Update - End of May: Recording and Video Production Proceeding

Michelle Dickerman

As the project I'm currently working winds down with the design phase in June, to get offloaded to the contract holders own in-house team for overseeing the production work at their shipyard, I'll have more time freed up soon to start working on things I've been delaying for too long. I will point out that this current company I've been attached to for this work has made no offers to me for employment with them. They alerted my employer and I to when my last day working the project will be. This was so that both my current employer and I can coordinate my return to the project I was working prior, along with the return of the contracting company's laptop I've been using. 

In a majority of jobs I've worked in cooperation with other companies, both onsite and remote, I've always received job offers while working for my previous (and now bankrupt) employer of ten years. On every contract I worked onsite with the Coast Guard for example, while they couldn't directly tell me to apply for GS jobs because of some specific rules, they had ways of encouraging the poaching of contractors without violating any rules. The USCG GS employees made sure in their own ways that I was made aware of all the job postings that were open in their department, and made a point to keep bringing up around me that they needed people with my skill set to fulfill those roles. Companies in the private sector had no such restrictions of course, and I've received direct job offers from those companies many times at the end of those projects.


All of these job offers happened while working with my previous employer of ten years as I said. Every single time I had to turn those offers down even when I really wanted to take the offer. I had a felony on my record after all, and I was greatly concerned that said felony would cause that new job to fall through. The last thing I needed was to leave my (at the time) steady employer for a company that had a high chance of dropping me once the background check was done. My recent experiences in the years since my old employer's bankruptcy, has more than proven that my caution all those years was completely warranted. I've had multiple setbacks attempting to move to other companies since. Some have made it clear that my status as a felon was an issue. Others never said anything that made it crystal clear what the problem was, but there is enough evidence to suggest that the felony was the reason.

This current company running the project I'm subbed out to has made it very clear they are happy with my work. But that praise has not materialized into asking me to hire on with them, and the contract ends by the middle of next month. This employer already knows I have a felony. Because my background check result, needed for me to gain access to certain places for meetings, caused some screaming by someone in a government position. This was smoothed over because of need, deadlines, and the fact I was the only person with the right skill set available at the time - but that definitely didn't help my situation. When I heard the contracting company hired someone that had a similar skill set to mine, previously mentioned in another post, I had already expected that no job offer would be forthcoming. It is clear now that I was correct. Which is a shame, because working with this company would have actually been a good thing for me. This is yet another issue that is going to add to Michelle Annette Dickerman's list of problems she will be facing in the future.  

The benefit at least from wrapping up this project and moving on, is that I'll be able to slow down a bit. This one has been a rough one due to the pace and other issues. I'll now be able to start working on things I've had to delay, which involves multiple items related to this dispute with Michelle Dickerman.

I've been going over sections of transcripts I've produced, via a voice memo app that I used to transcribe things I've gone over during long drives. These will be condensed down into talking points that I'll use as a guide for the videos I previously discussed in the last post. I have also been reviewing software for the recording and editing and learning how to use it.

I've setup the Shure mic and the pre-amp and they work pretty well. I did have issues with dialing in the audio and reviewing the edits, so I've picked up a headphone amp and studio headphones to plug into the pre-amp for that purpose. I haven't picked up a camera because I have no interest in sticking my face up on the videos. I'd rather use images, evidence, and artwork to help explain the situation. None of this is gear that is top tier or high priced stuff by the way - it's decent mid-tier gear but it isn't something you'll see a professional podcaster running. Nor am I picking it up just for pushing out videos on Dickerman, although they certainly help in that regard.

I've had intentions of getting a similar setup like this for unrelated things for years now and just hadn't had the motivation or time before. In the past I have streamed a little with various games and simulators, mainly to just friends and family who tuned in. I'm no longer doing much in the way of streaming anymore, but I have had a desire for other related content creation. Pulling the trigger on ditching long write ups to switch over to a video format was the motivation I needed to start setting things up. 

Not to mention that being able to produce better sounding content helps push this dispute out into the public eye. A video is far more likely to go viral if effort is put into its creation, rather than putting out something that looks and sounds like late 2000's 'PowerPoint' YouTube videos. It might take me a bit to get it dialed in, but I'm hoping to get to a point where the videos at least sound great. This will also help with putting out short form videos on various social media to spread the word.

That for now is my main focus. The AI post has kind of sat on the back-burner because I would like to publish the first of the videos before the AI post. We'll see what happens with that. The AI experiment has been interesting, mainly because I ditched garbage AI like ChatGPT and shopped around for better options with no guardrails. I never once asked ChatGPT anything Dickerman related, instead I was putting questions to it about various factual subjects as a test during my initial screwing around with it. That didn't go well at all. I've even ditched using it for image creation (though this is more due to the handicapping guardrails in place). 

Plenty of people have seen the videos of the guy asking ChatGPT various things that it kept getting wrong, like what months on the calendar have an 'X' in them. More than a few boomer lawyers have also been burned when ChatGPT hallucinated non-existent supporting court cases/decisions when writing their motions and briefs. I didn't want AI that lied to me when discussing this legal situation. I've dealt with more than enough lies from Michelle Dickerman, I don't need a clanker doing it as well.

That's about all for the update at the moment. Hopefully the next post is either a video, or the AI experiment.