Paperwork · 981 days ago by Dave Polaschek
As I go through the “new hire process” at work, I keep thinking more and more that this is how a pig must feel going through the “sausage making process”. I’ve gotten emails from four different people telling me I have to fill out forms “immediately” or face dire consequences.
I’ve asked each of these people if they could perhaps just provide me with a packet of all the forms so I could sit down with them some evening or weekend in a bar and fill them out all at once, but no, everything is online now, which makes things Oh So Much easier.
Except that none of the emails telling me I have to fill out a form even includes a URL.
I think I liked it better when “Human Resources” was called “personnel” and forms were something that got jammed in filing cabinets. This “process” is rapidly turning me into a luddite.
sunrises · 1015 days ago by Dave Polaschek
This morning, as I was driving to work, there was a beautiful sunrise. There was a band of clouds on the eastern horizon, with clear skies beyond and behind them, and as I left for work, the sun was reflecting off the bottoms of the clouds and making some of the most intense reds and pinks I’ve seen in a long time.
Unfortunately, I spent the magical moments trying to figure out a good vantage point between home and work for taking a picture of the natural beauty, and by the time I’d gotten to one, the colors had faded as the sun peeked over the horizon.
I need to work harder on remembering that even if I can’t capture such beauty, I still got to see it, and that’s pretty good, too.
IMHO, TLAs are a PITA · 1016 days ago by Dave Polaschek
One of the things I’ve noticed in my (not so) new job is that I’m having to learn yet another set of in-house acronyms. Every company seems to have a need to have a few acronyms that are their own. At one employer, it was OOTO for “Out of the Office” and WFH for “working from home”. At another, it was AFO for “Away from office”, which covered both cases. Here, it’s PTO for “Personal Time Off”.
Usually these acronyms aren’t really planned. Sometimes the source is a company handbook, and sometimes it’s just a phrase that falls into common usage.
Whatever the case, it’s easy to tell the new guy. He’s the one with the puzzled look and the bookmark to the Acronym Decoder in his browser.
too busy on the weekends · 1032 days ago by Dave Polaschek
I’ve been noticing lately that I’ve been awfully busy on the weekends of late. In fact, I’ve had something going on every single Saturday since December 17th. And if you ignore the fact that I seem to have avoided planning something for the second Saturday of the month in both November and December, my weekends have been booked solid since October. This month, I missed out on my plans on the second Saturday due to being sick and having to wait for the guy to come and install the new door on my fridge, but I now know why it feels like I’ve been going non-stop for months.
Next weekend, another friend of mine is throwing a party. I haven’t seen him in quite a while, and would like to get over there, but I’m not sure at this point. I have it in my head that there’s something planned for me in February too, even though I don’t see anything on the calendar.
I appreciate all the invitations, and generally have fun at these gatherings, but I’m starting to feel just plain worn out. The result is that I’ve decided I’m not going to throw a party this winter. Two years running, I’ve scheduled a party for the last weekend in January. This year, I thought “maybe in February”, but I think it’s better to just put it off until spring. Maybe once my new patio is in or something, but not anytime soon.
The President Broke the Law · 1034 days ago by Dave Polaschek
I got an email this morning that said:
Hi, President Bush admitted to personally authorizing thousands of allegedly illegal wiretaps, and he doesn’t plan to stop. Circumventing the Constitution is serious business. This is a big moment. People from across the political spectrum are standing together to protect the rule of law and the principles that are core to our identity as Americans. Can you sign this petition to show Congress that Americans want a thorough investigation of the president’s secret wiretapping program?
http://political.moveon.org/ruleoflaw/
I responded:
President Clinton broke the same law.
President Bush before him did.
President Reagan did.
President Carter? Probably.
President Ford might not have. He was too busy falling down.
President Nixon did – still J. Edgar.
President Kennedy – that was when J. Edgar was tapping MLK.
President Eisenhower? Almost certainly (fighting Communism, you know), but there was a lot less to tap.
How far should I go back? J. Edgar Hoover took over the FBI in 1924, under Calvin Coolidge. I expect going back that far would not be a problem.
Al Gore’s speech on MLK day was pretty accurate, except for the part where he neglected to mention that he knew so much about it because he was part of an administration that had been doing the exact same thing.
MoveOn started as a group that wanted to (among other things) abolish the 9th and 10th Amendments in order to “get people to move on” from the investigation of President Clinton. No, I can’t sign a petition by them.
If you want to support freedom, try one of the following groups, who are non-partisan:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation – First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment advocates.
Gun Owners of America or Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (which is open to Gentiles, as well) – They are the only pro Second Amendment groups I’m aware of that would actually be happy not to need to exist. The NRA is pro-gun-control, since if they were successful in their stated goals, their immense amount of power (and money) would dry up, and that scares the current NRA board and staff silly.
The Institute for Justice – Agressively protecting the 5th Amendment, especially in cases such as Kelo v. New London which deal with abuses of Eminent Domain.
The Fully Informed Jury Association protects the right to trial by jury (the Seventh Amendment), and also the right of Jury Nullification, which comes down from the Magna Carta. Even mentioning that you know about them during voir dire will get you out of Jury Duty anywhere in this country if you don’t want to serve.
Or if you’re not a “joiner”, spend a few days reading Constitutional Chaos by Judge Andrew Napolitano if you want to read about all the governments who have circumvented the Constitution. You can pretty much go all the way back to John Adams with the Alien and Sedition Acts and find an unbroken string of lawbreaking by the government right through to today.
I welcome you to the fight, but I hope you’ll keep an eye on folks from both major parties. The problem is not with any one person or party—it’s institutional. And my personal opinion is that organizations like Move On are more a part of the problem than any part of the solution. They’re just mad that THEIR crooks are out of power at the moment.
Company Meeting · 1043 days ago by Dave Polaschek
Had an interesting schedule at work yesterday. There was a company meeting scheduled from noon to 1:30, so I had planned on ducking out about 11:30 for a quick lunch. As it turned out, my boss called right at 11:30 and we ended up talking until 11:50. At that point, I just headed to the meeting, which ended up running long, so I didn’t get out to lunch until 2:15. Now maybe it was just the hunger making me cranky, but an all-company meeting like this seems like a tremendous waste of time to me. The big bosses brought on marketing people to tell us how great the products we’re working on are.
Excuse me, but one of the reasons I’m working there is because I know I’m working on a cool product (the other, natch, is the money). I don’t need to spend over two hours being pounded over the head by that, and by the time the meeting was over, I was pretty grumpy about the whole business. Especially since I’ve become so commercial-averse, thanks to my TiVo, that obvious marketing like this tends to turn me off whatever product is being pushed in my face. Luckily a double-cheeseburger cured my bad mood, so I managed to finish off the last hour and change of work without any “issues”, but I think I’m going to start skipping big meetings like this in the future.
colors in the sky · 1048 days ago by Dave Polaschek
This morning I was confused by the sky. It’s not a monochromatic gray. There’s colors ranging from red to salmon and all the way through to blue. I just wish I’d noticed that a little earlier—I would have gotten ready to head outside with the camera to try and capture some sunrise photos.
As it is, I think I’m going to readjust my plans for the day a bit. I had some “inside stuff” I was planning to do, but I think I may try and spend more time outside reveling in the sunshine.
another experiment · 1049 days ago by Dave Polaschek
A few months ago, I bought a software package. I bought the previous version because the new one wasn’t available and I was promised a free upgrade.
Two months ago I accepted a new job.
A month ago, the company I’m working for bought the company that made the software package.
The new version appears to be selling like hotcakes, but is also now available to me via the company’s internal servers.
I’m trying to decide whether I want to go to the effort of trying to get my free upgrade via “normal” channels, or if I should just bring home a copy of the new one. While “interesting experiments” like this give me something to write about here, but there’s a cost. They’re interesting because either I’m frustrated or I’m making someone else nuts, and that isn’t always pleasant.
So what do you think? Do I poke the customer support people with a sharp stick over not having gotten my free upgrade, or do I just suck it up and have one less thing to write about?
Geeks and social skills · 1049 days ago by Dave Polaschek
Got told yesterday that there’s a friend of mine who’d like to see me more often. It was suggested that maybe he should call or email or send smoke signals or something because I didn’t actually have a clue about this. Apparently my spidey-sense wasn’t tingling when it should have.
But it raises an interesting question for me. Now that I know this, should I shoot off an email, or should I wait and see how long it takes? I haven’t decided yet, and either way, I think the results might be informative. It’s not so much that I want to perform experiments on my friends, but I am fascinated by the various ways in which people behave. And I’m reluctant to suggest anything at the moment, since I’m still settling in to the new job. My schedule isn’t packed, but I don’t always know ahead of time which evenings are going to lead to me wanting to get out of the house, and which are going to beg for an evening of collapsing on the couch and staring at the idiot-box until I have to drag my sorry mass upstairs to be. I usually don’t know which way an evening is going to go until I’m on the way home from work.
What all that means is that I tend not to contact folks to suggest outings, and apparently I’m not the only one. And here’s a clear sign that a guy could break the impasse, and I’m not sure whether to be the first one to do something about it or not.
I guess I’ll figure it out. But probably not today. Or maybe I just did.
I've got divorced bosses · 1050 days ago by Dave Polaschek
Yesterday at work, I spent a couple idle moments pondering my situation there. I was waiting on a compile or some such, and started to think about the way I’m managed.
See, I’ve got one manager who’s located in CA. He’s in charge of part of the project I’m working on, and handles many of the technical issues I have to work with.
My other manager is local, and she’s in charge of the other part of the project I’m working on. She also tends to handle the more HR-related kind of things (although much of that belongs to the company I’m contracting with).
What struck me yesterday is that I’ve lived through this sort of situation before. I had a flashback of sorts yesterday to when I was eight and for the first time realized that I would sometimes play my divorced parents against each other. “Mom said no? Well, ask dad!” It wasn’t something I consciously took advantage of too often, but as a kid, it’s a pretty easy behavior to learn.
I still haven’t figured out all the details of how it applies to my current situation, but now that I’ve noticed it, I do plan to watch myself and try to make sure I don’t end up trying to play my managers off against each other. That might be okay when you’re eight, but I’m pretty sure it would result in unhappiness today.