Tony And Debbie’s Florida Vacation – Part Six

Posted on August 23, 2011 by tony

Part 6 of our holiday in Florida sees me injured while Ice Skating, doing a Belly Flop on the ice, and then continuing with a stormy week in Hollywood. If you haven’t read the previous articles in this series, you might enjoy starting at the beginning HERE.

A Belly Flop On The Ice

On Tuesday of the second week I took the girls to Pines Ice Arena in Pembroke Pines, since they enjoy learning to skate, and hadn’t been there since I last took them 18 months ago.

We had a good time, until my eldest challenged me to a race, and seconds later I was headed flat on the ice in what can only be described as a belly flop! Being in my 50’s and overweight, putting my arms out did little to soften my fall, and as a result 2 weeks later I am still very sore with bruised ribs and pulled stomach muscles.

It’s hard to sleep at night because I can only lie on my side, and so I get woken up by a sore/numb shoulder and arm, which causes me to struggle to sit up, twist around and lie on the other side. I still cannot pie on my front or back even after 2 weeks, it’s that painful.

I guess next time I take them skating I will have learned my lesson, and therefore absolutely no racing. If they are skating better on their own too by then, I might just let them do more while I sit and watch.

Dragonflies

We took the next few days quietly, since I was hurting, and the girls spent lots of time in the pool while I tried to walk around in it, but found lifting my arms up too painful to allow me to swim unfortunately.

It stormed a lot the next couple of days as well, and before the rain on several days the sky was filled with thousands of dragonflies. It was quite amazing to watch, and if you click on the picture here and look at the sky, those are not specks of dirt that you can see, it’s dragonflies.

Fortunately they rarely came close to us, and we aren’t scared of them either, but if you were then it might not be too pleasant. I did manage to capture one that was perched on a wall, which I posted to Fine Art America. I wonder if I will get any sales?

Thunder And The Smurfs

One day we took the girls to one of our favourite places to eat, Sweet Tomatoes, and then since it was set to rain again, to see the Smurfs movie.

We opted to not see the 3D version, since neither of them really enjoy that, but managed to get good seats at the back of the theatre and settled down to watch the film.

About halfway through we could hear what sounded like thunder, and although I thought at first it was sound coming through from one of the other 17 theatres in the location, we soon found out that it wasn’t, as we began to hear the rain pounding on the roof.

Then, as so often happens in Florida, the power went out, and we all sat in virtual darkness for about 20 minutes until they could get everything back to normal. During this time we were making noises, sound effects, singing the Smurf song, and others in the audience were repeating it, so it was quite funny really, and the time passed quickly.

I wouldn’t say the movie was great, but it wasn’t awful either, kind of cute really.

The Last Night And A Full Moon

It’s funny isn’t it how the first part of a holiday goes slowly, and then as time goes on the days just whiz past. So before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye to the girls and to fly home to the UK.

My youngest decided to go home to her Mom on Friday night, as she was feeling homesick, but my eldest stayed with us and helped us to pack on the Saturday morning.

Friday night there was a full moon, and we went for a walk along the broadwalk at Hollywood Beach as the sun was setting to catch a glimpse, but there were thick clouds along the horizon and it was clear that the moon would have to rise quite a lot before anyone could see it.

However, about an hour later I was able to catch some good pictures of the full moon as it rose through the palm trees.

Goodbye Hollywood Beach

All too soon it came time for my ex to pick up my eldest, and for us to give the girls hugs and kisses and say goodbye.

Then time to complete the packing, loading of the car, and to leisurely drive to the airport in Miami, return the car, and wait for the flight home.

With my ribs being sore, having to try and lift the bags in and out of the condo, the car, and a shuttle bus, then into the overhead bins on the plane, I was really hurting.

It was actually for once not so bad trying to spend the night sitting half upright instead of trying to lie down, but after landing at Heathrow airport, and lugging the bags on and off another shuttle and into the car, I was about all in.

I had to grip the steering wheel all the way home to try and take some pressure off my ribs, but fortunately with it being Sunday morning the traffic was light, and the journey took just over an hour.

Once home, a quick check to make sure everything was ok, then off to bed for a couple of hours, to try and catch up on a bit of sleep, and to prepare for the reality of going back to work the following morning.

Well that is the story of our trip to Florida. I hope you enjoyed it, and if so any Shares/Tweets or a Google|+1 would be much appreciated.

Our Christmas Trip Is Finally Coming Together

Posted on November 19, 2009 by tony

If you are a subscriber to our blog or a regular reader, you will know that whan I moved back to the UK from Florida at the end of July, I had to leave my two daughters behind (with their Mom), and since I am missing them terribly, like all Dads do, we decided to try and spend Christmas in Florida to I can at least see them for a week.

The problem with going to Florida over Christmas though is that this is high season, the time when flights and accommodation are at their highest prices, and also at their scarcest.

In the wintertime, South Florida is full of people from the East Coast of the USA and Canada, the “snowbirds” as they are known. Some snowbirds spend a good three months in Florida to escape the bitterly cold winters up north, while others just visit for one or two weeks. If you go to the beaches in South Florida over the Christmas period and look at the licence plates of the cars, at least 2/3rds of them if not more are from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and in the Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale area too from Quebec and Toronto. Just listen to the conversations on the people on the beach too, and the all too familiar Hispanic voices are replaced by New York twangs and even more so by Canadian French.

Last week after much searching for a decent route at a decent price, we bit the bullet and purchased our flights. The price was high, but not as much as we could have ended up paying. It was actually cheaper than it cost to get Debbie over to Florida for Christmas two years ago, but we also don’t have direct flights, which I hope is not going to be a problem. When taking a multi-leg flight, you need to allow for delays in schedule, and inbound to the USA as well for delays in immigration, where Debbie has already had issues, her last trip to Miami resulting in her being stuck in immigration for 15 hours! But hopefully we will be ok this time, since we have a 3 hour layover in Raleigh/Durham before catching our flight down to Miami, and I also now have my USA Passport, which ought to help.

Last night we also bit the bullet and booked a place to stay. It’s not a luxurious hotel or resort, it’s a typical family owned motel on Hollywood Beach, and although it cost a lot it will hopefully work out best for us. The few reviews that we managed to find for the motel sounded more good than bad. There is no pool or hot tub, it’s above several restaurants so it could be noisy at night, but it is right on the boardwalk and we will be able to eat and walk along the beach at night, instead of being stuck in a hotel away from the beach in the evenings.

There really were not many choices for hotels unfortunately, since prices are sky high, and most places are already fully booked. Left are the hotels close to the airport in Fort Lauderdale, those on the interstate, and some high and low end places that are either too expensive or in a bad neighborhood. Of the three places on the beach, one was $250 a night, way out of our price range, a second was $100 a night but in the middle of being renovated and with some horrible reviews. The place we picked was about the only choice.

My biggest fear is that because we don’t land in Miami until 9:30pm on Christmas Eve, is that everything will be closed, and it will be 11pm at the earliest before we get to where we are staying. Since few places open in Florida on Christmas Day, we could end up without any essentials like bread, milk, juice etc for a day. However staying right on the beach, there ought to be some shops and restaurants open at least. It’s going to be a different Christmas with no turkey and trimmings I am sure, but hopefully a good one. Getting up on Christmas Day is going to be tough, since by the time we get to bed it will already be 5am UK time or later! Probably a good day to just spend relaxing on the beach or the terrace.

Now we need to find a good deal on a rental car, which I hope is easier to sort out. There appear to be plenty of choices at least from all the car rental companies, but even that is expensive. I must remember to use my AAA (equivalent of AA/RAC in the UK) discount to save some money, but since we will be taking the girls out we need to have transport.

I doubt that we will be spending many days on the beach, but at least we will be right there in the evenings, plenty of opportunities for walking, either on the boardwalk (promenade) or along the waters edge.

So wish us luck! Hopefully the flights, immigration process, accommodation and weather all work in our favour. Will post updates and photos later, also a video or two maybe…

The Lost Posts

Posted on July 22, 2009 by tony

lost posts No I haven’t physically lost anything, but this is about all the posts that I have wanted to write this month, but just haven’t had the time or energy to get around to.

I am frustrated that my last post was about taking my girls to the park on the 3rd July, which is now almost 3 weeks ago, and so much has happened in my life since then!

I really did want to write about my first 4th July as an American Citizen, which involved taking the girls to the water park, and other than that pretty much spending the rest of the day on my own, but sometimes a break is a good thing.

Driving into work I wanted to write about the different country songs that I was listening to (the other morning shows here in South Florida suck) and my feelings about them and what has been discussed on the radio. Tuesday morning the odometer on my car clocked past the 145,000 mile mark, and thankfully it’s still running. I had feared that either the tires or the suspension or something else unexpected was going to happen before I leave for England next week.

I wanted to write about Debbie becoming a Grandma, which happened on Monday. Her daughter and husband have been trying for so long to have a baby, and now finally their dream has come true.

I wanted to write about my struggles to pack my personal effects up ready to head back to the UK, my battle against my habit of procrastinating, causing me to have to be up packing until after midnight for so many nights. My trying to organize my personal effects in a storage unit when it’s 90+ degrees and incredibly humid, my fears that I would run out of time to have everything ready to ship.

There are so many things I would have loved to blog about in detail, but the exhaustion and number of things I had to take care of just left me brain dead day after day, week after week, but ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Today I felt that I had to post, even if it’s just about the LOST POSTS…

Phew It’s A Heatwave

Posted on June 23, 2009 by tony

heatwave in south florida with record temperatures in fort lauderdale Things almost went into a meltdown yesterday in South Florida where temperatures hit an all time high in Fort Lauderdale (see report from the Sun-Sentinel) where it reached 100 degrees at the airport, with a heat index of 111.

There wasn’t much breeze all day, it was really hot, sticky and uncomfortable. When I left work and got into the car, the temperature showed 108! Driving for a few miles it dropped to 98, but then as I headed south down I95 towards Fort Lauderdale it rose again to 100. Since the air conditioning isn’t working in the car the fan was just blowing hot air and almost sand-blasting my face.

I got home and Tim, my landlord had left the sauna on, so being hot and sticky I headed down to the pool, had a good sauna, and did 30 lengths in the pool. I felt much better after that, especially since some clouds came over and a light breeze got up, making it feel a lot more comfortable. It really did feel good cooling off in the pool after an hour long drive home from work.

Later in the evening, Tim and I decided to take our evening walk around the golf course, as we do most evenings, and as soon as you opened the door to the condo the heat hit you, phew! It seemed like the temperatures just weren’t going to drop, but fortunately as we headed out onto the fairways and away from the houses and trees, a nice breeze got up from the west, a sign of weather changes, and it did cool us down somewhat. There was also some nice heat lightning out west, no clouds or rain, just bright flashes in the sky.

I woke up this morning and wondered why it was still dark. One thing you learn about the tropics, is that when you get a spell of extremely hot weather, it usually causes the gods to get angry, and this morning they definitely got out of bed on the wrong side.

It was pouring with rain just before I had to go out to the car, but I was lucky and it stopped for 10 minutes so I could get out and start my drive. The car needed filling up before I headed up the highway to work, and I didn’t want to do this last night in 100 degree temperatures, but this morning with the rain, the traffic was heavy, and then I found my local gas station was closed, so I had to drive to another one. While there I could clearly see the skies over the coast to the east, and they were as black as ink. I knew that my drive north up I95 was not going to be a pleasant one.

I got onto the highway, and it wasn’t more than a minute or two before the lighter rain turned into a monsoo0n, with traffic slowing down to 25 mph as the road soon started to flood and a lot of vehicles were having trouble staying on the road. Fortunately my Toyota Avalon grips the road really well, and also has great visibility, so I get rather frustrated at all these people who can’t see a thing.

By the time I got to Boynton Beach, which is a few miles north of Boca Raton, the rain was so heavy that it was pounding on the roof of the car, it was just like a monsoon! It definitely got a good power wash today! The drive was so slow, but about 10 miles further on the skies brightened up a bit and I managed to escape the storm.

Amazingly enough, everyone actually had their lights on this morning, which is a miracle for South Florida! Quite a few even had their hazard lights on to warn drivers behind them, which is also rare. Maybe there were a lot of ”out of state” drivers on the highway today…

But I got to work in one piece, only 5 minutes late, and it was a cool 75 degrees compared to the heat of yesterday, so quite comfortable by comparison.

My First Day Back At Work

Posted on May 26, 2009 by tony

Today was my first day back at work after three months of being unemployed.

So naturally I was rather nervous, as most of us are when starting a new job, and as is typical for me, every new job I have takes me to somewhere I don’t know. This one is no different, at Juno Beach, just north of West Palm Beach in South Florida.

It’s a 45 mile drive to work, and as I had to be there by 9:30am to meet my new boss, I thought I had better leave by 7:45am in case the traffic was heavy. Well as it turns out, pretty much nobody went to work by the look of it, so the roads were fairly empty, and I got there by 8:50am! I still had to wait until 9:45am for my boss to arrive, as he had to go to the other office first, so by the time introductions had been done in the department and I had got my security card etc, it was time for lunch.

My boss was busy, so I took a walk out, a chance to call Debbie, and also my Son, both in England. The office is in a small strip mall, and across the road is a park. The other side of the park is the Ocean Drive, and beyond that the beach! There was a wooden walkway with steps leading down to the beach, so I stood there to make my phone calls and took advantage of the nice breeze that was blowing, it was great to not feel as sticky as I had just 1/4 mile inland.

The afternoon went well, with me getting into the systems and looking at a few programs, and then the drive home was fairly uneventful, getting home at 6:30pm.

I thought as I had been sticky, it would be a good idea to put the sauna on, and with luck someone had already used it, so it was still pretty warm. Nice to only need 15 minutes to warm it up instead of almost an hour! I had a good sauna, did 30 lengths in the pool and then back up my well trodden six flights of stairs to the condo, by which time it was close to 8pm.

I was ravenous by this time, having only had grapefruit juice and a banana before I left this morning, and just water and two cups of green tea all day. I didn’t care to go out to eat, I preferred to explore a bit and make my phone calls instead. Starving I was, but I didn’t want to overdo things as it was late, so I just made a cheese and tomato sandwich with some German Black Bread (Pepperidge Farm, really good) and peeled and sliced 3 carrots and had those with some ranch dressing. Yumm… Followed by a Raspberry Fat Free Yoghurt. That hit the spot, and wasn’t too heavy either. Now if I can do the same tomorrow, I ought to lose a couple of pounds for sure…

Watched a bit of tv, nothing much on though. Caught up on my email, tried to print a couple of documents, but the ink was low on the printer, need to redo those at work tomorrow. And now, last thing before bed, to catch up on Tagfoot.

So now I am winding down, and about ready for that trip to the Land Of Nod. Catch you tomorrow… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Mockingbird At Deer Creek

Posted on May 24, 2009 by tony

I managed to capture a Mockingbird this morning on my walk around Deer Creek. It was only 7:30am on a Sunday and it was so quiet out – apart from the birds…
Shame I had the camera set to record on compact, but the audio is what I was trying to capture.

Definitely Good Timing

Posted on May 21, 2009 by tony

The rainy season started here in South Florida several weeks ago, but the last couple of days have been really wet with heavy showers and thunderstorms.

This morning I woke up to find it was still pretty dark, with the skies very overcast and it had rained a lot in the night. Nevertheless, I decided to try and take my morning walk to try and wake up, as my head was in a complete fuzz after a hard day yesterday.

I saw hardly anyone on my walk around Deer Creek, just a lady walking her dog, and two people cycling around the loop. I guess everyone else was more sensible and decided to play it safe!

Well about 1/3 of the way around the loop I could see a few spots of rain falling on puddles on the ground, and I thought to myself “This is it! You are going to get drenched!”. But I didn’t, the sky brightened up a bit, and the walk went really well, except for the blister on the ball of my right foot that insists on re-forming every time I walk. Maybe I need to try two pairs of socks…

Moving forward to now, 30 minutes later, there is a terrific thunderstorm going on outside, it’s like a monsoon, and the wind has been howling. If I had got caught in this, there isn’t a tree on earth that I could have sheltered underneath. I would have come home like a drowned rat!

So maybe this day is starting off ok, maybe luck is on my side today! I sure hope so, I have so much to try and do, and I am still really tired after yesterday’s exertions (see here).

————————
** NEWS FLASH **
————————

10 minutes after posting – a mini tornado whistles down the lake. Even the ducks are trying to shelter from the rain which is now even harder. Rain is beating on the front of the condo, a stream of water is pouring down the inside of the front door, and we just caught the bedroom windows in time as a lake formed on the inside and it started to cascade down the wall behind the bed! Fortunately we just caught it, and a towel put paid to the otherwise large pool of water that was forming.

When it rains like this, the old windows in the condo just don’t seal well enough to keep the rain out. Where we are by a stair well, the wind channels through, and increases in velocity.

Fortunately it’s calmed down a bit – for now at least… I think we must have had a good 3 inches of rain in 30 minutes.

Another Batch Of Fresh Lenses

Posted on May 15, 2009 by tony

Both Debbie and I have been busy this last couple of weeks creating new lenses on Squidoo.

While Debhie has been working on her collection of lenses about Hampshire, I have been working on my USA States lenses, and also a local one about my daily walks.

Firstly, Debbie created a lens about Southampton, the city where she lives. Southampton is one of the largest ports in England, in the middle of the South Coast, and has seen many famous ships sail down the river, including The Titanic, Queen Mary and Elizabeth, and also their successors the QE2 and QM2.

She just completed another about Netley, a suburb of Southampton which has a lot of history. Netley has ruins of an Abbey, as well as an old military hospital, the remains of which have been turned into a country park.

Meanwhile, I just completed a lens about the morning walks that I take where I live in Deer Creek in South Florida. The lens has over 80 photographs from the walk, including some nice homes, lakes, and much of the tropical foliage and wildlife of the area.

I have also been working on a set of lenses about the states in the USA. I am creating these in alphabetical order, and so far have completed Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas and California. Each lens has background information on each state, and a list of other lenses about that state. If you have a Squidoo lens about any of these states, please feel free to add it to the list of lenses to get some free promotion.

If I haven’t got to your state yet, why not subscribe to our blog so you can be kept up to date with progress. I hope you enjoy what you see here.

Adjusting To Being Unemployed

Posted on April 27, 2009 by tony

I have to admit that it was a huge shock when I found out that I had lost my job in mid February, not only because I needed to be employed to ensure I had enough money to cover my living expenses, but because this was without a doubt the worst time in my working career to be looking for a job. The recession in the USA was starting to hit hard, few companies were (and still are) hiring new people in the IT field, and so for the first week or so I was pretty much in panic mode.

For those of you who are new to my blog, I hope that you enjoy the articles that Debbie and I write and will subscribe to them, either via RSS feed or email. We are also both on Twitter (Tony / Debbie) and you can follow us there. Our lives are complicated, with me living in South Florida while Debbie lives in the South of England. I am divorced with 2 young girls who live 30 miles from me, and child support for them takes a good proportion of my income every month, so obviously losing my job came as a great shock.

For the first few weeks at least, despite my alarm having been turned off, I would still wake up at 6:30am automatically, which really frustrated me as I didn’t need to. I also wasn’t sleeping too well, waking frequently during the night, and with working to update web sites, my resume and to get my affairs in order until late every night, I was exhausted. Finally I managed to get into a better sleeping pattern as things settled down.

With the prospect of getting another job in the field that I work in (I am a Senior Analyst/Programmer specialising in JDE World Software – an integrated system now owned by Oracle that is used by larger corporations) being slim, I decided that one thing I ought to do while unemployed is to try and do my best to make a living online. I figured that if I can earn more money online than I have been doing, and ideally earn enough to make a living, then the future would look a lot brighter. IT used to be a great field to work in, but in the last 10-15 years the rate of pay has actually decreased, and most companies don’t offer good benefits and definitely no job security these days. Anything I can do, especially as I am getting older, to get out of this dying field, is a good thing.

Well after a few weeks I managed to sleep better, and right now I can guarantee to more or less wake up between 7:30am and 8am most days, sometimes even later. The problem now of course for me is how to be productive. I am unemployed right! So I have all day to do what I need to do. Well it’s really not as easy as it sounds. Let me give you a run down of a typical day for me…

7:30am-8am – Wake up.

8am – Check email, web stats, minor web updates, shower, breakfast.

9:30am – Get some work done.

11am – Debbie comes home from work (4pm in England). Chat on webcam for a while, work on web tasks together.

12:30pm – Feeling peckish, grab a bite to eat.

1:30pm – Take a sauna/steam and have a swim.

2:30pm – Chat with Debbie.

3pm – Get some work done.

5pm: Goodnight chat with Debbie (10pm in England).

6pm – Grab dinner.

6:30pm – Get some work done.

8pm – Take a walk.

9pm – Watch tv / get work done.

11pm – Off to bed.

As you can see, I get some work done, but in short bursts, and in reality I barely have more than an hour for each burst before I am distracted by something else, like the phone ringing, or new emails coming in. I am determined to try to get fit and lose weight, so my daily sauna/swim is very important to me, especially as I am living in a community in South Florida where we have a nice pool and sauna, plus the weather is on my side most of the time. So I don’t want to give that up. I also need to chat with Debbie, as it’s important to us both, and it’s really hard to be so far apart for months at a time.

The solution is to try and do something to reorganize my days so that I can make better use of them. I started today, not too successfully, but this is my new plan…

7am – Get up early, quick look at email etc.

7:30am – Take a walk. I live in a community built around a golf course with several lakes, and walking around the block is 2 1/4 miles. I also live on the 7th floor of a condo block, and walking down the stairs, around the lake, back up the stairs took 36 minutes this morning, one of my fastest times.

8:30am – Shower and breakfast. A nice cool shower to clean off, then a healthy breakfast, either something like Raisin Bran or Oatmeal with a Banana, and Orange or Grapefruit Juice.

9am – Get some work done.

12am – Chat with Debbie. Both of us waiting until 5pm over there in England to chat, so we both get more done.

1:30pm – Lunch, Sauna and Swim.

2:30pm – Back to work.

5pm – Goodnight chat with Debbie.

The evening I can’t do much about, since I want to take my evening walk, and I go with Tim, who I rent from. It’s a lot nicer walking with someone, and I time the walk to fit in with his schedule. Fortunately we now have the ability to record television shows automatically, which is wonderful as it allows me to still watch my favorite shows, but frees me from having to worry about when they are on.

The best thing about getting up early and taking a walk is that I feel really energised afterwards. Doing this early is best in Florida as it soon warms up down here, but it also means that I have worked out by 8:30am and an ready to go and get stuck into my tasks for the day, instead of feeling sluggish having just got up and not done anything.

As far as looking for a job, these days jobs in IT are mostly advertised on the internet, and so I have various searches activated on sites like Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com which send me emails of any new jobs. Also having my resume active on these sites, the headhunters come to me when they have any openings, but inlike other times when I have been looking for work, this time there are precious few jobs going for people with my qualifications. In the last week I have found 3 jobs – one in Pennsylvania, one in Texas, and today one in Los Angeles, today’s being the only one that I would say I am well qualified for, and none in any location that I am happy to relocate to. I don’t see things improving any time soon.

My working day consists of writing articles on here, The Laughline and Squidoo, plus promoting the same on Tagfoot and Stumbleupon, as well as other sites. As well as posting links, I am actively researching for new ways to promote and cross link my sites, to improve traffic and also affiliate earnings. Some days it’s good, but the last week traffic has really slowed down unfortunately, and I don’t know why.

If you have any comments on how to better organise my time, or on how you organise your time I would be pleased to hear from you. Also if you have any suggestions for better marketing my blogs to get better traffic I would like to hear. I am always open to cross linking to other related sites, and there are many other blogs out there that I would be pleased to swap links with. Don’t forget that you can use the Share button at the end of this article to subscribe to our feed, and if you can Stumble, Digg or Twitter this I would be grateful.

Unemployed Again

Posted on February 11, 2009 by tony

I thought that this job I have had for the last two years would see me safe, at least for a while, since the company is keen to hire people that are looking for a long term position, and it likes to hire experienced people rather than trainees.

Well it wasn’t to be, and as from today I am on the scrap heap for the second time in six years.

A few months ago the company said that it was cutting costs to try and avoid redundancies. A few weeks ago we heard that probably our bonuses and 401K matching would be cut. A few days ago we heard rumours that some people would be losing their jobs. A few hours ago I was called into the bosses office and it was my turn…

I have always worked in the IT industry as an Analyst/Programmer working on IBM Midrange computers (AS400 . iSeries), and for the last 10 years with J.D Edwards World Software (now part of the Oracle group). Up to 3 years ago, JDE were trying to phase out the software I work with and trying to get companies to upgrade to the new version that they had created, however the new version has had lots of performance problems, and for most companies to convert it would cost over $1million, since they would have to rewrite all their locally developed programs. Many companies did not want to change over, or tried and found so many problems that they reverted back, and so when Oracle took over JDE they found that not only did they have a large user base that didn’t want to move from JDE World software, but they also found that this was the most profitable area of their business. In the last 3 years Oracle have rewritten the system to make it work better for the future, however most companies have been slow to upgrade to the new version so far, but they have at least said that this will be supported for the foreseeable future.

What I have in my favor is that in the last 10 years, with the threat of JDE withdrawing support for this system, many of the analyst/programmers who worked in AS400 computers have moved onto other platforms. Now that the system is here to stay for the long term, there are fewer of us to fit into the available positions.

With the economy in the state that it is though, few companies are looking to take on new employees or contractors, and this is the most dire job market I have ever seen. The last time I was made unemployed, I was working in Elkhart, Indiana, a small town which this month has been in the news as having lost the most jobs and having the highest rise in unemployment. Even President Obama was in Elkhart this week.

I updated my resume on Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com today, and looked to see what jobs were open to me, and while there would usually be several in South Florida, there was absolutely nothing in the whole state of Florida, which is quite disturbing. However, jobs aren’t always listed, so I hope the recruiter who got me my last two positions down here can come up with something.

I also updated my profile on LinkedIn.com which is the professional equivalent of Facebook etc. I don’t know what good this will do, however in the last two or three years social networks have really taken off in a multitude of ways, so it’s worth trying.

Other than try to get another job in the same field that I have always worked in, I would love to change career, in fact I would love to be able to earn enough online to support myself, but I somehow can’t see that happening. I can however if I have the time, give it my best show and see if my efforts will make a difference. It would be great if I could somehow find a way to get paid for writing articles, or could get my web sites popular enough to earn a reasonable income. Watch this space…

Biggest problem is that there isn’t just me to support. If there was I could probably just about manage on unemployment benefit, however I have two daughters to support, and they go to private school, since the middle schools are awful. I would really not like to have to put them back into public school, as this would affect their whole lives, however I need to find the money to cover the school fees somehow. I am also paying into a fund which will help to pay their university fees, since by the time they start at university I will hopefully be ready to retire. I really don’t want to have to drop this either.

So please wish me luck, and if you are able to share this post, or our blog with your friends, I would be grateful.

Keep your fingers crossed that something comes along and soon…

Off The Record

The Musings Of Debbe & Tony

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