.

I doubt I’ll ever see it.

Instead, I’ll hear about murderers, rapists, terrorists, burglars, robbers, serial killers, plane crashes, and on and on… I know that the 'good deeds' outnumber the bad, but, shouldn’t we at least get news shows that reflect that?

I somehow think, that if even one reporter, with one major cable network could back up any of this conspiritorial supposition, with fact, we’d have been subjected to hours and hours of it by now. They’d have full screen graphics, high-res photos with circles and arrows and a commentator explaining what each one means (sorry Arlo)… repeating it every fifteen (ok maybe 20) minutes 24 hours a day.

The fact is, there is no huge "out to get us" secret group out there… just the same old power hungry groups there’s always been.. and we’re watching them!!

[/rant]

I’ll be back soon (as myself), after the proper application of welding fumes, bondo dust, primer overspray, loud obnoxious power tools and carefully measured amounts of a cold, fermented, yeast, barley and hops mixture!!

Until then… what’s your favorite conspiracy??

Technorati Tags: >Conspiracy About Me Woodpecker Grid