Outsourced, Unemployed & Homeless

This blog has been moved

2010-05-30T12:48:00.000-04:00

I am leaving the old version here on Blogger but the whole thing, including all future updates are located at http://www.outsourcedandhomeless.com/

Moving this thing to Wordpress

2010-05-18T13:37:00.000-04:00

I am going to make a few posts about some things which Google might not like too much. Some crazy software which can be used to drive traffic. Not that I have really driven any substantial traffic with it, nor am I trying to get traffic to this blog but, nonetheless, I would rather this not reside on G's servers anymore. It’s going to look different aesthetically…probably not as good.
Might take me awhile. Might not post for awhile but check back if you feel like it. I guess there have a few interesting developments in my life which I would ordinarily put on this blog but have been too lazy or distracted to do it. I would definitely like to resume posting more often. Not sure I can hold anyone's attention anymore but this is still cathartic.

How Many Times?

2010-05-01T21:07:00.001-04:00

Another pin pushed into the already well-perforated cushion I call my “love life.”

I run into her at the bottom of the stairs of my condo. She’s walking her little Yorkie puppy. Attractive, dirty blonde, nice body, a nice age for me, kids grown and gone, seems interested.

Things seem to progress nicely. I pick up the little dog (ignoring the urine which I at once feel on my left hand) and the conversation flows naturally. I then ask her into my condo because she expresses in interest in doing so.

Little Yorkie follows us in and everything is good. After awhile she asks if I would like to see her condo which is actually right around the corner – the exact same building in fact. Anyway, things going well and she is offering me coffee or water etc…

The conversation turns to dating, and how hard it is to meet someone. She makes references to creeps on the online dating sites. She then asks whether I am married or have children and I tell her no and no.

She began to talk about her car and how she didn’t like it. She always liked sports cars. So, I mentioned that she would really have liked my old car – a Mazda RX-8. At this, she spilled her coffee all over the kitchen. Unbelievably, she went on to tell me that HER LAST car was a Mazda RX-8. Now, in all the years since that model came out, I have only ONCE seen a woman driving one. Not only did she have one, she had a green one like mine, same year, sport package with spoiler, same interior. The odds of this might be 1/1,000,000. Something about a woman driving a car like that is very sexy to me. The thought that she had the exact same car was surreal and, I suspected she felt the same way.

A pleasant hour of conversation passes and she volunteers to help me put stuff into my car. (I have sold the Kia and purchased a new sports car – more on this in a different post). I thought this to be a nice gesture but was quite blown away when she then volunteered to take a couple of the larger items and put them in her car and take them down to my new apartment. This is at least 1 hour out of her way – a 2 hour round trip from either home or work.

Things wrapped up with my getting her phone number and telling her I would call.

A couple of days later I called her and got one of the coldest, most unmistakable blow offs in my life.

How can one ever make sense of a thing when there are no consistent behaviors or results? It’s like trying to exist in a world where the laws of nature are constantly changing.

I deleted her from the cell phone and hope to avoid running into her again before I move…lest I loose my tongue.

Moving Again

2010-05-01T20:51:00.001-04:00

I am busy getting ready to move again. I went and retrieved some of my old belongings which I had stored in my friend’s basement a year ago. I brought all of the stuff up to the condo in Vernon but now I need to move all of it again since I am moving into another apartment down in Montclair, NJ. The new place is very nice and spacious; rent is about the same as here in Vernon but it’s not so far removed from everything. I will make a video of the place after I am moved in. I am still day trading and building some other blogs. These blogs are mostly related to my stock market research and application development. A couple of other ones are just for fun or to try and make some money on advertising. Much of the content is “auto generated” using some Wordpress Plugins. I will give myself a few backlinks now:

Stock Market and Forex Trading with Harmonic Patterns and Fibonacci Ratios.

Tailgating Beer, Tailgating Ale, Tailgating Accessories

World Cup 2010, Top 100 Futbol players of all time, Top 10 Futbol players of all time, Top 100 Soccer players of all time, Top 10 Soccer players of all time, Top 10 current Futbol players.

Stock Market and Forex Trading using OLAP Cubes.

Very Nice Wordpress Adsense Plugin

2010-04-18T05:13:00.000-04:00

For anyone who needs to insert some Adsense into their Wordpress Blog, this is by far the best plugin that I have found. Although my blog is a Blogger blog, I am starting to build Wordpress Blogs; very much preferred now that I start to dig into it. Problem is, I cannot just convert this Blogger Blog into a Wordpress Blog. I would lose a ton of stuff. I hate being a slave to "G" however, so, I might do it at some point. All it takes in one politically incorrect thing and one person to flag the blog (perhaps)

I am giving the author of the Wordpress Adsense plugin an endorsement with the icon below.

TechMilieu.com

Telechart

2010-04-06T23:02:00.000-04:00

A shameless plug for the most powerful stock software I have ever used. Yes, I signed up as an affiliate. I am still doing well. I got a new Droid phone which takes good video, and I have taken a few which I wanted to put on the blog but for the life of me, I can't convert the file format. I think the file extension is like .3gp or something. Only opens with Quicktime. It’s not like these are earth shatteringly interesting videos so, no great loss. I can always use my old one if I have something interesting to record. It’s a beautiful spring here in Northwest NJ. Because of the severe winter and all of the precipitation, it seems as if everything is revitalized and clean. Lots of flowing rivers and streams and oxygenated lakes.

Some Sort of Tracking Laser Beam

2010-04-01T18:33:00.001-04:00

Chechan Rebels “Will be Destroyed”

2010-03-29T11:13:00.000-04:00

Not “bring them to justice.” Why can't we get someone to state it like it is?
Even when Bush said “Dear or Alive”, he was skewered by the media as coming across as some Western Cowboy.

Chechan Terrorists

Explorers

2010-03-20T04:31:00.008-04:00

Some of the posts I have written over the past year have had to do with explorers and their fates – of either triumph and survival, or failure and death. Sometimes, as the decades and centuries roll by, historians are able to uncover the truth; namely, that when subject to closer inspection, it is the noble death which outshines the ignoble survival. The real heroes and the real cowards are fleshed out posthumously. I can site many examples of this. From time to time I may post one because I find these stories of exploration fascinating. I learned a lot from the book below. There were many stories of exploration of which I was not aware. After reading this, I was able to seek out the original books. Sadly, I lost many of these over the past couple of years. Some of them were quite valuable… and not just as keepsakes. So, if you are interested in this sort of stuff, I recommend the book below. Better to get it in hardcover (my personal preference).

The Oxford-Book of Exploration by Robin Hanbury-Tenison

Edward John Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George’s Sound, in the Years 1840-41

2010-03-16T02:13:00.009-04:00

Living vicarously really sucks.
-----------------

The Murder of His Overseer, James Baxter (1841)

Toyota takes aim at California runaway Prius story

2010-03-16T01:23:00.005-04:00

Toyota takes aim at California runaway Prius story

Excerpts from the article, and my comments in red. Sounds like another “Balloon Boy” to me.

Prius owner Jim Sikes made national headlines last week with claims that his car's accelerator got stuck as he sped up to pass a car while traveling on California's I-8 highway outside of San Diego, and that he was unable to stop the car.
"As I was going, I was trying the brakes ... and it just kept speeding up," he said.
Sikes said he called 9-1-1 for help as he was traveling in excess of 90 mph on a winding, hilly portion of the interstate. He said dispatchers tried to talk him through ways to stop the car, but nothing helped [how about hold the ignition button for 3 seconds].
Eventually, a California Highway Patrol officer was able to catch up to Sikes and used the patrol car's public address system to instruct Sikes to apply the brakes and the emergency brake at the same time. That tactic worked, and he was able to stop the car. [I assume then, that when the car was stopped, the cop observed that the car was still trying to surge forward? If so, I admit it was a problem with the car].
Sikes' attorney, John Gomez [bottom feeder], denied that the report proves his client was wrong about what happened to his car.
"The notion that they weren't able to replicate it in this particular case tells us nothing," he said. "They haven't been able to replicate a single one of these."

Posted using ShareThis

Despicable magazine tries to obtain nude photos of murder victim

2010-03-12T13:52:00.007-05:00

This is a disturbing article. There seems to be no limit to the moral depravity to which we have succumbed. There are lawyers for Hustler magazine who are contesting the judge’s ruling to NOT allow these photos to be distributed. Now… had this request come from a reputable magazine, it would be bad enough. The fact that is comes from a hardcore porn magazine is ghastly and disturbing. Think about it? Why would they want these photos?

You will see comments at the bottom of this article from people who are runaway free speech advocates. There is apparently nothing which will deter them from their ideology. They make reference to the fact that, were these photos of Pakistani women killed by American bombs, no one would care. I actually agree with this statement with one caveat: Why should we care as much about these deaths? Most people in Pakistan hate us anyway.
Full Article

Something Different - Vanderlei Silva vs Guy Mezger

2010-03-09T01:45:00.004-05:00

An excellent fight. Saw the whole thing years ago.

Fake UPS or USPS emails delivering Trojans

2010-03-06T13:14:00.000-05:00

This has been around for a few months now. If you ever get one of these emails about a failed package delivery, delete it. Russian hackers spam these out, knowing full well that some of the recipients will have actually mailed a package recently. They will then open the zip file and the executable within it. Once they do, they become just another zombie in a botnet. In the dark underbelly of the internet, they are then referred to as “Somebody’s Bitch.”

Class Action Lawyers adopt even more Dastardly tactics

2010-03-06T13:02:00.000-05:00

I have noticed a new trend lately. Class Action lawyers have decided to try and corner the market on very specific niches – usually pertaining to side effects or death from the use of certain prescription drugs. Years ago, one of these bottom feeders began this trend by cornering the market on “Mesothelioma” victims. These are people who suffered asbestos poisoning. Okay, of course, there is some legitimacy to this, however, a decade later they are still advertising. I would think the market for this would have dried up by now.
These newer bottom feeders are going after Pharmaceutical companies and NOW, Dannon. This ad was front and center on either yahoo or cnn.com a week ago. It is very expensive to get your banner ad on the front page of these sites.
Can anyone say “John Edwards”? This is what he did to get rich.

Tracking Cookies

2010-03-06T12:40:00.000-05:00

I forgot to add this. If you have your cookies set to manual, you will see something like this when clicking the link in the prior post:

This is a tracking cookie. Most people know what cookies are. These tracking cookies are a bit more pernicious. They claim to "enhance" the user browsing experience by serving "relevant" ads to the user. It's a bunch of crap. 2of7.net is one of the top dogs. I always block them.

Jobs: Short-term hope, long-term despair [with scam ads on the page]

2010-03-06T12:33:00.000-05:00

Was reading this article today on CNN.com

http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/06/news/economy/jobs_recovery/index.htm?hpt=T2

However, on the same page, there are scam ads to take advantage of people. The ads may be different if you click this link but whatever ads you see under "sponsored links" are scams. So, what have here is an article which might appeal more to someone who is out of work. They might then click the sponsored link and guess what? Because they are desperate, there is a chance they will get suckered in and actually lose what little money they have. Here is a screenshot of the ads I see. The Penny Stock one is obvious. The other is less so but is a scam nonetheless.

Adjusting to a Normal Life Again

2010-03-02T11:07:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone. True to form, I have been resting and sleeping for a good week. Lots of snowstorms going on outside. What a pleasure to be able to look out the window from a warm, cozy apartment whilst a storm is raging outside. I watched 24 last night for the first time in a long time. Another simple pleasure I had forgotten about. In homage to the Forex Trading application which helped me to escape my hobo-like existence, I have been using eToro to continue to do Forex Trading. Things are still going very well in that area. Other than that, I am just slowly getting back to the day-to-day trappings of a “normal” life. Nothing profound to add to this post. In fact, it will be harder to keep a reader interested. I suppose I could start to talk about politics. Beautiful day today in the NJ Skylands. Maybe this is a harbinger of spring – finally.

* Update. I am now using Telechart and ForexTracer

Nightmare is over – Moving Day.

2010-02-20T12:26:00.002-05:00

I moved into my new apartment yesterday. I have had to endure a lot in the past 9 months or so but I know I have been more fortunate than many. I heard from many others who were in the same position as me but who had children to support. I don’t have any. The circumstances of the past two days stand in such stark contrast to the events of past months. How quickly one’s life can take such a dramatic turn. I slept like a log last night. I may just sleep for the next week. To be able to lay in a comfortable, clean bed after taking a hot shower and a shave; how much we take for granted in our everyday lives. This past month has been one of great trepidation and hope. I took several risks. I give myself credit for my research on harmonic trading patterns. This project of mine, and the results I was able to obtain from the research, helped me immensely when it came to Forex trading. I also took a risk by over-extending myself even further in order to get access to some funds for survival and investment purposes. I signed up for something called the 60 Minute Payday in which I (somehow) qualified for a cash loan. More on this later. More on many things later. For the time being, it’s back to bed for me – to quote myself “the somnolent sleep of youth”.

Check the Google Pagerank of your Website

2010-02-18T10:03:00.002-05:00

Numbers will range from 1-10 with Google being a 10. Your goal is to get your site to a 6 or 7 which is not easy. Wiki Article

Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly:

This free page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service

Apartment Hunting - FINALLY

2010-02-16T14:36:00.000-05:00

I took this small video on Sunday. It was awkward and weird to film myself looking at an apartment. I could tell the landlord was uncomfortable. If you listen closely towards the end of the video, after I say, “I don’t want to take up any more of your time,” the guy says “Good”!

The place was a pig sty and was too small for me anyway. I would have had to wait until March 1st to move into it. Believe it or not, I am actually in a position now to be somewhat picky. I didn’t need to take the first place I looked at. I am so used to living in the car that I can look at a few more places. I am going to look at a place in the next couple of days which is a furnished condo. Because it is up in the Vernon area, it’s a good price considering the size of it. It is vacant (unlike the last place), so I can move in anytime if I like it, however, I don’t think I will take any video this time when looking at it.
Snowing AGAIN today in NJ. Looks like we will get at least six more inches. I am so ready to be plugged back into the real world. Shouldn’t be long now. I will publish a post pretty soon to explain how it is that I am getting back on my feet.

Emails from Indian “Body Shops” about Cloud Job

2010-02-11T17:39:00.001-05:00

I have gotten three emails from different body shops, all of which pertained to the same job. They are looking for someone with Cloud Computing experience so this would obviously be a good fit for me. As I have stated in recent posts and in my most recent video, I am working on other things now which are finally panning out. I don’t really care about this job so, as a result, I didn’t just sign their “NSA” (non-solicitation agreement) document. It was a ludicrous document, so I sent it back with edits and told him that if he wanted to modify it the way I suggested, I would sign it.
I spoke to two of them on the phone and was caught off guard at first because they were referring to themselves as “Paul” or “Mark.” Their accents were very thick. The so-called manager who was to speak to me on the next call was supposedly named “Mary.” Yeah right.
The one guy didn’t know what he was talking about. He was asking me “how many years experience do you have with Microsoft Azure and VMWare”? First of all, Azure just came online. Second, there is no correlation between Azure and VMWare. He was implying there was some linkage between the two.
Next, he was referring to Cloud computing and VMWare as “Telecom” jobs. I said that these had nothing to do with Telecom!
Pasting correspondence now:

Hi, Greetings for the day!!
Please let me know your interest for the position given below, do send me your updated resume. And send me the years of experience you have on every skill in requirement and rates you looking for.
Appreciate your response.
Job Specifics
Location: Cranbury, NJ
Salary: BOE
Type: Long-term contract

Candidate must have experience supporting Applications in a Cloud Environment
Cloud Server Computing and Support experience
Amazon & MS Azure technologies are a must
Cloud Computing with VM Ware
Cloud Architecture Design & support

Have a blessed day.
Thanks&Regards,

Rahul ……[name removed by me]

Sales Manager
[name removed by me]

Next, I spoke to him on the phone (somehow he was “Paul” at this point). He said he was going to send me this agreement to sign. Here is the next email with the agreement:

Hi Rob,

Greetings for the day!!

Please confirm your availability, comfortibility on $65/hr 1099 (All Inclusive) and given below is NSA document, fill the blanks and send me the signed copy ASAP.

Non Solicitation Agreement

1. When [name removed by me]. (the “Company”),has submitted your profile to our Client, you will not directly or indirectly solicit the business of Client (or otherwise deal in any manner adverse to the Company interest) or provide any software engineering, consulting or programming services for a period of 3 months to any Client of the Company where you are introduced by the Company. Furthermore, during the course of Evaluatory interviews and other meetings that the Company organizes between you and its Client, you agree that you will not offer your services directly or indirectly to (or otherwise deal in a manner adverse to the Company with) the Customers or prospective customers of the Company.

2. In the event that you breach the provisions of this Agreement, you agree to pay the Company as liquidated damages and not as a penalty a further sum of US Dollars Ten Thousand. You acknowledge that liquidated damages in such amount is reasonable under the circumstances in light of the fact that significant damages and expenses will be suffered or incurred by the Company and in recognisition of the difficulty and further expense of proving the exact amount thereof.

You further agree that: (1) the Company shall be entitled to injunctive relief as well as damages for any violation by you of the above clause (which shall survive the termination of this Agreement and your employment); (2) California substantive law shall govern this Agreement and its enforcement; (3) jurisdiction and venue is proper in any proceeding to enforce rights hereunder filed in any court located in California; and (4) paragraphs 1 and 2 are intended to be enforced in accordance with their terms but that such terms shall be deemed modified as necessary so as to render them valid and enforceable to the fullest extent permissible by applicable law.

Agreed and accepted with the express intent to be legally bound.

Signature: ___________________________________________________________

Name (As per the Passport): _____________________________________________

Home Address: _______________________________________________________

Social Security (Last four digits): # ___________________
Date: ___________________________

Thanks&Regards,

Rahul ……[name removed by me]

Next, my response to this:

Rahul, this document makes no sense. The wording is improper, completely ambiguous, and borderline deceptive. If you want to revise it in the manner I have below, I will be happy to sign and return it. (I made revisions and struck out 90% of it)
Rob

His Response

Sorry I can’t allow anyone to make changes in that, neither I understand the updated or revised copy of yours as it is completely ambigious for me and don’t make any sense.
Thanks&Regards,

Blizzard” in NJ yesterday

2010-02-11T16:23:00.000-05:00

I decided to make another short video of the large snowfall we had yesterday. Not a whole lot to it. Some nice scenery and me talking about how I am looking at an apartment in a few days. Looks like that may be next week but no matter. My aunt died this past week and the funeral is in Massachusetts. Sadly, I can't go (for many reasons), foremost of which is shame. I would not be able to hide my situation from my relatives. Secondly - to repeat the usual theme ad nauseam, I don’t trust the car to get me there and back.
I have also gotten some interesting emails from questionable Indian “Body Shops” recently. At least I think this is what they are often referred to as. They are most likely one or two-man operations. I will create another post and include the email correspondence between us.

Try this for Anxiety

2010-02-08T11:08:00.001-05:00

Get a small laser pointer. Make sure there is some sort of loop around the base so you can put this around you finger. Then, hold the pointer in your hand in such a way that you are clasping your hands together and dangling the pointer down towards the surface of a table or desk. Move your head close to your hands. Your head should be at roughly the same height as your hands as the pointer dangles beneath the palms.
See the beam of light hitting the surface below.
Okay, then take a dime and place it on the surface beneath the pointer. Feel your heart beating in your chest (or in more extreme cases), in your hands and fingers themselves. Then, shine the beam down and concentrate on keeping it within the diameter of the coin. It will wobble and bounce with your breathing and pounding heart. By concentrating on keeping the beam within the particular diameter, you can lessen the severity of the pounding heart. Just make sure to keep your breathing rhythmic. Since this is part of the voluntary nervous system, this has to come first.
If you are successful, keep at it. Draw a small circle on a piece of paper and use this instead of a dime. In fact, you may need to start with something smaller than a dime. Keep at it until you can keep the laser (and that crazy heartbeat) as still as possible.

How is Everyone?

2010-02-06T10:54:00.004-05:00

Seems a strange question to ask on a blog but sometimes I feel that a blog is a very selfish thing. To believe that what you write (and think and feel) has some inherent value and is the least bit interesting to others is, in and of itself, selfish and self-serving. I often digress into things which have nothing at all to do with my day-to-day existence.
Snowing lightly here in Vernon tonight. I am parked in my favorite spot – next to a storage container in a parking lot. Great Diggs.
We’re going to have some more “weather” this evening and tomorrow morning. However, it will be much worse to the south. I guess Washington DC. will get slammed.
I feel like writing another long elegy, continuing my themes of loneliness and timelessness. Frankly, this is what I want to do most – more than job searching, internet marketing, seo, etc…
How the hell am I supposed to write about such depressing things if I actually get out of this hole? I love writing about such things. I can't think of a better time than now to actually write profound, depressing, prose. If I get my life back and actually become HAPPY, nothing I write will carry the same weight.
So, despite the selfishness of the last two paragraphs, if anyone wants to email me directly to let me know how their lives are going, that would be nice. I know some of you already - via email and by virtue of your blogging names. Despite the nature of this blog, I am a very good listener (Hi Vicky).
Oh, one minor item. I will be looking at an apartment within the next week. Some good stuff happening of late which will probably spell the end of this strange existence.

This will be posted sometime on Saturday when I have an internet connection.

Youtube commenter: yes, it is very sad that all that California Redwood is rotting away. I am sure the Japanese developers will pull it all off.

Tuesday

2010-01-26T18:54:00.001-05:00

Still working on internet marketing stuff. Don’t like it too much compared to all of the other stuff I have been doing over the years but, since nothing else has worked, I am giving this a try. VERY competitive “space”. I am not in a good position to be learning things which are entirely new to me. I am very suspicious of some of the sites and promises, and hesitant to spend any of my “Cloud” money. The one good thing about this is that it requires far less effort insofar as just using my laptop. Creating websites, remotely controlling servers, photo and video editing etc… are a real pain under the current circumstances. I am doing much more simple things lately (like reading). Basically, I am looking for ways to take my existing expertise and make use of some of these marketing techniques – without taking hook, like, and sinker. We’ll see whether I crack and take a risk on something. My OLAP cubes and other endeavors are fading away.
Regarding my day-to-day activities, I have not been moving around too much. I have been able to test my luck again and sneak into the back of the hotel to tap into their Ethernet ports. So far, I have not seen that person who kicked me out a while ago. I have also been driving up to Warwick, NY quite a bit during the day (only about 10 miles) where I can use some hotspots. Feeling or looking slovenly is not an issue lately because I have access to these facilities. “Pray God” this keeps up for a couple more months. If I can get into March it will start to get warmer and who knows, maybe I will be able to make some money on this new thing.
Nothing else to talk about. Dark now.

Serenity

2010-01-21T10:50:00.010-05:00

That was the sentiment I had when I watched this video. The serene sound – or lack thereof, of the skiers and snowboarders as they glided past me was quite moving. Funny how I didn’t feel this same sensation while I was filming. I guess I was too distracted by talking.
I feel, more and more, that I am becoming so detached from the real world that it will be hard to return to it. I dread the thought of being forced back into the company of people. This could happen at a moments’ notice, as, I am totally beholden to the functioning of the vehicle.
I am working hard on another endeavor – internet marketing. Because of my time limitations, I always feel obligated to try something new if I don’t get instant gratification from some other project. What a terrible shame that my stock market projects are now dying. This OLAP application is actually a noble and monstrously complex beast but it seems that I don’t know how to market it, or, I could be completely wrong; it might be impractical. It has value - of that I have no doubt – but I am not a salesman and cannot envision myself standing in front of a group of suits…pitching my product.

Warmer Day Today...Finally

2010-01-18T12:21:00.000-05:00

The cold snap finally broke here a few days ago – making my life quite a bit easier. Pleasant, sunny day today in the NJ Skylands. There have been many skiers and snowboarders up here near the Mountain Creek ski area in recent weeks. I am sure the resort is doing a bang up business this year due to the cold weather.

I was actually getting some emails from headhunters at the end of December, and expected even more in January but, strangely, these have dried up. Nowadays, I cannot get online as frequently as before so I haven’t been posting so much. I was planning on writing some interesting stuff offline and posting several things at once when I had the chance but it has been too cold to get comfortable. I really am fortunate that ONE thing worked out…somewhat: the Cloud stuff. The extra $ from these servers is a windfall to me.
I really want to take the time to expound on that post which I titled “Happy Thoughts” but this type of writing doesn’t come naturally for me. It doesn’t just flow off the pen (so to speak). I like the way it reads when I am done but I don’t know if I could write a whole book this way. Perhaps pure novels would be easier and quicker. A friend of mine suggested I submit that one post to the New Yorker magazine so I went ahead and did it.
I have been doing a whole lot of reading about CPA advertising. There are many other acronyms that fall into this same category: CPC, PPI, PPV, PPC. Very competitive with tons of scammers. However, I have some very interesting ideas about how to trump some of them and to get a leg up. I would have to read a lot more and to really dive into this (totally inane) profession but, I don’t have any other grand ideas as far as making good money anytime soon. I am going to write a fairly elaborate post about this crazy CPA advertising one of these days. It’s shocking how deep this runs…and how so many big companies are in bed with so many sleezy ones, all for the purpose of surreptitious advertising.
That’s it for now. Going to take a walk.

Danny Glover Blames Earthquake on Global Warming

2010-01-18T11:52:00.000-05:00

I was thinking the other day that, at least they wont be able to blame this catastrophe on America. I guess this idiot found a way.
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/01/15/danny-glover-the-lefts-pat-robertson/

Hillary Clinton's Hair

2010-01-16T10:32:00.013-05:00

Been meaning to do this for years.

If this is what's happening on the outside, what's going on inside?

Pay Per Click and CPA Advertising

2010-01-11T13:48:00.003-05:00

Something is finally starting to work for me it seems. All these years of working on “hard core” applications and recently, Cloud Computing, have yielded very little. Over the past couple of years I was dabbling in Google Adwords, SEO, and some affiliate advertising. There are some affiliate banners on this blog but I have yet to make any money on these. Over the past month or so, I have decided to change gears, as I mentioned in a prior post. I wanted to do some writing and to possibly abandon the idea of getting another IT job. Not that I haven’t been looking but I don’t really want it anymore.
I have been doing a little research into the complex world of PPC advertising. It seems that it takes awhile to gain some traction but I tend to learn quickly when I put my mind to something so, we'll see if there is a place for this in my future. I suppose some of the advertisers /marketers are making money but it’s very hard to tell. I am not going to go into too much more detail right now but I may have some good news soon.
I made it through the cold weekend here by running my engine for a while during the night in order to generate heat. Very unpleasant experience.
Currently, I am getting by on some of the supplemental income I am still making from the Amazon Cloud but this seems to be getting smaller, not larger as I had hoped. They have lowered their prices and introduced Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 images. I had previously taken great pains to create similar images before Amazon was providing them. This is how I was able to get people to sign up and pay a premium to me for booting them up.
Maybe it doesn’t matter in light of recent developments!
I am at a coffee shop in Warwick, NY today. A very bucolic little down not unlike New Hope, NJ. Many antique stores here where rich shoppers from NYC come to buy useless and exotic stuff (not all of it of course). This town reminds me of towns in New Hampshire or Vermont where life seems to be simpler. This is the type of place I would like to live if (when) things turn around.

Happy Thoughts

2010-01-08T10:37:00.007-05:00

[Humor me with this cheerful prose]

It’s absolutely freezing here in NJ and the prospect of warmer weather anytime soon is pretty bleak. I believe they are predicting single digits this weekend. It’s at times like this that I feel like this…

Alone
December 30, 2055

Charles Babcock Sr.

Charles Babcock Sr., 40, of West Scranton, died Tuesday morning at home. He is survived by his longtime companion, Beverly Furman, with whom he resided.
Born Dec. 20, 2015, in Dover, N.J., son of the late Rose Henry and William Babcock, he was the owner and operator of Rainbow Home Improvements before retiring.
Also surviving are three children, Charles Jr.; Jerry Babcock and Jessica Babcock, all of Pleasant Mount; three siblings, Harold Babcock and wife, Susan; and Anthony Lumadue, all of Madison Twp.; and William Babcock, New Jersey; and a sister, April Harris, Orlando, Fla.
Carol Elizabeth Dailey
Carol Elizabeth Dailey, 65, of Carlisle, died Monday in her home. Her husband of 46 years is Raymond Dailey.
Born July 24, 1990, in Chicago, the daughter of Marie "Burke" Lansberry, Moscow, and the late David Kinsey, she was a Mary Kay Cosmetics consultant for more than 25 years and was employed by the Embers Hotel as a waitress and seamstress.
She was also preceded in death by a twin sister, Caron Pieski; and a granddaughter, Leona Hicks.
Services will be held Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Hoffman-Roth Funeral Home and Crematory, 219 N. Hanover St., Carlisle, with the Rev. John L. Larson officiating.

The man was always given to the rather depressing habit of reading the obituaries. Having been deposited, two years earlier, in this nondescript nursing home in a nondescript town in eastern Pennsylvania, he was thankful at least of having a view.

Murmuring Bumble and Honeybees, fluttering Cabbage butterflies, and the occasional Monarch or Swallowtail, their legs and wings powdered with pollen and beautifully iridescent, formed the perfect panorama in which, given to his unceasing habit of reflecting, remembering, and regretting, he could continue to project himself, as if to decouple the endlessly contemplated life from its owner.

Plump, merry, and attentive Haitian nurses, not wholly unlike the Bumblebees outside his window, attended to his not-so-merry brethren.
Most of the other residents, their brains long since diseased and incapable of much more thought than what would be required to lift the spoonful of baby food to their mouths, sat around disconsolately in their wheelchairs, some of them rocking to and fro, others staring into an empty void, waiting for their lives to wink out – the simple pleasure of memory having been so ruthlessly denied them.

How many years – decades! of trying to find the answers? How many decades since the last belly laugh? Decades of trying ceaselessly to revive that long dead, vibrant being, the one with the wry, yet unique sense of humor and a modicum of charm? How many false hopes, aims futile; how much love… unrequited?
It occurred to him recently to draw the following analogy; bad experiences are like tiny malignant tumors, which, harmless when small, alone, and, lacking the ability to grow or spread, bind themselves to neurons and synapses, and sit there…waiting.

All optimism, pleasant thoughts, aspirations – the subconscious mind itself, rotted by a lifetime of shattering disappointments, self-reproachment, bad memories and decisions, tumors - subducted like some giant tectonic plate being inexorably driven beneath its diseased counterpart. Down it goes into a molten abyss where dreams go to die. All of the books, positive affirmations, meditation tapes, benzodiazepines, staring at candles! NO GOOD. Try something else! Keep fighting. Another year gone, then, another decade. Perhaps a philosophy of timelessness and the inconsequentiality of human existence? Yes, minimize and trivialize the life of the individual in order to instill a belief in something grander – somehow more important, more timeless than oneself; “when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered.”

If only he could raise up this belief system to the forefront of his subconscious, subsuming all of the negativity, perhaps…just perhaps the negative thoughts could be suppressed, themselves subducted below a new paradigm - one which could liberate the top layer of the subconscious mind and banish the tempest that raged within it - create a sort of vacuum in which other, more benign thoughts could take up residence.
It seems so long ago that he had pondered this idea, devoting countless time and energy to it, all the while recognizing the paradoxical nature of it. “How can I adopt this paradigm of trivializing a human life and, once fused and hard-wired into my brain, and, having successfully brought about a resolution to the problem, can I go back – flip a switch, and revert to my core belief system - that of the importance of the human condition; the sanctity of a human life and human memories, happiness?"
For example, one cannot just decide one day to “get religion.” There must be some powerful motivating force. The essence of being “saved” is that of surrendering to one’s demons – putting them in the hands of a higher power, freeing oneself from the terrible burden of finding the answers. One cannot be saved and then, once cured of the maladies that necessitated this surrender, purge the bitter pill and revert back to their old beliefs.

ITGrunt.com and ENDH1B.com websites shutdown

2010-01-05T19:51:00.001-05:00

H-1B Bodyshop vs. U.S. First Amendment: The Case Of "Tunnel Rat"

Disturbing developments here. I wonder if he was able to back up his blog before it became inaccessible? Looks like from now on one should register the domain names AND host the blogs from a foreign registrar and web host. That is, if it's a controversial blog.

New Year’s Eve Day

2009-12-31T16:34:00.001-05:00

I took this video this morning. There’s not a whole lot to it. Just me walking back to my car after getting coffee, cleaning off the car, and driving off...to nowhere in particular. Some discussion of optimism that 2010 will be better.

Xenophobia

2009-12-29T15:31:00.001-05:00

This passage is taken from the pages of the book "Skeletons on the Zahara" [sic] by Dean King. It details the travails of a group of shipwrecked Christian sailors on the western coast of Africa in the year 1815. The crew was under the command of Captain James Riley. They were taken captive and sold as slaves by Arab nomads.
It is one of the greatest tales of suffering and survival I have read.

They reached more tents around noon. The women in this camp examined the tattered Christians, whose skin had turned to chaff before the sun. Instead of arousing sympathy, the spectacle ignited a fit of disgust in women deeply encumbered with superstitious fears. In a culture where females were often denounced as conduits of evil, any contact with Christians was dangerous. They reviled the men with shrill curses and spat upon them.
Such startling behavior had been related by Pierre de Brisson before Riley: "two of my fellows in misfortune were reduced to a most dreadful state; the women especially, far more ferocious than the men, took pleasure in tormenting them." Charles Cochelet, a French survivor of a shipwreck off the west coast of Africa in 1819, also noted that if the women "by any accident happened to touch [us]...instantly spat in their hands, in order to wash them, testifying by that the horror and disgust which our presence inspired."

Aspirations for 2010

2009-12-29T13:26:00.001-05:00

Goodbye to IT. Hello to other interests.

This doesn’t necessarily strike me as a bleak prospect. The more time I have to think, the less I want to have anything to do with IT, at least in a formal, structured way. I will only devote some time to my ‘Cloud’ stuff and to my financial application. It would be a terrible waste if I abandoned that project. Six years of work to get this far, but, the realization that to really make good money on it, I would have to devote many more years to it. I might scale down some of my grandiose plans. Instead, I may use RSS feeds, attempt to pull in daily stock data, run calculations against it to ferret out some interesting technical analysis, and sell the reports on a subscription basis. Of course, I will still sell databases where I can.
I see that I will make about $500 this month by virtue of my servers in the Amazon Cloud. People have purchased the virtual server (the ability to boot it up and pay me a surcharge above and beyond Amazons fee) but, I also specified that there would be a monthly fee of $10. Many of the people have stopped booting them up but have apparently forgotten about the monthly fee. I suppose they don’t look at their credit card bill thoroughly enough. If they did, they would certainty cancel the subscription. Not my problem. The only flavor of server which people are booting up is the one with Visual Studio 2008 and Office 2007. This is what makes up the bulk of the money although, strangely, this one has fewer subscribers, and the smallest monthly recurring charge.

So, despite how much I appreciate the emails and suggestions about jobs and shelter, please don’t feel the need to take time out of your busy schedules in order to keep me abreast of job openings etc... I am going to be okay I think. I will make a big life change in 2010 – one that has less to do with IT, and more to do with writing about my observations about things, both past and present. This will give me a reason to keep on fighting the good fight. If I can continue to just make this supplemental $500 per month, I may be able to get a place to live in a few months. I want to write and travel. Even if this means being poor, I think it will make me happy. With the money I have coming in, and with a little luck, I will be able to get by.
As the weather gets warmer, I may risk driving north and west. If the car dies, I may be able to get it repaired because I have this extra income. Ultimately, I would like to move out of NJ to some place far away where life is simpler.
It’s FAR easier to simply do some videotaping and writing, rather than try to develop applications and the myriad other things which I have been doing while homeless. I simply cannot be productive working this way… and I am tired of trying.
I am going to be working offline more now. I will probably upload multiple posts at once when I get connected.
I will probably not be sitting in the back of my car on New Year’s Eve… lamenting my fate.

Bombed the Interview

2009-12-21T14:44:00.005-05:00

What a cocky post about being an IT Blackbelt. I failed miserably to live up to that moniker. I drove all the way down to Eatontown, NJ, put on the suit and tie and walked in there feeling all messed up. Two hours sleep the night before and some strange mixed feelings about this job. I almost felt like I didn’t belong back in the real world. The world of people with families, jobs, LIVES! I was sitting there in the lobby waiting for the guy to come out and all I could think of was how I would rather be alone, totally alone, like Baffin or Banks Island alone (not in winter though). I was daydreaming of being in a canoe, rowing around the perimeter of the Great Bear Lake in August, away from this complicated and messed up world. Away from the world of computers, IPods, Britney Spears, Cloud Computing, OLAP Cubes, Reality Shows. I was reading that there is a reality show where there is some guy walking around in northern Canada, trying to survive alone. Apparently however, he has the ability to make an SOS call. I would love to be this guy. Like the ‘Grizzly Man,’ he has a camera and films his day to day existence. Frankly, maybe even my situation would qualify for a reality show. I think my situation would be more compelling and truthful than some of them. People don’t like to admit it, but a story in which the protagonist is suffering is more captivating to them. If they are leading comfortable, contented lives, these depictions of suffering and despair somehow fulfill a fundamental urge. ‘Feel good’ stories don’t satisfy this primal, selfish trait. I can’t remember whether it was William James (or maybe an anthropologist whose book I used to have), but there was a chapter in one of their books called something like “The Case for Altruism.” The author was trying to explain how this characteristic came to be. Altruism defies human nature. We are all programmed to seek out our own safety, happiness, and fulfillment above all else. In some cultures, past or present, when a person reaches an age in which they can no longer offer anything of value to the tribe, clan etc…, they are left behind to die – even by their own offspring. An altruistic act (helping and feeding this person) is an unusual one. I believe the explanation is that, despite an outward appearance of selflessness, this is an inherently selfish act. There is something to be gained for oneself by helping the helpless. One has gained a feeling of their inherent ‘goodness.’ This is something which helps them sleep better at night. In a religious context, I suppose one could even extrapolate this same theme to its upper limit by saying that Mother Theresa was altruistic in order to enhance her own chances of getting into heaven.

I can just hear people saying to themselves, “Why talk about such a thing when you have a donate button on your blog you idiot? Do you want people to feel that they are fooling themselves by donating money to you”? Do you wish to insult all those good people who give you advice and well wishes?

No, I don’t. This is just speculative anyway.

So, I was greeted by a man who led me into a conference room and began to tell me more about the company. I started to feel foggy, apathetic, and resigned to the fact that I was not going have one of my better interviews. After awhile, the next guy comes and leads me down a series of long, wide corridors. Eventually he led me into a large conference room where I was told to wait while he gathered up some people. I was under the impression that there would be two people interviewing me but, one by one they all filed in – a total of six of them. My mind took me back to Banks Island (I know a bit about some polar explorers and their experiences on this island e.g. Lorne Knight, Vilhjalmur Stefansson). I didn’t want to be there anymore. I didn’t want to have to ‘prove’ my knowledge to these people. My mouth started to get dry but I hesitated to take a sip from the bottle of water (bad body language – nervousness).
Unfortunately, many of the technologies which this company uses are ones which I have not used in seven years. I had setup Windows clustering in the past but could not remember the nuances and could not adequately answer the question. With each question, some easy, some harder, I began to hesitate more and more. I felt six pairs of eyes trained on me. Even when I immediately answered the question properly, I felt a total lack of confidence. I blew the simplest of questions about Norton Ghost, a product I used for years. A woman asked me to give a simple example of a SQL query. Incredible how I could mess this one up! I have written hundreds of queries for my financial application – some, quite complex. So, rather than give a simple example such as ‘Select * from Database_name’, I started to give an example of a slightly more complex query. All I wanted to say was ‘Select COUNT(*) Column_name FROM Database_name WHERE –some filter- AND –some other filter- like DATE Between. Anyway, I fumbled it and had to revert back to the most simple ‘SELECT * FROM Database_Name’ as my answer. I suppose there were about a dozen questions in all. If I answered one poorly, I could see instantly that the questioner was not satisfied. Mercifully, the thing wrapped up in about 20 minutes and I walked out with the guy who walked me in. It seemed to take an eternity to get to the exit and our parting was a little awkward. I left there resigned to the fact that I would never hear back from them - not caring one iota.
I am back in Vernon, NJ now. Blizzard here Saturday night. I only wish I had taken some video from under my blanket of snow while huddled in the dark back of my car. I will do it next time we have a storm. It’s a strange sensation to be in the back of a snow covered car, the only illumination being the LCD display from a laptop. There is an incredible feeling of isolation - not something which was wholly unwelcome.
I know I can’t expect help or sympathy from people if I am not even willing to help myself, but then again the blog was never about this. There was no intention to put a donate button on there. It was only after some urging that I decided to do this. The blog was, and maybe still is all about my projects. I thought maybe they were worth something and that if I could start to monetize them I would not be beholden to corporate America or ‘the man’ anymore. I wouldn’t be at the mercy of companies who outsource etc…
I already know what I am going to do to ring in the New Year. I am going to sit back there in the depths of depression, hopefully cloaked under a foot of snow, drinking a pint of some brandy or other alcohol, and feeling sorry for myself. I am going to lie back there and I am not going to think about Walmart or McDonalds, or ‘work for shelter’ jobs. I am going to think about being in New Caledonia, sitting on the beach, and speaking French to my beautiful Polynesian wife.

The shadows are already starting to get long here. I am going to take a walk while the sun is still up.
Something nice I just noticed while walking. Four cardinals (two males and two females) flitting around in a snow covered holly bush. Quite beautiful.

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Young Japanese Girl Plays YYZ on Electric Piano

2009-12-15T22:55:00.000-05:00

Being a Rush fan, this is one of the coolest things I have seen.
Incidentally, I have a face to face interview on Friday morning. This is based on the phone interview which I had last week.

A Walk on the Appalachian Trail in Northern NJ - while freezing my ass off

2009-12-12T00:09:00.000-05:00

I had a phone interview this morning with a company in central NJ near the Jersey shore. The interview went quite well I thought. Later in the day I took a walk thru this nature preserve which also happens to be part of the Appalachian Trail that cuts across northern NJ. It was bitter cold all day but I thought I would break out the video camera again. It’s been awhile since I taped anything – or even typed anything on the blog. Who wants to keep hearing the same sob story? So, with minimal editing, I bring you a cold walk on the Appalachian Trail. Don’t feel like typing more. I speak about the interview and other things in the video.

Still Kicking

2009-12-10T22:00:00.004-05:00

Way too sullen to keep posting the same crap day after day. I don’t get the easy internet access anymore. Predictably, while I was working on my laptop, a hotel employee walked back to the ballroom/convention rooms and said, “Can I help you sir”? Ridiculous thing to ask. I said no. He then said, “Sir, are you a hotel guest – because these outlets are reserved for our hotel guests.” I said that no, I was not a hotel guest; however, I lived nearby and had lost my internet access. He then very astutely said “for a month”?
Next: “Sir, I can’t have you using the internet access unless you are a hotel guest so I am going to have to ask you to leave.” So, what else could I do but leave? Thank God they haven’t locked this back door which I have been using to get into the resort - fitness center area. I get to shower and shave regularly. I see now why this back door is accidentally left unlocked. The smokers use it to take their smoke breaks and the place is open pretty much 24/7. For once in my life, vile cigarette smoke is proving beneficial to me.

Phone interview scheduled for 11:30 Friday morning regarding a Windows Engineer with SAN – Tape Library experience. They liked my resume but after speaking to the guy I had to be honest with him and say that, while I would have no problem picking it up rather quickly, I cannot say that, technically, I have worked extensively with configuring a SAN and a tape backup device. I know the technical details and the architecture and have run the fiber cables but when it comes to the nitty gritty, I could be tripped up in an interview. Nothing I hate more than people who lie about their skills just to get an interview. Companies ferret out these imposters by the droves, although - sadly, some do sneak thru the door by virtue of soft interviewers. Anyway, the guy said it was not a problem and they still wanted to do the phone interview. My only concern is that, as time goes by, I am starting to forget some of the terminology and acronyms, and of course, I am not up on the new stuff. Its one thing to do blogging and video editing from the car – quite another to configure a SAN from the car.

On another note, a disturbing thing happened recently which freaked me out and left me feeling as if I might losing touch with reality. I was in the sleeping in the back of the car a few weeks ago when, late at night, I heard sort of a thud on the rear window (behind the driver’s door). I woke up and saw a person staring at me from outside. Scared me to death. When I saw the face, I wasn’t sure if I was actually awake. These bangs on the window have happened before but it was always a cop. There would be a flashlight, Billy club, cop voices etc…This time, nothing but this ghastly and prolonged stare from this freak. Strange thing about the man was that he had these large wooden plugs in his earlobes. I have seen this sort of self mutilation on TV. I have also seen what the ears look like when the plugs are removed. Utterly grotesque. I am waiting for the day when some freak will take the self mutilation to the next level and begin to insert ever larger wooden plates into his lower lip.
I wish to hell I had been filming in the car when this happened. It would have been very freaky to catch it on film.
Anyway, he did not attempt to open the door (it was locked besides). A million thoughts were running thru my mind:

Should I try to get into the driver’s seat and get out of there? This is very hard to do without getting out of the car.
Should I call the cops?
Should I make a move towards him?

Ultimately this is what I did. Because I was so covered up by this comforter, I had a hard time getting out from under it and opening the door behind me (rear passenger door). When I got out, my heart was beating like a kettle drum. When I turned around I didn’t see the guy anymore. I was not in a big, exposed area. There were woods and small trees in close proximity so I assumed he ran off while I was getting out of the car. I immediately got into the car, started it, and began driving away – not so much to see where he had gone – but simply to get away from that place. One thing I know for sure; if I was a woman, he would have attacked.

Will segue here and return to this incident later.

There were times back in the mid 90’s when I had terrible insomnia. I remember having this horrible job working the graveyard shift making cardiac catheters from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am. I was therefore forced to sleep during the day. Bright sunshine, loud chirps from nesting birds, garbage trucks emptying entire containers full of glass bottles, landscapers, and a land line which rang with solicitors. Add this to the ignominy of the job itself and massive self recrimination (how the hell did I think this job would right the ship for me?), and you have the ultimate recipe for insomnia. Yes, the job got me out of doing industrial painting and yes, I was working in a “clean room” (Wowee) making surgical products, however, I was bombarded for 12 hours straight with Rapp music. One of the lines from a song was LITERALLY “Lead to the head of crackers.” Somehow I had thought that, because this was a lab job where everyone wore clean room attire and worked behind glass, this MUST be a step up from painting! How wrong I was. Any ignoramus could do it. The old Polish women would not dare speak up against the music, so I was left to be the lone beacon of sanity in that insane room. My protestations were met by deaf ears.
Back to the insomnia:
I was taking up to seven Ambien when I got home in the morning. It had reached the point where even this amount was not sufficient to get me into a “real” sleep. It was this strange sort of in-between sleep. I sometimes felt like maybe I was dreaming, but at all times I felt that I could simply sit up in bed and be wide awake. I don’t think there was any delta or rem sleep taking place. I vividly remember having some very frightful thoughts of sitting up in bed and seeing “Regan” from “The Exorcist” right beside me. Horrifying thought but perhaps more frightening was that I was not 100% convinced that it would not happen!

Returning to my story about the face I saw in the car window. I thought, could this have been the result of this same sleep phenomenon? Perhaps I was hallucinating or I was in this pseudo sleep state? I have felt so weak lately, and have been so worried, there is no telling what is going on upstairs. I am 6’1” and was about 195 lbs when I started living out of this miserable car. I am down to 175 now. I guess it’s not too bad but I do feel weaker and more easily fatigued. One last thought about this. When one sees something which frightens them and which they cannot explain, they regroup, talk to people, and slowly begin to rationalize it. This is purely a human survival instinct. One MUST rationalize it in order to move forward. As time goes by and this memory fades into the past, it can even be looked upon with bemusement. However, if this thing happens again, a life can be shattered, especially if no one can offer any type of satisfactory explanation for it. One is then living in a constant state of fear, paranoia, agitation etc…Maybe they turn to Thorazine or God in these situations. I hope never to find out, nor to fall so far as to rely on these types of crutches.

On a more pleasant note (relatively speaking), its freakin cold up here at night now. We had 4 inches of snow a few days ago and it’s cold in the car. This very thick comforter does do a damn good job of keeping me warm however.
Thankfully, I did sell a SQL database (Stock Market Data) a week ago for $500.00. Very fortuitous of course. Each chunk of money like this allows me to not only eat and gas up, but to continue paying the minimum on the credit card and to pay my cell phone bill.

Ps, I have seen two black bears roaming around in this area since I drove up here. They are jet black. Quite an amazing contrast with the backdrop. I can’t stand the fact that they are hunted. I think black bears kill perhaps 1 person a year (in the entire country). Pit bulls certainly kill dozens or hundreds.
I will try to update more frequently. If they want me for a real interview after the phone screening, I will be sure to post that. Thanks for those who have expressed some concern about me.
Rob

Buckethead

2009-11-24T12:31:00.000-05:00

I thought I would embed this video. I found it kind of funny and intriguing. Apparently this guy is an amazing guitar player. Perhaps the best in the past 30 years. Fairly unique costume and name as well.
Regarding me, I have been applying to jobs in a fairly wide radius but haven’t heard back. I am still up in the NJ Skylands area because the ability to shower, shave, and steal internet access via the back of this convention center is too good to abandon for now. I have gotten some modest and much appreciated donations from a few readers. What I do is transfer this money into my checking acct and this has enabled me to continue to make my cell phone payments as well as the minimum payment on my credit card. There is an interesting area up here where they have built a boardwalk through a marsh. This is part of the Appalachian Trail which cuts through NJ. I have seen a few red-winged blackbirds which I always thought were cool. I think I may take some video from this boardwalk one of these days.

Google Adwords Ad – IT Black Belt

2009-11-19T23:52:00.010-05:00

I am creating this post primarily for those who wind up here by virtue of a modest Adwords campaign which I have setup. On one of my posts a commentator said I was an "IT Black Belt". I love that term so much I am using it in the ad. I know it’s extremely boastful but what the hell. I am going to list a bunch of things that I know how “to do” so to speak (obviously this won’t include trivial and obvious things). There may be some people whom I can help, and who may be able to help me in return. Much of this stuff I can do remotely but there are obviously many things which would require my physical presence. E.g. a real job. If I get enough of these small jobs I can then get an apartment and work much more efficiently (if providing services which can be done remotely). There is no embellishment here. Yes, there are some skills which are a little rusty; however, the rust can be shaken off quickly. I am going to lump everything together here in one list. Some of these things are simply services which I can provide; others are products which I have used, installed, worked with etc…I won’t mention the applications, hardware, protocols, topologies etc… which I have not used in a decade, or which I have mostly forgotten (Novell). There, I just mentioned one:-)

Now, to the list:
Cloud Computing – Amazon (EC2 and S3)
Data Center experience: Rack and cable servers (primarily Compaq/HP and Dell). Firmware upgrades. Wiring 10/100/1000 Ethernet or fiber to patch panel and to switches or Candela latency inducers. Disassemble servers and replace internals. UPS and HVAC monitoring.

Expert knowledge of ALL Windows operations systems from DOS-Windows Server 2008
Browsers – IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera

Graphics and Web:
Windows Movie Maker, Ulead PhotoImpact, Microsoft Photodraw, SNagit, Adobe Photoshop (v7- CS3), Adobe Premiere Pro (beginner), Flash (CS3), Dreamweaver CS3, Adobe Media Encoder CS3

Most MS Office applications (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Publisher, Visio, Outlook)

IBM/Lotus Notes - Expert in all of the following: Notes client v4 – v8. Domino Administrator and Designer (some Lotus Script). Domino Server v6.02 - v8 installation and architecture including Web/Application servers including Web SSO. Domino LDAP and LEI servers including clustering, replication, connection documents etc…* I do NOT however, have much experience with Domino Mail or Sametime servers.

Networking – TCP/IP. (Rusty on setting up subnets, CIDR, OSI model, VLAN’s). Pretty good with overall troubleshooting including LAN, WAN, and Internet.
Home networking broadband connectivity (wired and wireless)

Active Directory – primarily administration including creating GPO’s and OU’s.
Very strong IIS
Internal Certificate servers including generating certs for SSL, code signing, and importing to Cisco load balancers (ACE modules)
Installing and configuring WSUS server
Imaging – specifically Ghost. Installation of Ghostcast server for multicasting purposes.
Unattended installations with sysprep etc…
Application packaging – Prizm Software
BlackBox KVM switch installation and configuration

Virtualization:

VMWare ESX, GSX including VMWare converter for P to V conversions. * I have NOT installed the ESX host OS (Linux). I have however used the VIM (both fat and thin clients) and created VMWare guests from scratch and from templates (which I have created). I have also allocated SAN space for guests.
Microsoft Virtual Server and Virtual PC (was learning Hyper-V when I was laid off)
---------------
Remote Control – RDP (remote desktop), RAdmin, Timbuktu, PCAnywhere
MS Terminal Server – application server (rusty)
Oracle 9i and 10g client connectivity (tnsnames.ora, sqlnet.ora)
SQL Server 2005/2008 x86 and x64 including SSAS & SSIS (all used for my Olaptrader application)

Installing and using all versions and flavors of Visual Studio from v.2003 – v.2008 including Team Foundation Server, Team Suite, Team Explorer, and Business Intelligence Studio.
I use Visual Studio 2005 & 2008 for my Olaptrader application.

Google Adwords/Adsense/Webmaster Tools
SEO (websites and blogs)
Signing up for and setting up affiliate advertising (legitimate ones)
In depth knowledge of various types of internet scams and products: work from home, PPC (pay per click advertising), Internet MLM, bogus keyword and traffic generating applications and documents, Twitter and Facebook work from home and Affiliate advertising scams (rampant)
Malware and viruses: how to identify and remove. How they are created and propagated.
Money Mule scams

Knowledge of organized hacking networks – how they work, where they operate, how they install trojans in order to create and “herd” zombies
Utilizing parked domains for advertising purposes
Creating websites and blogs. I tend to be best at Flash based websites although they are not the best for SEO
Offshore IBC creation and web hosting
Internet anonymity networks – how to setup and utilize (TOR network – Onion Routing)
Using anonymous proxy servers for anonymity (not as secure and TOR)
Domain registration, transfer, and 3rd party DNS services

Sample SQL database for Olaptrader application. This is 272mb - http://chilp.it/?0c78ee
Websites:

http://www.officetocloud.com
http://www.harmonicpatterns.com
http://www.garishshirts.com
http://www.olaptrader.com/downloads/portal.html
http://www.harmonicpatterns.com/index.html

http://www.olaptrader.com

All of my published financial documents:
http://www.scribd.com/olaptrader

Products, Services, and Presentations:
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=2691
http://www.officetocloud.com/amiportal.html
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=2498&categoryID=209
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=2612&categoryID=209
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?categoryID=116&externalID=2600
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=144-aPNOYyY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mca_e6W7xFw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_4Be5k46lk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXQKc62aB1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2XWzWqX4GA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn318YF-58w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-AO1FCeJA
http://www.olaptrader.com/downloads/portal.html
http://olaptrader.com/downloads/olaptrader-stocks-technical-indicators-only-sqlserver-format.html
http://olaptrader.com/downloads/olaptrader-stocks-baseline-only-sqlserver-format.html
http://www.olaptrader.com/downloads/olaptrader-stocks-candlesticks-only-sqlserver-format.html
http://www.olaptrader.com/downloads/olaptrader-stocks-baseline-only-flat-file-format.html
http://www.officetocloud.com/purchase/index.html
http://www.olaptrader.com/technicalindicators.htm

Will send resume upon request.

ps. I will be perfectly happy to give free advice as well so long as it's reasonable.

Goodnight.

Drove Further North to the NJ Skylands Region

2009-11-16T11:54:00.001-05:00

I decided to drive up to an area where I used to own a condo. The reason is this; there is a resort up there that I used to be able to sneak into via a backdoor. I could access all of the facilities: exercise, pools, sauna, jacuzzi etc…Now, it IS colder up there and the weather will turn more quickly. It’s at a higher elevation - I think about 2,000 ft. My car had serious trouble getting up some of the mountain roads but managed nonetheless. So, at least I have a place to keep myself presentable without having to furtively sneak shaves and showers. Also, in the back of the place, in a hotel area, there are Ethernet ports with internet access. I don’t want to abuse the privilege however. I am afraid an employee will see me there all the time and call the manager. Not much else going on. I am looking for help desk jobs more often now. Not that I hadn’t been already but I have expanded the geography to include all of NY state, PA and DE (and NJ of course).

View Larger Map

Cause of Oil Leak

2009-11-11T13:41:00.001-05:00

Someone was asking me about the cause of the oil leak so I will mention it here.

The guy at STS tire and auto center said that the oil pan itself had a puncture in it and that I must have hit something. Unfortunately it cost $400 to fix but I guess that's better than $500. So, ultimately, finding the cat paid for the leak and left me with $100 extra. Pretty good.

I Returned the Cat to its Owners

2009-11-09T10:28:00.000-05:00

Last night after creating another post with an update on the cat, I decided that enough was enough so I called the people and they came to where I was parked. Fortunately, they were nice people who seemed to sympathize somewhat, so they gave me $500 and I gave them their nice cat back. Frankly, I was sad to part with it. Being such a good cat, I enjoyed the company. I am heading down to a local STS Tire and Auto Center around the corner to see about this oil leak. Hopefully it won’t cost the whole $500 (or more) to fix. I will take a day or two off from posting on the blog until I get situated someplace else and try to work a few things out. Someday, if I get my life back on track, I definitely want to get a white cat like that.

Update on the Status of the White Cat

2009-11-08T21:00:00.001-05:00

I want to assure everyone that this cat is being well taken care of. The owner of the cat was able to somehow find the blog. It could be the result of my posting her Craigslist ad on the blog and Google indexing it. I gave her the same assurance regarding the well-being of her cat, however, as distasteful as it may seem, I am still holding out for donations before I return the cat to her. My dire and desperate situation has driven me to this extreme. I have still not been rousted out of the place in which I am parked, nor have I had the desire to do much else in the intervening two days. I would like to thank the reader named “Eh” for his research and thoughtfulness. His comments are not going completely unheeded despite my fatalism. Unfortunately, I have had my cell service (internet plan) cut off due to lack of payment. Therefore, I am once again beholden to free wireless hotspots in order to continue blogging and to charge my laptop. I am using a nearby Starbucks for this purpose. I can also recharge my camcorder battery there should I decide to do any more videotaping.

Craigslist Lost Cat Posting

2009-11-07T20:59:00.000-05:00

As I suspected, someone has placed an ad on Craigslist regarding their missing cat. As hard as it is to not respond to the ad and simply give them their cat back (name is Vanilla which is quite appropriate), I am going to try and stand fast with my plan. I am still in the same place where I was when I made the videos. Quite remarkably, I havent been hassled but I guess it's because the location is off the beaten path somewhat.

LOST WHITE CAT

A Lost White Cat. Did I save him or did he save me? Part 2 of 2

2009-11-07T20:38:00.002-05:00

In this video I discuss my reasons for using the cat as leverage in order to save myself. I realize that some will be aghast and disgusted that I would keep an innocent cat from its owner in order to cobble together a few bucks. I don’t expect the owner of the cat to give me all this money, nor would I want them to. I am sure there are many sympathetic souls out there who, while reviling me, will want to throw me a few bucks in order that I might return the cat to its owner. I can only hope to get lucky enough to remain in the (pretty much immobilized) car for a long enough spell so that I can get a few thousand dollars. If the engine seizes and I am kicked out of the broken car by a cop, I cannot take the cat with me obviously. Hate me if you will but, as I mentioned in the video, I don’t much care about that. If you are a cat lover or know of others who may want to help, please send them an email with the link so that they can help both me, and the cat.
Thanks
Rob

A Lost White Cat. Did I save him or did he save me? Part 1 of 2

2009-11-07T18:04:00.001-05:00

As you can see in this next video which I took on Thursday night, things have taken a turn for the worse, but with a bizarre twist. Something totally unexpected occurred when I had to stop en route from the place where I discovered the oil leak, to where I am now. I don’t believe in karma or God or anything supernatural, however, one might say that perhaps this thing which occurred is a form of divine intervention - the ultimate lifeline for me, and, just when I needed it the most. When I was driving away from the place with the leak, I was resigned to my grim fate. I was beaten – shit on by life for the last time. Despite this event which took place, I still feel beaten and done up but I suppose there is a chance for something good to come out of this freak event. You will see what I mean when you watch the video. I had to break the footage into two separate videos because of the Youtube length restriction. In the second video, I explain what I mean insofar as this “thing” possibly offering me the only way out of my morass.

Oil Leak

2009-11-07T02:22:00.000-05:00

My worst fears have now been realized. This is the first of two videos which I took on Thursday afternoon and evening. I could not get online yesterday to upload them. In this first video, I show the tremendous oil leak which sprung from my engine. I am still in the process of editing the much longer second video. In the second video I am at my final destination.

Large Hadron Collider 'Being Sabotaged from the Future'

2009-10-30T01:39:00.007-04:00

Scientists claim the giant atom-smashing Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being jinxed from the future to save the world.

In a bizarre sci-fi theory, Danish physicist Dr Holger Bech Nielsen and Dr Masao Ninomiya from Japan claim nature is trying to prevent the LHC from finding the elusive Higgs boson. Called the "God particle," the theoretical boson could explain the origins of mass in the universe — if physicists can find the darn thing.

The scientists say their math proves nature will "ripple backward through time" to stop the LHC before it can create the God particle, like a time traveller who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

“One could even almost say that we have a model for God,” Dr Nielsen says in an unpublished essay. “He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

"While it is a paradox to go back in time and kill your grandfather, physicists agree there is no paradox if you go back in time and save him from being hit by a bus," Dannis Overbye wrote in the New York Times.

"In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus."

“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr Nielsen told the New York Times.

European science agency CERN designed the world's biggest particle accelerator to shoot beams around a freezing 27km concrete ring underground near Geneva, smashing atoms together in search of the elusive "God particle" believed present at the Big Bang.

The multi-billion-dollar machine, built over almost 20 years, was set to launch in late 2008 but broke down after it overheated during a test run.

The relaunch was pushed back to late 2009 as more parts had to be replaced, and CERN was recently scandalised when a LHC scientist was found to have approached al-Qaeda for work.

Links

SLIDESHOW: World's Largest Atom Smasher

The LHC - which features in sci-fi plots such as Dan Brown's Angels and Demons and the new TV show FlashForward - has been dubbed a "doomsday device" with claims it will open black holes.

Last year, Professor Brian Cox of Manchester University told the UK Telegraph that LHC scientists had received threatening emails and phone calls demanding that the experiment be halted.

But Prof Cox, ex-keyboardist for 1990's pop group D:REAM, dismissed the hysteria in rock-star style.

"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a tw—," he said.

The LHC is set to start up again next month.

Something I couldn't help but notice in this article:

The relaunch was pushed back to late 2009 as more parts had to be replaced, and CERN was recently scandalised when a LHC scientist was found to have approached al-Qaeda for work.

Checking Account Balance

2009-10-28T01:34:00.002-04:00

It's very late at night now but I cannot sleep undisturbed as usual. I am in a forgettable location but I have enough bars to dial in and upload this video and post. I decided to check my piddly checking account tonight and thought it might make an interesting video. I was at a Bank of America branch in the very well-to-do town of Glen Ridge, NJ. Yes, I know it’s pathetic and morose to make a video of such a thing.
Was a time when I would just keep all of my money in my checking account. I would have 20-30 thousand dollars in there and like an idiot, didn’t bother to move it to a better place in order to get some decent interest. I guess I thought the amount would be miniscule. Of course, that interest would be vital to my survival if I had it now. I mentioned in a previous post how bad I was with money. Nothing could demonstrate this further.
I am up against it now. I have about maybe $400.00 left in my pocket which needs to sustain me insofar as gas and food. At some point my phone will get cut off, my virtual server will get “downed” and I will once again be relegated to libraries and coffee shops in order to maintain a semblance of hope. On this bright note, I conclude this post.

A Walk in the Woods Part 2

2009-10-27T19:03:00.003-04:00

This is the second part of a two part video I made on June 26. I thought it would be a nice day to take a walk in the woods of northern NJ in the area I grew up in. While fulfilling, I felt like it might not have been the best thing for my particular frame of mind. When things look so bleak, it's not good to live in the past but lately, I cant seem to help myself.

Free Shipping over $45.00 at Altrec Outlet

A Walk in the Woods Part 1

2009-10-27T16:32:00.005-04:00

This video, part 1 of 2 was taken yesterday, October 26 by me while walking in the woods in northern NJ. Fortunately, it's not as morose as part 2. I think perhaps people who enjoy the outdoors and the names of plants and animals etc...might enjoy this. I certainly did. I was always interested in Ecology, Botany, and Entomology.

I just watched it and noticed that I said it was Monday, June 26th! Needless to say I meant October 26th.

Free Shipping over $45.00 at Altrec Outlet

Childhood - Happiness, Forever preserved in 1’s and 0’s

2009-10-26T10:50:00.004-04:00

Fortunately, about 10 years ago I had the foresight to rescue about thirty 35mm reel to reel tapes from my childhood. They were damp and decaying in my mother’s basement. I had everything converted to DVD’s. I have since converted many of these into .wmv. I especially like this clip of me playing football with my cousins in the mid 70’s. I am the one with the strawberry blond hair.

Beautiful Sunrise over NYC Skyline

2009-10-26T08:47:00.000-04:00

I woke up to a beautiful sunrise today. I was sleeping in a parking lot in the West Orange, NJ Eagle Rock Reservation where there is a 9/11 memorial. It was quite cold but I wasn’t harassed at least. I took a photo with my camera.

Mentok MindTaker Rants about Baby Boomers, Outsourcing, and Economics

2009-10-25T04:13:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Mentok for his post about my situation. Check out his blog if these issues resonate with you.

Click HERE

Intelligent Design Advocate David Berlinski at Empire State Building Today

2009-10-23T21:39:00.001-04:00

I decided to actually DO something today like normal people. There was this guy named David Berlinski speaking in a room at the Empire State Building. He’s someone I love to hate. I took the train into the city. Only cost $10.00 round trip. I walked from Penn Station to the building. The room where he was going to speak was on one of the lower levels. I got there in the nick of time. So, I go to sit in the back and am apparently surrounded by a group of Christians from some school (seemed about College age). They had pen and paper out to take notes. I felt like an alien in their midst. Didn’t care of course. They all seemed very naïve and gullible. I have found this before when dating Christian women. They have often not known the most rudimentary things. For example: what is the sun?

This guy was all I expected and more. I have NEVER heard someone so pretentious and conceited. He actually used this term when referring to his parents’ feelings about his early career choice:
“They were insouciantly apoplectic”. I thought I knew what the words meant so I checked just now and they are basically what I thought except that they don’t go together at all. He was disparaging Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins with this very wry sort of humor. Most of the audience laughed of course because Dawkins is their arch nemesis. I have actually had a sneaking suspicion about this guy that he actually believes wholeheartedly in evolution and thinks his acolytes are morons, but, that there is more money to be made by proselytizing about Intelligent Design.
When it was over I decided to do something I hadn’t done since the 70’s, namely go to the observation deck. I remember in the 70’s one could just walk in, get on the elevator, get off at 80 and switch to the other one, and take it to the top. No security checkpoints or magnetometers. No salespeople accosting you at every corner trying to sell you something. Between the salespeople and the security personnel, there was never a moment when I was not being accosted or reprimanded. One step in the wrong direction or at the wrong time and there is someone there to discipline you!! Similar to what you have to go through when flying nowadays. Going thru the checkpoints are an exercise in self control. You feel like snapping at the nasty screeners but God forbid, if you show anger, they pull you out of line and make your life miserable – even threatening to prevent you from boarding because they don’t let “angry people” fly.
So, that’s it. I feel good about doing something. In the meantime, I want to thank those people who have suggested that I try to get to a warmer climate rather than trying to ride out the winter in my car. I just cannot get myself to do it. Call it an attachment to this area, or a fear that my car will break down at some point while heading south.

How did it all go so wrong?

2009-10-22T00:02:00.003-04:00

Yes, the outsourcing and loss of job and home were the catalysts for my most recent calamities but I often think back on my life and wonder, how and when did things begin to change for the worse? Was there one decision or event which lead me inexorably down a path which, despite its’ many branches, was not the one I should have been on. Did something happen to me or did I sabotage myself, over and over again? Would I have done so had I been on the right branch.

I don’t want to work on my projects anymore. When nothing works, when the only hope of making them work requires things which I don’t have – money, shelter, time, it is easy to sit back huddled under blankets and old clothes in the back of a shit car; to dream, and to regret…every decision I ever made, every goal unattained, every contingency disregarded, year wasted, and love, every love – unrequited. I want to sit there with a cheap six pack, writing up some self recriminating blog posts, waiting for the day the car breaks down. I have the urge to just lay there like a beaten man and go over my life, misstep by misstep. Certainly when I was 10, lying in a field of tall grass, staring up at jet contrails in a blue sky, certainly THEN things were okay.
I used to have moments, when, after another shattering defeat in the game of life, I would hang my head and sulk for a week. Then, by some force of will now seemingly absent, I would punch a wall, scream some obscenity, and, right the ship – ready to once again hoist sail and pursue my dreams. So, on this cheerful note I will sign off and hope for a better day tomorrow. Maybe I can once again summon some old reservoir of strength.

How do I sell my application?

2009-10-21T23:54:00.002-04:00

I have never been good at sales or schmoozing but I have never needed this talent more than I do now. I have advertised many of my projects on this blog since I started it but sadly, not a lot has happened. I think the stock market stuff is very niche oriented so, despite advertising it here and requesting feedback, there is no one who comes here who has any idea what all the esoteric details mean, nor should they. I have also found that, in this hectic world, people simply don’t have the time to read elaborate documents which lay out how an application works and which touts the merits of it. Successful business people like “high level overviews”. They want a synopsis, then a face to face meeting, doodling on a napkin, then a handshake deal following by all sorts of legal machinations. I am terrible at this stuff. I often have the feeling that (especially now) I will get ripped off by selling some of the things I have worked on for years. Things which I wanted to keep to myself in order to make good money in the long run. Anyway, once again I am going to embed a document from Scribd.com where I have posted a new document advertising a VB.NET application which I have finally put the finishing touches on. Not only do I not know how to go about selling this, I can’t even seem to find any way to find out what it’s worth. I guess I need to hire a salesperson (with what money) and to offer them a commission. Then, I need to find some other way of advertising. Google Adwords is an option but costs money of course. Then again, it’s back to the problem of presenting someone with “low level” granular information. Maybe I could send them some sample data and a portion of the code so that they could see how it works. It’s not for the average Joe trader or investor. In order to make use of the application you need to know programming, database stuff, and reporting.

This is another one of those things which, were I to get ONE break, I can not only resume a normal life, I might even be able to thrive. Actually I might be better off than ever. It’s been incredibly difficult to continue working on my projects in a piecemeal fashion like this, and, with the increasing cold – even more so. The Amazon Cloud computing stuff is almost a dead duck. Hardly any more activity on that front. All I have is a nice website to show for it. Oh, and a FEW people still booting up my virtual servers, although I have noticed this number steadily diminishing for some reason. I guess they are learning to build their own.

FOR SALE: VB.NET SOLUTION TO POPULATE SQL TABLE WITH HISTORICAL STOCK DATA

no updates

2009-10-16T02:43:00.001-04:00

Nothing new to report after my last post. I had some false hope that someone was interested in some stock market data I was selling but, alas, the guy changed his mind. I havent created any new posts because I have nothing good to say. Who wants to hear the same old sob story over and over? I am still driving. The car still works. The weather is getting much colder. What else? I am quite low on cash and the reserve I keep in my checking in order to pay the minimum payment on my credit card is getting close to nil. This card is what I use to keep everything alive. All of my cloud computing stuff including my websites are dependent upon it. Oh brother. Wish I had some good news.

Will try to update more frequently but not if there is not an iota of good news.

Helen Hatat - Homeless and at the end of her rope.

2009-10-09T14:28:00.004-04:00

Helen Hatat. Can anyone help this woman? She lives in CA.
**Update. This person is a scammer. Ignore the plea to help her.

Graphical Representation of a Small OLAP Cube

2009-10-06T05:07:00.001-04:00

The image below is something I created in Visio awhile ago. Basically it is intended to illustrate the type of data which would be represented in each cell of the OLAP cubes I would build. In this particular example, the cube only represents historical data for one particular stock - Alcoa. You can see the three dimensions: Time, Candlestick Patterns, and Technical Indicators. Candlestick Patterns are actually technical indicators but I have decided to put them in their own SQL table and dimension. You can see that I have highlighted one cell in red. Because the cube is built using data from the fact table, this cell (and all others) contains the simple EOD (End of Day) data such as Open, High, Low, Close, and Volume for Alcoa. Additionally, the cell contains a true/false value for the particular candlestick pattern which is represented on the Y axis. I have also calculated the values for 200 well known (and obscure) Technical Indicators. Each indicator is represented on the X axis. So, taking into account only the front face of this cube (one trading day), the amount of data is overwhelming. As you can see, the Z axis represents the date. I have twenty years of daily data so this would be a rather deep dimension.

Now, taking into account the fact that I take all of this rolled up data, not just for this one stock, but for all 14,000, and to put it in a larger cube, the question is - how to do it? I was working on another graphic where I thought I knew what I was doing. I was operating on this same principle that I could simply consider this one cube to be a cell in a larger cube. Here is the graphic:

This is flawed logic though because, since I already have all of the historical data for Alcoa, there would be no place for this cell in this type of larger cube. The patterns and indicators and time dimensions have already been calculated. Where would the other stocks reside in this type of matrix?

Maybe it doesn't matter anyway. I am busily cranking my way through the main sql database, writing complicated queries in order to tease out the metrics.
It's late in the morning here in NJ and it's a bit chilly. No one around here where I am parked so I should be able to catch a couple of hours sleep without too much trouble.

Screwed by a Brownnosing Naive Developer

2009-10-03T22:07:00.004-04:00

I thought I had caught a break. The planets were aligned and I was going to be getting a nice fat check for the sale of a database. The timing was perfect, what with the fall chill in the air. To finally get out of the Kia and into a proper apt was sounding glorious! It appears as though a neophyte developer wants to impress his boss and has therefore recommended that he NOT purchase this database. The guy thinks he can compile the information himself! Totally ludicrous. I will paste the email thread below. Puts another nail in my coffin. Incidentally I have changed the guys name to John Doe.

To: Robert Brown [mailto:outsourcedandhomeless@gmail.com]
From: John Doe
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 8:33 AM
Subject: Re: SQL database
Yes, haven’t had much time to review it.
Have you thought of pricing yet?
John

------------------------------------------------------

From: Robert Brown [mailto:outsourcedandhomeless@gmail.com]
To: John Doe
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 9:01 PM
Subject: Re: SQL database

Hi John, I should have some figures for you by the end of the week. Thanks for your patience.
Rob

----------------------------------------------------------

From: Robert Brown [mailto:outsourcedandhomeless@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, September 26, 2009 10:53 PM
To: John Doe
Subject: Re: SQL database

Hi John, I finally got some feedback. I am not going to sell the Technical Indicators table at this time. I am also not selling the Darvas Boxes table.
However, if you take a look at the word document that I sent you, you can see the other 5 tables which I will sell you. The price would be an even 7,500 and I would give you the updated Candlesticks table once I get it populated. I have functions now to derive about 20 more Candlestick patterns. Also, if I decide to sell those two other tables at some point, they can easily be integrated with what I have sold you prior. This database is in SQL server 2008 format. If you really need it in SQL 2005, I can do that for you but it will take me one week.
Because the Technical Indicators table is so valuable I will probably decide to offer access to it via subscription. Users can use Excel to query against it over the internet and pull data locally. I would give you a discount rate if you wanted to make use of this for your customers.

----------------------------------------------------------

To: Robert Brown [mailto:outsourcedandhomeless@gmail.com]
From: John Doe
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 9:15 AM
Subject: Re: SQL database
Hey, seems like a high price tag. Will review info on the docs you sent over.
What can you do on price?
John

----------------------------------------------------------

From: Robert Brown [mailto:outsourcedandhomeless@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 1:02 PM
To: John Doe
Subject: Re: SQL database

Sure, we can do something about the price. Depends on how far apart we are. I can include the Darvas Boxes table as an incentive and lower the price to 5,000.
Let me know what you think.
Rob

----------------------------------------------------------

To: Robert Brown [mailto:outsourcedandhomeless@gmail.com]
From: John Doe
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 11:33 AM
Subject: Re: SQL database
Rob, that sounds more reasonable. I have gone over the documentation thoroughly and my clients and I are now willing to offer you your price of 5,000 for this database.
We can arrange to send you a check or wire the money to your bank. Please send us your preferred method of payment and the details necessary to complete the transaction. I assume that after you receive payment, you will be providing us with a link to download the database.
Sincerely, John

---------------------------------------------------------

From: Robert Brown [mailto:outsourcedandhomeless@gmail.com]
To: John Doe
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 3:07 PM
Subject: Re: SQL database
That’s great news John. Happy to hear it. You can wire the money into my checking acct. Here are the details:
Name: Robert Brown
Bank of America
Routing Number is, {xxxxxxxxxxxx}, Account number is {xxxxxxxxxxxx}
After I have received confirmation that the funds have been deposited and cleared, I will send you a link to download the file. I have backed up the SQL Database into a .bak file and then “rar’ed” it. Fully inflated, this database is about 80gb but the file you will download will only be about 10gb.
Talk to you soon.
Rob

-------------------------------------------------------

To: Robert Brown [mailto:outsourcedandhomeless@gmail.com]
From: John Doe
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 4:39 PM
Subject: Re: SQL database
Rob, I must regret to inform you that my lead developer has revisited the proposal and believes that he will be able to compile the same information in-house within a reasonable amount of time. As such, I must withdraw my offer to purchase the database from you. Perhaps in the future we can revisit this, or, if you are willing to discuss selling the most valuable table in your database, maybe there is some room for negotiation there. Once again, my apologies for jumping the gun.
Sincerely, John

-------------------------------------------------------------

From: Robert Brown [mailto:outsourcedandhomeless@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 8:51 PM
To: John Doe
Subject: Re: SQL database
John, this is very regrettable. I believe your developer will find that he is mistaken.
First, he needs the baseline data which is rather hard to come by and to organize properly.
Secondly, there is no way to compute the derivative values without highly specialized software. I purchased some very high-end financial functions from a company which specializes in these things (FMLabs). I then took their .dll and built an entire .NET 2008 application around it. After many tweaks due to memory leaks, I was able to populate the Candlesticks, Fibonacci, and Darvas Box tables. To populate EACH table took my x64 Intel Core 2 Quad (2.6 Ghz per core) server (with 8gb ram) approximately 10 days running full out night and day.
So, if you find out that the developer cannot procure this data for you in a timely and cost efficient manner, don’t hesitate to contact me again.
Sincerely, Rob Brown

Caught a Break! I Sold one of my SQL Server Databases

2009-09-30T19:08:00.004-04:00

It’s a chilly day here today in NJ and the smells and sights of fall are all around me. Were it not for a bit of good news, I would no doubt be extremely depressed today. Incidentally I am parked in a place called Garrett Mountain Park. It’s a park in Clifton, NJ which overlooks the old city of Paterson, NJ.
Recently, I have been advertising many aspects of my financial application on Scribd.com. Here is the link to all of my documents: SCRIBD

So far I had made about $100.00 on the various spreadsheets but apparently someone noticed that I was also selling entire SQL Databases there (subsets of my main database). Since these were priced between $200 and $500 I didn’t have any takers. Anyway, a guy contacted me who must have stumbled on my Olaptrader website. He asked me about buying the entire historical stock market database including the monster table which I had not been previously offering for sale. Basically I consider this table to be the lifeblood of the database and to be worth a hell of a lot of money. Despite needing money badly, I felt that selling the farm for a pittance would be a disaster because whomever bought it could turn around and resell it or build an entire front end for it and make a tremendous amount of money. I wanted to build a web front end but simply don’t have the means to do it now. Because I am not a businessman, and because all of my efforts to get any feedback as to what the main table might be worth have failed, I offered to sell him the entire database except this main table. Even without this table, there is a ton of good data. There are 6 other tables chock full of regular and esoteric data. I threw out a number and we went back and forth and settled upon $5,000.
So, when I get the check from him I am going to be able to get the F*** out of this car and into an apartment. Screw all the companies that are not hiring, or who are hiring only foreign workers. If I can sell more of these databases, or build a web front end, none of that will matter anymore. This is not to mention my Amazon Cloud projects.
Once I get an apartment, I can start to blog about the things that I REALLY want to blog about. Namely, the demise of our once great country, and western civilization at large.
That’s all for now. Here’s hoping the guy doesn’t change his mind.

An Epiphany

2009-09-25T22:39:00.003-04:00

Why this did not occur to me sooner is amazing. With the amount of skills that I have, I should start offering my services right here on the blog. I will list everything I can do within the limits of my situation.

I will not bother to mention my skills which would require a physical presence at a company; things like VMWare, SQL Server, Domino etc…
I will be fair with pricing but without undercutting myself. Not only could this save me, the ironic thing is that, were I to start getting a fair amount of work, I wouldn’t be beholden to these companies which aren’t hiring or interviewing anyway. I wouldn’t have to pin all my hopes on landing one of these very elusive jobs. I wouldn’t have to look for public places to shave and secret places to change into my suit. No walking into an interview with my hat in my hand and tipping my hand that I am desperate for a job!

I could probably start making enough money quickly enough to get an apartment and continue to work this way. With an apartment, a consistent broadband connection, a normal keyboard and mouse, and a large monitor, I could be twice as productive as I am right now. People can post feedback on the blog about work I have done for them. I will not edit out any comments. I would obviously make sure that everything is done to the customers complete satisfaction. I would replace the pathetic “Donate” button with a “Payment” button.
Without further adieu, the following is a list of things which I could do remotely (using Remote Desktop or Radmin)

Troubleshoot, repair, reinstall, upgrade any MS Office application.

Troubleshoot, repair, reinstall, upgrade ANY other Windows application.

Remove all viruses, spyware, malware, and other junk.

Advise you on safe browsing behavior and make you aware of the risks and the tactics used by hackers.

Advise you on the risks of various PPC (pay per click), SEO, and “Work from Home” scams which are all over the internet nowadays, especially on social networking sites like Twitter. Shysters are trying hard to take advantage of people’s fears and concerns during the current economic climate.

Teach you how to use applications or the O/S by using remote desktop and telephone.

Show you how to register and begin using any number of different social networking sites.

Optimize your system for maximum performance and suggest hardware upgrades where necessary.

Reinstall operating system (Clean install) and all applications. Restore data. *Will require some user assistance.

Configure a local email client such as Outlook, Outlook Express, or Lotus Notes.

Build you a website or blog including registering the domain name, configuring DNS (if necessary), setup hosting and email accounts, and setup a local email client if desired. You can use a standard blog template or a highly customized one like mine.

Build rich Flash based sites using high end graphics software. Examples of my work in this area are all over this blog – in the posts as well as the sidebars.

Show you the most important things you need to do in order to generate traffic to your site. I will provide ample documentation, much of which you would ordinarily have to pay for. These techniques fall under the umbrella of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Show you how to sign up with Affiliate networks such as Commission Junction or ClickBank.

Show you how to use various techniques to “anonymize” your online activities. E.g. Tor

Install VMWare Workstation and show you how to use it in order to isolate your O/S from attacks.

Assist you in setting up secure “off-shore” web hosting.

Provide guidance and consultation with regard to migrating to the Amazon Cloud.

* The one caveat is that I am a Windows person. No Linux or Mac.

Autumnal Equinox

2009-09-24T22:54:00.002-04:00

Now that fall is upon us I feel a renewed sense of urgency about my situation. I haven’t been posting because, frankly, there isn’t much to report. No job leads and nothing else except a mindless persistence of my projects which I had such high hopes for. Without the proper resources it’s just too damn hard to get as much done as I need to everyday. I have always hated working on laptop actually. Now, they are bigger than ever with bigger keypads which is nice but it’s still not the same. If I had to use one of the old Toshiba Satellites from 2000, forget it.

A couple of posts ago someone made a comment that he would rather be flipping burgers than living in the weeds. Not me. Over the years every so often I will catch a glimpse of an older white guy, a drifter perhaps, working the grill in the back of a McDonald's or Burger King. I see him back there… alone and in his own world. The vibrant younger people are laughing and joking up front – their whole lives ahead of them. Rapp or Hip Hop music is blaring; certainly not something he can be too fond of. Were he to mention Led Zeppelin or The Who they would probably say “The Who”? To be such a man is one of the saddest things I can witness. I know because I was that man when I was 32 and still working in the pizza joint. I would make the pizzas, deliver them, wash the dishes. Even back then everyone seemed so much younger than me. Their lives were promising and carefree. They had no guilt or shame about working in a pizza joint, after all, they were working their way through college, while I on the other hand had finally given up on ever finishing. To be in this same situation now at the age of 45 is unthinkable.

Everything for me hinges on the car. So long as it is drivable I can avoid the ultimate crisis – that of having to take what I can carry and head off into the unknown. So far it’s still warm but soon the nights will grow colder which will necessitate turning the car on and off for some heat. The cold will also rob me of the ability to escape into the woods for an uninterrupted night’s sleep. I dread the thought of this but hold fast to some glimmer of hope that things will soon change for the better.

I have been pretty successful so far in eluding patrolling police by finding old cul-de-sacs (sans houses) to park my car in.

Anyway, I don’t have a whole lot more to say tonight. Hopefully this post wasn’t too boring.

Why Twitter Cannot Last.

2009-09-18T21:03:00.007-04:00

Having used it for a month or two, I find it more and more ridiculous each day. This is NOT a valuable social networking site.
I started using Twitter solely because I wanted to link my blog to it [http://twitter.com/outsourced08].

First of all the GUI is terrible and non intuitive. Tiling background images looks stupid, especially when they are cut off by the middle section. Most people don't know how to make a .jpg or .png etc... which has separate photos in a collage, and which is sufficiently large to fill the screen. Neither do they know, nor should they have to take the time to alter a large image so that the important parts of the image don't get cut off by the middle section. I took the time to do this with my silly image but it was a waste of 15 minutes.

Why not facilitate a discussion between people like blogs do?
Why is there such a tiny bio section? Even your web url is cutoff when you see this on the profile page.
Why does the profile page contain my tweets? I would think a "My Tweets" page would be more appropriate.
Why would I care to follow people's 75 character snippets about inane things?
Why do I care about Hashtags?

To me, this application is a case study in crowd psychology. Somehow it has become "cool" to be on Twitter, much the way fashion trends or hairstyles start out. I will just let TwitterFeed take care of updating Twitter for me and forget about it.
And finally, the most damning thing of all: every other tweet I get is from a scammer trying to sell snake oil. Here is a screenshot of the most recent iteration of my homepage. All bullshit.

A beautiful woman who deserved more out of life - Vagabond

2009-09-18T00:38:00.003-04:00

Please check out her blog and her writings. Kerry Echo

Escape from Treblinka...For Those I Loved

2009-09-16T23:04:00.006-04:00

THIS is hardship and survival.

New Sleeping Tactic

2009-09-15T02:23:00.000-04:00

In case anyone is the least bit curious, I have been trying a new tactic in recent nights regarding where to park my car so as to work and sleep. I look for cul-de-sacs where there are no houses. These are new developments where no homes have been built yet or old roads which, for some reason, they decided to not build homes on. The only possible concern is the potential for teenagers at night. They tend to seek out places to drink and party and these places might attract them as well. For now, I will stick to this plan. I am going to try and sleep now. Here is my location. Force Hill Road. Probably in Livingston, NJ.

Request for Feedback - SQL Server Database for Historical Stock Market Analysis

2009-09-15T01:41:00.007-04:00

This database/application is my Tour de Force. I have been working on it for 7 years and I see the finish line. Of all the things I have done in my IT career, it is this monstrosity (which I did after work and on weekends) which may lead me out of this morass. It is what I spend most of my time on during the day, hence, the lack of daily posts on this blog. I built this Flash site to advertise it (www.olaptrader.com) but right now it's nothing more than a pretty movie.
I have 20 years of data on 14,000 symbols with Date, OHLC, Volume, Company Name, Exchange, Sector, Industry. These encompass stocks, ETF's and Indexes. I also have all the historical data for 150 technical indicators, 50 candlesticks, 10 Fibonacci ratios and some more stuff.

The Cloud computing stuff doesn't hold as much promise for me it seems. Anyway, to get to my point; I have created a rather detailed document in which I lay out the structure and breadth of data which is available in this database. I also detail some queries which can be run to pull the historical data for unique technical indicators in order to get the percent increase or decrease over time. The whole point is to look deeply into the database and to find combination's of complimentary indicators and to then look forward in time to see how a subset of stocks meeting these criteria performed. What I plan on doing is hosting the database in the Amazon Cloud and attempting to get subscribers who will pay a monthly fee to access the data with a local client such as sql server management studio or visual studio. HOWEVER, there is a person who wants to buy the whole kit and kaboodle. He wants the whole database. I told him I would have to put out feelers. I also said I would get him two prices: one WITH the technical indicators table included and one WITHOUT it. Even without it there is a vast amount of historical Candlestick, Fibonacci, Darvas Box, and other data. If anyone who knows about trading and financial applications could give me some advice on what to charge I would greatly appreciate it. Just selling a piece of it will get me out of this mess. After that I can resume my life. I am embedding the document in the body of this post. The parts about the Amazon Cloud, Web front end, and subscription based access are not really relevant to this discussion because I am talking about a one-time sale to this person. You can skip over those parts (if you are so kind as to read the doc). All references to WE in the document should read I. I have to give the impression that I am not the only one who built this whole thing. Incidentally, in the right sidebar of the blog, I have my "Scribd" badge. This is a link to all of the financial documentation I have been compiling while working on this project. There must be 20 documents there by now and they are all inexorably linked to this application. Thanks for reading (this far at least).

The Girls Guide to Homelessness - Touching story which parallels mine in many ways

2009-09-12T17:11:00.001-04:00

Someone sent me an article today about a woman whose situation is remarkably similar to mine. She also became homeless due to the loss of her job and used a laptop and wifi connections to blog about her situation. This is a heartwarming story. A rare thing nowadays it seems.

The Girls Guide to Homelessness

Rainy Day in NJ

2009-09-11T17:44:00.001-04:00

It's a miserable, cold rainy day here in NJ. I have noticed the leaves are beginning to turn. As the years go by and I get older I find myself getting more and more melancholy when this happens. Maybe if I had a real life this wouldnt be the case. I worry quite a bit now about fall and winter coming. I received a comment the other day from a man whose situation was similar to mine. He had submitted his story to the BBC and they picked it up and published it. It's pretty interesting. Here is the link to the article.

Living in the Hotel Honda

Historical Candlestick Patterns

2009-09-11T17:25:00.007-04:00

I have had this data in a sql database for years but had not extracted it into it's own table. I was finally able to do this in the past week and am attempting to sell it to investors who desire historical candlestick patterns for approximately 14,000 stock market symbols going back 20 years. I backed it up, rar'ed it and uploaded it to Amazon where it is being advertised. I have also uploaded a document to Scribd.com which describes Candlestick Patterns in detail. I am embeddeding the document below.

Here is the url to purchase it.
Purchase Historical Candlesticks SQL Database

Life of an I.T. Grunt: Outsourced And Homeless

2009-09-09T02:52:00.000-04:00

This is a post that Kevin McCarthy of ITGrunt.com was generous enough to put on his blog.
Life of an I.T. Grunt: Outsourced And Homeless

Some Inspiration

2009-09-08T02:26:00.000-04:00

Regional Interest in Cloud Computing - India in the lead

2009-09-07T16:47:00.002-04:00

This graphic from Google Insights show the regional interest in Cloud Computing over the past 12 months. This is not surprising since these countries dont have the same current hard assets (large corporate data centers) that we have here. It takes awhile for companies to transition to the cloud. My old company spent 100 million dollars to relocate their data center from one state to another about 2 years ago. I have a feeling that if they had a chance to do it again, they might opt to go the cloud route, probably Amazon EC2 - S3 etc...

They also took measures to conceal the data center to reduce the threat of a terrorist attack. They wound up spending more as a result. Moving into a cloud infrastructure such as Amazon's or Microsoft Azure all but eliminates this threat. All you need are a bunch of H1 bees (typically drones) sitting in cubicles with laptops and a fat internet connection. If you are an IT worker I suggest you read on up cloud computing. I believe it will be bigger paradigm shift than even virtualization was.

Sleeping in a Business Park - Discussing H1B, Blog, Resume, Donations etc..

2009-09-06T18:47:00.003-04:00

I recorded this video last night from a business park in Roseland, NJ (specifically THIS location). It took some time today to get it from the camcorder to my laptop. There was minimal editing required so I used Windows Movie Maker. I am in nearby Livingston, NJ today in a coffee shop. I used their wifi connection to upload. In the video I discuss some of the recent comments on my blog. There are apparently many people out there who are in a similar situation to myself and who greatly sympathize with me. I really appreciate all of the offers to help me. There are nice folks who want me to send them my resume, are offering to post links to my blog, want me to create a "donate" button etc... I speak to all of these issues in the video. I have decided I will put a Paypal donate button on the blog, at least for now. Thanks to everyone for the support.
Here are my other videos:
Job Interview
Rambling

Get Rid of the H1B Work Permits

2009-09-01T19:34:00.004-04:00

I grow more tired and frustrated as the days and weeks go by. I have all but given up hope of landing another IT job. I must now resign myself to the fact that my career is gone. I will now take a menial job. My only issue is that they will want my address. Since “2000 Kia Sephia with plate # xxx-xxx” won’t work, I suppose I can use a bogus address until I find a place to live. Since I have always been a night owl, I will first try to get a job as a night watchman somewhere. This may allow me to continue working on my projects by using my laptop while at work. My latent bitterness and anger starts to slip out with each passing day. I think back to some of my books, “Onward Muslim Soldiers” by Robert Spencer and “Invasion” by Michelle Malkin. There are common threads running through these books – neither of which have anything to do with Indians by the way. Our government simply does not do what is in the best interests of its citizens. I have no animus towards hard working, kind, law abiding Indians. In fact, they are almost universally so. This H1B fiasco is not their fault. It’s another in a long line of legislative disasters wrought by ideologues, corporate lobbyists and megalomaniacal lawyers. I wonder how many of the senators and congressmen are lawyers? Ninety percent? What a crazy and intolerable situation. Allow the products of the least ethical of professions into positions of almost absolute power. Then, allow them to do whatever they have to so as to stay in office for 50 years. PUBLIC SERVANTS. What a joke. I say I am sorry to the decent, hardworking Indians but we Americans must come first. Of course American IT workers can do the jobs! Hell, we invented the programming languages, computers, network protocols, routers, switches, servers, and the relational database. We discovered how to transmit signals via fiber optic cables. We built the ships and developed the technologies to lay fiber optic cables in the deep ocean. Think about that for a minute. What is required to lay cable from continent to continent at depths of up to 30,000 feet? Who’s technology is used to repair severed cables on the sea floor? Check the patents. Who invented the chat software, the blogosphere, forums, bbs, and other mediums for America haters – both self hating and foreign, to spew their invective about us? Americans who lash out have to do so cautiously and often resort to anonymity services to get their message out.
How did we get to be so great? It’s because our hands weren’t tied and our efforts towards self improvement not thwarted by greedy, power mad bureaucrats.
Anyway, I need to eat my dinner now - a nice protein bar, couple of pieces of potato bread, and water. I can get by on these three things forever. Screw you bureaucrats!
This entry may or may not portend a different direction for this blog. Time will tell I guess.

email from headhunter

2009-08-20T23:36:00.004-04:00

I received an email the other day regarding a job (description below). This is a job I could do easily and well. On a followup email she asked me what I was making before and what I was looking to make. I hate when they do this because if you were underpaid before, yet you state what you did make, then you state what you would like to make, they scoff at it if it's substantially more. "Wow, that's an awful big jump you are trying to make. Why do you think you deserve this much". I have gone through this with each and every job change. It's a game you must play with head hunters. You quickly learn to either lie about what you were making, or simply ignore the question. Anyway, I gave her a low number. This was two days ago. Haven't heard back.

Senior Windows Engineer that has extensive background in Active Directory architecture, design, and implementation; has an understanding of Storage Area Networks; and, is familiar with the VMware ESX 3.5 environment.
Enterprise level Windows Engineer. This candidate will have a minimum of 6 years experience supporting Microsoft Windows Operating Systems and related applications. MSCE highly Preferred.
Develop systems designs and configuration based on requirements. Refines requirement with the client and ensures compatibility to standards.
Related responsibilities typically include the following:
Configure and implement new and existing operating systems and applications software.
Research new products and technologies to improve system performance.
Work with vendors to develop/maintain current standards of performance.
Ensure adherence to procedures and processes for hardware, software, and applications.
Interact with multiple business units in deployment of new hardware.
etc.........

Minor update

2009-08-16T23:16:00.006-04:00

I have been a bit disheartened that I haven't really generated any interest in my blog. Basically I was pinning all my hopes on generating some interest in this so that I could perhaps shine a light on the ramifications of outsourcing, and, of course, to generate some interest in some of my projects. So far, no good I guess. I will probably update this blog less frequently now. I will most likely take some more video when I get another interview. Hell, I should take a digital voice recorder into the interview with me and post the whole audio afterwards! That might be interesting but I suppose it would be illegal. Not a bad idea perhaps. Three hots and a cot :-)

No More "Wardriving"

2009-08-10T21:52:00.004-04:00

I must say I don't know why I waited so long to get Internet access on my phone so as to use it as a modem. It has now totally liberated me from the necessity of finding unsecured routers. I needn't lurk around "wardriving" in order to get connected and work from my laptop. Wireless hot spots have been helpful to me, especially when I need to do a large upload, but I am always worried about appearing slovenly. We are always are own harshest critic however. I compare the way I am dressed now to the way I used to dress and don't really relish going into a bookstore or Starbucks and avoiding eye contact with women. I got an email today from someone asking about my "services" regarding the olaptrader.com website. We then spoke on the phone and after he referred to my "company" as "you guys" a few times, I was frank with him and said it was just lil old me. Anyway, he might be interested in purchasing some of the mountain of financial data I accumulated over the last 5 years! Even if I don't find a job, if I can start to find a way to sell that data I will be in good shape. That's about it for today. I have spent much time today on Twitter trying to familiarize myself with some of the jargon and syntax.
I am going to try and catch some Z's in "Lyndt" park in Nutley, NJ. It's right along the Passaic river.

Reality Check

2009-08-09T11:38:00.005-04:00

I have come to the realization that documenting my day to day existence by creating video is probably a waste of time. I got some feedback from some old friends regarding the last one I did from my car. They said it was very boring. Hence, I dont see the point in making more unless it is something like the first one I did where I was going on the job interview. Me sitting in a dirty, dark car and ruminating about my life, past and present, just isnt very exciting. Why would I think this would be interesting? The only real type of "exciting" video that would engender some interest would actually be a scenario where something bad was happening to me. If I was in the car and a cop came up and yelled at me, I suppose that would be mildly entertaining but I wouldnt have the camera out anyway and if I did and actually pointed it at him, he would probably go berzerk.
On another note, I have decided to get internet access via my cell phone. It's an extra $10 per month on my credit card but this way I can use it as a modem and connect to the laptop via bluetooth. I am no longer a slave to open wireless connections or hotspots. Any additional expenses are hard to justify for me but I think this was the right thing to do. Now I have to look into applications which may be available via Verizon so that I can tweet from the cell phone directly without having to use the laptop.

Submission to Blogsrater.com for feedback

2009-08-07T12:35:00.004-04:00

This is a reciprocal link for the purposes of getting some feedback on the format, aesthetic appeal, and overall structure of my blog.

Windows AMIs in Amazon EC2

2009-08-05T19:21:00.006-04:00

I have had a very productive day today. I have been in a Borders bookstore in Livingston, NJ all day and have finally uploaded some videos to YouTube which I had created a few months ago. These are tutorial videos which I was planning to use to enhance the ability of prospective customers to re-bundle Windows AMI's. I have been meaning to upload these forever but the files were large .avi's which I had to convert to .flv format. Even after that they were over 60 megs. When I was initially setting up the websites for my various projects over the last few years, I always couched things by using the word "we" instead of "i" and by saying "my company" even though it was simply a one man band. I am going to embed one of the videos here in case someone winds up here by virtue of an interest in "cloud computing". I suppose today was an indication that there is still some fight left in me. It would have been easy to do nothing all day.

List of US Companies Exporting America

2009-08-05T15:36:00.004-04:00

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/popups/exporting.america/content.html

Somber Thoughts

2009-08-04T18:03:00.005-04:00

I love digging out just the right quote from a book I read so many years ago. One that perfectly expresses how I am feeling at the moment. Sorry to be so somber today.

No video today.

Drive Away into the Setting Sun

2009-08-04T17:50:00.004-04:00

I was sleeping in my car the other night - a rather tumultuous sleep considering the rain and the circumstances. In the fuzzy stage between sleep and wakefulness I had a memory of waking up as a child in my bedroom with the shining rays of the sun beaming through my window. It was the kind of moment when you can see the dust motes in the air and you stare off into space and lose yourself. All was right with the world. There were no cares or wants, no anxieties or fears. I laid there for awhile in a state of blissful relaxation; of course, not truly appreciating how fleeting those moments are. You hit the age of 14 or perhaps 18 and the pressures of life start to slowly mount. You either embrace and grab hold of them, or, you long for the time when life was full of innocence and the somnolent sleep of youth.

Incredible and Rare Pearl Harbor Photos

2009-08-01T23:24:00.005-04:00

There are about 14 photos in all. I have uploaded them to Amazon S3. Here is the link to download them all.
HERE

A new month - where did the time go?

2009-08-01T03:34:00.012-04:00

I found one of my favorite places (haha), a business park. There are a couple of houses nearby. I guess I have stolen a few precious bars from one of them.

I am now in a place where I can at least upload this video. It required very little editing from the original. The rain has stopped here but the tree frogs and crickets are in full symphony. Frankly I need to get into the habit of not repeating myself when I put descriptions in the blog or YouTube. I noticed just now that I mentioned about the tree frogs in the YouTube description. Not sure whether it is better to have duplicate stuff in YouTube, Metacafe and my blog, or to have references to one or the another. Actually, it's impossible to determine what to do regarding this because some people come to the blog directly and others via sites like YouTube etc...Way too much work for me to coordinate this stuff but I do want to maximize the exposure. Why would I want more exposure? Would it be for sympathy? No. Would it be to draw attention to the systemic problem of outsourcing American jobs? Somewhat. Would it be to help me utilize the skills that I have acquired in order to dig out of this mess? Yes.
Here is the video

Rainy Day in NJ - 07-31-09

2009-08-01T00:42:00.008-04:00

I did some videotaping earlier tonight but I didnt have an internet connection at the location so I moved along to another location nearby and found that someone had not secured their linksys router. It's a pain to videotape each time and potentially have to do some edits so I will often just blog. I will then take the time during the day to edit the video so I can post it on Youtube and my blog asap but depending on the edits, it can take some time. For instance, when I did the video of my interview I had to blur out my face. Since it was on a moving object (my head), it took forever to figure out how to do it. Luckily I have Adobe CS4 Premiere Pro installed on my laptop so I can do this. Usually I can get by with Windows Movie maker or Ulead DVD Studio. I use a firewire connection from my camcorder to my laptop. I cant spend all my time during the day editing video and blogging because if I am in a location with a good wireless connection I have to devote much time to my existing Amazon cloud projects or my various financial applications. I figure that these things have good potential to help me in the long term so I can't give up on them and just blog about my miserable plight. If I simply spend all my precious internet time ruminating or complaining about outsourcing or H1-B's etc..., eventually the car or laptop will die and my projects and my hope will die with them. Anyway, it's late and I think I will try to get some sleep. I will post the video after I make some minor edits.

5,000 edits later

2009-07-30T19:11:00.010-04:00

Incredible the amount of time it takes to edit a video if you want to blur out a face on a head which is moving. Only a high end product like Premiere Pro can do it apparently. It's harder when the part you want to blur starts halfway thru the video. From now on I am only going to video tape my face if it is stationary. Frankly, I did such a bad job that people who know me will be able to tell. This defeats the whole purpose but I dont have the patience to spend 12 more hours redoing it. I still havent heard anything about this job. In the meantime I am biding my time working on other things. Basically all of these things on my blog. It's very inefficient and slow to be working on a laptop but at least the keyboard is a decent size. Not sure when my next post will be.

Historical Stock Market SQL Server 2005 Database

2009-07-23T17:11:00.008-04:00

I have been working on getting my sql database uploaded and published with Amazon Web Services. They have finally come thru so I am going publish the link here in a post rather than taking up more real estate on this site. The stock database pretty much ties in with my other references to stock market indicators and documents on "Scribd.com" which I reference on the right sidebar of the blog. I extracted three tables from my gigantic sql database in order to create this subset database. I am still debating whether or not to continue working on my original plan to build an OLAP based financial application and to use my large database as the foundation for the OLAP cube. This was the basis for me building the olaptrader website. I guess it all depends on how things pan out for me in the coming months. It's very difficult and inefficient to work on these types of projects without a proper office and broadband connection. This post is pretty much oriented to those people who have stumbled upon this blog due to the search engine spiders picking up the financial references here. Even though the post isnt quite in line with my usual musings, I think this is the best place to put this link. Historical Stock Market SQL Server 2005 Database

Exchanges and Symbols:
Amex - 567 symbols
Nasdaq - 5993 symbols
Nyse - 3127 symbols
Otcbb - 2121 symbols

Columns include: Ticker, Date, Open, High, Low, Close, Volume, Sector, Industry, Company Name and Exchange.
There are 22 million rows in the main table. The historical data is from 1988-2008

All those moments will be lost in time...like tears in the rain

2009-07-22T20:07:00.008-04:00

- Title quote is from the movie Bladerunner

Fly in Amber

2009-07-22T03:58:00.011-04:00

I have spent almost the entire day in my car due to the dreary weather. As usual, I found a wireless connection to tap into and have been working on one of my projects in the Amazon Cloud building custom machine images (AMIs). I try not to drive my car very far or very hard since I need it to keep running but I don’t like to be sedentary. I figure that since I have so much time on my hands I should at least check out a few things that always interested me but didn’t have the time. For instance, a few weeks ago I drove down to Sayreville to look for this somewhat secret amber mine. I was always fascinated by the thought of seeing insects that had been trapped in a lump of amber tens of millions of years old. Incredible!!! I wasn’t able to find the exact spot but there was a rock shop on the way there in which I bought a nice, polished piece of amber with a couple of fly’s inside. Only cost about $5.00. Here is a good Wiki article on amber---HERE.
I took some photos of it afterward and they came out quite well. In the 2nd one I was able to capture the fly in good detail. I held the camera lens up to a small magnifying glass which I still have. You can see the same fly in the first photo towards the right side of the lump. There is also some prehistoric plant matter.
Will try to sleep now and not get rousted out of a slumber by some security guard.

Add to Favorites

2009-07-20T16:59:00.002-04:00

Forgot

2009-07-19T21:17:00.004-04:00

I forgot mention that I would welcome any feedback regarding the layout of this blog. I haven't created a blog before and don't know if it is actually meant to be read in this order. In other words, newest to oldest, and from bottom to top. Unless someone were reading every post of mine; in order for them to get up to speed they would have to start several pages back and read each page from bottom to top and work their way back to the present. Is this normal?

Lazy

2009-07-19T20:54:00.002-04:00

I haven't been online too much in the past few days and frankly, haven't been in the mood to do much. I may have an interview later in the week which is good. It would be my first one in a couple of months. I keep my suit in the trunk of the car so I will find someplace to shower and shave, put on the zoot suit, and try to wow (sp) them with my portfolio!
Needless to say I cannot mention this as one of my websites but, no matter. The resume and other sites and projects should help me. This could be false optimism because I had these same feelings prior to the other interviews and felt that I did very well on them. When they ask for what rate I am looking for I have been giving a figure somewhat lower than what I used to make. If I go too low I will appear desperate I think. Either that or they say to themselves, "gee, with his background, one would think he would ask for more money. Maybe he doesn't think too much of himself". Frankly, I just don't know. Interviewers are notoriously inconsistent and often read too deeply into things. Some wont look at more than a one page resume. Others will think one page isn't long enough. Well, we shall see this time. I will take some photos and maybe some video and give my observations after it is over. Oh, I am blogging from a Barnes & Noble tonight. ---->HERE

My old hot rod and my new beater!

2009-07-15T22:22:00.003-04:00