On a brighter note (and explaining lack of entries for a couple days)... I bought the game "Morrowwind : Elder Scrolls 3" on Wednesday, and just completed a 48 hour gaming session. Very cool game... pick up a copy!

Had a conversation with the wife today. We are getting close to considering having our daughter Adriana put in private school. I had the pleasure of taking her to school (she is in Kindergarten) today, and met the teacher. Her teacher must be one of the most indifferent and unpersonable people I have ever met! When we registered her a couple months ago (after our move to the burbs), a sub was there, and our experience was good. Not so with the actual teacher, who came off as a smarmy, unhappy person, who does not like kids.

Given that her current school district (she is in Kindergarten) is a big, suburban, materialistic, indifferent, nasty mess, it seems imperative that we do something more positive for her. This experience for me... trying to get the most for my daughter in her education, makes the case for school vouchers better than the case against school vouchers. The case against vouchers (better covered in other places) seems very academic... keeping a "strong public school system", "seperation of church and state", and the like. The case for vouchers, giving education consumers a choice, letting the market work in education, giving schools the ability to root out unqualified, burnt out, or other people who do not belong near children, seems like it will produce a result that is substantially better than the current state of affairs.

More to come. I am going to re-read any material I can find against and for vouchers and come to a more educated conclusion. I am also going to get some perspective from immediate stakeholders regarding what life is really like in higher grades in my daughter's school district.

Signed my retention agreement today. 25% of base is still good :)

Boss is getting ready to leave Andersen. I have written my old sociology prof for his recommendations on what masters program I should persue in Economics. Refreshingly, we are getting much closer to decisions regarding where we will go after Andersen.

As I predicted to my boss, at his disbelief no more than 3 days ago, the retention bonuses that we were getting, are indeed, not based on a full year's salary, but on a 3 or 6 month retention period. HA! Knew It! Now he has to call each and everyone in the department that they are getting only 25% of what he said earlier. Lets watch the resignations fly!!!

... and that is if they ever get paid at all!

Google search of the day : +Andersen +"retention bonus" +bankruptcy

Working on my boss' "plan B" today. Fun stuff... imagine you have unlimited money, build the best credit, market, energy, and operational risk system that money can buy. Besides the irony of a soon to be ex-Andersen cube dweller building a world class energy risk management system... this is a fun project. I have the proposal up to about 3M in hardware and software, 1M in fees. Nothing but the best... SunFire servers, EMC storage lockers, data warehouse, TIBCO front end, etc. etc. This is actually fun.

Working from home is much more fun than working in the office. Slept in til 9 today, and I do not feel a bit of guilt!

My boss is now holding back (or taking his own sweet time) on references because he wants exclusive rights to hire me at wherever he ends up. Hilarious.

Read a good book last night on dealing with dependent bosses. The good side, you get paid well (e.g. they will do anything to make you happy or keep you from working for anyone else). The bad side, is that they are a constant pain-in-the-ass. I have a feeling that the only way out of this is retirement or career change (e.g. go back to Grad school). Since I am not yet independently wealthy, I will probably end up doing the career change at some near future point. Software development is a shitty business to be in. Perhaps I will do a later post explaining why... but I assure you... if your kids are majoring in CS, encourage them to change majors :)

This conference call is going really long. Microsoft is really a cheap company.

A comment page related to the Andrea Yates case... showing just how sick people can be. I hope my fate is never decided by a jury of these brain donators.

And on that note... fuck people who defend Marylyn Lemak, Andrea Yates, or other child killers out there. Just because you are depressed and want to commit a 25th trimester abortion does not make you worthy of sympathy. Yah.. I know... post partum depression blah, mentally ill blah blah blah. Eat it fuckcake. I overheard some people the other day talking about how much the husbands of these child killers were to blame, because they were not "emotionally supportive" (whatever the hell that means... could mean anyone short of being an avatar of Oprah). Fuck you. These guys have their kids killed, and you want to pin them with the blame (I even overheard someone say that it is too bad these husbands could not be prosecuted). Seeing this kind of thought manifest in otherwise normal human beings is making me go from apathetic about the abortion issue to being a full fledged pro-lifer. I once remember considering the argument that "abortion is a slippery slope to legal infanticide" to be silly. Now I am not so sure.

Thoughts on the train today...

Should not mothers who give they're kids up for adoption be liable for child support? It seems that a woman could make a good living being a baby factory. Just read the middle section of the ads in the paper (and American newspaper), and see the offers pouring in for babies (especially from yuppies who waited til their 40s to get married and decide to settle down). If I were a chick, I would most certainly never go hungry.

Good thing about working at Andersen right now... nothing much to do... lots of time to write blog entries :)

If anyone reads this, I will be suprised :)

Wow... this works... cool.

Mid-May, the offices are nearly empty here at 33W.

I am one of the survivors... at least of round one of layoffs.

April 8th was "Black Monday". That was when most of my team was let go. We were 24. We are now 9.

It is like the Titanic here... people trying to find one of several "life-rafts". Only in this case, the life rafts are clients who will hire you directly, a "Final Four" accounting firm (e.g. any major accounting firm who is not Andersen), or one of the other assorted firms buying pieces of Andersen, and hopefully, picking up your salary.

As one can see on Vault.com, the issue is now retention bonuses. Who gets em, and for how long.

We were promised them 2 weeks ago. The boss said that if we do not have finality around them by May 1, start considering other job offers. We do not have finality, it is May 14.

The boss continues to suggest that they are a done deal... and not to accept other job offers. Which sucks, 'cause I have one.

A good one. In this market (which for techies like myself, is in high order suck mode right now). Do you stay, and take the "retention bonus" you have not seen the details of yet, even though it is said to be very lucrative, or do you go. I trust my boss... but I do not trust Andersen. My boss trusts Andersen. Tis a quandry indeed.