So what is an engagement manager

I was just looking at a listing of America's best jobs.

Table: The 10 best jobs in America

Job	Job openings	Median base salary	Career opportunity	Job score
1. Data scientist	1,736	$116,840	4.1	4.7
2. Tax manager	1,574	$108,000	3.9	4.7
3. Solutions architect	2,906	$119,500	3.5	4.6
4. Engagement manager	1,356	$125,000	3.8	4.6
5. Mobile developer	2,251	$90,000	3.8	4.6
6. HR manager	3,468	$85,000	3.7	4.6
7. Physician assistant	3,364	$97,000	3.5	4.6
8. Project manager	6,607	$106,680	3.3	4.5
9. Software engineer	49,270	$95,000	3.3	4.5
10. Audit manager	1,001	$95,000	3.9	4.5
Methodology: The Glassdoor Job Score is determined by weighting three factors equally: earning potential (median annual base salary), career opportunities rating, and number of job openings. Results represent job titles that rate highly among all three categories. The Glassdoor Job Score is based on a 5-point scale (5.0=best job, 1.0=bad job).

I can't figure out if these are really new careers or just hotsy totsy titles for traditional jobs. Sort of like old wine in new skin.  Nearest I can figure a project manager manages projects. I guess you could call a librarian a data scientist. Next time someone asks me what I do for a living I can say I'm a data scientist. Someone who wouldn't date a librarian might be willing to have a beer with a data scientist. 

Engagement manager I need to research. Is it like a wedding planner but someone who plans bachelor parties? A solutions architect? Someone who plans solutions? I could use one of these if he will shovel my car out this morning from the snow.

I looked up engagement manager. Apparently it is someone who nurses a deal between a vendor and a client. Sort of like if I was selling my car I'd enlist one of these people to mediate the sale and make sure all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed. Sounds like a good job to me. More fun than a ah counter anyway. 

Mother was wrong after all

I am actually quite happy today. Today I learned that I have been (not) doing something that I always believed I should be doing. My mother taught me that I should always make my bed every morning. Today I found out if you make your bed it will harbor mites. The moisture causes them to to grow if they are covered up with neat sheets and covers. Apparently bed mites are very neatness oriented.

Yes if you change your sheets and you can make your bed and have everything look "hotel fresh". However, if you don't change your sheets you should leave your covers sloppily draped around the bed to dry.

The love affairs of Nathaniel P

I have just finished the Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, the book that describes life among hipsters in Brooklyn the way Tropic of Cancer described hipsters in Paris in the 30's, or On the Road described hipsters hitchhiking into the 50's. Older people, long past their own pseudo bohemian youth, like to be kept abreast of such things.

I myself have gone to Williamsburg in Brooklyn just to see what all the excitement is about. Sadly, except for two trips where I saw over priced beer and the viewings of flannel shirts in summer, Brooklyn has remained somewhat elusive to me.

With this book the window is opened to privileged young people trying to make it in the publishing industry without borrowing too much money from Mom and Dad. We now can see what dating is like in this set of people. Hip, post feminist, post modernist people who hang out in expensive dive bars and organic coffee hangouts with wi-fi connections.

Nate is the protagonist of the book. He is in the situation of being a relatively decent male in a world where he is a rarity. He is not bad looking, straight, sexually experienced, and not a total a-hole which I guess makes him a hot commodity in this particular demographic in Brooklyn.

The book is a nice read but en mi opinion, it fails at its central conceit. I don't know why but the book pries into Nate's innermost thoughts and they don't sound like a guy's thoughts to me. Frankly Nate seems to be the image that women might have of a young man's internal workings rather than the actual thoughts of a young man.

For one thing he is too callous. Women are more cynical than men. Men are romantics at heart, at least while young.  Woody Allen movies show men as being more romantic than this novel.  I also thought that, in the real world, Nate's parents would have paid for his health insurance.

Editor's note: Another book about millennials in Brooklyn and the academic world you might like is Bad Teeth by Dustin Long

Predictions for 2016

First what I predicted last New Year's Eve:

Drum roll please. Mr Mustache predictions for January 1 2017: 

In red, what really came true on January 1 2016 

Dow 18500 17425

S and P Index 2100 2044

NASDAQ 5000 4593

Microsoft will retreat to 40 55.48

Eagles will get in the playoffs but lose in January. Eagles will not make playoffs.

Obama will make overtures to Iran like he made to Cuba but Congress will not go along with the deal, no treaties or normalization. Actually our president was cagier than I thought he would be. Pretty much got what he wanted in both instances. As a technicality we have a Charge de Affaires not an Ambassador in Cuba today. 

Unemployment will go down to 5% correct, and oil  47.07 will go up to $60. 

Middle East will stabilize a tad but the EU will be in the doldrums. Isis did lose some territory but did not really stabilize. Everybody seems to be in the doldroms nowadays.

The New York Post will start the drumbeats to impeach the mayor of NYC. While the Post is not Biaggi's biggest fan, no drumbeats. 

Overall another middling year. 

My financial predictions for 2015 were overly optimistic. I never predicted the market would go down and never really recover. This year I am carrying over my market index predictions from last year to the end of 2016 with the caveat that Microsoft will go to 60.  Hopefully by then we’ll have made some money on the market again.

Microsoft was one prediction that underestimated the price, next year I see it ending at 60, a small gain. The unemployment rate is now 5.0 and I am predicting 4.8 by the end of 2016. The Philadelphia Eagles will make the playoffs next year but lose their first post season game. Donovan McNabb will be well liked as head coach.

The Democrats will have a good election in November and Bill Clinton will be our next first lady, although they will have to give him a new name, the dowager President? 

Editor's note: What the BBC says we'll be wearing in 2016. Really?

Fact checking at parties

As the holiday season is coming to a close I have been thinking that most parties could use a fact checker. That is, a hired librarian or journalist who would circulate the party with a smart phone and verify the truth of what is said. I have to admit I have become somewhat skeptical about the facts that are presented in modern social situations and believe a professional fact checker could really do a service in circulating in a gathering and check the veracity of what is said.

Bill Grabonski announces that Windows 10 makes you buy a new printer!
The fact checker could tell Bill which existing printers do, in fact, work on Windows 10.
Janet Aldessio tells Rebecca Schwartzen that if she bottle feeds little Timmy, he will become allergic to peanut butter. The fact checker could give likely percentages according to the CDC.
Henry Gribaldi says that the Beatles were tough guys because they grew up Liverpool. The fact checker could tell him that actually three of the four went to fancy schmancy private high schools and it was Hamburg, not Liverpool where the boys learned about the seedier side of life.
Sid Blencher remarks that diesel engines always last longer than gas engines. The fact checker could swoop in on the conversation and verify his claim.

In addition to increasing the level of knowledge all around, a party fact checker would be a wonderful job for a retired librarian. To quote from Keith Richards, that's all I have.

Bacala

My father was Italian and my mother was from Texas. Normally Mother dominated the food choices at home. Our family ate southern fried chicken, black eyed peas, collards, turnip greens, corn bread and okra. My father’s family taught Mother how to make a spaghetti sauce and it wasn’t bad. Sometimes around the holidays my father would bring home salami, provolone, capicola, or pepperoni from a place on 9^th Avenue near the bus terminal. I guess it was his way to remind the kids of their Italian heritage. 

Bacala being de salinated.

One year, as a special treat to the family, he brought home bacala. This is a dried and salted piece of cod fish that dear old Dad ate as a youth in the Bronx. Proudly, he set it up in the basement where he had water dripping over it for three days. Not unexpectedly, Mother was not particularly happy to see this new member of  the family. Still, that Christmas Eve a tomato based soup with bacala, garlic, olives, and basil materialized on Mother’s stove on Christmas Eve. As if she didn’t have enough to do.

I’ve taken up the practice and make bacala at home on Christmas Eve. Friends and even my nephews have tried it and hated it. I can’t figure out why. If you have ever hiked and then taken off your hiking boots and socks  you can smell something that tastes roughly like bacala. 

Bacala soup

Better the devil you know

Just finished listening to Fred Kaplan on the Brian Lehrer show.  The theme could be called "better the devil you know". I've been hearing this all over the media recently, including from Bernie Sanders. Americans thought the Arab spring was going to result in liberal intellectuals, westward leaning, running the Middle East. Like the Russian and French revolutions, the beneficiary was going to be the common man, freed from his chains, with Facebook and Al Jazeera as their guides. Like the Russian and French revolutions, the end result was worse than what most people had to begin with. 

One of the lessons of age is that change can be a fickle thing. The new neighbor may have five dogs, three kids and fight with her husband. The new library director may even be worse than the spineless library director you have now.

Americans are starting to learn their lesson. Sometimes what you want is a strongman. Or as Truman said, "He may be a son of a bi--h but he's our son of a bi--h". So much for America standing strong bringing the world to liberty and egalite. Happy Christmas to you too.