A public (employee) apology

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Nerdmaster

As negotiations have heated up for Oregon public employees, I’ve wondered a few times at my prior posts about the state of public employee pay and benefits. I have to admit, I was a bit wrong about benefits not being as bloated as many claimed – they are in fact far better than I realized, and I fully understand why so many people think we have it easy. Continue reading →

Posted in Opinions | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Public employees and one last point

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Nerdmaster

I’m almost done with my ranting. And really, what have I proven? So the private sector sometimes is dumb, too. Big deal, right? It’s not like the private sector costs taxpayers when they screw up.

Except when the banks screw up so badly they tank the economy. Continue reading →

Posted in Opinions | Tagged | Leave a comment

Technology choices and lack of innovation in the public sector

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Nerdmaster

I’m continuing to talk about how frustrated I am that people believe that public employees are too expensive, public employees are lazy and incompetent, and unions only protect morons.

So now, on to technology and innovation. I hear that the public sector is stagnant and lacks imagination. I hear that the public sector makes horrible choices in technology investments. I wonder where people are that they think the private sector is that much better. Continue reading →

Posted in Opinions | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

What does the union do besides protect stupidity?

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Nerdmaster

Last time, I discussed how the private sector is pretty bad (though admittedly not as bad as the public sector) about retaining incompetent employees. …but all I really did was prove that the private sector ain’t all that great. Those examples don’t excuse unions from doing the same thing.

But here’s the deal: unions don’t deliberately protect unproductive workers. If you aren’t doing your job, you can be put on a “work performance program” or something. The manager has to prove that he or she is trying to help you get past your weak spots, and if you can be shown to not improve, you are let go. It takes time, yes, but this process is very similar to the disciplinary process in many private sector jobs. The big difference is that we have union representatives to help us avoid being unjustly fired, such as for rallying our peers into pushing for fair pay (At MF, my boss told me I could be fired after I told several coworkers their pay was too low). Continue reading →

Posted in Opinions | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Unions protect lazy, incompetent employees

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Nerdmaster

Today, continuing with my “public employees suck!” theme, I’m going to address another interesting and confusing myth: the belief that unions protect the lazy and incompetent workers.

Really, this argument is ridiculous. I hear it a lot, and apparently the people making this argument have never held a job at a serious company where there is a formal process to discipline and fire an employee (except for unusual circumstances like assault or sexual harassment). Retaining bad employees is as American as apple pie. It happens everywhere, and if you disagree… you’ve never been part of the workforce. Continue reading →

Posted in Opinions | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Incompetent public employees with ridiculous benefits, and the evil unions protecting them

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Nerdmaster

Public employees are the DEVIL. That’s what I’m hearing a lot lately. We cost the state too much. In Wisconsin, they have limited negotiation rights now, and here in Oregon we’re looking at various cuts to our benefits to help the state out of debt.

It’s interesting to read the responses on various news sites – depending where you go, the public might be behind us or completely disgusted by us. Obviously I’m planning to address the latter, as I would have no reason to be annoyed at supporters. Continue reading →

Posted in Opinions | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The horrible cost of using explicit returns in Ruby….

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Nerdmaster

At my lovely new job, we got a trainer to teach us about Ruby, Rails, and agile methodologies. She was pretty good overall, but one thing she mentioned a few times really got on my nerves: “use implicit returns in Ruby because there is a performance hit when explicitly returning”. Continue reading →

Posted in Opinions, Programming | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, problems launching, problems playing, and windows 7

Posted on November 23, 2010 by Nerdmaster

This drove me completely freaking crazy for the past few days. Hopefully my pain can help somebody else.

After dealing with the incredible disappointment of Elemental, Stardock’s newest game (a subject I will probably go into further detail on the another time), I decided to break out Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. Continue reading →

Posted in Bad Programmer!, Games, Opinions, Piracy | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Ruby lovers rejoice! Net::YAIL 1.4.0 released!

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Nerdmaster

I suspect there are still some bugs, as I only have one bot I use to test the thing, but there’s a lot of really good new stuff. I’m trying to move everything that makes sense into github, so the changelog is available on the Net::YAIL github wiki. Highlights: there’s finally a topic-change event, you can now register a block as a handler, some core issues are fixed in parsing, and I’ve paved the way for object-based handlers and filters. Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

I’m not dead yet. Celebrate H-day!

Posted on September 26, 2009 by Nerdmaster

WTF is H-day, you ask? Why, it’s the anniversary of the day I survived a workplace shooting that was almost potentially likely to become a very real possibility!

A little over a year ago, I (and various coworkers) were threatened by somebody I had once considered a good guy. (Quirky, way over-sensitive, but a good guy.) We will call him Mr. H. Continue reading →

Posted in Opinions | Tagged | Leave a comment