Memories of a very dear friend

It's been a week since we got the sad news that a dear friend of ours had passed away unexpectedly.  Since that time, David has been in my thoughts a lot.  Because I had the pleasure of working with David at 5 different companies for a total of 16 years and had also enjoyed his company after work on a regular basis, I know a number of his work friends.  I tried to help share the news of David's passing.  One of our friends responded by commenting how well David and I had clicked which made me smile.

I met David in 1990 when I left a contracting position at the Washington Navy Yard for a job with Sprint International which created equipment for Sprint's packet switching network.  My boss at Sprint was a Brit I had previously worked with at GEISCO.  My boss was a firm believer in getting out of the office at lunch and arranged regular outings to various ethnic restaurants in the area, something he had also previously done at GE.  I think it was at one of those lunches where I first met David.  As we chatted, it became obvious that we had similar tastes in books and movies.  We started eating lunch together on a regular basis.  My boss was also keen on regular after work happy hours, which occasionally involved playing darts.  David and I enjoyed many of those gatherings, sometimes playing darts.

Initially at Sprint, David and I were working on different types of PADs (packet assembler/disassembler) network nodes at Sprint.  I was working on a QLLC PAD which enabled IBM equipment to connect over Sprint's X.25 network.  David worked on more traditional PADs until Sprint started developing Frame Relay, which was a hot new network technology at the time.  Frame Relay was the perfect place for David as he picked up new technologies so easily.

After a couple years, I transferred to Sprint's Operating System group which gave David and I more chances to work together.  I enjoyed that opportunity since I discovered that he and I had compatible troubleshooting approaches.  I believe that came from both of us having started out working on computer hardware, him designing it and me repairing it.  

David and I enjoyed getting together outside of work which continued after I left Sprint in 1994.  It was at one of the after work gatherings that I remember us arguing over the actor's name who had uttered a line in the movie "Cool Hand Luke".  Fortunately, there was a movie store next to the restaurant where we were.  David and I left happy hour for a few minutes so we could consult the movie guides next door to settle the argument.  Other people at happy hour laughed at us for needing to prove our geek cred that way.  That's just one of many little happy moments with David that make me smile when I remember them.

The next time we worked together was in 2000.  At the time, David was working for a startup company which was developed financial problems, as many small startup companies do.  I was happy to help him get a job at 3Com where I was working at the time.  I was developing firmware for a number of ADSL modems while David was helping the ADSL architecture group.  This was another ideal position for David since network architecture requires expertise in so many different areas and David was always eager for opportunities to learn new technologies.  3Com was challenging since the schedules were incredibly aggressive.  That was because the group we were part of sold hardware to consumers which is a rapidly changing environment.

Later in 2000, David and I were both contacted by someone we both worked with back at Sprint who had taken a management position at a new optical networking startup company called Ocular Networks.  We both took the plunge and joined within a month of each other.  Ocular gave us the chance to work closely together on a regular basis.  David initially worked on a DS1 board while I worked on a DS3 board.  These boards provided electrical network interfaces which could be concentrated over the fiber optic network cables.  Like many early stage startups, Ocular required that we work 60-70 hour weeks for the first couple of years.  Fortunately things slowed down a bit after Ocular was purchased by Tellabs.  Tellabs moved our office from Reston to Ashburn.  It wasn't long until we discovered that our new office was very close to the Old Dominion brewpub which became a favorite place for after work gatherings.

The group of engineers I had met at Ocular, many of whom I had worked with at other companies, were so nice that shortly before I left Ocular in 2004, I organized an e-mail list to make it easier to organize regular get togethers as people left for new companies.  I often think how ironic it is that someone as naturally introverted as I am ended up in the role of organizer for activities outside of work.  That's due in large part to David and a few others like him who I couldn't bear the thought of losing contact with.

After Ocular, I took a position at AOL in the e-mail server group.  David also moved to AOL shortly after that and we found a way to work together again.  Unfortunately, the group we were with disbanded before too long and despite being moved to another group together, we both ended up leaving AOL.

For the next 10 years or so, we only saw each other for lunch or for an after work happy hour but fortunately those meetings were regular enough so we didn't lose contact.

In 2015, David joined a company called FourthWall Media, where I had been working for 5 years.  We got to spend another 5 years working together before a shift in company direction resulted in both of us getting laid off.  FourthWall was fond of company outings and I have happy memories of baseball games and visits to Top Golf to unwind.

The pandemic limited our in-person get togethers for a while but since I hated the thought of losing touch with David and a few others, I started a weekly video chat call on Skype which has been something we all looked forward to each week.

Over the 35 years I've known him, David has been someone whose company I have enjoyed and whose opinions I have valued.  He was an absolute joy to work with since he's very knowledgeable and extremely easy to work with.  We've shared recommendations for books, movies, music, and beer.  In the week since I learned of his passing, I've encountered a number of things which I wanted to share with him only to remember that he's no longer available.  He will be missed more than words can express.

Here's a picture of David and me at the Lost Rhino Oktoberfest in September, 2023.  I'm at the front left and David was directly across from me, looking at his phone.  This photo makes me smile because we spent part of the day trying to answer trivia questions posed by the musician who was playing.  We were up to our old geeky tricks that day.

Experience versus enthusiasm

We live in a somewhat rural area which means we have a well as there's no municipal water supply available.  Last week we discovered that we had no water pressure.  Since our house is 24 years old and supposedly well pumps seem to have an average lifetime about 20 years, this was an inconvenience but not a huge surprise.

What I found interesting was observing what it took to get the problem resolved.  The plumbing company we called did an excellent job.  They had a young plumber out to diagnose our problem within 4 hours of us reporting the problem.  The plumber they sent was very nice and extremely diligent.  Since he dealt mostly with houses on the eastern and more suburban portion of our county, he wasn't familiar with wells.  However he was able to get advice on how to troubleshoot the problem from more experienced plumbers at his company and after 3 hours, he determined that our well pump had finally died. 

The next day he returned early with a more experienced plumber (one closer to my age) who was familiar with wells and rural water supply equipment.  The two of them worked hard to replace our well pump in very cold temperatures (15-20°F).  During the times they came into the house, I had a few chances to chat with the more experienced plumber and found him to be not only very knowledgeable but also a really nice guy.

It struck me after they had left that the older plumber and I have found ourselves in somewhat similar situations.  I'm one of the two oldest engineers on our team at work and I'm definitely the oldest who still works full time.  I work on things that the younger engineers don't have experience with such as firmware, device drivers, and operating systems.  From time to time, the need to deal with old technology such as a serial port crops up and I'm happy to do it because it brings back memories of a simpler time.  I also seem to get all the core dumps to analyze which I find to be challenging puzzles.  Who needs brain teasers like Wordle when I can spend hours solving a crash?

I guess the lesson to be learned it that it's useful to have engineers of varying degrees of experience on a team as learning from people who have been around some type technology longer is more efficient than younger techs having to learn everything on their own.

We lost another dog to cancer

About a month after we lost our dog Bandit to osteosarcoma in March, we adopted a sweet female pit bull mix named Greta.  The jump from an 84 pound Lab, Shepherd, Husky, Pit mix who was strong enough to be considered a force of nature to a 49 pound pit bull mix made Greta seem petite.

Her happy personality was on display from the moment we picked her from the animal shelter.  She happily cuddled in my wife's lap for the 30 minute ride home.

She had had a rough early life, having been bred at least twice by the age of 2, followed by being abandoned in a fenced outdoor holding pen at a shelter in West Virginia.  Luckily for Greta and for us, she was transferred to the Loudoun County Animal Shelter which is where my wife discovered her.

Despite having shorter legs than Bandit did, Greta loved accompanying my wife on 2-3 mile walks once or twice a day.  She found people much more interesting than other dogs or toys and had a number of friends in the neighborhood.

Bandit had always wanted to be a lap dog but Greta was actually small enough for that to be a regular occurrence.  It's hard to tell whether she enjoyed it more or whether we did.  She was extremely affectionate.

 

In early September, we noticed some swelling on her neck, so my wife took her to the vet.  To the vet's surprise, it was not an infection but instead turned out to be lymphoma and a fairly advanced stage at that.  Apparently that's rare in a dog so young.  She was prescribed steroids which did a wonderful if somewhat temporary job of reducing the swelling.  It was lovely having an extra 6 weeks of time with her where she was relatively symptom free.

Unfortunately once the final dose was done, her swelling came back with a vengeance.  It quickly advanced from being an uncomfortable nuisance for her to starting to obstruct her breathing.  I'll never forget the look in her eyes which seemed to question why this was happening to her.

She was sweet and loving to the end, despite all she was going through.  We'll always miss her even though she was only with us for 7 short months.

Cory Doctorow's new book is really good

I shouldn't be surprised about how good Cory Doctorow's new book, Red Team Blues, is.  I've been a fan of his books for about 20 years.  His books invariably involve new trends in technology and their possible consequences.  Cory definitely has the technical chops to write convincingly about emerging technologies.  He's an activist and has been involved with the EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) for many years.  Cory also has a frequently updated blog called Pluralistic which features an interesting article and lots of links, which often involve technology and its unintended consequences or occasional intentional misuses.

Red Team Blues follows the adventures of a forensic accountant (which apparently can be a much more interesting profession than the position title would imply) named Marty Hench.  Hench specializes in the cybersecurity and accounting involved with digitally accessed assets such as cryptocurrencies.  In Doctorow's capable hands this premise becomes a gripping detective novel and a cutting edge one at that.

I backed the audiobook version on Kickstarter.  Cory resorted to using this method of funding because Audible won't carry books without DRM and he insists on allowing readers to own the books they purchase.  As an added bonus, Cory got Wil Wheaton to narrate the book.  I always enjoy Wil's narration and I think he does an especially good job on books with a technology or a SciFi focus.

I strongly suggest you check this book out.  It's very compelling and made me wish I needed to commute to the office more often so I could have finished it quicker.

Saying goodbye to a special dog

 

We lost our very special dog to an osteosarcoma a few days ago.  He started limping a little over 4 months ago and it took a while to diagnose what was causing the problem which kept getting progressively worse.  We were so focused on figuring out what was wrong that it dominated our recent conversations about him.  I wanted to make sure it didn't overpower people's memory of the most affectionate dog I've ever met.

Bandit entered our lives a little unexpectedly about 10 years ago.  He was the third dog we've had during the 30+ years we've been married.  For some strange reason, each of them was roughly double the weight of their predecessor, progressing from 16 to 42 to Bandit's whopping 84 pounds.

Bandit had a rough start in life.  We adopted him from Rappahannock Animal Welfare League (RAWL), the same shelter where we had adopted our previous dog, Sandy, who was very sweet but much less outgoing than Bandit.  They do a wonderful job of socializing their dogs.  Apparently Bandit had been chained outside for much of his early life.  The shelter got him due to an altercation he'd had with a feral cat coupled with the fact that his first family had not seen fit to get him vaccinated against rabies.  He needed to be quarantined for 6 months for the possible rabies exposure.  They're a "no-kill" shelter but apparently that doesn't automatically apply in quarantine cases.  After seeing what a sweet dog Bandit was, they opted to keep him for the 8 months it took to get him through the quarantine period plus his recovery from being neutered because they were sure he'd be adopted.  How he stayed so friendly and loving given that rocky beginning amazes me.

My wife fell in love with the personality he displayed in the shelter's pictures of him playing with 5 beagle puppies.  His face managed to exude good-natured playfulness and joy in a way that we both found irresistible.  She also chose a smaller dog to look at in case the fact that Bandit was part pit bull (he was a lab-shepherd-husky-pit mix) made me nervous.  Any chance of me being worried about him being aggressive disappeared when they let him out of his kennel for us to meet him.  He was so affectionate that both of us ended up sitting on the floor petting him for quite a while until we were finally able to sign the adoption papers.

Since he had been chained up for much of his life, he didn't have much experience with cars.  I had to lift him into the truck where he sat nervously and stiff-legged in my wife's lap for the entire 90 minute drive home.  The only difficulty he gave us was with his initial nervousness about car rides.  He discovered that collapsing as low as possible could delay his ride for a while because it's so hard to lift an 84 pound dog who has cemented himself to the ground.  His nervousness about cars persisted for about a month until we took him to a place where we could bathe him.  He was so relieved to be done with the bath that he leapt into the back of the truck to go home.  After that, going for rides was one of his favorite activities.

 

When we adopted Bandit we lived in a suburb of DC which had lots of walking paths and he was happy to hike as far as we wanted.  Bandit usually preferred people to other dogs.  One notable exception was a dog half his size which lived near the walking path we took on a daily basis.  They loved to wrestle and often looked like tiny dinosaurs as they chest-butted each other while smiling the entire time.  It was like our own version of a Godzilla movie where the monsters are furry and friendly.  They would get so tired having fun that they would eventually collapse on the ground.  Once they had recovered somewhat, they would drag themselves towards each other to start again.

A year after we brought him home, we moved to the more rural suburbs.  Out in the country we discovered Bandit was really more of a medium-sized dog.  While technicians who came to the old house to fix things were nervous around Bandit, those visiting the new house often had dogs larger than Bandit and were happy to pet him.  Bandit always loved finding a new person to give him attention.

It was shortly after we moved to the country that he met his favorite neighbors.  Their oldest daughter bonded with him almost instantly.  She seemed to have a sixth sense about when we'd be passing their house and frequently treated him with bacon and other snacks.  After a few times being spoiled this way, his tail would start wagging wildly whenever we approached their house.

He looked forward to spend time with us each evening.  He often positioned himself between us and nudged our arms to convince us to pet him until our arms were tired and sometimes sore.  There are few things which could relax me like spending time with that affectionate bundle of love.

If I happened to drive by my wife and Bandit walking on my way home from work, Bandit would drag my wife towards the house to see me.  Bandit was a force of nature.  If he saw deer, he could spin either of us by the leash in his struggle to give chase.  Sometimes my wife would let go of his leash once they were close enough to the house to see me.  I have happy memories of him running down the road towards me and the uber-affectionate greeting I would get when he finally reached me.  The stress of the commute and a long day at work melted away instantly under his enthusiastic greeting.

There were few things which Bandit enjoyed more than having his face pet by my wife.  He would get into the strangest positions to coax her into stroking his face.

In the last few years, he had been moving a little more hesitantly and was not quite so keen to go on long walks but his sweet nature was just as strong as ever.  Those signs of him slowing down triggered me to start paying more attention to the time we had left with him.  I knew dogs as special as him don't come along often and I wanted to enjoy every precious moment.

He was sweet to the end despite being needing to take 3 potent medications for the ever increasing pain he was in while his doctors tried to diagnose his problem.  They ultimately determined it was an osteosarcoma and that the cancer had spread to his lungs.  We held out hope until the diagnosis made it obvious that we needed to let him go.

Both of us loved every minute we had with Bandit.  It's hard realizing we'll never be greeted by this big lovable goofball again.

Changing the oil

I changed the oil in my commuter car today, having grown tired of the "change oil soon" messages which started appearing on the dashboard about two weeks ago.  Changing the oil is something I learned to do from helping my uncle and grandfather work on cars when I was young.  It's much quicker and somewhat cheaper to do it myself than it is to take the car to the shop since you need to include the time spent driving to the shop and waiting for the oil to be changed.

The container on the left in the picture below which now holds used motor oil always makes me think of my grandfather.  It's one of a pair of 5 gallon oil cans I have which he used for delivering heating oil during WWII.  Several times when I've taken these containers to the county recycling center to recycle the used motor oil, people have asked whether I'd consider selling them.  These cans and the other tools I inherited from him hold far too much sentimental value for me to ever consider parting with them although the idea of some yuppie paying top dollar for something like that would have made Grandad laugh.

 

I'm always pleasantly surprised to see how easy it is to access everything on this car (a Chevy Equinox).  It seems every other vehicle we've owned for the past 20 years has placed either the oil drain plug or the oil filter in an awkward spot.  Some have gone as far as hiding them above frame cross-members which makes a huge mess when the old oil drains out.  I've tried all manner of do it yourself funnels to try to coax the oil into emptying into the drain pan with varying degrees of success.

Golden age of nerds

It suddenly struck me today that nerds today have it much easier than nerds of my generation. It's easy to feed unconventional tastes in books, comics, music, TV, movies, food, beer, etc than it's ever been before.

It struck me as I was having a very enjoyable but quiet lunch by myself (thanks to a last minute cancellation by a friend who wasn't feeling well) at my favorite craft brew establishment. In my youth, I would have never considered dining solo but luckily my iPhone affords me ample entertainment for such occasions so there's no need to skip an tasty lunch. I have more media than I could consume in several weeks at my beck and call.

In my misspent youth, nerds were forced to read a wide range of magazines and visit geeky bookshops run by knowledgeable staff to keep up with upcoming media they might find of interest. Proximity to a great bookshop could spell the difference between keeping in touch with new happenings in your slice of the nerd universe and playing a perpetually unsatisfying game of nerd culture catchup. Fortunately I was close enough to a couple great bookshops that on weekends I could convince my Mother (who instilled the love of reading in me) to drive me to one or the other to spend my hard earned paper route money on another stack of books.

Now I can accomplish the same thing with a few subscriptions to e-magazines, email newsletters, RSS feeds, and podcasts. Ordering said items of nerdy desire are usually just a matter of pointing at the correct website and furnishing a valid credit card.

I chuckle when I hear geezers (not that I'm not one myself) bemoaning the death of paper books, magazines, newspapers as well as vinyl as a storage medium for music). They're missing the point that the artist's message is becoming easier than ever for the public to consume and frequently without the unnecessary middlemen who have all too often served as unwanted arbiters of what the public was ready to accept.

I for one embrace this golden age of nerds. Let the mass consumption begin!

Advice for the family tech support person (or mechanic)

An acquaintance of mine has been roped into providing computer tech support for a family friend and is entirely too polite to complain about the situation to the correct people to prevent a reoccurrence. I've got friends who are mechanics or at least very mechanically inclined who face similar problems in their field.

Hearing about the headaches associated with this has brought back memories of being in similar situations. Once people realize you have expertise in computers, or any other field for that matter, you may find yourself getting pressured into providing computer or car maintenance assistance. It has made me wish there were a tactful way of establishing guidelines for providing help to friends and family members. What better way than an anonymous blog post you can point to as a gentle suggestion of how to behave when asking for help?

1) Use Google to see if you can't solve your own problem or at least narrow down the possible causes. You'd be surprised at how many problems can be solved without intervention from experts.

2) Just because your friend or family member is willing (or at least too polite to refuse) to offer you assistance, don't assume that he or she wants to extend the same courtesy to your friends or coworkers. Don't volunteer them to do so without asking first and take "no" for a answer gracefully. Just because they're good at their job, don't expect them to be thrilled about volunteering extra hours above and beyond their normal work week on related problems.

3) Should your indentured tech support servant be kind enough to agree to help, don't make the imposition any worse by being picky about where or when the service should be offered. No one enjoys being stuck in a cramped back room working on a computer or on a cold, hard driveway working on a car. If they ask you to bring the PC or vehicle to their place, do so cheerfully. If they do agree to come to your house, clean up a bit to make service less painful. I can't tell you how many times I've had to ask for vacuum cleaners to clean off fan vents sufficiently to make disassembly possible without a big mess. No one enjoys working with a jumble of cables or surrounded by so many knick-knacks that it's difficult to get to the computer. Be flexible about time too. Remember, your potential tech support person has a life too. Don't interfere with work or their other commitments.

4) Find a way to reciprocate and make sure it's something of comparable value. If your tech support person has spent 2 hours fixing your computer, don't let a plate of cookies be your only thanks for their efforts. Think about some skill you have that they may need and offer that, be it mowing their lawn or taking them to dinner. Remember how much you would have spent at the local big box electronics store.

5) If the support you're asking for is advice or if advice is offered as a method of preventing future problems, don't blithely ignore it. You've asked this person for help because of their expertise. If you ignore it or instead follow advice from some less experienced friend or coworker or even worse, fall prey to some slick advertising or advice from one of the poorly trained hourly grunts at your local big box electronics store, how likely do you think it is that your tech support person will ever give you meaningful advice again?

6) Do whatever preventive maintenance is recommended to try to prevent future problems. No family tech support person wants to hear your plaintive cries about how you can't afford to lose some valuable file. So do your backups (or oil changes in the case of cars) and don't expect your family tech support to perform miracles on neglected PCs or cars.

Following these steps will help ensure less resentment on the part of the person helping you.

e-audiobooks rock!

For a long time I've been listening to audiobooks to make commuting or exercise more bearable. Our local library used to have a great selection of audiobooks on cassette. The last time I checked, they were slowly transitioning to CD based audiobooks. I never borrowed a book in that form as they only seemed to stock recent bestsellers and I don't find most recent books as engrossing as some of the old classics by authors like Nevil Shute, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson among others.

Fast forward to a couple years ago. I discovered that our local library had started carrying e-audiobooks which could be downloaded to an MP3 player with support for Windows Media DRM aka protected WMA files). With mixed feelings, I purchased a refurbished MP3 player capable of playing protected WMA files. It irked me that I couldn't play this protected media on the iPod I used for most of my music. The MP3 player gave me a years worth of service before developing some interface quirks which became so bothersome as to be unbearable. It's hard to believe that with an iPod as a model of how to design a decent user interface, other manufacturers do such an abysmal job.

The refurbished replacement I purchased from another manufacturer was slightly better but still paled in comparison to the iPod's interface. It lasted me another year before refusing to connect using its USB interface without jumping through a strange series of steps I found on a user forum for a different model player from the same manufacturer. The prospect of spending more money on yet another unsatisfactory MP3 player didn't thrill me.

Fortunately, my library wasn't sitting idle during this time. They've recently made available a new service from Overdrive, the company which offers e-audiobooks for download. They offer an MP3 version of some of the e-audiobooks. Sadly this is a fledgling service at the moment so the selections aren't nearly as extensive as the WMA selections are yet but I'm hoping this will improve with time.

So far I've listened to Kipling's Captains Courageous and Stevenson's Kidnapped. Both were wonderful and made me choose longer paths when walking the dog so I could listen longer. If you've got activities which might benefit from distractions such as a good book being read by a skilled narrator, I recommend you check with your local library to see whether the offer e-audiobooks.

More about strokes

After a few visits with a friend who has recently suffered from a major stroke, I think it's a good idea to pass along some information because strokes are not well understood by the public at large.

It's important for people to learn to recognize the symptoms of a stroke. If you or your family members don't recognize the fact that you're having a stroke, you may not get treatment quickly enough to prevent unnecessary long term brain damage. It's especially important to remember when symptoms first appeared. The most promising treatment, TPA, must be given within 3 hours of the first appearance of symptoms. It can actually cause harm if given after 3 hours have passed.

The aftereffects of strokes are also somewhat misunderstood. Most people recognize the temporary or permanent paralysis of of one side of the body as classic stroke symptoms. The brain swelling which takes place frequently causes problems with speech or control of the limbs on one side of the body which can require months of therapy to correct.

You may also want to ask your doctor about taking a daily low dose aspirin as a preventative for strokes and heart attacks. For some reason the body seems more prone to developing blood clots as we get older.

A podcast I listen to regularly, Skepticality, features a host who had a major stroke a few years ago. He returned to podcasting after about 4 months. At first his delivery wasn't as fluid as it had been before the stroke but with continued speech therapy, it's now hard to tell that he ever had a stroke. I'm hoping therapy proves just as effective for my friend.

Recognizing the symptoms of a stroke

I found out tonight that a close friend of mine suffered a stroke last week. He recognized the symptoms and was able to describe them to the doctors before his speech was too affected. Knowing how bright he is and how much he reads, it doesn't surprise me that he'd taken the time to learn this valuable information.

The Stroke Association has a list of symptoms which everyone should commit to memory. It can make all the difference!

I knew it!

Here's an interesting article about Ernest Hemingway. The part I find most interesting occurs on page 4 where Hemingway that the symbolism which English teachers so often attribute to stories is not premeditated. He states "No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in".

This quote supports my long held belief that the symbolism English teachers claim to find in books was usually not intended by the author and as such is entirely subjective. In school I always hated being criticized by an English teacher for not seeing the symbolism they claim is the "only" valid interpretation. Frequently these teachers would speak as if they had some sort of notebook from the author containing their secret thoughts about hidden subtext they had woven into their novel. What a crock!

Readability rating

I think the rating should be more like "Evil Genius". It must be all my posts about obscure Unix commands, eh?

Feeling old

I was in the hospital visiting my grandmother this weekend. Last week she had fallen while trying to put on her shoes and broke her leg near the hip. Thank goodness it wasn't her hip as that's supposed to be much harder to recover from. So thanks to a metal pin and 3 screws installed Thursday, she's starting the long hard road to recovery.

I was amazed that the physical therapist was able to get her to try a few steps while I was there. She was in a lot of pain and was reluctant to do anything which made it worse, such as moving the injured leg. The thing which was toughest for me to take was the sounds she made when the pain hit her. I was also struck by how small and frail she looks now. I know it's been a long gradual process but it really struck me while watching her struggle with the pain.

It's strange how the roles feel reversed now. When I was small, she used to take care of me while my mother was at work. She was always able to help with anything I needed. Now we've got to do the same for her. It seems kind of strange for all of us and is taking a little getting used to.

More advice for young engineers

A few more pieces of advice occurred to me since I wrote the last post.

1) Never accept counter-offers. The chances are pretty slim that the only reason you were changing jobs is money. An offer of more money or a change of titles probably won't fix all the problems which caused you to take the relatively drastic step of looking for a new job. While it's quite flattering to hear how your old company can't do without your valuable contributions, usually none of the promised changes are permanent aside from a raise in salary. Once you get used to that, and sadly it never takes as long as you'd think it would, you'll probably be dissatisfied again. What's worse is you may have burned a bridge with the company which made you an offer by accepting your old company's counter-offer. It rarely pays to burn bridges.

2) Don't go back to an old company unless you really loved it the first time. This is for much the same reasons as the point above. No matter how much a company claims to have changed, the truth of the matter is company culture rarely changes. Companies with glaring flaws usually never correct those fundamental problems.

3) Socialize with your co-workers on a regular basis. You'll be surprised at how a few lunches or the occasional happy hour can build stronger working relationships which is good for everyone involved. Keep up those relationships once you change jobs. That's the best way to build a wide network of friends. Your network can help you with finding new jobs, recommending ways to solve problems, as well as giving you someplace to do a little venting about workplace frustrations.

Advice to young engineers

A long time ago I was given a bit of advice that has served me well over the years. An engineer with much more experience than I had at the time made the simple statement that "your company doesn't love you". What he was trying to say was there's only one person you can really count on to look out for your best interests and that's you. Over the years, I've refined that simple statement into a philosophy which has helped me make some small amount of sense of how engineering companies work.

1) Never trust head hunters. These paid recruiters have a list of jobs to fill. They'll always try to steer you towards their least attractive positions since those are the hardest to fill. The rare "dream jobs" require almost no work to sell. Recruiters will lie to you about lots of things, including what contracting rate is equivalent to a given full time salary. If you do decide to work with a head hunter, make sure you tell them you want to be informed before they submit you on any job. That will help prevent misunderstandings where you apply to a company only to find out the head hunter has also submitted you. This is especially important if you ever decide to work with multiple head hunters at the same time. Being submitted by several agencies may lead to disputes about which should get paid if you want to accept the job. Companies don't like dealing with that sort of ambiguity and may decide against hiring you altogether to avoid the potential conflict.

2) Rarely trust Human Resources. Their job is to hire and retain workers at the lowest possible cost to the company. The best HR representatives will realize that if they can keep employees happy, the company will benefit in the long run. That's as rare as a car salesman who realizes that if he works with you to find the car that best meets your needs instead of one which offers him the best commission for the least amount of work, he might be rewarded with your return business and referrals. In my 30 years in the computer industry, I've met just two HR reps who I felt were true advocates for employee satisfaction and as a consequence might work to see I was treated fairly. That's not a terribly encouraging percentage.

It probably pays to do some negotiating when you're faced with a job offer. They're probably walking the tightrope of seeing how cheaply they can hire you without being too insulting. That's why they look for hints about how much you were making at your last job. You would think that a job has a specific worth to them which would be easy to calculate which would dictate what they'd offer you but you'd be wrong.

3) Salary increases are almost never fairly distributed. Companies tend to pick company wide target percentages for raises and those percentages tend to remain unchanged as they pass down the line though the executive staff is almost never restricted to such tiny percentages. So the person in the mailroom who has precious little impact on a company's bottom line may have the same target percentage raise as engineers working extra hours. What's frequently worse is when they create a raise pool by giving a first level manager this same target percentage for all the employees who report to him/her. A manager with an outstanding team of workers will either be forced to give the same percentage to everyone or worse yet, to attempt to steal from some employees to correct past salary inequities. Meanwhile there's no incentive for managers to return part of their pool should they have mostly average or below average employees working for them. Keep an eye on what you're worth to other companies in the industry and always make sure your salary measures up.

4) You're only as good as how well your last project or assignment was perceived. The minute you're not viewed as contributing to the bottom line well in excess of what it costs to keep you employed, you're no longer an asset to the company. That puts you at risk of making the list for the next lay-off. Sometimes this is exceptionally unfair because the perception may have been caused by you getting assigned to a project doomed to failure by factors outside your control. Keep an eye out for signs of project failure and explore transfers if things start looking bad. Always keep your resume up-to-date because we've already seen that HR cares more about the company's needs than yours.

5) Strive to give the company good value for their money. It's really your best hope of getting glowing referrals from your manager and co-workers. Part of this requires that you make sure they know how good a job you're doing. Suffering silently doesn't serve anyone except for a boss who isn't interested in trying to reward good workers.

6) Network with former co-workers. No job lasts forever so it pays to always be thinking about what you would do if circumstances were to suddenly change.

7) (courtesy of my friend Chard) A company never treats you any better than they do when they're trying to recruit/hire you. So if they're unresponsive, evasive, or misleading during the recruiting and interviewing process, you should see that as a preview of how things will be when/if you're hired.