Wednesday, December 20th, 1995
					12:36 pm

Dear God,

    A larger screen with my JED editor, can you see the difference?  I
can sit a few feet away now and almost don't need my glasses.  Isn't
it great, God, what mankind can invent?
    Just a few minutes ago, I stalked out of Carfax.  Sitting here eating
a brownie (that David Ackerman made last night with his girlfriend Amy
over here at my apartment) and drinking a glass of milk.  Thinking about
the last encounter I had with Ewin Barnett, and then Kris Knutson before
him.
    Kris, Craig and I were to have had a meeting at 10:30 this morning.
I was ready and prepared for a meeting -- at 10:30 -- this morning.  When
I got to the office and found that Kris Knutson was out of the office
doing something with tapes and Canada data at the south office, I was
mildly peeved.  Okay.  So he comes in a little later -- say, 11:00 or
11:15.  At least he greets me.  But no move is made to start a meeting.
I work with continuing to clean up my electronic mail and deal with a
few Kentucky problems.
    Now I just got off the phone with Jackie to let her know if Mildred
Carter of Kentucky calls to talk to me that something has come up and
that I will not be available to talk to her -- to please take a message.
I won't be in for the rest of the afternoon, nor, actually, for three
weeks, as I heatedly informed Ewin right before stalking out.  I told
Ewin that I would do what I said I would do for Kris Knutson -- work on
West Virginia this afternoon, and evening if need be, to get WV ready
for title searches to go out.  Then I informed Ewin of just two insults
I felt this morning (not mentioning hundreds of others that have been piling
up) , and that after getting the title research for WV ready to go out, that
I would have nothing to do with Carfax for three weeks.  He responded,
"Okay."  And I left.  I felt deeply hurt by the cavalier treatment our
appointment seemed to receive from both Craig and Kris. I make an
appointment for a meeting at 10:30; I expect a meeting to happen at 10:30 --
no excuses.  And excuses is all that I seem to be hearing lately.

    I am tired of excuses.  I am tired of feeling put off, feeling strong-
ly disliked by Kris Knutson.  I am now pretty certain I hate the man.
I am filled with the poison of my own hatred and anger and have little
or no patience to deal with Kris's avoidance of dealing with me.

    Can't say I blame Kris one little whit for disliking me or (what I sense
to be) his going out of his way to avoid dealing with me.  I have been doing
very little to be likeable in the past few weeks or few months, being super
critical of many things I see and/or don't see.  I have had an abundance of
comments and criticisms that I have shared via electronic mail, not only
with Kris, but also in some cases with other programmers, stating clearly
how I differ.
    It seems very disrepectful to set up a time for an appointment and
then make little or no effort to be there at the appointed time.  I feel
snubbed, disrespected, disliked, and unpopular with Kris Knutson.  I feel
embittered and embattled.  There is no way to "win" here.  The game of
criticizing and hoping for change in the directions my criticisms would
lead are for naught, because I criticize in a browbeating fashion.  It is
understandable to me why ideas, perhaps very good ones, and also very bad
ones, will go unrecognized, uncommented upon, and avoided -- just because
of how they are presented.  And the more ideas I share that end up being
ignored, the more ideas I subsequently come up with to try to get *some*
kind of acknowledgement.  And the more I share, the less likely it is that
*anyone* will respond.  When I write a set of ideas for comments, and I get
no response, like "good idea," "bad idea," "this stinks," "you may wish to
look at it this way," or anything, I feel punches pulled.  Kris makes a
great deal about how he doesn't pull punches.  Kris is a liar.

    The global edit evolved largely with little or no input from me. I was
busy with other things.  It was Ben; Ben and Kris; then Ben, Kris and Joe
that helped create this edit, with little or no creative input from me.  If
any had been solicited -- if any discussions were going on that someone
would have said, "Let's get Dave in here to see what he has to say," I would
have gladly participated.  But as I wasn't asked, I didn't. So I am told to
get into the global edit in latter October, early November. And when I
finally get into the edit enough to have creative input, which I shared in a
brainstorm the other day, most things I share that I feel are good ideas are
relegated to "Phase II" by Ben.

Being asked to do West Virginia in the global edit was an overwhelming re-
quest to me.  Because it involved simultaneously:
   1)  Re-acquainting myself with the put-on-hold WV edit from June,
   2)  Starting to look at the data
   3)  Getting into the code of the global edit program itself, which,
       although it follows many of the general characteristics of the
       EDI_T3_xx edits, is an incredible complex beast to understand
       from my point-of-view, just by itself and not getting into the
       state data.

Trying to know the data, know the old programming and what was going on with
it, then leaving the old EDI_T3_WV program to program from scratch in this
new structure of the global edit, then to look at the data from the vantage
point of the new program and look at analysis of the data from the
vantagepoint of structures which are entirely new to me and follow the
execution of a newly-structured state edit whose data I am still trying to
get reacquainted with while being lost in the maze of the global edit and
not even being able to see the figures I am used to seeing in a form I am
used to seeing them in (including the title-date counts table) but feeling
asked to get to know the data with structures and methods of reporting on
the counts that I am not yet familiar with while still getting to know the
in's and out's of the global edit and continuing to know the data better ...

You know, I had a clear plan in my mind to take things one step at a time.
1)  reacquaint myself with the data.
2)  get back into the old edit and bring it up to snuff, getting title
    searches out
3)  Once the title searches were out, I would have been thoroughly familiar
    once again with the WV data through using a program I knew and was
    familiar with, I could start porting the WV edit into the global
    framework, knowing what I was doing with the WV data and knowing once
    again the steps that needed to happen specifically for West Virginia
    (versus other states like PA or NC that I had been in more recently).  I
    wouldn't need to worry about relearning WV data and WV processing steps
    all at the same time as learning the details of implementing in the
    Global Edit and also as the same time as being requested to go through
    the common code and learn it so I could make recommendations as to the
    soundness of its structure.  Keeping my mind on one (piece of data and
    its flow through an edit to loading) at a time is about all I can
    manage.  I have just stated four things I felt I was being required to
    keep track of at the same time, not knowing any of them well and not
    knowing when to go from one level or problem to another.

Kris didn't agree that I needed to go through the old state edit first.  Ben
saw no need for it.  Kris would bear with my stated need to use the old edit
as a point of departure, but would not take the time to understand it.  And
I kept feeling pressure to move off of it into the global edit, so I finally
decided to do so, under pressure to do so -- knowing in advance that I
wouldn't be but maybe 25% as efficient because I would have to keep in mind
too damn many things at once.

Is it any wonder, then, that I have lost confidence in the leadership that
was disagreeingly (but patiently) waiting for me to do the old-style WV
edit so I could get on with delving into the bowels of the global edit?
I know myself.  I know how I work.  I knew it would be frustrating and
confusing for me to attempt to jump into the new edit.  

I have felt mismanaged.  But I have not been able to put words to this
feeling until just now, in the retrospect of reviewing how this project has
seemed to have failed to get very far off the ground.  I have felt that Kris
has taken the stance, whenever trying to consult with him on approaches to
this, of "however you think you should approach it," all the while when
others have asked him for help in approaching their problems, overflowing
with advice, direction, support, and detailed managment of their projects.
I have felt lost many times and have not felt good about approaching him,
because when I would offer the solution that he didn't want to hear (my
approaching it through the old EDI_T3_WV form of state edit), I would get no
further aid from him.  It felt like snubbing.  It felt very discouraging.
Perhaps Kris was of the opinion that my need to do EDI_T3_WV was artificial
and time-wasting.  But by not saying so, if this is how he felt, he was
pulling a punch by clearly adopting that attitude without saying so.  And if
my memory is faulty, and he did say so, then I feel unfairly treated that he
didn't take the time to hear my side.

So Kris felt "like this was New Jersey all over again."  And it was.  I
feel there once again has been a severe communications breakdown between
him and me because he could not get off his high horse long enough to see
that the approach I wanted to adopt was a valid approach and I did not
deserve his withdrawal from supporting my efforts altogether ... just as
the approach he insisted I do for New Jersy was clearly the wrong approach
for the data we had at hand, and I would not tolerate the stupidity of
doing an approach to "fixing" New Jersey that would just as likely
corrupt as many records as it fixed.

And Kris more or less said sometime in November, "As long as you're in the
old state edit, I don't want to talk with you ... I don't want to see it."
So we didn't talk and he didn't see.  And now, only because we are under
sudden time pressures from the Virginia office to "get WV out the door
by yesterday," does there seem to be my being given any feeling of vali-
dation for doing the WV state edit the old way first, because it will
be quickest.  And my temptation is to just throw up my hands and say,
"(*blank*) West Virginia!  Do it yourself!"  Just like New Jersey.

(End of thoughts...)