Talked twice with some company from Michigan on fifth, and what can I say, it was a love at first sight except the guy said „we can't pay you more than our CEO gets“. We're off by about 25%, and if nothing else comes around, that place would be quite okay. It's on the coast of Michigan lake, tourist resort with hotels and nice nature spread around. I'm expecting some other answers meanwhile, and I've also applied to a few other ads, so we'll see about that yet.
Late previous night, some email exchange with pLazić, about life, universe and getting a job again.
he*: I have just got an email from Škrba were he says te recession has hit you too, unfortunately :(
we're okay, in te sense tat I have a job until New year at least until wen we hope to get te green card (unless tere's furter delay)*ž
I hope tat in te meanwile you found a job. Here (in California in general) it's really nasty to find one now.
If tere's any way we can help, say. Not tat it would be anyting muc at tis time, but I hope it gets better.
me: Nope, not recession, it was fools at the helm of the firm. Such a series of blunders I haven't seen in a while, as if I was working in one of those political investments, or whatever they were called in days of yore.
he: That sounds familiar. America is not really what we thought (or at least I did), is it? I mean so much moronic action I haven't seen not even back home. It's just that the money is much bigger.
me: That's what amazes me, for two years and one day now :). The only explanation I have is that it's their tradition - these are still, mostly, the descendants of the european adventurists, bandits, missionaries, cutbags and other scum, and if they have anything to pass as folks' artisanat, it's how to live on expense of others. Though, we did know that the Amers live on the backs of the rest of the planet, and came here to snatch our share back, but to see them so... that they produce nothing, that it's more important to write a paper about how the finished product should look, than how to make it (not to mention to actually make it)... that was hard for me to believe, but so it is. Kind of looks as if here, just like at home, 10% of people work, the other 90% scratch their balls and rule.
I already have something in sight, expecting to hear from a few guys, also there's a little tezga on the shreds of the firm (there are a few users who need the software like bread, and I got interrupted amidst the new version - and the old version won't do, the format of incoming data changed).
Two days ago I was expecting a call from LA, one was interested in getting me there, but didn't call.
All in all, thanks for the courtesy, we're managing. I just got fox 7 in lieu of last salary, the most expensive exemplar, and I'm inventing mad earthworms** in it. Worst case, sell the car and buy airplane tickets. At least I don't owe for it, paid off. [not quite, I paid the last 180$ next week]
Re green card, I'm not quite sure it can go that fast... my lawyer talked about it should be done already, but he's still waiting, for months, for my I-140 to get done. I think they are delaying them intentionally now, waiting to see how Bush breathes.
he: we got labor in a month. Took us three months for I-140. Then I lost a (precious) month on the medical, photos and the rest.
I-485 (last phase) we submitted on 20th june and then waited until 28th august for receipt! :(
Worst case we have green card by 28th february, in regular (but go prove that) 20th december.
In a month we should get a temporary labor permit.
me: My labor permit should survive, if my lawyer manages to prove that I'm doing the kind of job I was brought for.
he: true, it did go rather fast. We had our labor papers submitted by beginning of november. But this the normal speed if firm doesn't stall it. In any case it requires managing until then.
me: if I could prove them, I would have put to the light of day some things, out of sheer spite, to embitter their lives a little. A part of paperwork, from the firm's side, went through their CFO. Whenever I wanted something hushed up, I'd come up to one of other bosses and asked who'd be in charge of it, the CFO or somebody else. They wouldn't have any clue of what I was asking about, so they'd just say „yes, him“ and I'd pass the matter to him and then slept in peace, knowing the problem was now permanently buried :). The guy to send to fetch death.
he: it means you didn't get te WAC number and alien number?
Don't know how tings stand on your side, but had you managed to get temporary labor permit (I-485 if I remember correctly) you would have been on te horse.
me: there's still some chance for tha, if it arrives while the firm still formally exists. I talked with the lawyer today, and he says he could save it if I work in the same trade (well, where else), in roughly the same position.
he: is te company totally bankrupt or it still exists in some form? If it exists in some sape, maybe you can bargain with tem (if you can stand it financially) not to drag your process.
I: it exists to the hilt, except there's no cash. Didn't announce bankruptcy, instead the bank snatched everything and paycheck didn't come, so the gang was told they're waiting in vain. Now there's some muddling to yet compose a little company to renew some part of the business, and that's where they need me, and need me strongly.
he: I know it's fucking hard :(. I'm here since marc last year, and I've really been trough tiresome 16 monts. In my life I never worked more, unless we count te period wen I wrote books. Hell even if I count tat.
I: I got fucked from some other side, i.e. I didn't kill myself working these two years, did I maybe do tops of five days overtime, and out of those, three happened now near the end, all the time trying to earn the title of the software hero who saved the company. But then, it didn't help because that wasn't what decided matters. The fuckup in my case is that they dragged their feet with the procedure (by my counting I am on the better side of 6 to 10 months late behind your procedure) and that they were cheap with my salary. And on the side that they strictly saw to scare me that wife and kids mustn't work anywhere so that we wouldn't get exiled (the H4 hell).
he: I had te circumstances of working for a firm of ours, were te owners were ex-YU folks and were in principle te deal was tat I'd work for my papers. Because te start salary, in terms of Silicon valley, is not enoug to survive, 48K$. It would take me a year to arrive at 75K$ wic even here still doesn't count as muc of a salary (not just in IT).
I: Thin, bro. They promised me 55-65K, which is about OK here, but the first year I had 52, and when I discretely rebeled why only 3k up, my boss started looking for a hair in the egg. Well, when he stopped, then I started doing visible miracles - up to then I was all the time doing things on the inside, straightening out the spaghetti I found on the premises and slapped my forehead whenever I saw how dirty it was all written. Some time this winter my film broke and I started slicing wherever I had time; by springtime, it came down to three-four cosmetic changes a week and breathing was possible. The trouble is that the rest of the company was in nincompoops' hands.
he: for comparison's sake, it 60K$ in Newark, NJ, is equivalent to a 100K$ in Santa Clara.
me: yes, that's about the rate. Last winter I refused 70K$ in DC, wasn't enough and I wasn't about to drop the green card for that much, but then I agreed to 65K$ in Salt Lake - except that outfit bust while we talked, so nothing of that, luckily.
he: and after all now wen we finally can save some along wit decent life te firm grinds to te halt, as most of consulting ones do. Even now I'm lucky tey're keeping me, tough I don't know until wen. Now I'm literally sitting in te office with noting to do.
I'm waiting for some contract I sould do and tat'd be it. And tere's little business to do, California suffered badly. I get signs from East coast, tough tey mostly ask for papers and te locals. at least you worked for an american firm. How did you get wit tem? Are yours also prone to exploiting the foreigners?
I: When they say „locals“ they mean „will not sponsor“ which then means „we can't wait until it gets done“. When they hear you're already here, the thousand dolores for the paperwork doesn't mean a thing. I was getting responses form such already, even went for a talk.
You'd extract, more easily, a confession from someone that he is a homo or a pedophile, than he'll confess how big is his salary. I only know that this was less than promised, not to mention this fiasco in the end.
Also, in cases when someone suggests that the salary be not secret, it goes "are you normal, if so-and-so hears how much I pay you, I'd have to reduce yours". It never occurs as "I'll have to increase his too, then the others will rebel and then there's never an end". That's why they have so much throughput - even while the firm stood solidly, the turnover was about 56% annually, i.e. only 44% people were here a year ago. I have seen uncounted backs, of many I didn't even have the time to remember the names, and in the end, out of 21 of us, only one of the technical staff was here longer than I, plus 5-6 of the overhead staff (three bosses, secretary) and ah yes another programmer, but that one is a co-owner.
I: There was another foreigner there to the end, some dude from Australia, but he soon switched to some boss position and sorta led a project. In the week when it was finally launched live, he wore a tee-shirt "Deployment is futile". He was so right, he had no idea.
I paid off the car, last installment in a week or two, but it's a second hand Corolla and to knock on wood I have it good. The chinese guy who sold it agreed to lower the price from 4900 to 4400, and in the next year and a half it cost me 600 for new tires, starter and alternator. I figured out how they calculate the interest here, so I pushed payments at at least twice the offered speed, and saved 400$ on that.
Over time we found what's cheaper where, so we got rather ready for this period of thin cash. In the beginning the grocery cost us about 600 a month, this year it's below 300, now probably 200.
It still never happened that we didn't find a way to manage :).
In the morning I was sitting by the computer, probably surfing for a job, when Go called and told us to turn the TV on, an airplane has knocked itself into a skyscraper in New York. So we did, and actually saw the 2nd one. Then we heard about the DC stuff... and fucket, she was living just a few miles from there, closer to the beltway.
Our first sentiments were, given that we were on the receiving end of the F-117s only a couple of years ago, that "oh shit, these guys have finally seen how it looks to have their cities torn down, and now let's only hope they won't do something foolish".
Watched TV most of the day. The girls were at school. In the afternoon, I pulled the photos from the camera - mostly of the weekend in Alexandria, and the shots I took from the top of a Ferris wheel.
Later, I remembered that GWB immediately threw the blame at Iraq - how did he know that so fast? - and I have proof of that memory in an email I sent to Škrba later in the evening:
he: know what, I spent the whole afternoon by CNN and waited for Willie Nelson to appear with a transcrypt of "We love you, our homeland". Fucked mother, no dice.
I: someone was hitting Kabul this evening, and that with the cruise [missiles]. Of course, someone of the CNN vultures was there, and the most highlighted fact was that he's reporting via video telephone, which is the latest technology. Except he had no idea who was shooting.
I: I hear they are fearing that Dublyoo may commit some stupid act. It all seems to me that it is too late already - here they already giddy up to prepare the public opinion for punishment of misbehaving countries - supposedly they will slam Afghanistan again, Iraq, and maybe they'll slap Gadafi again so he doesn't feel leprous. Recession, fuck it, even their military industry is in decline.
he: They cry. Let them cry. And they should cry.
In a word: my duck hurts [i.e. my dick hurts, i.e. I don't give a damn].
I: Yesterday and today, by coincidence, I exchanged a heap of messages with pLazić. He says, "how do they call fifth avenue now?" "Soot row" [a famous book of Gypsy related poetry by Mika Antić].
I: Go again had to be there where it thunders - two and a half years ago she was in Novi Sad when it began, and now she's in Deesee, about 5km south of that "what is it, has five corners and four sides". Also, the airport is about two-three kilometers down the levee along Potomac from there, and although the planes generally fly from the other side, it's not unusual to fly by from this [one]. It could approach as much as it wanted. Actually an alarm was already given and they started evacuating the building, but they weren't fast enough.
he: I'm only sorry that I borrowed dollars, and not marks, and now the rate will be bad for the dollar.
I: That's how much the pleasure to watch TV without commercials all day costs me :). The only one who runs their own is the Disney channel. That should be exterminated.
And, finally, a message to someone on UT:
>It's absolutely impossible for me to imagine a fit punishment for the animals that perpetrated such a bizarre act. A part of me can't think of anything but absolutely flattening whatever country hosts these terrorists, but then death seems akin to mercy for them.
Sorry to interrupt, but what makes you better than them? I am ashamed that my nation has given birth to a bunch of communist generals and politicians who flattened just a few cities - and they should be punished, IMO. But, leaving out any sort of double standards, what's the difference between that, this today, and flattening a country? In the size of the club?
>I'm just grateful for being a night person (just like mom), who's unable to reach acceptable levels of consiousness before 10AM. Otherwise I would've been in the World Trade Center today at 9AM to pay a credit card bill.
I know the feeling. The only time I was grateful for my city being economically degraded was when I realized it meant there was nothing worth bombing in it.
So cool down and don't get into hating anyone. I know it's hard, and you're welcome to vent here. Still, the whole concept of 'rogue countries' is a very bad thing in general, equally bad as 'war for humanitarian goals'. Who will judge which nations are rogue? And I've already seen the idea being sold on TV here. Mass media are already preparing the nation for it. Remember this when you see your neighbor being brought home in a coffin.
It was a long day.
----
* he's sometimes writing in proper latin script, sometimes in haircut, i.e. without diacriticals, so each šđžčć is replaced with sdjzcc... equivalent of which, in english, is omitting each h when not after a vowel... that's about the amount of damage it does to understanding the text
** „to invent/produce mad earthworms“ is an old phrase, means anything between „tries outrageous things“, „plays with it insanely“, „fantasizes at large“.