Hmmm... Haloscan released a new feature called Trackback. Trackback is just a way to link posts between blogs. Should make for interesting networking, especially as antagonistic blogmeisters start Trackbacking the shit out of each other. Does the Vatican have a blog yet, I wonder?

Apparently, some gay activist has been feeding the Central Park penguins some of Monsanto's products. It's long been bandied about on numerous email chain letters that Monsanto's products cause cancer, sterility, impotence, stupidity, rabid Christianism and a host of other maladies. Is it too much of a stretch to think they can also be used to induce homosexuality?

The story states that 2 male chinstrap penguins in the Central Park Zoo in NYC had an "relationship" going on between them. To the point that they acquired an egg shaped rock and trid to incubate it. Availability of ample females of the species did nothing to deter these unnatural penguins from buggering each other. Someone at the zoo finally decided to give them a real penguin egg to see what they'd do with it. Well, they brought it to term and proceeded to raise the chick, which has been given a cutesy name which escapes me at the moment, Penga, Tenga, something like that. The wits I listen to every morning on the radio where pointing out that despite being raised by gay penguins, the chick had turned out to be heterosexual, thus laying to rest the argument that adopted children raised by gays will turn out gay. For penguins, at any rate.

Now, as most of the people against gays and gay marriage are so quick to point out, homosexuality is unnatural and goes against God's will. I take that to mean that homosexuality would not exist in the animal kingdom unless induced by some manmade stratagem, right? Everybody with me so far?

Ergo, any homosexual animals we do find must have been made to act that way by something. That something just has to be Nutrasweet or some other Monsanto product.

I'd certainly like to see Mayor Bloomberg marry the two penguins. Why should San Francisco hog all the glory?

Driving across the countryside, around the area where I live, I stumbled upon the damndest thing. The closest I can come to describe it is like a sort of eBay, only without the online part.

It was a chamber filled with people, all of whom had numbers written on cards held in their hands, or visible in their shirt pockets. These numbers were, I'd say, analogous to eBay ids. A person on a podium near the front of the chamber would instruct some workers to bring forward items, mostly furniture and antiques, from the back in order that the people with numbers could take a look at them. He'd then describe the item and shout out a starting price, keeping up a rapid patter the whole time. The people with numbers, me among them by that point, would then signal him if we wished to bid the amount he was mentioning right then. He'd proceed to acknowledge the bid, raise it slightly and try to get someone else to bid at the higher price. After a certain amount of time had passed with no new bids, the item was adjudicated to the last person to have bid successfully.

I managed to walk away with some fantastic items, easily worth hundreds, for less than 20 dollars for all of them. I wonder if the eBay people have realized that the business model they use is perfectly valid even without the use of a computer and an internet connection. Did they think to patent it? Are these people, who are calling themselves auctioneers, violating or infringing on eBay's patent?

It all boggles the mind...

My corporate email's working again. Unfortunately. These past 2 days without work email have been like a vacation. None of the morons in my company can ever be bothered to pick up the phone to ask for something, so besides my minimal day to day stuff I've been basically twiddling my thumbs. All the requests for reports, information, meetings and the like, all urgent and requiring immediate attention, simply piled up in my email and I am just now starting to read them all. 99% of them will go unanswered, since there's no point in responding 3 days late to an email whose subject was: URGENT!!!! Immediate Response required (by close of business Monday).

My company's leaders deified email some time ago, to the point where I have seen, many times, situations like the following:

1. An email sent requesting something. A followup email sent 10 minutes later asking "what's taking so long with the reply to the first email?"
2. A meeting invitation from X person sent out by email at 8pm ET for a meeting to be held that same night, at 8:30pm ET. X's administrative assistant starting to call the attendees at 8:45pm ET, wondering why no one's joined and warning that X is very pissed off at the poor attendance.
3. People who are in an office right next to mine, and whose stomach rumblings I can hear perfectly through the drywall separating us as lunch time grows nearer, who will send me an email to ask whatever idiotic one line question strikes their fancy at the time, only to holler the question 2 minutes later, or simply walk in and ask it, when the reply isn't immediate.

When did all these morons decide that email is not only instantaneous, but also works via telepathy, thus not requiring the recipient to be in front of his PC in order to read it?

I've been having the utmost joy telling everyone that I can't respond or do anything about their problems because my email is kaput. I've also suggested to anyone that asks that we outsource our email infrastructure to Hotmail or Yahoo. Thankfully, I only use my work email for work related stuff, so I'm still getting the emails I'm really interested in, which are from my buddies, acquaintances and the odd newsletter I patronize.

A Helpdesk critter called me back today, and after I quickly proved to him that a) it wasn't a network issue and b) I wasn't like the rest of the company and actually knew what I was talking about, he said he'd escalate it as a top priority to the Email Group. He did warn me that there were 32 Top Priority tickets ahead of mine. I guess mine isn't the only inbox they screwed up in what was supposed to have been an upgrade of some sort.

I am so ashamed of working for my employer that I'd feel less embarrassed saying I worked for the Dean Campaign... UGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!

Email at the company is down. Seems to be affecting most of my co-workers. Not all, though, since we do have different servers. Still, you'd think a company that's supposed to be one of the leaders in IT services could manage to keep all of their email up and running most of the time, wouldn't you?

It's the equivalent of having the Police Station burglarized regularly.

I guess I'd better go home and rest. Can't work without email... LOL

Nothing pisses me off so much as having to field stupid and/or pointless questions. After giving it some thought, I guess that what pisses me off is that I don't understand why the fuck someone would ask a question like that, and I come to one of the following conclusions:

a) You're stupid.
b) You think I'm stupid.
c) There is a point to your question, but it's beyond me.

I don't see any other possible reasons, and all of the above are reason enough for me to fly off the handle. If it's the first one, then you're wasting my time by making me associate with you, even if it's for a short time. The second is an obvious insult, and I've never taken kindly to those. And the last one probably offends me worse than the others because it is my firm belief that I can understand anything based on logic, and the slight chance that I can't will just ruin my day, even if I know it's not true.

And there you have it. If someone wants to compile a reference manual on how to get along with me, make sure the above figures prominently in it.

I used to have a club, about 25 years ago, give or take a year or two. Its acronym was ICOES and besides me, it had only one other member. Its mission was to serve as a framework for us to practice the straight con. Our victims were mainly people who thought they were conning us. I say mainly because we weren't all that fastidious, and if we saw the opportunity to make a quick buck, we really wouldn't let a lot stand in our way. Still, I believe we never conned anyone who didnt deserve it, and when we did do business with someone who wasn't trying to take us, we often gave fair value for what we received. At one point we were doing so well, that we instituted dues, and had a proper treasury. The funds were used solely at our discretion for whatever we felt like using them for. Mostly booze, although solid food was sometimes acquired, too.

My co-founder and I drifted apart some 10 years later, but I continued using ICOES, even if I never refered to it by name anymore. It was just a sort of underlying life system I had. Nowadays I hold a legitimate job, but the straight con is just beneath the surface of me, at all times. I had the opportunity to have dinner with my fellow ICOES member some 3 years ago, when we happened to be in the same city. I presented him with a bill for 15 years of monthly dues, too. He got me on a technicality, though, since one of our bylaws stated that we couldn't con a fellow ICOES member. Would have been neat to collect that money...

I've been thinking of fully reviving ICOES. The percentage of gullible people seems to be on the increase. Why not take advantage of that? After all, someone has to be responding and sending money to the Nigerian Scammers, right? Otherwise, they'd have stopped sending those emails a long, long time ago.

My day job is as an IT Manager in charge of making sure that a dozen different systems supported by an even greater number of teams are all interconnected and working properly. This job would be reasonably easy and straightforward if it weren't for:

a) The customer for which I do this is the stingiest company this side of the Hudson River.
b) The customer for which I do this is clueless and unreasonable.
c) My employer is just a shade less stingy than my customer.
d) My employer is just a shade less clueless and unreasonable than my customer.
e) The many teams which are supposed to be working in harmony, with lots of synergy thrown in for good measure, all behave like separate companies, with conflicting objectives and the clear desire to screw the rest of the teams.
f) The few people who should be protecting my employer from unreasonable/unrealistic demands from the customer are too busy kissing said customer's ass to be effective in their role, with the sole exception being me*.

As a classic example, here's what happened this week. There's a certain simple but manual procedure that has to be executed on the main computer every week to ensure it comes up correctly. Every other account my employer handles has this procedure automated so there's no chance of a mistake. My account still does this manually, the responsibility for executing the procedure falling on the group of Operators that man (and woman) our Data Center, which in turn houses the main computers for most of my employer's customers on the East Coast. Not executing this procedure properly places us (my employer) at risk of having a substantial financial penalty levied against us by the customer. This procedure is screwed up about once a month by the group of Operators simply because being the only one of about 50 main computers that requires it, they'll sometimes either miss it completely or type it in wrong and not notice it didn't execute correctly.

Since my arrival on the account, more than 2 years ago, I have attempted to cajole the Applications team into dedicating the resources required to automate that and a few other risky procedures. It's always put off due to higher priorities. In a meeting today, the senior-most person here, whom I report to dotted-line, insisted that he could not dedicate the resources to getting this done, and that it was up to the Operators to make sure this was done properly. I just laughed. Then I stated my position. Until that gets automated, as we've been requesting for more than 2 years, we just won't accept any complaints about it not being done right. He knows my management doesn't suffer idiocy gladly, so he backed down. But he won't forget I did that to him. One more person to guard my back against.

On a lighter note, I've had 3 people who report to him come into my office after that exchange and congratulate me. It seems they've been trying to get him to authorize this, as well, with identical results so far. I got a history lesson from them, too. This should have been done back when the customer originally outsourced this to us, more than 8 years ago, but the customer wouldn't do it since once outsourced it would become somebody else's problem, and we didn't require them to do it because we were hellbent on getting the contract signed as we usually are. And once signed, we resist spending any money unless we're recouping it, which we won't. Except by avoiding penalties, but that doesn't show up in the books, meaning it's not a factor.

* And I am honestly surprised I've lasted so long here, with my constant habit of pointing out these issues in meetings with both my upper management (as described in item f) and the customer's.

We are all products of our past, that much, I think, no one will dispute. But is it also valid to say we are prisoners of it?

I have a very good friend and teacher who constantly bristles at, as far as I and others who know him can tell, imaginary offenses in almost anything having to do with a particular subject he's very keen on. Oh, he's not imagining the whole situation, he's just perceiving the offenses as implicit in the communications others send out to him regarding this one subject, especially when the communications come from people or organizations that aren't actively aligned with him. He also sees these offenses in the random flow of events, in some cases. He'll detect bad intent in events that really don't seem to have any way of having been premeditated, much less targeted specifically against him. He will then strike out against the perceived threat/offense and attempt to drag in the rest of us. He's not crazy, quite the opposite. In every other aspect, he's a very wise, balanced, thoughtful, well educated and focused individual. Even in this one subject that triggers him off, he's a renowned authority.

To give an analogy, it would be more or less as if I were to espouse keyboards as the supreme data input devices to exclusion of all else. Then someone mentions off hand that a mouse is also useful, in certain cases. If I were my friend, I'd then blast out at this heretic for his affront against keyboards, and make sure all my friends are made aware of this, so they, too, can chime in and say what an idiot this mouse guy is. Everyone else immediately recognizes that both a keyboard and a mouse are necessary devices to have connected to a PC, and that each has its purpose. The one does not exclude or contradict the other. Actually, when used properly, they complement each other. But no one dares even suggest this to me. Mainly because no one considers the Keyboard vs Mouse Debate to have any real importance in the grand scheme of things, so why rile up the Keyboard Maniac?

Those of us that are close to this friend have often wondered what event in the past has caused him to be so touchy on this one subject, but none of us know him all that long. I feel that if we knew what circumstances caused him to adopt this attitude, we might actually prod him towards a change.

Back to my original question, though, I wonder if there is a certain point where people are unable to change what they are, and how they react to the different stimuli that we are presented with daily. I know I have my foibles which are caused by circumstances that happened so long ago that some I don't even recall. The thing is, I still react to situations as dictated by these long ago events. Changing this is a very hard thing to do, and requires a lot of concentration, to make sure one notices and overrides the automatic reaction.

This doesn't apply only to individuals, it also applies to nations. Take the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict that's been going on for so long. Each side retreats further and further into the past to prove that they are the original and rightful owners of the land. They're going so far back that they are really not discussing history anymore, but mere legends and myths. There are so many solutions that might be applied to get them out of the stalemate they've been in for decades, but they're all so committed to their automatic reactions that they are incapable of considering any other option. And each new generation has the old mentality imprinted upon it by the prior one.

Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it. But it's probably also true that those who refuse to reject some of that history will be doomed to never break out of it.

I got a very nifty watch as a gift on Valentine's Day. It's a clip watch which you clip on to one of your belt loops or whatever those things on your pants are called, to hold the belt. It's pretty smart, and has its own little leather slide in pocket thingy to protect it, too. I've never much been one to wear a wristwatch. I used to carry an old pocket watch with chain and all back in the day, but I no longer wear suits regularly, so that's no good. This is the next best thing. I tried looking for a pic of it on the web, but apparently there's none forthcoming. I'll snap a pic of mine later, when I have the time, and post it here for everyone's edification.



Thanks, kid... I'll wear that watch always and think of you.

That's all for today. I'll try and be more interesting, or even scary, tomorrow.

Statistically speaking, and taking into account the way our genes work, there should be far more immortals, or even just extremely long-lived people, among us than there are. By immortal I don't mean someone who cannot die, which is the literal definition of the word, I'm applying it to people who have very efficient immune systems and do not age. Whose biological clocks never run out. Whose telomerase never shortens upon cell division. That leads us to two possible conclusions.

On the one hand, there just might be a whole lot more immortals than we can identify, and they're just very good at keeping a low profile, And this would be understandable, since the ephemerals might be offended enough by seeing someone refuse to age and die, that they'd try and help entropy gain the upper hand.

On the other hand, we could also suppose that nature does produce a statistically normal share of immortals, and they in turn go on to lead significantly longer lives than their contemporaries, but something eventually does them in so that they don't accumulate. This might be some particular disease, specific to our condition. It could even be epidemic in nature, resurfacing every millennium or so and just wiping out all the immortals alive at the time. Or it could be a less virulent disease, not highly contagious at all, but with enough time, you're bound to catch it. Alfred Bester used this idea in a particularly good novel, now that I remember. I wonder if he was on to something... I'm going to look for that book at home and reread it.

On the gripping hand, though, it could just be a matter of all of us sooner or later sinking into despair upon realizing the hopelessness of the human condition, that humans will never progress much beyond savagery. I know I've reached that point several times already, but it's never lasted too long. I've gotten back my 'who gives a damn' attitude and gone on to do ever greater things each time. I could see that if I stayed in that funk for too long, I might do myself in, even if it would probably be by subconsciously walking into a deadly situation, instead of actively terminating myself.

I'l need to think about this. Maybe I can avoid the problem if I am prepared for it, no matter which conclusion turns out to be true.

I saw a sign in the bathroom at the dentist's yesterday. It absolutely blew me away. Luckily, I had a camera in my pocket and was thus able to preserve it for future generations.

I don't know if I really want to patronize a dentist whose employees need to be told this:

I work for people so stupid that I actually feel unclean at the end of the day.

It's interesting. I spend more and more of my time on meetings to go over the numbers, which is my company's way of referring to the budget and our actuals as compared to it. We're missing our numbers big time, so these meetings become exercises on everybody's creativity in how to fudge them before an upcoming meeting with Wall St. where we are to give 4th quarter guidance. You see, if we reveal how bad our real numbers are compared to what we said we'd achieve, the stock would tank.

If we were more productive, we'd probably make the numbers we were supposed to have made, of course.

Does anyone know why we're not more productive?

My theory is that we don't make our numbers because we spend too much time on these stupid calls trying to figure out why we don't make our numbers... That has to be a major drain on productivity...

Well, I'll be damned... So much time having society drill into me the firm belief of equality between whites and blacks... No difference between the two, no, sirree... How I'm a racist if I even hint at any difference...

And now P&G goes and comes out with a shampoo just for colored people... What's next, special seats on buses for them???

This is so weird. I'm torn between several distinct and equally strong urges and/or thoughts...

1. It was great that little Rebeca died. Some creatures should not be allowed to live. The Spartans had it right when they would leave abnormal or weak babies on hilltops. Better an quick death than a long, dragged out, uncomfortable for babe and family, painful existence.
2. God damn! This is neat! When's McFarlane coming out with the action figure? Oh, and McFarlane? Don't forget to make both mouths moveable, just like on the original!
3. I have to become strictly atheist, this so proves God doesn't exist, He would never do something like this!
4. Gotta be more religious, something like this can't be chance, it has to be the work of a God who was very pissed off with the mother or father's behavior!

Well, just to prove that the night is darker just before the dawn, I got some good news today. As usual, my night is everybody else's day, but the analogy holds.

My former employer is cancelling a huge chunk of the contract they have with my current employer. In other words, they're insourcing, or as they call it, repatriating, a lot of the IT work they had outsourced to us some years ago. I no longer have duties on the account that handles my former employer., but I still have lots of friends that continued to work directly for the company. I'm going to be sending some emails and making lots of calls to them in the near future. I'd love to say goodbye to these asswipes and work for a good company once more. And what better company than my former one?

I have got to get one of these for the manor... What a wonderful person this Doctor Gunther Von Hagens must be, to have created something this breathtaking!

BodyWorlds!

Now, far be it from me to dictate how people should behave. For example, despite being rabidly heterosexual, I have no problems with allowing gay people to marry. More power to them. I'd even support their use of parthenogenesis as a reproductive strategy if they can finagle it.

But where I have to draw the line is at websites such as AskMen. When the hell did this become an accepted thing? The site seems to be your typical girlie tips and raves e-magazine, only geared for men. Shades of Dear Abby!

Now, I am very well aware that just like women gossip and compare notes and share recipes, we men have similar activities. Similar in spirit if not in substance. We have been known to email all our buddies and let them know, graphically, that we scored with that babe we'd swore to bed. We share naked pics of our girlfriends with nary a qualm. Hell, I forwarded to all my buddies, and even cc'd Stile of Stile Project fame, pictures of someone's deformed vaginal lips. They belonged to a chick on the net who was apparently smitten with me and decided the best way to my heart was to show how different and unique she was. Right... To steal a line from John Leguizamo, this chick could have been nicknamed Mothra, and would have had no problem grabbing a cootchie lip in each hand, flapping and flying up, up and away...

But let's make it clear, we do not, ever, share 3 tips on how to prevent the guy in the cubicle next to ours from sabotaging our career. We do not read articles on how to know if our girlfriends really love us! The whole site seems to have been something designed with women in mind, until someone got drunk and did a search and replace, substituting the gender word everywhere it appeared.

Someone please tell me it's a satire/joke site...

I have my own priorities and interests and mores. They often conflict with other people's. I've mainly worked under the assumption that since I am the only real person, and all the rest are either mere figments of my imagination, or worse, props, then my way was the proper way. Even on those occasions when I changed my ways due to someone else's teachings, I'd take it to be my inner self animating one of the props for a while in order to make a point to my conscious self. It's called solipsism.

This worldview of mine is as rational and self-consistent as any other 'faith' I have run across. It's more fun than any other, too. And I've looked into all of them, believe me. I might make a serious attempt at trying out Buddhism, but from what I can see of it from the point of view of a non-practitioner, it's nothing more than a faith based on the assumptions I already hold and expressed in the first paragraph of this post, right? The kicker, though, is that its purpose is to wake up.

I think it's time I started to wake up. I've had a good rest, these past aeons, but work awaits Me and God mustn't be late for work. It would set a really bad precedent...

I heard this morning, on the radio station I was listening to (WABC), an opinion on a newsbyte. To wit, they were talking about a Dominican national who died while serving in our armed forces in Iraq. Under discussion was a request to grant this soldier posthumous citizenship.

They mentioned how he died, which appears to have been while guarding a gas station in Iraq. My first thought was the irony of the whole thing. Most latinos killed in gas stations are holding the place up, not guarding it. Yeah, I know, I'm a callous sob. But I just had to say that and get it out of my system before I sprung a leak.

Seriously, now, I don't know why there's any question on it. The guy died for our country, go ahead and grant him posthumous citizenship. It's not only a good way to honor him, but it probably opens up the door to some pretty nice benefits for whatever family he left behind to mourn him. Does anyone think they don't deserve this after losing their son, husband, father, whatever he was to them who died fighting for a country not his own?

Any non-citizen who dies (honorably) while serving the U.S. should automatically get citizenship unless it can be proven that he didn't want it, or his immediate family objects for whatever reason.

Bush is trying to let people into the country willy-nilly for no better reason than to get some latino votes, and someone has a problem with granting a dead dude citizenship? Come on, people... Focus!

The whole bloody goat incident I chronicled last week finally made the news. I told you people! I'd never make up a story that crazy...

Here's a newspaper article regarding the whole thing.

I'm really not into the Super Bowl mania that grips the country yearly, to the exclusion of most everything else. I mean, I enjoy football, I really do. It is a pleasure to watch a good game. But if my team isn't in the Super Bowl (and it rarely ever is) then I don't see much point in watching it, especially if I have anything else remotely interesting to do.

As fate would have it, at around the same time the game started yesterday, I already had a scheduled activity revolving around the finer points of killing people with or without an edged weapon to assist the procedure. Much more interesting, to me, than a game without my favorite team in it.

That's why I didn't watch the game yesterday. After having heard and read all the comments on the half-game show, though, I see I should have at least tried to catch that part of it.

Serves the American people right, though, having some skanky hasbeen of a performer show her boob on Prime Time. I don't know why everyone's making such a big uproar. This country has made it a point of patriotic fervor not to have anything resembling good culture, so why does it surprise anyone that something like this should happen?

After all, somebody decided way ahead of time to have Janet Jackson perform, right? What did they expect? A show highlighting breeding, culture and good manners? We, as a country, need to take a deep breath and decide what it is we want. But just going along with the flow and hoping the results are going to be acceptable isn't going to get us there. Unless there is what we have today, where our values and mores are dictated by the lowest denominator and dropping steadily.