Unemployment Claims Crash State Web Sites 233
1sockchuck writes "A sign of the times: a surge in filings for unemployment benefits has crashed online application systems in four states this week. Web sites in Ohio, New York, Kentucky and North Carolina have been knocked offline by unusually high volumes of jobless claims. Phone applications systems appearing to be faring even worse in many states. The thin silver lining: states are hiring workers for phone banks and buying new servers to prop up their web sites."
Especially Michigan (Score:3, Informative)
Re:HUH?? UH HUH! (Score:5, Informative)
You say "My parents raised 4 kids on about half of what I make now".
Could you be a bit more specific? Lets look a little closer.
A. What did your parents make in '82?
B. Go to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve home page.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1084177&op=Reply&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=26367983 [slashdot.org]
C. In the "What is a dollar worth" program
C1. Type 1982 into the year
C2. Type your parent's 1982 income amount into the "goods or services" field.
C3. Type 2008 into the "Then in" field. 2008 is the latest year they have data on file.
C4. Press the "calculate" button.
Finally let us know the result!
This Fed calculation is quite useful for all time oriented dollar amounts. You will notice that news sources constantly compare today's dollar to yesterday's dollar as if they were the same. They are not.
Thanks,
Jim
No More "Offices" (Score:3, Informative)
Most states now do the entire process online or by phone only. There is no office to go to any more.
Re:Do they need more servers !?! (Score:2, Informative)
You haven't worked government, have you? The server isn't a core 2 duo. Its a P2 450, that they purchased with grant money in 1999, and haven't been able to replace. It runs NT4, with a website in either cold fusion, or ASP. but either way, it was written with a "Idiots guide to $LANGUAGE" book in hand, And of course, MS SQL Server 6 is running as the primary database, on the same machine.
Or, its a quad core, quad processor system, with 16GB of ram, running either cold fusion, or ASP, with MS SQL server 6 running on the same machine.
with government, its always one or the other...
Re:HUH?? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think people quite get it.
I was in the same situation. I've done IT work for longer than most people here have been able to read. :) When I got laid off, I did two things. I filed for unemployment, just in case I couldn't get a job, and then I went job hunting. The unemployment forms in my state take a couple hours, and a good bit of research. How much did I make at that job two years ago? What is their current contact information? Oh shit, the company moved out of country, but I still have to list someone who can verify I worked there. What's their current mailing address? A contact? A phone? I haven't talked to them in almost two years, why should I know this? Even the office phone number was on speed dial ... on my work cell phone that I turned in on my last day there.
After I got done the unemployment paperwork, which the unemployment office actually recommended doing online versus one of their branch offices which just has a terminal to do it online, I then went job hunting. I called every contact I could think of. I checked all the job boards. I went to interviews at crappy places. One of the best was with a scientologist run company. I never "interviewed". They had me take their pseudo-psych profiling test to see if I was worthy. When I researched the test they gave me, I'm sure I scored in the "don't ever contact this person, he will be subversive" range. :) It took a few weeks to get another job. I'm not a McDonalds level employee. I'm close to a C-level tech person (CIO/CTO, depending on the size of the company). While contacts may be begging me to come over and work for them while I'm employed, that window of opportunity isn't always still available the day I need new work.
I collected two checks from unemployment, and that was it. $250/week, the ceiling for unemployment in my state. It wasn't much, but it insured I could put gas in the car and feed the family until I got my next job.
Just because I just got laid off, should I disconnect all my services (power, water, phone, internet), and sell my computers? Hell no. The next job is coming soon, and I *NEED* those. Without them, I wouldn't have landed my next job. I found them on a job board. I applied online. I spent 8 hours a day browsing what was available, and matching them up to my skills. Well, some days I spent at head-hunter offices, with no real advancement. "Oh, we can place you immediately, we'll call you tomorrow". They'd all, say that they sent my resume to some company at a vague loation, and then never hear back. My resume, although glowing, was just one in a stack of 100 that they sent to each place. Head-hunters used to be great. Now they're trying to make a buck too. Hopefully they can get one of those 100 hired, so they make their commission.
I thought the head-hunters had forgotten about me, until I got a flurry of "offers" in a few weeks ago. I actually read them (I'm working, so I'd usually ignore them). They were all for the same job. Everyone was so hopeful to be able to make that deal. It's really sad out there right now.
I say keep what you have, for as long as you can. My "home office" now consists of one PC and a laptop, because I'm no longer living in my nice house, with lots of room for my whole setup (which has since been sold or given away). I'm hopeful that the economy will get better, because if it doesn't, I'm almost tempted to beg to join the Army. Sure, I'll get shot at for 15% of my old pay, but it'll pay better than McDonalds, even though I'll run the risk of getting killed daily. When it gets bad enough, McD won't be any safer. Desperate times call for desperate measures. If you haven't eaten in a week, bringing a gun (the last valuable you own) into McD to rob the place for food and cash on hand doesn't sound all that bad.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:HUH?? (Score:3, Informative)
So good luck getting flash bloated web 2.0 ANYTHING, much less webmail to load at all in IE5 on a 10k hookup
Gmail has an HTML-only option. (although they will be dropping IE 6 support soon, don't know about IE 5)