We're hiring a couple of engineers for my team at work.  (If you're interested, let me know.  I get $1500 if you're hired!)

One of the resumes that I looked over today had the following section (complete with lines in the table):

	Qualification awarded	Name of Institution	Location of Institution	Year completed
1	T.Y.BSc Comp Sc- 50.06%	Bhavans College, Andheri(w)	Mumbai, Maharastra	March, 2007
2	S.Y.BSc Comp Sc- 74.0%	Bhavans College, Andheri(w)	Mumbai, Maharastra	March, 2006
3	F.Y.BSc Comp Sc- 68.0%	Bhavans College, Andheri(w)	Mumbai, Maharastra	March, 2005
4	HSC - 70.4%	Shree Vaishnav Academy	Indore, M.P	March, 2004
5	SSC - 61.2%	New Look School	Indore, M.P	March, 2002

I don't know how to interpret all of this.  First of all, I'm assuming F.Y.BSc Comp Sc- means First Year Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.  S.Y. and T.Y. are second and third year respectively.  But then the percentages...  Isn't 50.06% failing?  Or do they use some other strange scale?  It looks like this is a C student (at best) that dropped out of college after his third year.

Under "Work Experience" he listed that he worked with SPJIMR as a TSE for 1 Year.  What the??  If I have to google it to know what it is (It's the SP Jain Institute of Management & Research in Mumbai, in case you were wondering) then he should probably spell it out.  It's probalby well-known in Mumbai, but I'm NOT in Mumbai.  And what is a TSE?  A Technical Student Employee?  A Technical Support Engineer?  A Toe Sanitation Engineer?

He lists what languages he speaks, but gives me no indication of the computer languages and technologies that he can use.

Strange, strange, strange.  No, we're not going to interview this person.

However, I actually liked this resume better than the six-page resume from someone with 20 years of experience.  Why exactly would this person be applying for a junior-level position?  Even if you have 20 years of experience, you don't have to write a small paragraph about each position in the last 20 years.

Seriously, people!

It's ok though...  We're just getting started I'm sure.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I'm grateful for inspired men that saw fit to declare that men ought to be free.  After enumerating a list of grievances, these men further declared:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States...

And after this declaration of independence, these men showed how important this independence would be to them:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

This, of course, led to war with England, a war that cost many lives and fortunes.  This war ended in narrow victory by the American colonists and led to the constitutional republic known as the United States of America.

This wasn't the first time that blood was shed in protection of rights on the American continent.  Nearly 1850 years earlier, Moroni, chief commander of the armies of the Nephites tore his coat and took a piece of it and wrote on it:

In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives and our children

He called this the "title of liberty" and he raised it on a pole and used it to rally his armies against those that were fighting against these ideals.

And he bowed himself to the earth, and he prayed mightily unto his God for the blessings of liberty to rest upon his brethren, so long as there should remain a band of Christians remain to possess the land.

I, too, pray that the blessings of liberty will continue to rest upon these United States of America.

My dad lost his job today.  They eliminated his position, giving him a severance package and a "thank you for your service" and goodbye.

He reached "retirement" age a couple of years ago.  He was planning on retiring in another couple of years in the future.  So at this point, he's decided that it's time to retire.  It's not how he wanted it to end--on someone else's terms, but sometimes, especially when working with technology companies, the unexpected happens.

There will still be work opportunities for my dad.  He may do contract training work.  He may teach a class or two a semester at a local college or university.  There will likely be other opportunities that will arise that he hasn't even though of yet.  But for all intents and purposes, my dad has officially retired.

My dad has been a great example to me of putting in an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.

I can remember going to visit him at the Lasa Data Center when I was very young.  There was a doorbell high up--too high for me to ring unless my mom lifted me up.  My brother and I argued about whose turn it was to push the button when we drove up in the blue rambler to pick him up from work.  When the door opened, I remember walking past large computers and punchcard readers and tape drives.  After a right turn, my dad's desk was in an office to the left.  He sometimes had treats in his desk drawer.  We would ask him for a "big pill," a large, pink, wintergreen-flavored candy.  That job ended when the data center was being moved to another city.  Not wanting to leave billings, Dad opted to take another job.

I'm sure I don't remember all of the jobs that my dad had through the years.  I do remember that he sold insurance for Prudential (Get a Piece of the Rock) and for Woodmen Accident and Life.  The building he worked in at Woodmen was down the road from the airport.  A couple of times, when I visited there, we saw deer just outside the windows, looking in at us.

He sold corrugated fiberboard (aka cardboard) boxes for the American Packaging and Container corporation for a few years.  For that, he drove all over the state of Montana in a company-leased Ford Escort.  We would drive that vehicle with all seven of us inside from Billings to Circleville, Utah.  It took 15 of 16 hours, and way before we arrived at Grandpa and Grandma's house, we were sick of being in that vehicle.  Yet my dad's hard work saved him a lease payment for a few years.

I was in High School when Dad was let go from that job.  Even when he wasn't working, he worked hard at finding his next job.  I don't recall how long he was out of work before he started working for the public library in Billings.  He brought them out of the card catalog days into the computer age.  He remained at the library until just a few years ago when he moved to Utah to work for SirsiDynix.  (They went by a couple of different names back then.)

He worked as a trainer for SirsiDynix until today.

In addition to the regular full-time jobs, Dad was always working in other ways as well.  He traded computer services to our dentist to pay for our dental work.  He tied flies to help pay for musical instruments.  He sold cleaning products and health products.  He taught remedial math classes at Eastern Montana College/MSU Billings.  He was always working to ensure that his family had a roof over their head and food on the table.  Sometimes, that was about all he could provide, despite his best efforts, but due to his hard work, we never went hungry.

I also want to mention that my mom worked very hard as well.  In order to be able to remain at home for her own growing family and to still bring in the money that we needed, she ran a daycare in our home.  I remember being quite young when she started.  She continued watching other peoples' children for many years, finally "retiring" when my parents moved to Utah.  Her efforts helped pay for many other necessities that five growing boys needed.  She also delivered newspapers for many years, rotating in and out of different routes with her sons.  It's her sacrifices that often made it possible to make ends meet during my dad's unemployment or when her sons were serving missions.

I'm grateful to my parents for their examples and for the things that they taught me.  I'm grateful that they taught me a good work ethic.  It's helped me in my career.

Happy Retirement, Mom & Dad!

ASTYM is so much fun.  I have bruises all up and down my right arm.  All I can say is that this had BETTER work!  Hopefully, these bruises will heal before I go in for another round on Thursday morning.

An interesting thing about ASTYM is that it evolved partly from the Samurai.  A slow Samurai might get hit with a club or a mace and would have deep bruising and possible tissue damage.  The samurai would scrape the damaged tissue with tools made of bone.

Another interesting thing...  When the therapist uses his tools correctly, it's supposed to have a piezoelectric effect that is supposed to further stimulate healing and blood flow.

I don't know how much I believe all of that.  But I DO know that it hurts, but that surgery would hurt more.

Or is it better called "Pain and Torture?"

Today's therapy session for my elbow was painful.  PAINFUL, I tell you!

ASTYM, the therapy that they're doing for my tennis elbow involves scraping the tissues under the surface of the skin with hard acrylic tools.  These must be modern derivatives of the instruments medieval torture.

I know that, in the end, it will be good for me, but for now...  OUCH!!

If you grew up in the 70's, you know what I'm talking about.  If you grew up in the 90's, you think I'm talking about a band that had to change their name because of a brouhaha over the name of a toy.

My friend, Duey Chambers had a Stretch Armstrong.  We would stretch him out and watch him return to his actual size over and over again.

Then came the day that we decided to see just how far he would stretch.  Duey took one arm and I took the other and we pulled in opposite directions.  I'm sure that there was something in the instructions prohibiting this for obvious reasons, but we weren't thinking about that.  We were finding out, for the sake of toy science, how far he would stretch.

The answer:  a long ways farther than we thought it would, though we don't have any actual measurements.

I remember that Duey was all the way against the staircase in his living room and Stretch was still stretching.  I had decided to walk around the sofa to give myself more room to pull.  Duey was digging in with his heels and I was very slowly inching backwards, tugging with all of my might when poor Stretch had taken all he could take.

His arm snapped off near where his super-stretched elbow used to be.  All of that potential energy in the stretched-out toy turned into kinetic energy, all of it directed at Duey.  He fell backwards, hitting his head against the wall below the staircase and a supersonic Stretch Armstrong smacked him in the eye.  He had a pretty good shiner.

Which goes to show you that if you give two boys enough unsupervised time with a toy, they'll find a way to destroy it.

However, for the sake of toy science, I'll add that Stretch Armstrong wasn't filled with any sort of goo or liquid.  The severed limb was quite solid--as solid as a stretchy Stretch Armstrong can be.  That bit of knowledge satisfied my other curiosity about Stretch Armstrong's anatomy.  I had always thought he had a super-stretchy skin and liquid innards.  I was wrong.

So what brings up this dissertation on Stretch Armstrong?

Tennis elbow.

I have lots of stretches that I do to make my elbow better.  Or, better put, I'm stretching to make my arm strong.

This really is turning into the year of the physician for me.

I went to see my orthopaedic surgeon this morning.  The tennis elbow that I developed during my racquetball trournament earlier this year is not going away.  I have been doing the stretches that my ortho suggested last time I had tennis elbow.  They help, but it's just not going away, so I decided it's time to get a little help.

He didn't get out his big needle and try a cortisone injection.  He said that they're finding out more and more that tennis elbow is usually more than inflammation of the tendons.  There are usually micro-tears in the tendons as well.  Cortisone will help with the inflammation, but not so much with the healing process of the tears.

He referred me to a physical therapist for ASTYM therapy.  They use hard acrylic tools to break up scar tissue and promote blood flow to the painful area.  I had ASTYM done on my ankle with very good results, so I'm hoping that this will take care of my tennis elbow.  The ortho recommended 2 treatments a week for up to 6 weeks.

If the ASTYM doesn't fix the problem, then it's likely that I'll need an expensive MRI and an even more expensive surgery.  Oy...

My health insurance plan pays for the first $2250 of medical expenses for the year.  I had a routine physical, for which they gave me a $100 bonus, so the first $2350 plus the cost of the physical exam will be covered.  I have about $850 of that left, and they still haven't billed me for the Lithotripsy yet.  Then next $2250 comes out of my pocket 100%.  After that, we go to a 90/10 coinsurance.

Normally, this plan is ideal for my family.  It costs less than the traditional insurance plans, and even if we have one major health expense (like a kidney stone, for example), we don't have to pay very much out of pocket.  This year, it's going to cost $2250 plus 10% of what's left over.  *ouch*

There IS a maximum out-of-pocket, so maybe I should get both knees replaced and have shoulder surgery, and see what else I can have done this year.  Might as well...  It only costs time, and pain, and therapy and more pain and...  Never mind.  All that pain scares the willies out of me.

When I was a cub scout, I remember going to Cub Day Camp.  The Day Camp near Billings had a BB-Gun range.  I came home frustrated and upset, because I couldn't hit anything.  I don't remember even having hit the target, let alone anything that would have scored well.

My dad worked with me and helped me realize that although I am right-handed and do everything with my right hand, I'm left eye dominant.  I was shooting right handed, but I should have been shooting left handed.

When the summer was over, I was given the opportunity to buy one of the BB guns from the day camp for something like $20, so I did.  I spent quite a bit of time in the back yard shooting into a little trap target that my dad made.  I started to get good at it, and I also realized that I liked to shoot.  My dad told me that if I worked at it, I'd be a sharpshooter someday.

My first week-long camp for Boy Scouts was called K-M (K bar M) scout ranch near Lewiston, Montana.  I was 12 years old (almost 13) and one of the activities available there was rifle shooting.  They taught us how to shoot in the prone position, laying on our stomachs.  I found out quickly that if I controlled my breathing and if I took my time (sometimes to the chagrin of others that were waiting their turn) I could shoot really well.

K-M had a "sharpshooter" competition.  They would take the best (highest scored) target of the week and they would be named the camp sharpshooter.  I tried my best to shoot as well as I could.  At the end of the week, at the campfire, I was the camp sharpshooter.  My dad's words had come true.  I was a sharpshooter.

Since then I have rarely had the opportunity to shoot.  I had shot a few times at different activities when the opportunity presented itself.

Last week at scout camp, I had more opportunities to shoot.  They had a very excellent rifle range and they let scoutmasters and leaders shoot.  After remembering to breathe and take my time, I started shooting REALLY well.

In addition to merit badges, the range also offered NRA light rifle qualifications.  I worked on those as much as I could during the week.  Later in the week, too many boys were shooting, trying to earn their merit badges, so I couldn't continue, but I ended up with my NRA Marksman 1st Class qualification.  If I would have been able to shoot two more times, I would have earned my Sharpshooter qualification.

One of the most fun moments of camp came on the last day during the camp-wide super activity.  In the shooting sports area, they had a water balloon shoot.  They wanted the scout and the leader that were the best shots to shoot.  One of my scouts had also earned his NRA Marksman 1st Class qualification.  We shot for our troop.

We decided to shoot separately instead of shooting together so we could spot for each other in case we missed.  The scout shot first.  We each had 3 rounds to shoot.  He shot 3 out of 3 water balloons, and it was SO much fun to see the huge grin on his face each time he exploded a balloon.  It was fun to hear the whole troop cheer each time he hit his target.  It was a great moment.  Incidentally, I also hit 3 out of 3 targets, so we ended up with a really good score.

I've been missing in action here for another week.  I was at Camp Tifie near Mount Pleasant, Utah this week with my scout troop.

It was a great week!  Camp Tifie is brand new.  It had only been open a week when we got there.  There are still a few kinks to work out, but overall, it was a great experience.

My troop of 14 boys earned 55 merit badges and a couple of boys even taught a merit badge class.  We were easily the best troop there, and that's a completely unbiased opinion.  No, REALLY.  We were chosen first for the "spirit stick," we had a troop yell at every flag ceremony, we earned the Baden Powell patrol award, we were chosen to present our skit at the closing campfire, and best of all, we earned the White Buffalo award, the highest award given at Camp Tifie.

My own son had a ton of fun too, including sleeping overnight in a shelter he built with two other scouts.  It was a requirement for the Wilderness Survival merit badge.  It was SO fun to see him learn and grow and have a ton of fun.

I'm exhausted though.  It will be nice to sleep in my own bed tonight.

That's good news.  I don't have an ugly surgery to schedule, worry about, and recover from.

I didn't find out from my Urologist.  My wife looked up the result for me.  I'm not too happy about that, so it's a good thing I'm changing doctors now.  My Urologist's office hasn't been too good with communicating with me.

I called a Nephrologist this morning and they'll call me back to schedule an appointment.