I mentioned earlier that I have 2 music degrees, neither of which I use. I didn't care about that for a couple of years but now I'm kind of getting a hankering to play again. The Messiah was fun to do and reminded me what it was like to play great music. Last year I played with the Denton municipal band for a few rehearsals & a concert. The band really wasn't that good and I wasn't playing(practicing) between rehearsals and I didn't sound very good. What I would like to do is play in one of the community orchestra around here. The horn player who sat next to me during Messiah said that she and her husband played for the Flower Mound symphony. For some reason, that sounded really good. There are two obstacles: 1. I am still rather out of shape. and 2. My blasted work schedule. The 3rd or 4th week in Feb I(and the rest of the shift) go back to the Thur-Fri-Sat & every other Wednesday 7am-7pm. #1 could be largely cured by a month of steady playing. #2 seems to be just the way it is. At any rate, the work schedule is really handicapping me getting back into performing.

Incidentaly, my work benefits are changing for the New Year. There were/are $10 copay for drs visits & inpatient hospital visits and $100 copay for er visits. 100% of everything after that was covered. On the 1st my insurance will be $250 deductible(or $500 per family) and 80%-20%(meaning that I will be responsible for 20% of all medical expenses after the deductible is met. So the philosophy that needs to be employed here is 'don't get sick.' And if you do get sick you had better not need to be admitted to the hospital. Here is the way that the company explained it to us in an email:

'Each year, we carefully analyze our benefit plan design and cost to balance our ability to hire and retain top quality associates with our ability to competitively price our services. This balance is critical to Perot Systems’ continued success—as an employer and service provider. Based on this evaluation, you will see changes in the structure of the 2006 health benefits plan design. Our competitive research revealed that the market trend is moving away from plans utilizing co-pays, and replacing them with deductible and co-insurance plans. Our revised plans will reflect alignment with this market trend by providing a choice of plans with varying levels of deductibles and co-insurance.'

I shall do you a favor and translate this:

'We looked around and saw that other companies were getting away with phasing out copays so it looked like a great time for us to do it as well. After all, it saves you, uh...I mean us, a LOT of money.'

One of the few good things about working here was the great benefits. Not anymore.


On the sunny side of life the, BYU men's basketball team is 7-3 after clobbering Eastern Washington at home 97-66. I'm not reading too much into the good start by BYU as most of their wins haven't come against good competition. We'll all know more after the game against Air Force next Thursday. BYU plays Tulsa(4-6) at home on Friday but they don't look too strong as of yet.

I got bored the other day and started up looking up old roommates on the web and found this. We were roommates for 2 years in a basement that an older couple was renting out to us and 3 other intrepid souls. I'm glad that things worked out the way that he wanted them to. He looks very intellectual in that picture, huh?

We performed Handel's Messiah at the Stake Center Sunday night. It went pretty well from what I could hear and from what I've been told. A friend did tell me that the choir was miked wayyyy too much. Said that it was hard to hear the orchestra, if you can believe that. My wife said that she had a hard time hearing me and she only sat 7 rows back or so(and I play the trombone). It sounded pretty good at the dress rehearsal. The only thing that I can think of is that someone thought that the extra bodies in the audience would deaden the sound somewhat so they jacked up the sound a couple of notches. I wish that I could give a better first hand account but I was playing in the thing and not in the audience.

Still several audience members said that they enjoyed the performance very much. Also, it was great to play again. It felt good and it wasn't as hard as I thought to get back into decent(not necessarily 100%) playing shape again. The horn sitting next to me and her husband both perform with the Flower Mound Symphony Orchestra and it sounded like they have a blast doing it. I sure wish that I had the time to do something like that but my job schedule(nights) kills that idea right away. No fun at all.

Some background on my earlier post:

I graduated from BYU in 1995 in music education. That may sound ok to most but the problem was that student teaching pretty much convinced me that high school students are manipulative bastards and killed whatever desire I had to teach. I felt that I leaned more towards performance(trombone).

So I went to graduate school at the University of North Texas. It started out poorly and never got better. My auditions didn't go so well right off and I didn't get placed in the ensemble that I would have liked. Things got better in those regards but I never got into the ensemble that I want. In retrospect, it looked to me like you made a good impression right off or you were screwed. Its a HUGE college of music(biggest in the country last I checked) and once you were pigeonholed, that was it. I take responsibility for some poor decisions that I made while there at school but there was definitely that aspect. My (trombone)teacher & I got along pretty well for the most part and I actually worked for him for a while doing music copying work(I learned Finale while I was at BYU. That really helped me with cash to get through school. He was great in those regards. We had a bit of a falling out towards the end of my time there due to some deception on his part. I graduated with a MM in 1998. But just barely. I was sick of playing the trombone by that time and I was just tired of the whole thing. Surely some of you can relate to that.

Anyhow I decided I wanted to take a break from music and do music copying and some web page construction. Neither of those worked out very well; the copying was inconsistant and I wasn't all that good at the web page thing.

I was basically unemployed for about a year.

Then I met someone who was in my stake(a group of LDS congregations is organized into a stake) that worked for Perot Systems. He was really sold on the company and I was enthusiastic about getting into a technology based corporation. If you think of what the economy was like in 1999 then you might understand. Anywho, I talked myself into a job via a recriuter and they agreed to place me in the mainframe tape library, night shift. At the time all one needed to do , seemingly, was get a foot in the door and work hard and opportunities would present themselves.I did just that and got moved from tape ops to the command center after 7 months. I was moved to various platforms(Data General, Mainframe Operations) before I was moved to my current position: mainframe cycle management. Everything was going well & I seemed to be moving along and then two things happened. The stock market crash in October of 2000 & Ross Perot stopped actively managing the company. Ross Jr was in charge and I don't think that he was much interested in it. Anyhow, the end result was very low annual raises(usually 2% across the board) and limited upward mobility. Everything just froze.

About a year ago I got some hope of moving into the project management field within the company. It was a hot occupation(and probably still is) and the company offered internal classes. Then I went to see him on the morning of January 4, 2005 to ask if I could work on some on some of what whatever projects might be going on to get some experience. He seemed to think that that was a good idea and said he was glad that I told him that I was interested in that field. He would be glad to help. So I left that meeting hopeful, happy, & upbeat. I went back to my regular job and waited. And waited. After several weeks I emailed him a couple of time following up on this and got no response. Then I asked my shift manager(the guy on the same shift as me who also reported to the 'boss' in question. He said that he hadn't heard anything. After a couple more weeks I emailed my boss asking if I could apply for begginer type PM/Coordinator type positions within the company. No response.I asked my shift manager to follow up with him. The message that the boss gave him was 'He can apply but tell him if he does then he's going to be out of a job.' Great. I went to HR to make sure that my job was safe and then I sat down with my shift manager and my boss. Basically nothing got changed except that he said that I could apply for jobs without getting canned in the process. Gee, thanks. Problem is, I have no experience. Hmmmm....seems like we talked about that earlier. I should add that he hasn't let anyone in my shift take another job in the company for at least three years.

So I sit here having worked nights for 6 years, in a job that is killing off my brain cells, with no possibility for advancement, sitting next to a guy for 12 hours at a time who is both immature and has no repect for me(but that's another topic), and I commute 40 minutes a day(each way) to do it all.


But I have 2 music degrees.