BigCat’s Blog of DOOM

http://www.themovieblog.com/2007/10/why-commercials-before-movies-is-worse-than-piracy
I agree with this editorial completely.

I hate pre-movie commercials with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns. No seriously, I hate them that much. You should hear the ear-full I give Lauren at every single movie we go to and show up for on time. It is gotten to the point that I show up a good 10 minutes late, and loiter in the lobby until I think they will be over.

Why hate something so innocuous you say?

Because it is anything but innocuous.

Let me paint some scenarios not covered by this guy in the article.

Rocky. He put ads on his warm-up robe so Pauly could make some money. This would never bother me if I were at the fictitious Rocky boxing match it would cost me zero since he would already be wearing a robe that would otherwise provide me with no information other than his name, and it is good to know that Rocky supports local businesses.

But, anything that I pay for, that costs me time or some other unannounced cost associated with this thing, really bothers me.

It is completely and totally 100% false advertising to say that a movie starts at 7:00, and then it actually starts at 7:20 (I’ve timed the commercials, lately they are averaging almost 20 minutes around Minneapolis), that is called lying.

If someone says “Easy setup” on an electronic device, but it takes 47 steps to put together and get running, that is false advertising…a.k.a. lying, and I would start a class action suit over that.

I propose, here and now, that you leave a comment if you would join me in said suit against every major movie franchise. We could begin to take back the precious commodity of our time from the over-bearing media companies that want us to jump through hoops by making commercials on DVD’s unskippable, and get the movie companies to either lower the cost of admission, or finally change the movie start times so that you would have to show up early to see the commercials and previews.

Hear my call, fellow movie watchers. Movie theaters are not houses where we should pay them to watch commercials that they get paid for without compensation. Let us band together and force them to return to honest showtime listings.

I think one of the more jarring things in life is to stumble upon something that you did not know that you did not know. Those things that you never even thought to consider that pop up and bite you in the ass.

I’ve had about 3 to 5 of those experiences in the last two weeks….all while in the midst of cutting multiple tens of thousand dollar purchase orders to our vendors. That is super scary for me.

Todays was so stupid it seemed almost ridiculous. I’ve literally been in the middle of a project where we were going to take a dual path in developing a product. This is on a tight deadline, so I’ve given a lot of vendors some really harsh delivery dates, and taking this dual path is stretching the budget to get two units (one from each path) delivered on time. Then today, I realize, like an idiot, I need two of whatever one we choose. And I pretty much need it within two weeks after the first one.

Wonderful. This is the last in a series of failures I’ve had in attempting to be the primary person driving all the technical details in this project with a rushed deadline that keeps creeping up so as to ship by the end of the year. Meanwhile I have to keep most of the normal projects going, so I get to be in tomorrow to clean up several ECOs that are just to make the regular day-to-day stuff work here.

I guess that old quote that I found in Walden by Thoreau (I hence learned that it is from Confucius) is right “To know that you know what you know, and to know that you do not know what you do not know, that is true knowledge.” And let me tell you, that not knowing the stuff you don’t know part is the little bug of fear that perpetually bites me in brain every time I make an engineering decision in a crunch. I think it is also the tingling feeling that I get sometimes when I’m not sure that I found all the info I need to make a decision despite having spent a long long time trying to gather all the information I need.

My hope is that with age hopefully the following increase knowledge, wisdom, and experience that the little tingly feeling and ass-whooping experiences will become less over time.

Anything on this page that is located in St. Paul is a job for where I work
http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?q=veeco&fn=&lid=&re=130&cy=us&brd=1&JSNONREG=1

Specifically, the design group / engineering group, that I work with is looking for:
Electrical Engineer: This is exactly the same thing I do, which is mostly controls work. I’ll probably be doing a lot of training for to help the person who is hired for this position at first.
Mechanical Design Engineer: These guys do a lot of design to make new ways of creating vacuum chambers and heaters. I don’t know a ton about what they do, but if this interests you, let me know and I can put you in touch with one of them.
Mechanical Designer / Drafter: This is mostly a drafter type of position, but typically there is a lot of interaction on the design side with our mechanical engineers. Our drafter / designer people are pretty savvy and don’t need a lot of supervision on some pretty complex projects. So, it isn’t just a paperwork, type of position.

There are also a bunch of other related jobs around Systems Engineers, which are a lot like project managers who do a lot of customer interaction post-sale, and then there are assembly / electronics technician positions available, which are pretty sweet if you are electronically or mechanically inclined. I work pretty often with the assembler guys, so if you are interested in those let me know.

If you want to apply, don’t submit your resume through monster. Go through me, and I will write a recommendation and hand it in in person, which is a big boost to your chances of getting an interview (referrals go a long way here).

I have to say, while it is exciting for the company to grow I’m just about ready to pitch a cot in my office cuz there is so much to do. So please, if your remotely interested in a new position, in a pretty fast moving technology company with decent benefits, let me know….I can use the help, and the sooner the better.