Profunksticated

What’s up? I’m about to go on something of a rant.

Is it too much to ask for a response to a phone call or e-mail, even within the subsequent seven days? I know you’re fighting fires like you’re in Santa Ana wind-whipped southern California, but damn, could a brother just get a quick phone call, or a “Hey, I got your e-mail, still working on it” ? It ain’t like I’m a bill collector or something like that. Sheesh!!

Why do I feel like most of what I do or say or write at work is second-guessed by either or both my supervisors? How did I end up as a glorified administrative assistant (not to disrespect AAs out there, but I’m not sure that a 50-year-old African-American male is well-suited for such work)? Hell, I’m the one that needs an assistant!

I’ve recently gotten in touch with the fact that I have serious passive aggressive issues. But then I read that is a great survival tactic for black men in corporate America.

As of this writing, I’m no closer to ending this Philly area-to-DMV commute, which is now an every week thing due to the FMLA leave. Tolls for one month alone are $80. I haven’t computed the cost of fuel. I’d probably gag.

I contemplated for a few seconds dropping out of the master’s program in which I’m currently enrolled and learning a trade such as carpentry, plumbing or electrical work. I read where preparing folk to work in corporate America is like being readying them for subjugation to a form of gentle fascism – an apt comparison – and that perhaps trades should be get a greater emphasis in the public schools.

Profunksticated interviewed with a couple of firms this week. The phone screen was with a water utility in southern New Jersey. The second, in-person meeting was at an environmental firm in northern NJ.

The environmental firm looks promising, thanks to an internal reference, a guy who I worked with when I was let go from the other environmental firm in 2007. The vice president I met with seemed like he was trying to sell me on the firm. Also, he mentioned that an offer could be coming this week.

The nice thing was that the VP didn’t ask my salary requirements. He said he’d come up with a number and we could go from there. There’s also the possibility I’d work in a company office much closer to my NJ home.

How refreshing that the VP is willing to provide a salary figure. I say that because every recruiter that’s called me about gigs in the DMV always ask me my current salary. They say that the first party to provide a number always at a disadvantage in negotiations. The question irritates me because I feel like my current salary isn’t relevant. I’ve made the mistake of giving my current salary, and based on that, the recruiter would say I shouldn’t get more than $10,000 more than what I’m making. I really want and need $20,000 more per year to make this now two-year-long, bi-regional commute and living arrangement worth the time and travel.

At that point, I’ve ended the discussion. I know I can provide a lot more value for a lot more. What should my current salary have to do with anything?

I’ve put the question to my HR buddy and he had this simple solution: Lie. Yup, he advised inflating my salary upward to get the bump I wanted. I’ve been a leery of that approach, wondering if a prospective employer can call my current employer for that information. He said they probably won’t. He also said, “They’re probably figuring you’re inflating your salary anyway.”

Would any of you out there lie about, er, spin, er, inflate your current salaries to get what you really want and deserve in the next gig?

Hello, you all. Sorry it’s been a few weeks. Some random thoughts from old Profunksticated, the Supergroovalistic One:

It takes suffering through a nasty upper respiratory infection to realize that a person should never, ever take for granted the ability to swallow food or liquids without intense throat pain.

The 2008 and 2009 Philadelphia Phillies are the best baseball teams this historically hapless franchise has ever fielded.

This commute between the DMV and the Philly-South Jersey may be coming to an end as I seek employment in New Jersey. It cannot come too soon. Just one recent morning, I found myself stuck in traffic along southbound Interstate 95 for an hour north of Baltimore due to a multi-vehicle accident that involved an auto transporter. And to top things off, the computer that controls the traffic signals in Montgomery County, Maryland crashed. Someone’s gonna have to re-write that code or consult a library.

I do like having these long weekends under FMLA. I don’t like not getting paid for when I’m not at work. Why does life have to have tradeoffs? I want it all.

I finished a master’s course called Software Frameworks, all about reusing code in web-based applications. It kicked my azz. A major problem was the software packages we were required to download and work with were flawed. After getting a string of “A’s,” I escaped this Dante’s Inferno of a course with a “C.”

I voted for a third-party candidate in the New Jersey election for governor. I was proud of myself for helping this guy get 5% of the vote. President Obama notwithstanding, I’m about sick and tired watching the donkeys and the elephants practice their shenanigans. The electorate needs to get bolder and support more of these folks, who aren’t backed by big money and who aren’t bought (at least not yet).

Thank God for my son’s Playstation 3. He told me it plays Blu-Ray discs. Until then, I was contemplating getting a Blu-Ray player to go along with the newly-bought 42-inch LCD high-definition television. I love watching that thing.

Profunksticated is taking time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act to care for the Spouse, whose MS is starting to kick up to a new level. She had a flareup a couple of weeks ago that landed her in the ER, where she spent 10 hours. The steriod infusion she was given has been of limited effectiveness. Her neurologist is putting her on interferon, the same drug she had when she was first diagnosed in 2003.

She having a little more trouble walking and she complains of stiffness. The fatigue is still there.

I will be spending Mondays and Tuesdays in NJ and the rest of the week in the DMV. Of the days I’m home, Monday will be he FMLA day and Tuesday I will work remotely.

God is still good.

Wassup? I’m back, for now.

Am I crazy, or did Profunksticated really get more than 10,000 hits while he was away?

Profunksticated (the blog) earned a whopping 45 cents via Google Adsense, but that was back in April.

I’m still commuting between the DMV and the Philly-South NJ. It’s getting old.

I’ve learned in my first year on the job I need to improve my attention to detail, a recurring theme throughout my one-year performance review.

I’ve fallen off the wagon and gained 10 pounds in the last month or so. I’ve got to hit the workout room once again and lay off the Dairy Queen blizzards with Oreo cookies and Heath Bar chunks.

I’m three courses into my master’s program in information systems management. That class in object-oriented programming (Java) kicked my azz. I had to get help from a Java developer in my company. I got an “A.”

In July, my brother married the chick-on-the-side co-worker with whom he had a son. You may recall the kid was born less than three months before his wife died, which was 18 months ago. The new wife had moved into his house a couple months befor they got married, much to my nephews’ chagrin. This week, my older nephew moved out following a huge blowup between he and his father. Guess where he’s laying his head? That’s right, our house. There are more extremely gory details, but I’m only hearing one side of the story, which is my nephew’s.

My sister and my dad attended the wedding. Sis found it hard to watch; Dad was sort of neutral. My mother didn’t show; she conveniently was out of town. The new wife’s family was overjoyed, acting as if there was nothing wrong with the adulterous relationship she was part of. I guess the bottom line is that I cannot control what two adults do, but when it impacts the kids, then I have to be concerned.

Profunksticated had to come out of hiatus for a minute to comment on the loss of Michael Jackson.

I can’t believe I’m feeling a certain kind of way. I feel like I lost a second cousin who was my age. When I first heard the Jackson 5, I honestly believed whoever singing lead was a girl. I found out otherwise, of course. Girls in my fifth grade class would play those large-spindle-hole 45 rpm J5 records such as I Want You Back on those snowy days we could not go out for recess.

I liked the Jacksons when I was 10, 11 and 12, but as I entered my teen years, they became just another group playing in the soundtrack of my life. That’s not to say I didn’t like them. But their still-bubblegum style was competing for my musical attention with funkier groups such as the Ohio Players, Kool and the Gang, Earth Wind and Fire, War, and of course, Parliament-Funkadelic. Matter of fact, the first album I ever bought was a Motown label, but not the Jackson 5 . It was Stevie Wonder Presents Syreeta. I loved the cut I Want to Be By Your Side.

By about 1975, I figured the Jacksons were done as I hadn’t heard much from them.

But then in early 1977, my senior year in high school, I was laying half-asleep on the couch in the living room with WDAS-FM playing on the stereo when I heard this real smooth cut with a group singing the lyrics “Let me show you the way to go.” I was shocked when I found out those singers were the Jacksons, minus Jermaine, on a new record label. Wow, they’ve come back and strong, I thought.

Then Michael went off on his own and blew up like a hydrogen bomb. You all know the rest of Michael’s story, so I won’t rehash it here.

My 21-year-old daughter shares a birthday with Michael Jackson, which is August 29. My wife went into labor on August 28, 1987. Had it not been for the fact that our baby was too big for my wife to push out — the doc tried everything to bring our baby into the world, including forceps and a Dirt Devil (just kidding) — my wife would not have undergone the Caesarean section that resulted in the birth of our first child, weighing in at nine pounds, seven ounces, at 32 minutes past midnight Mountain Time on the 29th.

Had our daughter been born before midnight, on Aug. 28, she would have shared a birthday with one Richard Sanders. Who is Richard Sanders, you ask? He’s the actor who portrayed the nerdy, bumbling newsman Les Nessman on the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati.

Nothing against Mr. Sanders, but I think my daughter got the better end of the deal, being able to brag that she shares a birthdate with the late King of Pop.

RIP, Michael Jackson. And may God comfort the Jackson family in their time of loss.

Pro did not have a great week on the blog posting front. I made a crude comment regarding the First Lady on another site, calling myself being funny. But I got slammed big time. And then I was reminded that I made an inappropriate comment toward a female blogger on a social networking site a few days earlier.

I apologized to the site owner twice. The first was filled with justifications, an email borne of muddled thinking. The second, which I should have written first, was a straight-up mea culpa I wrote the following day that I insisted be published by the site owner under my blog name.

A day later I called the female blogger in question and apologized to her and she accepted, thank God. It pains me to realize, however, that I may have killed what was a budding friendship between myself, and this lady and her husband, who have in the past invited me into their home. I’m pretty sure now they will keep me at arm’s length. Can’t say I blame them; I’d probably do the same.

Suffice to say there are certain things you shouldn’t post anywhere, much less on a site read by strong women. If you want to know details, we’ll have to discuss it privately, although I’d just as soon put the whole embarrassing episode behind me.

On a related note, I’ve found myself making snarky comments on course material during discussions in my online class. I’m sure my instructor appreciates it. (Sure, right.) And I was called out on said networking site for denigrating a whole group of media as “idiots” for mispronouncing the surname of the President’s Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. Again, I felt compelled to apologize.

All this had me considering abandoning blogging and otherwise playing online altogether, but instead, I’ve concluded this is a good time to put Profunksticated on hiatus for a few months until I get my head back together.

I believe the stress of working away from home, attempting to find another gig, trying to stay a step ahead of the spinning blades of the wheat thresher that is foreclosure, doing this master’s program and dealing with what I believe are some serious issues in my marriage is starting to catch up with me. And, oh, not to mention dealing with the mess (he doesn’t believe it’s a mess, obviously) my younger male sibling has created between he and his older sons.

You may think this sounds like excuse-making, but it’s the truth. I’ve got work to do on myself in terms of doing more prayer and more earnestly working the 12 steps of the recovery program. That leaves little time for blogging.

In the meantime, browse the archives. I’ll check in from time to time to see if a comment’s been left.

I’ll be back in a few months, I’m not sure exactly when. In the meantime, thanks for reading, take care and may God bless you all.

Again, sorry for the lag between posts. Work and grad school have taken up a lot of old Pro’s time. But now I’m at home in the Philly-South of NJ being Dad to my youngest one while The Spouse is traveling in, get this — Argentina and Uruguay in South America for 10 days. It’s a trip she’s taking with a group from the college at which she teaches as an adjunct professor. She’s using it as some sort of educational experience in conjunction with her doctoral program.

I’m going back to work next week, then I’ll take the following week off as my first week of company-forced unpaid leave. (I would have used this week as unpaid leave, but we cannot take such leave during a week in which there’s a paid holiday, in this case, Memorial Day.)

Other stuff:

My bro is getting married to his youngest son’s mom. I haven’t posted about bro lately, but you might remember that he’d had a longstanding relationship with this woman while his late wife was ill. His wife died in March 2008 and the kid was born three months earlier. I’m pretty sure his two older sons are gonna be less than happy. While on the phone with him, he passed it to her, when she asked me how she felt about having her as an SIL. I was taken aback, but blurted out “Fine!” OK, I was lying. But I’m hoping to have a convo with the both of them.

I’m stepping up my search for another gig. My salary at the current job simply isn’t justifying the costs of me maintaining a house in NJ and renting a room in northern VA. And speaking of gigs, I’m using my unpaid leave week to take the Foreign Service Officer’s Test for the U.S. Department of State. The test center is in Philly. (Seems the available seats for this upcoming test period filled up quick in the DMV area.) Look, I’m almost 50 and haven’t been outside of the United States, save Tijuana, Mexico and Nassau, Bahamas. I don’t think San Juan, PR, counts since it is technically is part of the U.S. And the nice thing about foreign service officer gigs is that you can be hired up to your 60th birthday. I can’t wait to show ‘em my passport as ID when I report to the test center.

I’ve gotten into juicing. I bought a $60 Hamilton Beach juicer from Wal Mart (OK, so shoot me!!) a few weeks back and have discovered how great carrot juice tastes. And just yesterday, I made a slamming carrot cake out of the carrot pulp! My thing now is to juice oranges, apples and grapefruit and then blend the juice with a banana and frozen strawberries. It makes a great breakfast smoothie and helps with the weight control.

And speaking of weight, I’m still holding at in the mid-220s range while doing mostly walking in the mornings. I’d like in the short term to drop below 220.

That’s all for now. Peace.

Just wanted to let ya’ll know that the recount in the Spouse’s bid for school board in our NJ town was held this morning and it confirmed that she lost by seven votes. She’s still glad she did it and hope it inspires folk to take a closer look at the school district that once employed her.

All I can say is that I hope this project raises her profile enough to where her husband will one day no longer have to work.

Hello, all,

With Mother’s Day approaching, I thought I’d share with you this poem by a friend of mine from my recovery fellowship. Give her some support though the site. Thanks.