Sancta Walpurgis, ora pro nobis...

The Corporate World has become exactly like the Church. Meaningful activities which once served a valid purpose have been replaced with empty ritual which only serves to take up valuable time away from critical activities.

I once had a very good director, and I remember one of the most valuable principles he would always try to pass on to his direct reports. He would say, "Look, guys, if your manager tells you to do something, or you see a procedure that's always been followed, but you don't see a valid reason or a benefit to it, say so! Don't just obey blindly, question things! Ask, of what value is this? If it doesn't make any sense, don't do it! If someone insists you do it, escalate to me!"

Once people realized that he was serious, and started applying this, the change was dramatic. A lot of pointless activities were simply dropped. A couple of pointless managers who wouldn't get with the program were also dropped, to no one's regret. Our organization became stronger as a result, and for quite some time was used as a model within the company.

Directors, even managers, like that are few and far between these days. The bean counters have taken over. Fully half my day is taken up with meaningless report filling and/or status calls that benefit no one, certainly not the customer who's ultimately paying for our time, and certainly not the company who in theory is in it to make a buck.

Every day there are more and more finance types and similar bean counters, and less and less real workers. Real workers being those that do the work the company gets paid for. And the real workers are those whose jobs are at risk, of course. I wonder what the bean counters will do when all the workers are gone. Will they even notice? I've seen accounts handled by this company where staff is virtually nil. The systems continue working because we're lucky enough that nothing fails. We'll continue bilking, sorry, I meant billing, the customer as if we had a full complement of folks until someone notices. Conceivably, the bean counters might get away with doing this everywhere. For a while, at any rate.

I'm beyond caring, though. Screw them all. I'm fairly confident that I have other viable alternatives lines up, so let this implode.

I'd barely fallen asleep last night (in front of the TV, so I'd have had to get up anyway), when my pager went off. I was tired as all hell, too, but I got up. One of the kids who lives near me jumped out of the darkness as I was reaching my car, still half asleep, mumbling something about how he forgot where he parked his car and could I give him a ride to the Firehouse. This in a parking lot consisting of the two sides of an overwide street, with maybe 20 cars, all told. After laughing a bit, I motioned him into the front passenger seat and took off. I keep my gear in the car these days, so I let him off at the front door, and parked out back, hopping into my pants as I walked to the station.

Quite a lot of us made the call, too, considering that we'd been doing drill earlier in the evening and everyone was dead tired. The call was for some old harridan who'd left her gas on, which had tripped the CO₂ alarm, which had sent us all scrambling out into the night. Good thing, too, as she was unconscious by the time we got there. The EMT crew took her out and tended to her, while we put on air tanks and masks, and went in to turn the gas off, make sure no deadites or similarly incapacitated creatures were about, and determine there was no fire hazard any longer. That takes a while, especially in such a messy, cluttered house. and especially when an air tank only lasts for 15 to 20 minutes.

It was good practice, though, so I'm glad the old biddy decided to play tricks with her gas. According to my Assistant Chief, we do this at her house every so many months. She's a regular customer.

It never ceases to amaze me how awe-inspiring stupidity can be. I often take it for granted that others are able to match me one on one at most things I do. Not that I have a low opinion of my abilities, quite the contrary. The thing is, I rarely exert myself to the utmost. I've almost always been happy to go the path of least effort. If 17psi is enough to crack someone's elbow, why exert 18psi? The only exception to this rule is when I'm trying to impress someone. That mainly happens at work, and then only in companies where such an effort is noted and rewarded. That is to say, not in the company I currently work for.

Anyway, about a month back I was given another account on top of the one I was handling already. I had about 3 days advance warning of this and only a couple of hours of time with the outgoing manager in order to understand what the hell it was I was supposed to do. This was a temporary assignment, as the account was transitoning over to another outsourcing company, who had underbid us when the contract came up for renewal.

About the only significant admin-type thing I had to do was that every morning I'd receive around 5 or 6 reports via email, containing statuses one on group of servers or another. I was given a spreadsheet with an equal number of tables in it, where I would have to take inormation from the emails, and consolidate it into the master spreadsheet. This spreadsheet has around 400 lines. And I had all of 20 minutes each day between when I received the emails and the time I had to have sent the file out to a distribution list, as I would then have to join a call and talk about the contents of said file. Daunting, the first day. After doing it once, though, I identified the timesavers I could use, which my predecessor probably used, too. Common sense, all of them. From the second day onwards, it started taking me 5 to 10 minutes, at most, to prepare the file and send it out. And bear in mind that the instructions given me on how to do this took less than 1/2 an hour. This was considered a trivial part of my responsibilities.

The other company took over this function as of today. We spent 2 hours on the phone on Friday, prepping the new guy on what he had to do. From the noises he made, he was copying verbatim everything I was saying. Which would never work, by the way, as the needs change every day. I told him this. Didn't seem to sink in, though.

As expected, he made a full mess of it today. So we spent another hour going through it. From what I could hear of his thought process, as he is one of those folks unable to think without vocalizing, I'm pretty sure tomorrow's going to be about the same. I think the customer's in for a rude awakening, when they realize that cheaper definitely isn't better.

And I thought my company had cornered the market on stupid people. Live and learn.

Equilibrium, as I've often stated, is a condition that haunts me. I usually have to perform very complicated spells when I don't want to be waylaid by this old Principle. And I do this, rigurously, before initiating any significant endeavor.

I cannot perform such spells every day, though. I must conserve my power for those times when I really need it. What this means is that every so often, instead of me initiating an endeavor, you might say an endeavor initiates me. It is in moments like those that I am most vulnerable to Equilibrium, which thankfully does not often work to my detriment. Something good happening to me might be offset by an equal but opposite event in a friend's life, for example.

This happened today, when out of the blue I was called by a former manager. I'm being considered for two positions. One I rejected immediately for reasons I won't go into here, but suffice it to say that it was clear to me that I was being offered a position a good friend of mine thinks is his, and it was equally clear that this friend will not be getting an offer on it. That wasn't why I rejected it, by the way. Friends are friends, but I will not let such considerations get in my way. He won't get the offer regardless of my answer on it. I was simply not interested for other, personal reasons.

The other job offer was suitable, though. Oh, and it wasn't exactly a formal job offer. More like sounding me out to see if I'm interested before my contact makes any efforts on my behalf. I indicated I'd love to have the job, so I should be getting a formal offer plus some other conditions by next week.

I so look forward to telling my current employer and customer to go f*ck themselves.

I will make a good sacrifice this Walpurgisnacht, as a token of my gratitude towards the Gods, regardless of how events fall. The mere anticipation of mayhem is enough to make my day.

I grow weary of doing so many good deeds. I think I will do something really evil and in character, just to get it out of my system.

I used to be quite an avid comic book collector. I think I was one of the first on the planet to recognize the artistic potential of this medium. And truly, some few comic books are right up there, on a par with renowned masterpieces.

Next time I'm rich* I'll build up a massive comic book collection. For the time being, I do keep up subscriptions to a very few titles, more from nostalgia than anything else. I also regularly read a newsletter or two on the comic book industry, just to get a feel for what's going on.

As such, I saw that Marvel Comics is again proving why they are at the vanguard of the industry. They are not afraid to take risks nor to embrace new technology. While their closest rival did something like this first, they quickly shut the program down when someone put their offering online. What they did was offer a preview of complete upcoming books through some of the specialty stores. Apparently, they didn't suppose that one or more of the stores would place their preview online. Despite an increase in orders for the title previewed, they got panicky and stopped any further previews from coming out, online or otherwise.

Marvel seems to have taken note, realized how stupid DC was, and copied a good idea. Only they took it to its natural conclusion and are allowing full online access.

Here's Daredevil: Father #1 for anyone interested.

*I've been filthy rich, and I've been dirt poor. And with infinite time ahead of me, I'll probably be both again, many, many times. For the most, I've been somewhere in between the two extremes. Life being cyclic, and all, one does get used to these swings and accepts them. I've usually been able to be happy and satisfied, regardless of my immediate financial situation. I've never understood people who are miserable. Especially many I've met who lean more towards the filthy rich extreme. It seems for some, the more they have, the less satisfied they are. Contrariwise, I've often been fêted by people who clearly have nothing to spare, and these have been amongst the happiest and most generous folks I've ever crossed paths with.

420!

There are many companies, and even entire industries, that have grown complacent in the fact that they offer services or products that everyone just has to use. They take that as an excuse to offer either terrible service or simply treat their customers like dirt.

I've decided to make an example of one.

No, can't say anything more here. That would be stupid, now, wouldn't it?

An article in Newsweek states that Iraqi soldiers are refusing to fire against their countrymen in complete disregard of U.S. orders. Basically, the Iraqi soldiers are being asked to fight against rebels and other seditious elements currently making the U.S.'s position a nightmare.

It seems that these outrageous, unreasonable miscreants have some sort of qualms against firing on their fellows!

Well, this was an honest mistake made by President Bush and those coordinating the war in Iraq.

Please note for the future, guys, that not all occupied people behave like the French. And, don't worry, anyone could have made the same mistake.

Okay, then.... Purportedly taken from a magazine targeted at senior citizens.

Important Advice to Retirees:

"Removing Roadkill from the Highway

Tempting as it may be, don’t do it yourself.
Call your local department of transportation.
Some states hire a local contractor, who gets paid by the carcass.
So if you do it, you’re taking food off his plate… Uh, indirectly.”


(AARP Magazine, 2004)

I attended a Japanese event yesterday, in full battle regalia. I had a blast. I've always been in love with the Japanese culture in general, despite being very conscious of its shortcomings which have cost the Empire of the Rising Sun so much in the past.

There were some people who travelled very far and very long to be there yesterday. A shame they didn't have a better turnout. I was honored highly by one old woman, considered a National Treasure by the Japanese govt, who presented me with one of her calligraphies.

Overall, I was treated as if I were one of them, which coming from native Japanese is both rare and a signal honor.

Stuffing myself with sushi was also appreciated.

Happy Birthday, Viejita Linda...

I was in a hurry this morning, or I'd have taken a picture. While driving to work down 206 I saw a furry piece of roadkill right on the median line. It looked to have been a weasel or something of that same family. The funny thing was, though, that there was this big, orange, squarish bucket lying a few inches ahead of it. Gods know why.

The only thing that makes any sense to me is that this weasel was paying his way through law school by running errands and got hit while on the job. Would have been a nice picture, too...

No time to write.. Sorry...

Gods! You can tell that, symbolically speaking, the slave god has arisen again. What a trying day this has been!

The symbolic death of the Christian God is always a harbinger of good things. This time around, it's job offers. Three distinct and arguably good ones. I'm on the verge of actually cracking a smile.

I usually drive at very high speeds. My senses are good enough that I almost always see a cop before he sees me or his radar can get a good fix. By the time I impinge upon their consciousness, I've managed to slow down to an acceptable, even if still slightly illegal, speed.

Last night I was coming home from the Emergency Response Center, which is the place where all the county's 911 calls go to for dispatch, and the road being practically empty I was doing more than 80mph almost as soon as I took to the highway and steadily picking up more speed. Now, my saving virtue is that even if I go at high speeds, I have the reflexes to back it up and I keep my car in very good repair. It also helps that I know the roads where I'm likely to be on like the palm of my hand.

So, there I was doing somewhere between 80 and 90mph, on a 2 lane highway with a speed limit of 60mph, I think, when 2 cars overtook me and tore past. They must've been doing 100, easy. There's a particular curve on a ramp that dumps the highway I was on into the Interstate that's pretty sharp. It was on this curve that my young firefighter buddy from a couple of weeks back met with his untimely demise. And he should have really known better, as we regularly hear about the people they scrape off that piece of road from the neighboring Fire Company that has that stretch under their jurisdiction. I normally take this curve at 60mph, but that little voice inside my head convinced me to take it even slower this time around. Sure enough, one of the cars had totalled itself against the guardrail a few seconds before I got there. A bunch of kids were piling out of both cars, the second one having stopped a bit farther up the ramp, with its blinkers on. I pulled over ahead of that one and got out.

I had some shit go down at the office earlier in the evening and I'd killed my cellphone battery on a long conference call, so I had no way of calling. On the other hand, I knew that a bunch of my fellow firefighters had also come out of the Emergency Response Center right behind me, and some of them should be coming around the curve at any time. The little voice inside my head then suggested I don my firefighter jacket with all the reflective patches, and the helmet, and wave down cars coming into the curve before they piled up on the totalled car already there. When I'm tired, that little voice inside my head is very good at taking over and making sure I don't miss anything. I don't understand how I got along before I cast the spell that trapped that particular demon inside my noggin... But I digress. I'm sure you don't care about that...

I looked over the 8 or so kids and made sure none were hurt. I then got a cellphone off one of them and called 911 to report the whole thing. They thanked me and said the state troopers were on their way. Right about then 2 more cars pulled up ahead mine, and some of my buddies got out asking if I was okay. I explained the whole thing, and since one of them had flares in his car, we set them up well behind the crash and started controlling traffic in a more serious fashion. By the time the Staties arrived, we had everything set and all they were needed for was to write up the ticket and get the car towed, which they did.

My buddies and I said goodbye to the Staties, and to the still-in-shock kiddies, and went home.

Being a force for order instead of chaos is a strange thing for me, but I thoroughly enjoy it. Especially the telling people what to do part. LOL Not that I've given up chaos, or even considered it. Not at all.

Of Death, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Back in 1776, a group of disgruntled colonials decided they'd be better off without a King who governed them from across the ocean, and without them having any say at all on what decisions were made by this King. All in all, that has proven to have been a very good idea, and has produced much good throughout the ensuing 2 centuries and change. The problem I'm writing about stems from a document these aforementioned colonials produced back in 1776, titled the Declaration of Independence. I'm sure many of my readers have heard of this document. I'm equally sure only a very few of them have actually read it, except for the cursory reading of it they might have had back in school.

One famous sentence from this document has been perverted of late, and on this it is that I will touch. The sentence goes as follows:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Let me dissect that sentence and discuss its pertinent parts...

1. All men are created equal

Nonsense. Patently false. Trying to apply this literally has generated great evil across the land. No two individuals are or have ever been equal in any way. Our forefathers meant this statement as a promise that whatever laws applied to one man would also apply to all other men. And even that had its exceptions whenever a need arose that might go counter to it. Their beef at the time was with the King in particular and the English in general. These colonials did not accept (and rightly so) that the King was special in any way except for the fact that he was a monarch, which was an accident of birth. Nor did they accept that special treatment be given to those born in England over those born in the colonies, and such was the case as regards taxation and some other thorns the crown had imposed on the colonies, all designed to benefit the English over the Colonials.

These colonials were not stupid, and they could clearly see that X person had more or less abilities than Y person. And that baby A had been born with a crippling disease not evidenced by baby B. Therefore, they were never so stupid as to pretend that their equality statement was literally true.

Yet our court system, lobby groups and other assorted mentally defectives are trying to force literal equality upon everyone. What they are achieving is to reduce our options to the lowest common denominator. Take our school system. It has been dumbed down to the point where the slowest, dullest children are able to pass. And even when that's not enough, then laws are passed to make sure that promotion to the next grade is automatic. The only achievement required is for the child to have a birthday and be a year older. The obvious solution, that different children learn at different rates and that some require special help that should be provided them, but not at the cost of either holding back more advanced kids must not be uttered. That would violate the equality clause.

And that's just one example of many. The worst part is that the way they're applying their policies is a disservice to both the slow kids as well as the fast ones. Both are mistreated for the sake of a misapplied ideal.

2. ...certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life...

This is one of the most laughable pieces of hyperbole I've ever seen. You have an unalienable right to life???? When the hell did that happen? I'm sure this will be a comfort to all the dead people out there, who can now promptly come back to life. Someone please go tell them! And do you have to be a citizen of the United states for this to cover you? If not, I'm sure thousands of dead Iraqis will be eternally grateful right now. Not to mention every single prisoner in our jail system currently on Death Row.

The reality of it, of course, is that the opposite applies. You all have the right to die, and even that's being contested by our court system, as Dr. Kevorkian found to his great regret.

This fragment has caused so much harm to our legal system and put so many brakes on progress that thank Gods the Middle Ages had ended by the time this sentence was written, if not, we'd still be in them!

Let's look at a classic example...

I saw on the news last night that a certain medical product had been discovered to cause harm to 1 in so many tens of thousands of users. Or maybe 1 in so many hundreds of thousands, I wasn't paying all that much attention to the newscritter. Want me to tell you what's going to happen next? Some idiot and his sleazy lawyer will sue over this. The FDA will step in and try to mandate genetics, or chance, or whatever the problem turns out to have been. The end result will be that a) the product will be taken off the market or b) its price will be that much higher to compensate the makers for their extra cost in lawsuits and what not. It will then be that much more difficult for people needing it to acquire it, either because it will be illegal here, or because it might become too expensive for them. All because someone thought that people had an unalienable right to life which must be protected.

The truth of the matter is that if you grab a million people randomly, and expose them to any random substance you care to try, say mint, you're going to find a small, insignificant percentage of them have an adverse reaction. Some may even *gasp* die! While it would suck big time to be one of the ones that died, and slightly less to have a loved one die, this is just a fact of life. On the other hand, the medicine that killed the 1 in a million user was probably helping to keep the other 999,999 users alive or making their lives measurably better. Don't the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

Yet we have a whole industry of bloodsucking lawyers in place to benefit over this perfidious fragment!

3. ..., Liberty

Ha! Liberty has never been an unalienable right and never will be. That was the whole purpose behind the colonial's independence movement, the fight for liberty. If it were an unalienable right they wouldn't have needed to fight for it, now, would they? And furthermore, it's another truism, as Thomas Jefferson said, that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure."

Every now and then we'll be forced to fight for our liberty. Sometimes it will be against an external enemy, such as in 1776 against England, or now against Terrorism. At other times, we'll face an internal enemy, such as the Confederate states in the Civil War, or Kerry and the Dems today (that last was me kidding, folks, so don't get your panties in a wad, although I do consider Kerry to be a threat, just not one to spill blood over). The day we don't fight for our liberty when we see it threatened is the day we'll lose it. Thing is, this has already happened. We've seen our liberties eroding year after year and I don't see a lot of people giving a damn. Voter apathy is at an all time high. People give up their rights slowly but surely in the name of safety, comfort, short-term benefits or any of a myriad little gods that people have enshrined in Liberty's place. Few make a stand, and those are usually punished as non-conformists.

If our forefathers executed their unalienable right to life right now and took a look at us, they'd decide to die again immediately.

4. ...and the pursuit of Happiness

Well, golly! This is the only piece I find no fault with. Note that no one's guaranteeing happiness. Just your right to pursue it. Go ahead. Pursue away. But don't fuck with me.

Many people have asked me, "Nicholas, we'd love to browse the internet while we're offline, as that would save us thousands a year on connection costs, as well as freeing up a line for other use. Can you help?"

It took me a while, folks, but I've done it. This link should download the internet to your hard drive. Enjoy!

Today is Passover, people tell me. It's a Jewish festival. I wondered out loud if Israel would be celebrating it by initiating some terrorist action against the Palestinians and received looks of outrage in return. How dare I malign the poor people of Israel? How dare I attribute such actions to the Jews?

Oddly enough, I thought it would have been in keeping with their heritage. Doesn't Passover commemorate the fact that God murdered all the firstborn male childs of the Egyptians, but passed over the Jewish households? What do you call it when someone targets a group of innocents with violence in the hopes of making a government change its policies? That wouldn't be terrorism, now, would it? I thought so...

And don't get me wrong, I consider the Palestinians terrorists as well. I like calling a spade a spade. If we all admit that both sides are dirty terrorists that must be brought to heel, maybe we can make some progress in the Middle East.

This week is Easter. It is a very magickal time, mainly because of the symbolism granted to this season by the Christian Church. It has always been a highly amusing time to me, as well, due to the irony of the situation. The Christian Church spent many a long year in the past trying to erradicate what they call Black Magic. At the same time they institute a holiday commemorating the Death of their god. In this way they inadvertently feed that which they profess to despise. I say profess only, because many a mage has hid behind the priest's frock both now and in the past, even unto the highest offices.

All religions are a sham, but the symbols themselves are imbued with very real power. On Holy Friday the Christian God dies, and symbolically, the Powers of Darkness have absolute dominion until the symbolic rebirth of the Christian god.

A time for High Magick, it is. Rivaled only by our other High Holiday, which falls at the end of this month.

Life is very weird... I am increasingly being drawn to the belief that this is all just a game or a simulation running on someone's PC. Things just get more and more bizarre each time you complete a level. So far, that's the only theory that fully covers and explains what I experience...