Tag: jobs

Friday’s Theme Music – Tariffs & Travel

Ashland, Oregon — Friday, April 3, 20226.

33 F when I got up but sunshine was clearing the mountains and trees, lighting up cloudless blue sky. Today’s high will be 71.

With no news from home about Mom, I turned to the net for updates on the world. The US economy added 178k jobs in March. It surprised economists, and it surprised me. Economists warned that the war in Iran could cause problems, because it’s driving up costs throughout the supply chain.

Higher gas prices in the US will also mean less discretionary funding, which could be especially troubling as the US heads into May and the first of the big US travel holidays. Air travel could be harder as airlines such as United cut back flights to deal with increased fuel costs.

The economic is taking another hit from a sharp rise in fertilizer prices, affecting farmers which were already struggling with tariffs, broken trade agreements, and weather issues. Those challenges could result in lower yields and higher food prices at the store.

Not satisfied with high gas, diesel, and oil prices, Donald Trump declared tariffs on prescriptions drugs. Not immediately effective, they come with an opportunity for companies to agree to build facilities in the US to avoid the tariffs.

Today’s song comes from Papi and I stepping out onto the back patio. The gingerboy was already out there, grooming and sunning. His satisfied demeanor invited me to join him. I was still thinking about my dreams at that point. As I lifted my face up to the sun, the opening lyrics of “Kashmir” entered the morning mental music stream: “Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face.”

Here’s to you and a hope that peace and grace find and carries you, today and every day.

Cheers

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Twozdaz Theme Music

Howdy, sports fans. It’s Twozda, September 9, 2025. 62 degrees F holds forth in Ashlandia. Marbled clouds headline the moment. Never fear: it’s going to move to 69 degrees F by the day’s end, although we may need to navigate more thunder and rain while we get there. Feels like autumn has got its dandruff up and is out to end summer’s hold on Ashland.

Yesterday early afternoon found us with a huge downpour. People rushed into the coffee shop bursting with news about how intense, sudden, and cold the rain was. Brief was added to its description as the rain ceased after ten relentless minutes.

Then, 2:30 AM. A sound is covering the house. My sleepy mind thought it was a giant fan. Asking, what fan is that, I roamed through the house and realized, that giant fan sound was rain hissing down with Biblical efforts. I returned to bed and sleep only to awaken a while later to my wife in the kitchen getting water.

A sharp, high squeal noise had awakened me. I asked my wife if she’d heard it. “It’s raining,” she said.

I listened. “It stopped.”

“No, it’s still going.”

Papi and I went out back to prove the rain was stopped. It was. Cool breezes swept by with friendly helloes. Moonlight bright enough to walk on broke out. Rain clouds were splitting up and racing away in different directions, leaving a starry dark gray feast for my eyes. “This is nice,” I said. Papi didn’t disagree.

After I was back in bed, a sound like a brassy chord being strong on an electric guitar awakened me. “What the hell was that?” The Neurons asked the dark room. Nobody was giving any answers about noises.

Dad remains hospitalized. Not much can be done about a fractured pelvis. He’s due to be moved to a rehab center today. Andy is also being moved to a rehab center to help him recover from his hip fracture. Sis is mum about her medical procedure and its results.

Gritting my teeth and swallowing my GRRRRR, I peruse the news. Trump is suing the WSJ and anyone attached to the story about his ‘alleged’ birthday card/notes to Epstein. I’m sure Trump is betting that the story will be withdrawn and apologies issues. Meanwhile, he donated the Bible his mother presented to him in his boyhood to a Bible Museum. The net responded with laughter and mocking about the Bible. Most doubt that Trump opened his Bible, read it, and went to church, except for publicity when it suited his needs.

More attacks have been carried out in several wars. None of the war reporting arrives with a sense that the fighting is going to end soon. The major aggressors, Russia and Israel, are well past reasonable lines about their intentions. All can see that Russia will not stop until it has Ukraine. Israel won’t stop until Hamas are all dead. Neither nation displays concern or empathy for the innocents they’re killing.

Economic news will take over today’s media top spots. 911,000 fewer jobs were created between April 2024 and March 2025, BLS says. US job growth through March was significantly weaker than previously thought. Economists and analysts are telling us that it means the jobs markets was even worse than realized. A large downward revision was expected, with many citing sampling errors resulting from declining survey responses, weaker-than-inferred job creation at new firms, and adjustments related to asylum-seekers and other undocumented workers. The pandemic’s impact on the global labor market and residual adjustments were also blamed. Trump’s WH thinks that it proves Trump was right, the Biden economy was a disaster, and the BLS reporting is broken. That’s certainly puzzling, isn’t it: the Trump Regime is depending on a system they claim is broken to prove they’re right. Classic MAGAt non-thinking.

All this has culminated in The Neurons’ song choice for my morning mental music stream. It stormed in Ashland, with more storms coming. Trump is riding a storm of criticism about Jeffrey Epstein. We the People are riding through the storm of data about what’s going on with the economy. Hence, The Neurons summoned The Doors and “Riders on the Storm”.

Coffee has dropped in for an extended visit. May grace and peace visit and stay with us all for a while. Here we go again. Cheers

3

That’s Life

What jobs have I had?

I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.

No, wait, those are song lyrics.

I was in the military 20 years plus. Did a bunch of jobs in there, you know? My specialties were war planning, command and control, and disaster recovery operations. And I was a facilitator for team building projects. I was in tactical air forces, space command, military airlift, and special ops.

Before engaging in that occupation — the Air Force — I was a newspaper delivery boy, worked in a grocery store during Christmas, and dug ditches. While out of the military after finishing my first enlistment, I was owner/manager of a small cafe. Cook, cashier, did the books and payroll, cleaned and stocked, and supervised a small group of employees. Since retiring from the Air Force, I worked in marketing, was a database administrator, an analyst and service planner for a Fortune 500 corporation, ran tech support, customer support, and sales for a small software Internet security unit as part of a startup, was a product manager for coronary and peripheral angioplasty products, and a marketing manager for new medical products attempting to find a safer way to treat chronic total occlusions. Now I write fiction. I don’t tet paid for that, so it’s not technically a job.

Basically, I was a jack of several trades, doing what I could to be gainfully employed. All of it was interesting and boring, challenging and tedious, but it helped me see the world and learn.

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Twosda’s Wandering Thoughts

IBM made news with the announcement of a ‘historic’ investment in manufacturing in the US. It made headlines and has the Trump Regime pretty excited.

Less coverage was given to IBM’s plan to ramp up operations in India. Working with new operations in Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, Europe, and Australia was a large part of my work for several years while at IBM. This was part of their offshoring investments to reduce overhead and personnel costs.

In other IBM news, IBM announced the ‘layoffs’ of 9,000 US employees. Many are being replaced by AI. As noted by many experts, a return to manufacturing in the U.S. won’t automatically translate to better employment numbers.

And keep in mind: the same replacements by AI are being planned at Amazon, Dell, and other U.S. corporations.

The old joke used to be that companies often required employees to train their replacements before they were released. Now it looks like employees are building their replacements.

1

Two Dreams

My dreams of late have been numerous but mostly adventure stories which don’t seem to include me, with a few exceptions. Last night’s dreams were all about me. Two struck me as more interesting than the rest.

This one really intrigued me. A younger version of me was strolling through a hall. Passing brick walls, I could have been in a school, college, university, or museum. I was alone, though.

Mounted on the walls were hundreds of boxes. All were the same size, about eight by ten inches, two inches tall, with printing and a scene on the front. Wondering what they were, I slowed to examine them.

“Oh,” I said, speaking aloud as realizations came. “I see. Those are dreams I can chose. Very cool.”

Smiling, putting my hands in my pockets, I resumed strolling, looking at the boxes as I went by.

While the first dream featured only me, the second was busy with people. Most were strangers, even though several were purported to be co-workers.

Background: A former boss, Walter, was featured in the dream. I’d worked for him at my first startup after retiring. Walter was a nurse who’d become involved in starting medical device companies. He’d made a fortune with a device called the Rotablator last century. The startup where I worked for him in the 1990s was a medical device company manufacturing stents mounted on balloons for use in coronary angioplasty. We made our own balloons and stents and were searching for ways to used stents and/or balloons for treating some stenting side-effects with radiation. Fun time.

In last night’s dream, I again worked for Walter. He was trying to start another new business. The last one hadn’t worked. I went to him and asked, “Walter, what are we going to do?”

He replied, “Don’t worry, I have some things coming up.” (Typical Walter).

My desk was located outside, as was everyone else’s desk. We sat on black mental folding chairs. As I had no work, I just goofed around, playing little games.

Other people came to see me, along with a middle-aged woman with a sunny smile and a blonde beehive hair style. She told me she was either a regulator or inspector and was just coming to check on me to see if I was okay.

Walter then came around and told me to be on the watch for Jason. Jason was supposed to be arriving. I responding, “Who’s Jason? What’s he look like?”

“Jason is a friend,” Walter called back over a shoulder, going away again.

Looking for Jason, I went around the corner of a large cinder block and metal building. About a dozen people were there, milling about, busy with different activities and conversations. One came around the corner on the building’s other end.

Making my way to him, I introduced myself, and added, “You’re Jason, aren’t you?” As he replied yes, I finished, “Walter is waiting for you. Follow me.”

Dream end.

2

Sunday’s Theme Music

Mood: chill

Good morning, fellow travelers. It’s Sunday, October 8, 2023.

Indian summer continues in Ashlandia, where the people are mostly progressive, and concern about climate change continues to rise. Today’s weather looks just like yesterday’s with sunshine and blue sky continuing its autumn takeover. Temperatures range from 56 F in the morning to 87 F in the afternoon’s final hours. I am very happy about it and hope it doesn’t end soon.

A friend’s seventieth birthday was celebrated at her house yesterday. She has two sons. It was her sons and her son’s husband, along with her other son’s boyfriend, who planned and hosted the bash.

She’s a retired botanish. As such, the taught botany at California and Oregon colleges and universities. She also worked with the forest service extensively. Naturally, that life work and its locations were dominated the guest list. Many Phds attended. Professors, BLM and forest service people were plentiful. Botanists dominated.

Let me tell you, these botanist are engaging, charming people. They love to have a good life. So we all had a good time.

The party defined The Neurons’ music selection today. I have “Get A Haircut” by George Thorogood and the Destroyers circulating in the morning mental music stream. Released in 1992, the song tells the story of a long-haired fellow who keeps receiving the advice to cut his hair and find real employment working nine to five. Thorogood didn’t write the song; that was done by Bill Birch and David Avery. Thorogood heard it while in Australia and liked it because it pretty well defined exactly what he was hearing.

The Neurons began playing it because I asked many people last night about their jobs. I enjoy drawing people on these things. For example, one woman had retired after thirty years as a librarian, even though she’d been educated to be an urban planning. After receiving her degrees, she decided that she didn’t want to be involved with urban planning. But a job was needed to pay bills, so she applied for a job as a part-time librarian. Its order and structure appealed to her. This was back in the days when people, organizations, and businesses would call the library for help on research. She especially enjoyed that. That job is rarely needed these days because corporations bought or developed their own databases, and the Internet emerged. Just fascinating to hear her recount as the slow change in her job took place over the final twenty years.

Stay pos, be strong, and keep reaching for the stars. Here’s the music. Let me go find coffee. Cheers

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Bot-tender

I followed my robot vacuum around today. Using it for spot-cleaning, I’d move it, turn it on, and then stand over it like a football coach on OTAs. “Move left,” I’d tell it. “Get that fur. Come on, pick it up, pick it up. That’s it. Good job.”

Doing this presented me with a feeling that I was cleaning, but I also felt empowered. I controlled the bot.

Maybe, too, I was seeing the future. Robots and automation are taking over more jobs each day, with plans for greater shifts on the near-horizon. But bots and automation might require intervention and guidance, as my Roomba does. We may have a new job category opening, bot-tender.

It could be the hot new thing, but I don’t think it’ll pay much.

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