Don't let on...

Whatever you do, don't let your work mates know you have upgraded your work computer with a cd burner. All of a sudden the word "favor" means, "Hey, do something for me with something that is yours."


I just thought I'd share.

"Deleted Items" is now a storage facility

Yes, if you can believe this...
I just changed out a work mate's laptop for a new one (no, I am not part of the IT department but we won't get into that.) Made a successful backup of all files, outlook .pst, the whole 9 yards.

He called me on the phone, "Hey bubba, I used to have 2 spots for deleted items."

Cryptology is my strong suit.

"In email?" I query.

Affirmative.

Turns out the guy was using his "Deleted Items" as a storage folder. I don't know what he had in there but he is devastated. I explained what a deleted items folder is for and he said he knew that, he often manually deleted items from it and kept what he wanted in there.

Sounds a lot like he was storing stuff that maybe he shouldn't have been but who am I to judge.


Incidentally, from now on I will not let it be known in any of my future jobs that I understand computers any more than the next guy.

e=mc2

I had a work mate ride home with me last evening. I've been listening to the audio book A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Among many other things it discusses Einstein's theory of relativity. This was a subject matter I never grasped until recently and honestly thought I would never get a handle on and resigned myself to that. Bill Bryson make comprehension of it simple and short and I was amazed that I understood it so quickly. Regardless the book was at this stage when it was playing on the ride home. My work mate had never heard of this ubiquitous equation. Ever. Never heard of it. I'm stymied. I am by no means the shiniest apple in the barrel but I had assumed everyone had at least heard of e=mc².

You learn something new every day. Whether you want to or not.

Things I hope to never hear again

I never want to hear about prime rib in Aruba again.
I never want to hear about the good old days at Brown & Root.
I never want to hear people referred to as "hands."
I never want to hear the word "opportunity" used as a nicety of "fuck up."
I never want to hear the voice mail lady say "You have X new unheard messages." If they're NEW they are UNHEARD. Do you also understand that too?

The war is over

I was born and raised north of the Mason Dixon line ( http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa041999.htm ) starting in the early 70's. That's the 1970's for those who are not clear on the concept. The civil war, which was the "Yankees" versus the "Rebels" was fought from 1860 to 1865. The Mason Dixon line wasn't actually the dividing line, but it's what most people think of as the dividing line between the north and the south. Either way, many battles were fought and even more people died. They say it was about slavery but that isn't entirely true either. It doesn't matter. It's 130 years later. The war is over.

Why then, do people of southern descent insist that I am a "Yankee" and furthermore why do they believe that "Yankees" are all of one type. Apparantly we're all pompous asses who don't give a half of a shit about anyone but ourselves. There are more of this type of person in my current location than I ever met while living up north. They always justify this to me by saying they don't consider me a Yankee because "I'm not like that." The truth is I still take offense. Not that they do or don't consider me part of that group, but the fact that they harbor all the prejudice.

Speaking of prejudice, I'm soooo tired of all the racial prejudice in the south. I grew up thinking this all died in the 60's. I never saw it. I thought it was gone. Such is not the case. No, not at all. People still use the racial slurs, believe that different races are worse than others. I don't believe these things but where I am right now it is not only common to hold these twisted beliefs it is almost expected. I hate the situation far more than any of them can hate their race of choice.

Southern Colloquialisms

I grew up in the north where for the most part figures of speech include similies and metaphors. I am amazed at some of the phrases I hear in this part of the country.

Girlfriend and I were just outside smoking when one of my employees drove by in a mule and she said,

Homeboy don't believe lard is greasy, does he?

Heh. I like that one.

The Phrase that Pays

So girlfriend was sitting in her office working away when a guy we'll call Stack steps into the doorway. I have an unobstructed view of her doorway and her. She was busy in a pile of papers and after a moment noticed someone standing in her door. She glanced up quickly and went back to work. After a moment of realization she looked up with what can only be described as an attempt to hide dumbstruck horror. She had received word this fellow was "sweet on her" and on a couple of occasions she and her friends had me point this fellow out to them. He's a typical construction worker. He's not that attractive, full of shit, and has the social skills of a 4th grader. After she came out of shock she said something along the lines of "What can I do for you?" in a very businesslike tone.

He replied that several people had told him he needed to get up with her. She asked who and he mentioned one of the guys that work for me. She noted that she had not sent for him and it was quite obvious she was very nervous about this whole ordeal. The office was growing very quiet quickly and at it's most silent point he said, "So are you seein' anybody?"

There was a pause of pregnancy that could have used an abortion clinic staffed to the hilt.

"Uhhh, on and off..." she stammered. She was so nervous I felt bad for her.

The conversation went on for about 15 minutes but I'm sure it felt like about 6 hours to girlfriend and she wasn't really any better off nerve-wise at the end than she was at the beginning. After 10 minutes I had to get up and head to another office or I would have started crying I was holding back the laughter so hard.

I immediately made certain that everyone knew the phrase that pays:

"So, are you seein' anybody?"

She won't forget that anytime soon, I feel quite certain. :)

Words

"He - Uh"
If you say that out loud and keep saying it until it runs together I will likely hunt you down and slap you. I'd say I'd slap you senseless but since you are saying the word "here" in such a manner the sense has already drained from your brain anyway.

Girlfriend...

There is this employee at work, we'll call her girlfriend. She is by no means my girlfriend. She spends at least as much time per day on personal calls as she does working. She is currently on the phone with her daughter. I missed most of the conversation until she raised her voice saying, "If you lie to me again I'll drive all the way to Byromville just to spank your ass!"

This person spends about 25% of her personal phone call time fighting with someone or another.

...and people think I'm high strung.

Opportunity missed.

If I had been born a female that wore glasses and was pretty in a sisterly way I would have become a librarian.

Alas, it was not to be.

It's easy to go over the top when you set your bar so low

Work just keeps getting better.
The top client representative just stopped by Humpty's desk and commended him on getting here so early this morning. I sprang out of my chair, those were fighting words. I arrive at least an hour before he does and I do at least 75% more work than he does. I walked into his shared office and just stood there mouth agape while the 5 or 6 people were all talking him up for being here so early this morning.

I said nothing, I just dropped my head, spun around and went out to smoke a cigarette. On my way out I resolved to take the rest of the day off but then I remembered I have to go to the damned auto parts store, buy a part with my own damned money (and then wait 5 weeks for the expense check to come back,) then go to the grocery store and buy 5 gallons of vegetable oil, once again my own money, my own wait to get the money back....

Fuck this place straight to hell.
Fuck everyone
Fuck everything
Fuck you
Fuck me.

Work sucks

In the last 4 weeks I have had 1 day off ( Sunday, Sepetmber 18th) and I'm very well into feeling the effects. I usually leave for work at 4:55 AM and typically make it home right at 8 PM. Tomorrow I have to leave home around 3:30 to go get 50 dozen donuts and get them to the jobsite. Goody. My online friends remark that I've fallen off the edge of the earth and I just tell them I'm on the 100 hour per week plan at work. I am about to enter the final week of this hell. This will be the most trying week though. I will have to lay most of our workers off this week so paperwork and stress will be high. I can't wait to have a couple days to just sleep whenever I want. I can't believe I'm not sick already.

A workmate just said, "Tell me, John, what exactly is a blog?"

I was certain I'd been caught. Not that I'm overly trying to hide that I'm blogging but I don't really need work people talking amongst themselves about what I really feel.

It's something in the water

Me: Did you get drunk last night?
Fellow employee: No, I went straight home, drank my beer in the shower and went straight to bed.

uhhh

Fat and happy != enjoyable to all

I had to do a half flip ( as close to flipping out as possible without actually doing it) on Humpty Dumpty this morning. I noted that I was tired of checking lunch boxes and I don't plan to have that responsibility in the future.

Some background info is appropriate, methinks. Humpty Dumpty has the same job as I do but he works for a different company. We often spend most of the day in similar situations and often in the same work area. He speaks highly of his days with the most loathsome construction company I can imagine, Halliburton's Brown and Root. I'm sure he was a model employee for them: fat, yes-man, and lazier than a cat on a sunny day. He is very enamored with me because I am the local computer helper among other reasons. He often pulls me over to his workstation to tell him (again) how to get his toolbars back in outlook or what he has done to his word document. He bought a laptop a few months back. He wasn't satisfied with something that would fit his knowledge of computers. He had to have the biggest and best so he got a 3 gigahertz with a 17" wide screen, dvd burner, premium sound, amazing video card and all this extra crap he'd never need. The best part, he HAD to have an external floppy drive because it's all he understands.

(I know, I'm on a tangent now, but I'll continue with the original story later. This is too fun to quit.)

After he purchased the unit he asked me to come to his apartment and help him get it set up. He had the cable guy install his cable modem and he was already online when I arrived. He had me make him an account with Yahoo so he could have yahoo mail and whatnot. He also wanted his isp's email (why do people use those?) and I recommended not using Outlook Express due to it's security being worse than a drunken guard. I downloaded Mozilla's Firefox for that purpose and put in his smtp and pop information. I noticed his version of Microsoft Office was but a 90 day trial and he was aghast. I told him I could download and install OpenOffice and it worked the same way and was free and legal. He thought that would be good so I did that. He worked with OpenOffice for maybe a week before he plopped down $400 for Microsoft Office. He said OpenOffice didn't display his documents the same way as Microsoft's Office did. I agree this is true, but is that worth $400? Not to me. I'd rather make the miniscule changes or just use OpenOffice at the office. Ah well, it's his money.
He told me he burned a cd after bugging me for about 3 days with questions about it. I asked him what he successfully burned. He replied, "A picture." heh. Good use of space Humpty. I have no idea if he's ventured back into the oh-so-difficult realm of cd burning again or not. I have no desire to ask.

Anyway, end of tangent, back to this morning...

I've had a lot of trouble lately keeping up. The work load on me is likely higher than it has ever been and I am as stressed as I've ever been. After I mentioned how I didn't like checking the lunchboxes he replied with one of his standard lines:

You brought it on yourself.

My blood pressure was likely visible through my eyeballs at that point. I mentioned that he has seen the load I have had as of late and if he were any kind of man he could have stepped up to the plate and offered some help. He continued on with the "it's all your fault" line. I loudly told him to shut up, I had heard enough.

I'm sooooooooooooooo looking forward to his next computer question. No matter the question the answer will be shouted across the office:

F1

It's not only power that corrupts

A few weeks ago there was a recordable injury on one of the other jobsites the client I indirectly work for. Their (the client's) corporate safety manager stopped by our jobsite en route to the jobsite with the injury and he said one of the lowest, most deplorable sentences I have ever heard in my life. I cannot seem to stop thinking about it. I think about it at least daily, usually several times a day. I know I will never forget it and I'm sure it will serve a valuable lesson in humility. I understand how recordable injuries happen. We all sometime "space out" or lose focus on our work when we are working on something that is mundane or we have performed that task countless times before. It does happen and when it does there is the potential for something to happen. A finger could get cut, an ankle sprained, or even something tragic could happen when we let down our guard. It is human nature and we must accept it. We need to proactively (sorry, I'm not big on buzzwords but that truly does fit) encourage people to keep their minds on their work. When something does happen we need to look at the situation from every angle to see how it can be avoided in the future. There is one exception to the angles we must look at it from. Do not, under any circumstances, look at an injury from a monetary standpoint. Feel free to look at the lack of injuries as a monetary gain if you like but don't treat people and their health in the converse light.

Quoth he:

There goes my bonus.

Theories are like asses. They're everywhere and they almost all stink.

I have a theory that stress forces person to think with the artistic side of their brain. I think all the stuff a person tries to get away with on the logical side forces the center to the other side to alleviate some of the stress and that's why the best artists are starving, drugged out, or otherwise messed up.

If I didn't like meat so much I could be a vegetarian

Bicycles haven't radically changed in like a hundred years or something. Sure, you can get them with Space Shuttle panel equipped frames and magic pixie dust holding the cranks together...

1. If you're not in the Tour de France weight should not matter.
2. Certainly they have the jigs and welders hooked up right by now. Lower the damned prices.
3. Sweat is good, quit wearing the $100 shirts that make you look like a maroon.
4. Take the headphones off so you can hear the redneck truck that's about to hit you.
5. Quit trying to peddle pixie dust to increase the price of your bikes.
6. The cost of your bike says nothing about your ability.
   

Rhetoric : Selfishness

Through much ado over many years I have finally come to the undeniable conclusion that I am a very selfish person. This is not to say I am not a giving person, the two things are not entirely related. I enjoy things such as bringing or making enough lunch for everyone in my office. I like to be able to give things to people that need them. I would think that many of my friends and work mates would disagree that I am selfish. The reason they would disagree is because they are looking at the idea of selfishness in the wrong light.

I do not give out of the goodness of my heart. This is not to say I have gains to be made from the person that is the recipient of my gift. One person at work calls it "building an emotional bank account" but it is not that either I don't suspect. I give because I enjoy the feeling of pleasing other people. I don't directly enjoy the feeling of pleasing others. I enjoy the feeling it gives me. Therefore when I give or share I am doing it to feel good myself and that makes it selfish.

Gargamel rears his ugly head

Today, as all Thursdays are, was check day. This is the day my week's labor comes to a head and I give out checks to our (currently) 80 employees. Typically everyone is very happy to receive their checks. We have one employee that very nearly resembles Papa Smurf. He's an elderly gentleman, a carpenter helper. He is very nearly illiterate. He can read and write although it pains him greatly and takes him enormous amounts of time. He is a very nice man but he does have a tendency to not speak clearly and has a reputation of that. Today was a hard day for all of our guys and many of them came out looking like they had rolled around in the mud and most were still completely soaked from head to toe in sweat. The humidity was relatively high today although it was only in the mid 80's. The worst part of it all was the deadline of having the twenty some foot wall ready to pour tomorrow. There were many down attitudes at the end of the day but Papa Smurf came out nearly last. I try to keep the guys' spirits up and be somewhat jolly when they come in and leave though it pains me sometimes. Papa Smurf is one of the guys that is nearly always in a good mood. Tonight I asked him how his day was and without looking up he said it was a bad day. Knowing it was a bad day for most I assured him it would be a better day tomorrow and he replied that, "No, no it won't be better."

With that response I knew it was more than a bad day. On our last project this man had gone home one weekend and had a heart attack and didn't return until I invited him back on this project. I knew if he said it wasn't getting any better something was very seriously wrong. I asked him about it and he simply asked what time I'd be in my office in the morning. I replied I'd be up there about 7:30 after the night shift left and I had them all checked out. Then he began with "They moved me down the line."

I'd heard his foreman, we'll call him Moose, at lunch say something about he was going to give me a list of names that he didn't ever want me to hire again. I knew he was just aggravated because our company does not operate like that. I didn't give it much thought until I heard Papa Smurf say this cryptic line about moving down the line. We don't work in a factory style and there are no "lines" to speak of so I was quite baffled. I asked him what he meant and he finally looked at me. He reached into his pocket as he started to speak. He said "they" had cut him back in pay by a dollar since he was here last time. He showed me his check stub and sure enough he was exactly correct. I felt as though I had just kicked baby Jesus. I assured him it was nobody's fault but my own and I was eternally sorry. I told him I would fix it in the morning and make sure he got all the money that was coming to him. The apology and the promise of making it right put him in a much better mood. His posture corrected itself and he forgave me.

Hopefully tomorrow Papa Smurf will have the strength to conquer Gargamel.

The Subtle Knife - His Dark Materials Book 2

I downloaded this onetoday. I've listened to the first 16 minutes now and no Lyra. Also, this is odd. They never really dated the first book but they had electricity but the master of Oxford college still used oil lamps. Now we're talking about cell phones and whatnot. I sincerely hope Lyra isn't 50 years old and still searching for Dust.

The first one was a stunning performance so I had really high hopes. This book is a bit shorter than the first but not too much so to detract if the storyline is as well written.

I have to say it again, I love my audible.com listener plan. I'm considering getting another account so I can get more audio books per month. Currently I get 1 audio book and 1 subscription program per month. I thought it would be too much at first but I quickly found out it was not nearly enough. I do wish they would just allow you to add two plans to one account but alas I'd have to make another account. That's the only thing holding me up.

When did Microsoft buy Motorola?

Motorola Programming Primer

I've been studying on buying a two way radio most of today. This has been a harrowing experience. I decided to purchase one of my own so I would not have to put up with people taking mine away from me or not being able to be issued one. It's a rediculous situation all around to be certain. The guy that programs the radios for all of our job sites is quite a treat and I refuse to deal with him unless it is absolutely necessary. Thusly I decided I need to buy a programmable unit with all of the accessories to program it. Those accessories include the radio, the software, and the cord to connect the radio to the computer. This is not rocket science. It is a programmable radio. I tried to find something at radio shack that is more like what I used to see with all of the numbers and buttons and whatnot but it seems they have gotten out of that line of retailing. Perhaps they just don't show it on their web site. I found out what frequencies we use here at work and I thought I was home free. Not so said the retailer I spoke with. Now I needed to know if it was open squelch / carrier squelch or if it used tones. I called our local radio shop and they indicated that we are on a tone system. I was sure I was in the bottom of the 7th inning and I would soon be asking how quickly they could fed-ex me my new radio. Turns out I need to know some number associated with each channel for the tones. The guy (oddly enough his name was Van) indicated that I might not be able to glean this information since it is typically kept private to keep people from buying radios from other retailers.
As I mentioned one guy does all of our programming but he is the radio gestapo. To obtain the frequencies we use (which likely could have been queried using some fcc database) I had a female coworker call and tell some half truths about the nature of the inquiry. Actually she mentioned that she could get the info and I just stood at her desk in awe as she sweet talked the slime ball. She certainly didn't mention my name and I'm not certain how we would extract this newly necessary information from him to accomplish our goals.
Van said he could read the tones from an existing radio if we could send him one but therein lies the problem. I'd need a radio to send him to get a radio for myself. Van is in Los Angeles, I'm near Atlanta. Even with Fed-Ex that's going to take up to 4 days in the middle of a shut down. In short: not going to happen.

Now on to the Motorola / Microsoft connection.
Everybody uses these things. Police, fire, hotel workers, wal~mart employees, construction companies, delivery drivers, hospitals, the military, the list goes on forever. There are literally millions and millions of these radios in use today. First of all they are unduly expensive. One might think a hundred dollars or so. Not so. It seems as though Motorola has asked online retailers to yank the prices on their products but when one can find a price it is always in the $500 - $1200 US Dollar range. Used equipment can be had at a fraction of the price but then you need to check into the mysterious Motorola RSS programming package. I have as of yet to see a price for that. I'm on hold with Motorola presently out of curiosity. First there is the approximately 2 day wait to get an account set up. Then there is the approval process for your application of the software license. Next up, as my pleasant customer service representative noted, is a charge of "typically between $275 and $300" for a 3 year license. ...Uhhh, no. I think I'll buy from their competitors who have a $89 software package / cable option.

...and someday I swear I will learn C and make this crap open source.

Grammar Nazi

Dictionary.com/ornery

It eats at my very soul when someone says "Onery" instead of the proper pronunciation. There is no word in the english language that equates to "onery."

As much as I try to overlook it I have a substantial amount of trouble dealing with ignorance.

Genesis

I have been inspired. I just finished reading this blog and it prompted me to start writing things down. I found that link at the hippie commune and I posted as such:

johncub
Wednesday, September 29, 2004 at 12:58:03 mid:1738-1642
Kind of like in True Porn Clerk Stories.

That was the best online reading I've done in months. I too was a porn clerk but we didn't rent any of that "actual movie" crap, just hardcore porn and we sold the accessories. It was one of the most interesting times in my life. I learned a lot about people and the world while working there. Things I learned that the narrator didn't cover:
1. "The mob" is a real thing and very well alive all around our great nation.
2. People will give up drugs to watch porn, as in drugs for payment. I never understood this.
3. People will watch porn as a group and ghastly things happen in there (we had 2 theatres at one of the stores and 1 theatre at the other)
4. The token areas are not really about the 1 minute per 25 cent token booths, it's about the gay men that hang about preying on whatever wanders in.
5. There is no need for a customer to be ashamed at looking at whatever is in the store whether it is straight or gay. The clerk has seen it all and couldn't care less about your sexual curiosities.

I deeply regret never keeping track of my day to day adventures. As I age my memory is slipping and I know I'll never get those memories back. I wrote a blog program which as far as I know is still functional but with less and less time to maintain any programs I decided to use this off the shelf version and deal with it.