Oy!

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is going to be a movie this fall.

Here's a description: "[I]t's about a wacky inventor who helps his financially depressed town get back on its feet by creating a device that spews food from the sky. Suddenly pancakes are flying and people are dodging produce."(Found at Movies without Pity, you'll have to move forward a few pictures.)

Well, that's not like the book I remember. Not at all.

Here you go, and enjoy the movie.

Today from the Sac Bee:

The governor's latest budget proposal assumes almost 20 percent in employee wage cuts: 15 percent from the three-day furloughs that started this month, plus another 5 percent across-the-board whack.

"Three days (furlough) plus the 5 percent," said H.D. Palmer, Department of Finance spokesman when asked Wednesday to clarify the governor's budget proposal.

The Legislature won't go for the pay cut, but the governor can then add a furlough day for reasons we'll explain.

...

[In] May the governor proposed a 5 percent cut on top of what were then twice-monthly furloughs. The proposal was dead from the start; everyone knew the Democratic-controlled Legislature would never go for it. ...

Sure enough, the Legislature defeated the plan in June. Schwarzenegger followed the "defeat" with a new executive order to add a third furlough day, getting the 5 percent cut in state worker wages that he wanted.

He could do that because a Sacramento Superior Court judge ruled in February that Schwarzenegger's emergency powers let him treat the government's fiscal meltdown like a Southern California wildfire by claiming broad emergency authority – including the power to furlough state workers.

The legal hurdle to exercising that power is proving there's a crisis. The Legislature's bickering while the state's budget ruptures helps. Its rejection of a pay cut is even better.

So this pay cut won't fly, either. Then the governor can add another furlough day. The 20 percent cut will bankrupt some of the 235,000 state workers affected.

Just thought of this...

I won't be at work any Friday's this month:

1. The revised furlough program starts next week, so the Governator is forcing me to take the 10th, 17th, and 24th off.
2. I'm taking the 3rd off to head up to Cowtown for my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary.
3. And I won't be here on the 31st because I'll either be driving up to Oregon, for my brother's (and the fiancee's) wedding, or I'll already be up there because I decided to not stay at work any longer.

Weird month already.

Also, I doubt this closing the government three Fridays a month will last long. Lots of state buildings will have to remain open anyway because there are some exceptions to the furlough rule and it'll just piss people off. It's practically insane to close the DMV for weekends, closing it for three Fridays'll just get regular folks yelling at the Governator.

That's why we switched from closing two Fridays a month to self-directed furlough days.

Trans-lash

Like most geeks out there, I've been following the online bitch fest that's come out of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I haven't seen the movie, and I don't plan to. (I saw the first and after watching it I decided that if movies called "Transformers" focuses on a human rather than the robots, what's the point?)

Anyway, lots of people don't like the movie. Lots of people who do like the movie seem to being assholes and using the age-old line, "Well, it's making a lot of money, so we must be right, it's good," to defend their position. (Less often used is the "That's just you're opinion" line, which, when reading a review of anything, is like a huge DUH.)

Because of so many people only reading the first paragraph, or looking at the number of stars, of the negative reviews, Jim Emmerson, of Scanners, wrote about the fallacy of the majority of reactions to what critics have been writing. He should know all about this stuff, he's editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com, so he gets to see all the bullshit comments, as well as the few good ones. (Last year, he wrote that he didn't think The Dark Knight was great, only kind of okay. Here'sa link to all his posts on the subject, but you should start with Under Cover of The Dark Knight to see that sometimes real discussion can take place. I recommend it all, though.)

Which leads me to why I'm getting into this:

Over at The Moviefile Blog, in a post about things the writer enjoyed about the movie, some commenter named damage wrote: "The movie was awsom who cares if it jump around the world it not reality so just enjoy it if your a true fane of the transformers this movie was about the bots." The comment bugs me, not just because of the bad spelling and grammar.

Really, I want to know what a true fan of Transformers is? Seriously, what is it? Is it someone who watches or reads or plays with anything that has the word "Transformers" on it and automatically loves it? Would this damage person enjoy Kiss Players? And if he (I assume it's a he.) didn't, would that mean he isn't a "true" Transformers fan?

Is that the only way to be considered a "true" fan of anything? Just shut up and "enjoy"? So, those SF Giants fans who sit and bitch about the line-up, but watch and cheer at every game, aren't "true" fans? Can a "true" fan never criticize the thing they enjoy?

I'm a fan of The Transformers, but there's a lot of it that I don't like.

The (North) American shows are what I really enjoy. I grew up watching the original cartoon. Beast Wars was a giant step forward in plot an pacing for animated shows. And Animated is just pure fun while keeping characters pretty true to their beginnings.

The ones from Japan that I tried watching, just didn't click for me. Robots in Disguise's "humor" just rubbed me the wrong way and made it hard to watch the show. (Plus, a flying shark, really?) And Transformers: Pokémon really irked me, and that irked-ness spread into it's two successors.

Like I wrote before, I really didn't care for the murky movie that came out in 2007 and, given the opportunity/motivation, can say exactly why I didn't want to see the new one in the theater. If I were to see it, I promise I'd be one of the complainers, too.

I don't collect the toys. I only occasionally buy the comics, but that's very rare. I don't keep up with any of the news and gossip surrounding the franchise. I can only name a few actors and who they played in the original and have no clue about who plays whom in later shows.

Does that make me less of fan of Transformers that this damage guy?

I still drool over the box set that's coming out. (The GI Joe one, too.) I assume he does, too.

So, why aren't I a "true" fan because I didn't enjoy the first movie and don't think I'd enjoy the second movie?

Maybe it's just because I won't accept something as good just because it tickles my nostalgia.

And what kind of soda did you want?

From the Sac Bee:

A legislative budget committee on Wednesday rejected Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to cut state employees' paychecks by an additional 5 percent, as part of the ongoing effort to balance a badly out-of-whack state budget.

The committee also voted to increase the state's tax on cigarettes from 87 cents a pack to $2.37, and impose a new tax on oil produced in California.

The governor has made it clear he will veto the tax proposals – and any others included as part of a budget-balancing package.

... "We are hoping that the state will look at other options for cost savings, in part because our members have already experienced (a) pay cut through the furloughs."

Zamora's reference was to the two-days-a-month unpaid leaves the governor imposed on state workers earlier this year. The unpaid days are equivalent to a 9.3 percent pay cut.

...

[Schwarzenegger said,] "It's outrageous that the Legislature would ask Californians to pay higher taxes but refuse to cut the pay of state workers by 5 percent," the governor said in a statement released by his office. "This is exactly why so many Californians have lost faith in Sacramento's ability to solve problems."

Funny, I thought Californians have lost faith in our state's government because it's never been able to responsibly spend money or come to a budget deal on time.

Do you want butter on your popcorn?

From the Sac Bee:

[W]ithout a budget patch in place by the end of this month, state finance officials say there's a chance state government might have to do what it hasn't done in 17 years: issue IOUs instead of paying its bills.

...

Until a budget is in place, the state can't borrow money.

Instead, the controller's office is forced to delay payments to various creditors. The decisions on who gets paid and who doesn't are determined in part by the state constitution (schools and bondholders get paid first); in part by federal law (state employees can't be paid in IOUs), and in part by any court edict that has ordered the state to pay someone.

Everyone else – companies that do business with the state, students who get state aid, local governments, taxpayers awaiting refunds – has to wait.

...

[T]he major banks and Wall Street investors that California usually borrows from have been so battered by the worldwide recession that just having a budget in place isn't good enough for them to lend the state money: they want it balanced, too.

...

State Controller John Chiang has forecast that absent a budget deal that allows borrowing, the state will be in the red by July 28.

...

The last time the state issued registered warrants – and the only time since the Great Depression – was 1992, when the state handed out 1.6 million warrants worth a total of $3.8 billion over a two-month period.

State financial officers say that issuing registered warrants would make it even harder to borrow from commercial markets and private investors – and nearly impossible without a balanced budget in place.

Hours, Money, Holidays, and Possibilities

For eight out of the last nine work-day's I've been coming in at 7AM to get some overtime and I discovered that I like coming in early. So, last week I submitted a request to my supervisor, SUSM, to see if I could change my schedule so I could come in at seven, take a half-hour lunch, and leave at 3:30PM rather than five.

She was gone last week, so I figured, while filling out the form, that she wouldn't approve it before this week and the stupid rules say that we who get our schedule modified can only start it on a Monday. Fine, I thought, I'll ask to start it on the 15th.

Monday, late morning-ish, I get an e-mail from her titled "FYI":

I just wanted to let you know that I have your Request for Alternate/Modified Work Schedule. I will need to talk to PJ & get back to you on this. He is out all week, but I think he may be coming in for a while on Wednesday – but not certain about that. I’ll let you know.

I wrote back with a simple okay, even though I don't understand why she can't just approve or deny it on her own. The other guys and gals who are clerks here don't want to regularly come in at 7AM if they're not getting overtime, so we'll be fully staffed until 5PM. And I asked for an earlier lunch, when no one else has one, which guarantees, on days that I'm here, that no one will ever have to leave for a late lunch again unless they WANT to. And that's a great thing, especially since I'm the one who usually has to leave late for lunch because some of the assholes I work with don't know how to make it there and back again (not a fucking Hobbit's tale) in an hour.

Without really understanding her reasons, I wrote back an okay because I figured if they decided in the positive, I'd get to start on the 15th.

Around 8:30 this morning she e-mailed me: "[ticknart] – did [the PJ] come see you about this yesterday?" meaning my request for modified work. I wrote back a simile "No." because he didn't.

Funny, I thought, isn't she the one who should be speaking with him? I think I made my position pretty clear by submitting the form that, you know, says I want to come to work earlier, take a shorter lunch, and leave earlier. Why should there be any discussion with me about it? Is it necessary for the two of them to know my motivations behind this change?

At nine she sent a reply: "He will be returning on Monday. The effective date on your request is Monday, so we will need to amend this if he approves it."

I printed and signed another request asking for the first day of this thing to be on the 22nd, since it has to start on a Monday. Not that it really matters this month because I'm going to be coming in at 7AM at least four days a week, and leaving at 6PM, so I can get a full 8 hours of overtime each week while it lasts.

Most of me doesn't think this'll get approved, though.

Sometime after I finished my first year here I submitted one of these so I would work four ten hour days each week and was denied because he didn't want to have an exhausted staff. A week after that denial I tried for a 9/8/80 schedule, but I'd stay here until 6PM (because my supervisor at the time -- I despised her -- came in at 7AM and I wanted less time with her around) and he said no to that one because the he'd have to stay until six with me, which made me feel real trusted. After that one was crushed, I quit for a while. I asked again about a year later with the schedule I'm asking for now and was denied because we had just lost two clerks and I should try again when more were hired.

So, here I am, trying again. Hoping to get an earlier shift, but preparing to once again be disappointed.

Why am I asking for this schedule?

Well, the main reason is because I'd have an hour in the morning where I could wear headphones and dick around on the 'netstuff. Sure, if I needed to get caught up, I'd use that time to do actual work, but I've been siting here writing this for the last 30 minutes and I spent much time (like more than an hour) launching hedgehogs into space. My best time is three days.

Also, though, the governator wants to cut my pay by another 5%, which would drop my pay by something like 14.6% from where it was last year at this time and that would make my buying a car in November an even stupider move and one harder to pay for than it was then. AND if the budget doesn't get passed by the end of the month the state may drop pay to all it's employees to federal minimum wage, or $6.55 an hour. (That's about $1100 a month before taxes, and since taxes take away 1/3rd of my pay not that would leave me with about $733, and my rent is, oh, $750 a month no matter how much I get in my paycheck. I know this sort of stuff is scare tactics, but it's like that old cliché: "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.")

I figure that if I work until 3:30PM I'd be in a good position to get a second job, downtown here, in the evenings and on weekends. I could start at 4PM and work until 11PM, or whenever, to offset the probably loss in pay. Sure, I may not visit my family at Thanksgiving or Christmas so I can work, but at least I'd be getting by. (Besides I was already getting myself ready to miss Christmas because I may not be able to afford the new vehicle licensing fee increase. We'll see.) How well that'd work out, I don't know. Still, it'd be better than quitting, having no job, and moving in with my parents and hoping that I'd be able to find something up in Cowtown that's more than serving coffee or putting a prefabricated burger on a bun to people who just... well, I won't write anything overly nasty about them while I'm not working in that situation.

Now I sit an wait. I'm waiting for all of this bullshit to settle into place, but mostly I'm waiting to find out if my schedule will be changes so I can come in earlier, take a shorter lunch, and leave earlier each day I work here. And when the waiting for that is done, I'll wait for the next piece of shit to settle so I can make a move to prepare for the shit that'll come after that.

Cricket Christ, there sure is a lot of waiting for shit to happen in life, isn't there?

Still, It's Upsetting

Once again, cross-posted from What's Distracting Us?

The Amazon thing I posted about was an error:

Amazon managers found that an employee who happened to work in France had filled out a field incorrectly and more than 50,000 items got flipped over to be flagged as "adult," the source said. (Technically, the flag for adult content was flipped from 'false' to 'true.')

"It's no big policy change, just some field that's been around forever filled out incorrectly," the source said.

Some questions were answered here:

Q: Was the problem with a French programmer? Can you illuminate what you think happened?

Daisey: Someone was editing the category systems inside of Amazon.fr, made an error, and that system is global, so it propagated everywhere. I have no insight as to anyone's nationality, or whether it was a language gap, or anything of that nature.

As one who helped to blow it more out of proportion, sorry. Still, to know that one employee making a mistake (or a "mistake") can effect thousands of titles is disturbing.

To Amazon or Not to Amazon

This is cross-posted from What's Distracting Us?

Looks like Amazon is discriminating against GLBT material when it comes to their ranking lists.

Authors such as Jaci Burton, Maya Banks, Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler have reported that since being stripped of their sales rankings, their titles are no longer found in searches on Amazon.com. MetaWriter is also compiling a list of titles that have been stripped of their sales rank.

When pressed for a reason, Amazon.com’s customer service department told YA author Mark Probst:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

There's an ever growing list of books at Meta Writer of books not listed.

BeaukoupKevin wrote a letter to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, on his blog.

Me, I'm seriously disappointed in Amazon, but I'm sure the paltry amount of money I spend there wouldn't even be missed. Still, I won't be ordering from them for a while.

EDIT 9:58AM: I read that Amazon is calling it a "glitch" in the system. Of course it's a "glitch" that's been around since February.

Suffering Stupidity and Pain

I go shopping kind of early so I don't have to deal with crowds, about 8:30AM on Saturdays. So, I don't expect there to be many check lines open, but like I wrote before, there aren't crowds that early on a Saturday, but there's at least one for people like me who are lazy and like to think that if we go to a check line run by a person we can discourage those shitty self-check lanes.

Well, I went shopping at a local story, Lucky, this Saturday. They had some good sales and I wandered up and down the aisles picking up extra stuff that I wanted but didn't necessarily need, like molasses. When I arrived at the front of the store, finished with my shopping, I was surprised to find that none of the check stands had a person there to check me out. I was forced to use the self-check lanes.

Now I've used the self-check before, but it's always been for a few things, never more than four, during crowded evening. It's easy when you have so few things, you scan, listen to the damned voice, put your stuff into a bag, and repeat until your out of stuff.

It's not quite as easy when you have a cart with many things. First, the computer lady doesn't like you skipping putting stuff in a bag. (But why would I want a bag for a five-pound bag of potatoes?) The computer doesn't like it any more when you just fill the first, of three, bag and immediately pull it and put it in your cart without filling the other two. Oh, and trying to find the right veggies in their list by picture, a real pain in the ass. Paying is easy though.

I decided that the next time I stop at that store I'll scout out for a checker and if there isn't one I'll ask the self-check guard and if I'm told there isn't going to be one during my trip, I'm leaving.

In other news, I finally know what it's like to have food poisoning. It's why I wasn't at work yesterday. Mostly, I worked the sickness out during the night, but I didn't sleep much and thought staying on the floor in my apartment watching TV and napping would be best.

When I worked in a sandwich shop, when ever my boss had a stomach ache, he'd call it food poisoning. For years I figured that if food poisoning was just a stomach ache then it's no big deal. I know better now.

Not Commenting

In my experience with computers and various programs, the more you use the easier things get. At the very best, you learn shortcuts you can use to make things go faster and you learn how more advanced features can make things better. At the worst, you get used to it and you work around the problems to finish what needs to get done. Either way, things get easier.

It hasn't worked this way with the new program at work.

Yes, it's only been two and a half weeks, but even in two and a half weeks of using a program, the things you do most often should seem easier because you know the steps.

Nothing has gotten easier. For anyone.

There are not shortcuts. Only the long way.

All the documents in the clerk work queue are called "Document Other Pull" so we have to click to bring up the page where we scroll down so we can click on the name of the doc that opens a new window where we click to allow us to see non-secure items which allows the document to be displayed in a shit Java MSPaint-wanna-be program where the document is way to small to read and we can't just click to make it bigger even though the mouse looks like a magnifying glass because that only makes the image smaller so we have to adjust the percentage or click the plus symbol and then adjust by grabbing the scroll bar, which is way to sensitive and as long as you keep pushing up, it keeps creating more white space to move up in. Oh, and I forgot to mention the 10-30 seconds worth of waiting in between each page or window for the damn thing to load.

And that's all to just view (Yeah, I split a fucking infinitive. English can do it and we should do it. Fucking Normans and their fucking stupid fucking French and its fucking influence on the English language.) the thing to see what it is. After that we decide what we should do with it. Sometimes that mean closing the task (one click) but mostly it means sending it to someone else (like 10 clicks intermixed with typing and searching).

During the last two weeks: I have heard two of the secretaries sob over this. One told me that she's cried more than once. I watched a court reporter throw her mouse at her keyboard. Instances of cussing have increased several times among everyone, and some have stopped doing it under their breath. And one day I felt like grabbing a man, dragging him out of the office and throwing him over the balcony.

I haven't written or replied to any e-mails during these last two weeks and I think I only wrote one response to a blog post. Sure, I'm still reading, but anytime I think of a response, it's more sarcastic than usual or just plain mean. Seems that I've been doing a good job of keeping the meanness and sarcasticness out of the replies I write here, but if it creeps in, it's my fucking blog and I can call a person a shit eating baby fucker if I want to.

It's been real hard to think positive or even neutral.

And at the rate I'm being offered new jobs, I'll never be positive again.

How Stupid Have We Become?

SCHOOL -- 1957 vs. 2007

Scenario:
Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.
1957 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2007 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

Scenario:
Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario:
Jeffrey won't be still in class, disrupts other students.
1957 - Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 - Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario:
Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.
1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. State psychologist tells Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison Billy's mom has affair with psychologist.

Scenario:
Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.
1957 - Mark shares aspirin with Principal out on the smoking dock.
2007 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. Car searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario:
Pedro fails high school English.
1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2007 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario:
Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.
1957 - Ants die.
2007 - BATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated, Johnny's Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

Scenario:
Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

This should hit every e-mail to show how stupid we have become!

And if we do not wake up and take our country back - WE will not have a country , nor a society to grow old in or for our children to grow up in

Think about it!

How stupid have we become?

Someone, somewhere, took the time to create this and decided to glorify a time where men of color were lynched for talking to a white woman partially because of institutional racism. A time when women weren't allowed to serve on juries in many states. A time when HUAC still encouraged citizens to accuse neighbors of being communist.

How stupid have we become?

My coworker took the time to forward this to me. She added a note about how true it is. (Funny, she was only a few years old in 1957, so how would she know?) She thought I'd be one of the people who agree, even though I've told her, several times, not to send me crap like this.

How stupid have we become?

I think we're just as stupid as we've ever been.

Ends in Odds

One of my brothers is up in Washington for the summer. He's there with his girlfriend at her parents' place. If I remember correctly, it's some island near Seattle, but it isn't exactly Seattle. (I wonder if they have to take a ferry to get to the island?) When school starts, they move to Oregon. I'm not sure where. All I know is that the place they move is like three hours from Portland, so the next time they show the Too Much Coffee Man Opera, I won't have a cheap place to stay.

Don't know why I wrote that.

'Course, don't know why I'm writing anything today.

Work has been weird. We're in that nebulous period between our old computer system and the new one where they've shut down the old and no one can actually use the new. Yeah, it's fucking stupid and a real fucking pain in the ass. Some of the trainers refuse to accept that it's a pain in the ass, though, and keep telling us that we just need more practice and that we'll get it eventually.

Fuckers.

sick, sweet, tight, wicked, crazy, dope, gnarly, sex, shit, bad, insane, phat, awesome, the shit, badass, killer

To say that I've been in a crappy mood for the past six or so weeks would be like saying only some tuna is eaten each year.

I don't know what started it, but I do know how it was exacerbated in late March and since then, I haven't been able to shake the thing.

Also, there are the people at work.

There are three guys near my age. The youngest is maybe two years younger and the oldest is maybe six moths older than me.

When our office was upstairs, I was separated from the other guys by an aisle. Here, I'm place between two of them and they like to talk to each other. That would be okay if they talked about a variety of topics, and they don't.

They talk about video games. All. The. Time.

For most of April they talked about getting new maps for Call of Duty. It was always, "Hey have you downloaded the new maps?" "Nah, I couldn't get on." "Oh, man, they are so sick." "Yeah?" "Yeah. I found this place where I could sit and snipe. I burned so many last night." "Dude?" "Yeah." And me, in the middle trying not to rip my hair out or jump up screaming before I run out of the office.

Okay, so I can occasionally join in, but it's mostly to ask about hardware and the capabilities of the machines and reaction to the controls and such. I don't care about the games.

Then, last week, it got worse. The new Grand Theft Auto came out. Now it's all I hear about. I hear lots of "Did you do... ?" and "Have you got... ?" and "What's up with... ?" and "Did you meet... ?" and "It was so sick when... ." And I am already fucking tired of it.

Yeah, I understand being excited about something. Yeah, I understand really enjoying something. And yeah, I understand wanting to talk about these things with other people who enjoy them, too. I get it. Really.

My problem is when it's the only thing these people talk about.

Well, that's totally true, they do, occasionally, talk about work, but as soon as that's over, the talk moves to a game. The talk about the game last at least three times as long as the work talk did. And everything is "hella" this and "hella" that.

And then they do it again and hour later. And an hour after that. And an hour after than. And when they get back from lunch. And when I get back from lunch. And then... And then... And then...

And then I want to drive my head through the plate glass windows.

Photo Phuesday

The so-called art in the lobby of the building I work in:

From the entrance.

Near the elevator. (Sorry about the skylight. Who knew it was going to be so sunny that morning?)

From the third floor.

I think it's supposed to represent birds.

Scattered Pictures

I've found it hard to concentrate on reading. I think I've only read four books (including this and this, which aren't very hard, but are entirely interesting and fun, and she owns a Sphynx) since Christmas. Maybe it's just long narratives. I haven't had problems with a comic or two before I go to sleep.

Went and watched Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street last night. It was the second time. Yes, I know the play's better, but I liked the movie, a lot. The songs are great and the actors are marvelous and the blood flows and squirts and sprays and I enjoy every minute of it. Sure, I'm sad that Turpin's turn at singing "Johanna" wasn't included, but it wasn't enough to make me not enjoy the movie. One other thing, Helena Bonham Carter has appeared in every Burton movie since the horror that was Planet of the Apes, I'd like to say that it has something to do with the fact that they have two kids, but it's hard to confirm that because she's such a spectacular actor.

At break time I've been staying at my desk. Sometimes I do work. Sometimes I screw around on the 'net. Sometimes I stare into the corner just trying not to think.

There's stew thawing in my fridge. It's probably not very thawed, yet, and I don't want to put a block of ice in the microwave, I'd rather wait until it's mostly thawed. I made the stew more than a week ago; I made a lot of stew thinking that my brother was going to be sleeping at my place, he didn't. There are two or three more things of it in the freezer. I'll probably thaw them out next month.

Work keeps building stupid upon stupid. First we stated the bullshit "prepping" of the files at the beginning of the month. Last week, we started "prepping" the DEU files and learned that they "prepping" is based on date, so any DEU rating that was done after September 1st of last year is supposed to be "prepped" for scanning (We still haven't seen the scanners and no one, in our office at least, has been shown how they work. Hell, we were told that there wouldn't even be a monitor for the scanners, so we can't see what we're doing.), even if the rating is in a file that won't be scanned. Last Friday, a guy came in to look around an tell us how we're not up to the proper ADA standards, so some chairs and a table have been removed and we all now have to police the lawyer to make sure they don't block the door or the place where a wheelchair may be at some point in the future and people are not longer allowed to work outside the door, to keep the noise down out there. We're already having problems with this stuff, but it won't be addressed because we're moving downstairs in a few months where there will be a whole new set of problems that won't be addressed because we're only staying there for a few months because the remodel will be done and we'll be back up here with a whole new set of problems that we'll have to work out to go along with the problems that aren't being addressed now.

I've been walking at lunch, when it hasn't been raining. I just go around the corner, past the post office, and stay on that sidewalk, by a hospital, for a half hour before turning on the next block and the next, which bring me right back to the road this building is on. It's not an exciting or interesting walk, but it's not about being exciting or interesting, it's about getting away from the place I work physically since I haven't been able to do it mentally on my lunch hour. myPod plays random music on the walk and I try to focus on that.

In nine days I'm going to Cowtown for a long weekend. Hopefully my car won't break so I can actually have good time rather than being Mr. Grump the whole time.

So very, very tired...

999

I've once again fallen into bored mode. There's work in my basket that I could be looking though, but tomorrow I'm supposed to take some time training the new SLT on how we process the mail we get each day, which means that I need mail for him to process, and I don't want to process the mail now only to have to show him how to do it tomorrow only to do it for myself again after he's through. The stupidest thing about this training that that he'll never have to do the work that I do. SLTs work for the judges. SLTs do what, in other places, legal secretaries do. SLTs never do the work that I do unless one of us clerks royally fucks up. I'm only going to be working with him for an hour, but it'll be a very wasted hour. It'll be especially wasted because we're not working together until 10:30. My first two hours will be spent pretending to work, but not actually working so he can try and do my work.

Truly, stupidity should be more appreciated. If it was, then sycophants would be able to tell the truth, and it seems to me that more truth is needed in this world.

I'm not sure what else to write right now. I'm sick of writing about work, just sick of work. I don't know if this long weekend will charge my batteries, but it will be nice not being here for a few days.

In the past few months, I've discovered the fun of Stargate: Atlantis. The channel that it's on showed Farscape last year and changed over to this show at the beginning of the season. At first I was upset, but I was also lazy and bored, so I watched the episode. It was fun and it made me laugh. It's not great, but sometimes science fiction doesn't need to be great, just whimsical. I really don't like the character of Ronon; he's like a weaker version of Tyr from Andromeda. (Yes, I can tell the differences in their back story and other ways, but every time Ronon appears on screen I think of how much better Tyr was right from the start while I've seen Ronon each week since September and I still think he's boring.) Still, the occasional appearance by Robert Picardo balances Ronon out. Besides, sometimes you just need a show that features an ancient, floating city with a driving range into the ocean, right?

Distractions Abound

Stupidity, that I don't wish to write about, melted my brain this morning. Still it made me wonder why I didn't try to take all of next week off instead of the two days supplied. Thursday can not come soon enough.

Yesterday, Blogger blocked comments I wrote on some other people's blogs. I didn't know that until this morning. I didn't rewrite any, though, due to the stupidity mentioned above.

Been spending a lot of time, this afternoon, playing this Something*Positive archives. I'm pretty close to finishing 2005.

Between comics, I also rated things at Amazon to "improve my recommendations." So far, it's not suggested anything exciting and new to me, but it's another good time waster.

Be well.

Yesterday and Today

In just a little over eight days, I'll be on my way up to Cowtown for Thanksgiving. The best thing about that trip will be the being away from here. Sure, visiting with family and (hopefully) friends will be great and so will eating too much yummy food, but what I'm really looking forward to is not being in this general area anymore.

I don't think this is a horrible place, it's not. Lots of people love it here, but I don't. I'm not sure what it is, it's just not a comfortable fit, for me. I felt more comfortable living in a (semi-)crap hole in Cowcity.

What am I trying to say here today? I'm not sure. I'm just tired. I haven't been on an interview since early August (Or did I have one in September?) because of my car and gas and going to something like eleven interviews and not being hired and only being called back for two of them and only getting letters for about five of them.

I've been all over that crap before though. And maybe it's not even about the crap. Maybe it's about needing to set my sights higher than me just wanting to live and work somewhere else. But that all I really want right now. I don't expect to be jumped up a pay grade or suddenly be put in an office with actual responsibilities, that's not going to happen because I don't have the experience. I can do my job, though, and I can do it pretty quickly and accurately. I can learn how to do other things, too, if that's what the job requires.

---

(I got this far yesterday evening and then got distracted by work stuff. It was a stupid survey about a stupid program that still hasn't been completed, but they want to know what we all think about how they've done so far. The trouble was, it wouldn't really allow me to be thoughtful in my honesty. Several of the questions supplied an "other" choice and then a one line box to explain that "other." However, they little box only allowed for 40 characters, including spaces. 40 characters is not much space to write / The space between the letter "e" and the slash would be character 41 in the sentence I was trying to write. It was just really, really annoying.

The thing that really got me, though, was that they wanted us to rank, from best to worst, the portions of this so called "roadshow" they did for us a couple of months ago. The "roadshow" was a total waste of time, since the people in charge still hadn't made many decisions about the new system. Everything they told us was followed with a "We're still not sure if that's how it'll be." or a "But it's probably going to change a lot between now and when we implement the news system." So I tried to leave that section blank. The survey wouldn't go forward without that question being filled in. I filled my sort of answers, but I decided to write an e-mail to the people in charge to tell them that it wasn't an honest answer and if they're actually looking for well thought out feedback they need to allow more that 40 characters. I clicked on the e-mail link provided on the survey and when I sent my e-mail off I got this back:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: Survey
Sent: 11/13/2007 4:55 PM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

... on 11/13/2007 4:55 PM
The message reached the recipient's e-mail system, but delivery was refused. Attempt to resend the message. If it still fails, contact your system administrator.

I resent the letter immediately and got the same letter. I sent it again this morning and got the same response. For some odd reason, I don't think they actually care about the opinions of the people who will have to actually use this new system.

Nice of them.)

Bang, Zoom

On Sunday, I did my laundry, but didn't want to go shopping or head back to my place right away. I drove around a bit and eventually ended up near the "indie" theater in town. Since I was in time to go to their early shows (Friday through Monday they have shows that start at about 10:30 AM, which is great for an early riser, like me), my brain went "What the hell?" and I parked the car and went to see what was playing.

My first thought was Lars and the Real Girl because it looks kind of funny and weird and I wasn't really interested in the others that I were up there.

Then I saw the last title, In the Shadow of the Moon. I read the little blurb about it the surviving members of the Apollo program talking about going to the moon. I knew I had to see this film.

I'm not going to go into detail about the movie. I liked it, a lot. I liked how most of the words spoken were by the former astronauts. I felt excited when Kennedy called for man to walk on the moon before 1970. I held my breath a bit when Apollo 8 came around the moon to film the first seen earthrise. I got chills when they showed the footage of Eagle landing and Armstrong stepping onto the surface. I got more chills when they went through the Apollo 13 mission. And I was a bit giddy when the men talked about being on the surface of the moon, talking about its desert like beauty. It's a really good movie.

On the drive back to my apartment, I got to thinking about landing on the moon and how it must have felt to the people of the time.

To the generation before, the people who lived and fought through WWII, traveling to and landing on the moon must have seemed like fiction. They must have thought it the politicians posturing to convince the world the US wasn't losing the space race to the USSR. They probably didn't believe it would happen.

To the generation who achieved the moon landing, those born in the late thirties and possibly saw some time in Korea, it was a challenge to be met. They may have though failure was possible, but it wasn't an option. The moon was their target, all they needed was the proper weapon to hit that target. And they succeeded. They made it to the moon.

The generation who were kids while men were flying and landing on the moon saw it as normal. It was cool, yeah, but it was something that had been done before and doing it again was no big deal. Still, it opened the universe to them. They dreamed of traveling to Mars, Venus, and Jupiter and maybe even settling there. They eventually send off probe to send back information that we could use when we were ready to travel greater distances.

For my generation and the others, who were born years after the last moon landing in 1972, it's become a story. Sometimes this story is even told in a when-I-was-your-age way by the people who lived through it, like we, who didn't, who couldn't, don't want to have people traveling to the moon or Mars, or Venus, or beyond. It wasn't our choice to stop that sort of mission. We weren't the ones who decided that more weapons were the right way to show up the USSR. (Which, apparently, it was, seeing how the USSR was bankrupt by the time I was 10.) We were stuck with what's been left over for us.

And, unfortunately, as the my generation approaches the age to start taking some control over governments, we're being left with fear of the things that are found on Earth instead of having a sense of wonder about the solar system and what's beyond. When we come completely into power, we'll probably be so stuck in the fear and our eyes will have trouble looking any higher than the horizon, which is horrible.

I doubt humans will walk on the moon in my life time. I hope that it'll happen within the lifetime of my generation's children and grandchildren, but I'm afraid that it won't.

God, I wish the people of this world were more into improving things for everyone instead of worrying about the movements of bit of paper.