Monthly Archives: December 2004

Wisconsin DOT employees wait to hear their fate

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Being someone who was put at-risk of losing his job due to budget cuts, I was actually relieved to learn that I was on the chopping block when it finally happened. The future seemed uncertain at the time, but I looked upon it as an opportunity to move forward in my life.

Unfortunately, someone decided that it would not be humane to let employees at DOT know that they’re losing their jobs before the holidays. I believe that this is actually inhumane, because employees must wait longer yet to learn their fate. When I left the agency, morale was already at an all-time low. On a recent trip there to wish my former office director congratulations on her retirement, I could feel the tension in the hallways. Employees don’t want to hear bad news, but they want to know if it will be them so they can start competing for other positions or start planning for the future.

John Nordbo, an employee at DOT, mentions another issue in his editorial with the potential layoffs: bumping rights. The whole thing is going to be a logistical nightmare for many employees and the human resources bureau. In its simplest terms, if an employee had a previous position, was promoted to a higher position, and is then laid-off, that employee can “bump” back to a position of the same previous classification. If that position is not vacant, then the incumbent of the position is “bumped” out, possibly facing his or her own layoff. When you compound this among many employees (DOT has 340 staff in its reduction plan), you can imagine the mess this makes.

So, I agree with John Nordbo’s editorial. I’ve already been down that road, and I was fortunate enough to find something fairly quickly. But others may not be as lucky. It seems unfair that employees should wait until they know of their fate at the the very last minute. I know that DOT Secretary Frank Busalacchi has the utmost respect and compassion for all of the employees that work under him, and I know that he has as much trouble dealing with this as anyone else at DOT. It’s not a matter of blame, but a matter of timing. DOT should provide its employees the opportunity to know what’s going on and offer them a chance to plan for their futures.

Links:

Wisconsin State Journal: Layoffs, With The Holidays On The Mind

Editorial: For Dot Employees, Not Knowing Their Job Future Just Prolongs The Pain

Remembering Dimebag

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Last night, Dimebag Darrell of Pantera and Damageplan was gunned down while performing in front of an audience last night. The shooter also fatally shot five other people, including two members of Damageplan, before a police officer fatally shot the shooter. What would drive someone to pull off such a terrible mistake is beyond me.

Dimebag was a leading force behind Pantera, and his guitar riffs blew us away. He influenced so many people, and he helped keep the spirit of metal alive. I’m dedicating this blog to him and his bandmates, his family, his friends, and his fans.

Links:

Lars Ulrich (Metallica): RIP Darrell

MSNBC: Metal world mourns death of “Dimebag” Darrell

MSNBC: Deadly Ohio nightclub rampage baffles police

New dragon desktops

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I’ve added new pictures to my site… desktop backgrounds. I’ve taken a copy of the dragon image above and turned it into a desktop image. So for those of you who like dragons breathing fire and holding a guitar residing on your computer desktop, you’re in luck. Please remember that this is copyrighted material.

To set as a desktop image, open the image completely, right-click on it, and select “set as background,” or download by selecting “save picture as…” from the drop-down menu.

In my haste, I also forgot to add a picture of my desk. I’ll continue working on the article next year. In the meantime check out my desk if you haven’t seen it before.

Brian-lair-dragon – 800 x 600

Brian-lair-dragon – 1024 x 768

Final redesign updates

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I tested out the site some more, ran across a few more problems, and hopefully corrected them. I was speaking to one of the web developers at work (Wendy), and she gave me a solution to the problem I had with the error pages. It was great advice, because I found a handful of other pages with the same error. So hopefully the site is ready for prime time (I’d say complete, but these things continue to evolve).

By the way, I’m still considering a RSS feed, in case anyone is interested. Otherwise, I may just use XML to create automated blog entries, with permalinks listed at the bottom of each one.

More site information

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I managed to make a few fixes to the site. One thing I’ve noticed is that the cascading style sheet (CSS) for the error page doesn’t work very well inside a folder. Hopefully no one will encounter this, but it’s difficult to avoid mistakes once in a while. I’ll keep working on a solution. Fortunately, the site passes the World Wide Web Consortium’s validation for both HTML and CSS, and most other items work so far.

One other thing I’ve noticed is that although you can see the validation symbols at the bottom of the pages in Microsoft Internet Explorer, you cannot see them in Mozilla Firefox. If you are having problems seeing them in Apple’s Safari (I don’t have a Mac so I can’t check this), please let me know.

I have a last-minute update to make, so please be patient as I continue to make minor changes.

New site design up

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If you’ve been to my site before, you’ve probably noticed that it has a new look. That means that I’ve completed the site redesign and published it.

What’s new? Well, if you’ve visited the site before, you can tell that I’ve really given it a clean look. I had a list of buttons on the left, a dark background (no, I haven’t lost my heavy metal roots), and some really bad inconsistencies. Big coding changes include using cascading style sheets. I’ve also chosen to use either Verdana (for Windows users) or Helvetica (for Mac users), which is better looking than the old, blah-looking Arial (Windows font). If your computer doesn’t have either of these, I still have a default sans-serif set up. I also played around with some new colors (not that I’ve used much). Finally, I’ve added some new footer links at the bottom, including a brief explanation of the dragon.

Don’t get me wrong; this was a huge undertaking. Over the last two years, I added a lot of information and pictures to my site. Although redesigning the look took me very little time, migrating everything from the old site to the new one lasted several months. Add to that the fact that I had to check all of the coding, and you can imagine that my eyes are practically burned out!

Despite all of the work I’ve put into this new design, I still would like feedback on what you think. Please use the link below to find out how to contact me. Please be patient as I continue to debug some things.

New digital video recorder

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I’m a television freak… I can’t seem to live without it. But I hate missing television shows, and I really don’t like using VHS tapes over and over. So I subscribed to the digital video recorder (DVR) service from my cable company. It’s actually a multi-media device manufactured by Motorola that uses the MOXI system (MOXI apparently won a technical Emmy). Basically, it’s like a ReplayTV or TIVO, but it works through the cable company. So I’ve already paused live television, recorded a couple of shows, and even gone back to catch the beginning of a show that I missed (you have to leave it on that channel for this feature to work, and it only goes back an hour). It’s capable of recording two programs at once (but you have to watch one of them). The remote control and menu system are much better than the previous digital cable system. And although I’m not using them, it also has a built-in cable modem and four USB ports (reportedly for future expansion).

My only complaint, though, is that I had to disconnect my DVD player. Since I already have the Xbox and a DVD player in my PC, I figured that I could make the sacrifice. Fortunately my television has three inputs, so I haven’t lost my VCR yet (old technology is tried and true). But I also lost the cable connection to my VCR (my decision). In fact, I’m keeping the VCR in case I decide to move forward with a video editing project. Also, I can no longer use my television’s picture-in-picture feature, unless I reconnect the antenna. Knowing me, though, I’ll probably get confused if I try that.

My cable installer was great as well. He gave me the option to install it using S-Video and ran through the entire set up for me. He also showed me all of the features. Amazingly, he was very patient with me and checked out my coaxial cable to make sure it would continue to work with the new device and my other cable devices.

Despite some minor disadvantages, the new DVR is still very cool and loaded with many more benefits. The quality of the picture is great, and the system is just very simple to use. And my cable company’s customer service is just fantastic, and always has been since I started subscribing to them (it’s Charter Communications, in case you’re wondering). I’m glad that I made the decision to subscribe to this service. I’m sure it will come in handy in the near future.

Web site redesign delayed

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I have to admit that I’m not completely ready to publish the new site just yet. I haven’t been working on it lately, but most of it is done. I have a few more things to update, write, and review before I can bring down the old one and publish the redesign.

Many of the things will look familiar, such as the organization. Differences include the new method of posting my web logs and the overall look. I’ve also decided to remove many of the family photos from past events. I may just add a couple of pictures to my blog instead, so people can still see them on occasion. I did decide to keep

The other thing I’m currently working on is a new computer maintenance article. I recently sat in a “mini-course,” where the instructor was really on top of much of PC security. But rather than add to the PC Security article, I decided that a separate article would help differentiate between security and cleaning. The new article will be published with the new site.

One thing I’ve been struggling with is creating an automated blog system. If I decide to pursue using XML to publish my blogs, it won’t occur until sometime next year, and I plan to set it up the way my friend Jason (jasonbock.net) sets his up, including breaking articles out possibly by month and giving them permanent links. In the meantime, I will continue to keep it broken out in quarters for the remainder of the year, and previous years will remain in their current format.

My updated target date for the new site is December 5.