I need to sneak one more Christmas picture in. This is for the Dimocrat Party, all the fucking trolls like Blarney Gumball, and all the loony fucktards at Democrat Underground. Eat your hearts out you asswipes! How's the moron doing now? BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
This was received by Barbara M. from Captain & Mrs. Smith, her local Camp LeJeune friends. She forwarded it to me. I am putting this on the top of my page the rest of the month. I hope they don't mind. Their third child was born while Capt. Smith was in Iraq.
Dammit! I gotta start writing this shit down. I know it was in the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation within the last three days, but I cannot find it on their website and I've thrown the newspapers out, but it was about white collar jobs following blue collar jobs in moving off shore. It seems IBM is moving 4000 jobs to India and Microsoft is following suit. If you're a CEO and you're not moving programming jobs to India, you're not doing your job.
I'm seeing this at TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name). A few months back I had a problem with my PC and I had to call the (No) Help (Whatsover) Desk number, 1-800-FUCK-YOU. I was connected to someone whose English skills really sucked. His PC skills really sucked also. I spent 45 minutes talking to him on the phone in which my main input was,
What (the fuck) did you say?
Huh?
Could you repeat that?
I'm sorry, I cannot understand a (fucking) word that you are saying.
Could you repeat that?
Would it help if I spoke slower?
Could you repeat that?
How many times do you want me to reboot this fucking thing?
Could you repeat that?
Huh?
Could you repeat that?
WTF?
Eventually, when his language skills and his computer skills reached their limit, he said he would have to refer me to Deskside Services.
<rant>
Goddamit! This is what really pisses me off about IT now! Back when I started 25 years ago when men were men and ships were made of wood and Help Desks actually provided help, I didn't have to put up with someone making $5 per hour who couldn't speak English and knew less about computers than I do telling me I had to open up a DOS Window and I had to change this and I had to reboot 200 times before he figgered out that maybe he better send someone with some knowledge to actually fix the fucking problem because he was an incompetent dickhead working from a script. You PC bigots can laugh at us green screen mainframe dinosaurs all you want, but when you call operations or me with a problem, I fucking fix the fucking problem. I don't tell you how to fix the fucking problem. I fix it! That is my fucking job and I fucking well do it! It pisses me off to have some $50 per hour programmer dependent on a non-English speaking $5 per hour dickhead who doesn't know shit! If this is the future of IT, the future sucks!
</rant>
This happened on a Friday. Monday morning my team lead came in and I told him my problem. He fixed it in 10 minutes. So, I'm an old fart. So I'm a dinosaur. I still amaze my team lead with my MVS and VM skills. TCIDNN is not willing to invest in me learning PC skills. It costs too much money. At my age I don't learn as fast as I used to plus I don't give a shit. So, they have me call some raghead in India who is incompetent and after wasting an hour, they then deploy sneakerware support (Deskside Services) and have some young whippersnapper come to me and fix my problem, which they should have done in the first place. They would much rather waste the time of a highly paid, highly trained, and highly motivated (two out of three ain't bad) data processing professional waiting on someone who makes 1/10 or 1/5 of said professional. Yeah. Makes perfect sense to me. Assholes! We need to start moving some management jobs offshore.
But that's not what I wanted to write about. Why are these jobs being moved to India?
Because the wages are cheaper.
Right. But that is only part of the reason. Another reason is gummint.
Gummint? How can that be?
Gummint regulations. Here's an example that hits close to my heart. The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).
You're a cripple. How could you actually bad mouth the ADA? Wouldn't that be blasphemy?
Au contraire, wheelchair breath. In the building where I work the urinals were one inch higher than what was mandated in the ADA. That means they all had to be dropped an inch. That wasn't cheap. This is hilarious when you consider that most handicapped people (those with spinal cord injuries) do not even use urinals. Because their bladders do not function, they need to ram catheters up their dicks to pee. A commode is much more convenient. In the majority of cases moving the urinals was a waste of money.
I could spend days writing about OSHA regulations.
And let's not forget the wonders of socialism. Do you remember a few years back when Congress passed a law mandating 12 weeks of unpaid leave? Wiser heads made the following arguments:
1. Someone would have to be hired to do the work of the person on leave.
2. This is a camel's nose under the tent.
About number 2 the liberals scoffed, "Nonsense. This is unpaid leave. What harm could it cause?"
Guess what? <Gomer Pyle> Soo-prise! Soo-prize!</Gomer Pyle> Snagglepuss Joe Lieberman has already come out with a campaign promise to make the 12 weeks unpaid leave into 12 weeks paid leave. Whoosh! There go another shitload of jobs offshore.
It's not just wages that are moving jobs offshore. It's unfunded gummint mandates. It's gummint regulations. The cost of doing business keeps getting higher in the United States so the jobs are gonna go where there are less regulations, less unfunded gummint mandates, and less taxes.
So IBM and Microsoft are moving jobs to India. There will be an outcry for gummint to "do something!". Gummit will "do something!".
IBM will move 10,000 jobs to India. Microsoft will too.
Whoosh! There they go!
Every now and then the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation prints an op-ed that I would love to fisk, but doesn't put it on their online site so I can cut and paste. Normally, I can find it somewhere elso on the web, but not this time. The op-ed is by Holly Sklar and, of course, it talks about how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. A quick Google of Holly Sklar shows that she thinks the minimum wage should be raised to $8 an hour. Why $8? Let's just make it $20 an hour and totally wipe out poverty.
Anyway, I could not find this op-ed anywhere on the net, but I will hit a few high (low?) points.
The general tone of the op-ed is what a crime it is that the Forbes 400 richest Americans had so much money and the poor didn't. According to her the Census Bureau's poverty count of 35 million people is actually a lowball count.
Forbes 400 combined wealth rose 10 percent over the past year
I guess I must be doing sumpin' right because my wealth rose 12 percent over the past year. Which brings me to a Doonesbury cartoon in Monday's AJC. Joanie is bemoaning the fact that her portfolio declined 20 percent (Mine rose 11%) over the past year. She better fire her financial advisor, since one would have really had to work hard to lose money in the stock market in the past 11 months. But Joanie is a liberal so that could explain part of it.
Now just why do you suppose that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer? Maybe it's because the rich do things to make them rich. My sister and I came from the lower middle class, yet both of us have done very well. How did that happen? In my case, I never lived beyond my means and no matter how much I made, I always paid myself first.
An example of not living beyond my means. I have owned 10 cars in my life. Only 4 of those cars were new. The rest were used.
As for paying myself first, I currently put 14% of my TCIDNN salary into a 401K. I have accumulated many investments over time, and all the money I get from them gets reinvested. Of course I get richer. I started saving at an early age and maintained the discipline to keep saving and investing.
I remember a few years back, one of my co-workers was complaining how another co-worker seemed to have more money that he did. I took him through the following exercise.
1. How much do you spend on cigarettes? The other co-worker didn't smoke.
2. How much do you spend buying coffee in the cafeteria? The other co-worker brought a thermos of coffee.
3. How much do you spend on lunch in the cafeteria every day? The other co-worker brought his lunch.
The difference was over $200 per month.
The poor are far more likely to smoke than the rich. Smoking is expensive. I sure am glad I quit smoking. I don't think I could afford it now. And the poor like to buy lottery tickets. I love the lottery. It's a tax on the stupid.
But back to Holly.
The poverty thresholds for 2002 $8,628 for a person 65 and older, $9,359 for a person under 65, $12,400 for an adult and child, $14,480 for a couple and a child, and $18,244 for a couple with two children.
$9,359 works out to about $4.68 per hour. That's below minimum wage.
$12,400 works out to $6.20 an hour. If you can't do any better that that, why are you having children?
$14,480 works out to $7.24 per hour. This couple could both work at McDonalds flipping burgers and make more than that. If they're too stupid to make more, they shouldn't be having children.
$18,244 works out to $9.12 per hour. Likewise if they cannot make more money that that, why are they having children?
I realize that some people can fall on hard times such as a catastrophic accident or a prolonged illness. That is what welfare was designed for. But we have third and fourth generation welfare recipients. It has become a lifestyle. The Great fucking Society has bred a permanent underclass dependent upon gummint handouts.
The poverty rate hit its best mark way back in 1973. The 2002 poverty rate of 12.1 percent was 9 percent higher than 1973's. The 2002 child poverty rate was 19 percent higher than its lowest point in 1969.
Those are telling numbers. They show that the War on Poverty, after throwing trillions of dollars at poverty only made it worse. It also shows that the breakup of the family, which began at that time, also has contributed to the child poverty rate. There used to be a stigma attached to out of wedlock birth. But now that we have decided to be non-judgemental, illegitimacy has gone way up (over 60% for blacks) and with it the rise in child poverty. What more proof do we need that liberal social welfare policies have been catatrophic to the people they tried to help?
As I said, I grew up poor. My father was an alcoholic and was often out of work. This was before food stamps and welfare. My mother worked a variety of jobs and kept us clothed and fed. Both my sister and I started working at an early age. She put herself through college on a scholarship. I flunked out of college and went into the Navy to learn electronics and get money for college. Yes, I have been lucky that I never got laid off, but I always seemed to be in the enviable postion over the last ten years of being the only person who could perform some particular job or program.
I know I sound heartless when I say this, but the vast majority of the poor in this country are poor because they do things that make them poor. They drop out of school. They have children at an early age. They have children out of wedlock. They have children thay cannot afford. Hmmm. Is it any wonder that the largest group of poor in this country are children? Poor people should not be having children. How hard is it to understand that when people cannot even support themselves, they should not be bringing children into this world?
It is hard to believe that we are the richest nation in the world, but at the same time have so many poor people. Unfortunately, the gummint only made the problem worse. I'm sorry Holly, raising the minimum wage to $8 an hour is not gonna solve poverty in this country. The only real solution is fixing the real cause of poverty: the behavioral habits of the poor.
That's not gonna happen as long as we have liberals making excuses for those behavioral habits.
Wnet to a wnie tasting. Got totalty fcuked up! More stuff tomorrow. Oh my aching liver!
I had a very nice Christmas. I was able to buy family and friends nice presents because I am one of the evil rich (as defined by Dimocrats). So in the spirit of the season, I'm gonna repost one of my rants from when I started out called Poverty.
Since my sister expects me to blog at least five times a week and I missed Tuesday and Thursday because of SCUBA, I'm blogging today. But before I begin...
Still no hate mail. I know people hate me, 'cause I got 15 people who rated me 'Hate it' on BlogHop. I also know they're not Cynthia McKinney constituents 'cause most of them can't read or write.
Aha GOC! Caught ya! You said you weren't racist, but there ya go claiming Cynthia McKinney voters can't read and right because they're black!
I said no such thing. I say they can't read or write because many of them are products of the Atlanta public school system. Georgia schools rate somewhere around 47th or 48th in the country (Actually 50th!). The city of Atlanta schools are the worst in the state in spite of spending over $11,000 per pupil! That is outrageous!
Another thing I thought would piss people off came from Wednesday's blog where I said the Palestinians should 'Tell all Their Troubles To Jesus' and that the father of 11 children who sells soft drinks near a school for $2.50 per day should sell the little T-shirts that Palestinian infants wear that say My mother's breast milk is not affected by the (travel) restrictions. Still no hate mail.
So let me try again. How about the father of 11 children selling T-shirts that say My brother blew up a busload of Jews and is now banging 72 virgins and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. I'll put up the seed money and split the profits with him 50/50.
OK. Now on to poverty. I can solve it. I can solve it in one generation. But first, since liberals are so fond of looking at the 'root cause' of something, let's look at the 'root cause' of poverty. The root cause of poverty is children. Look at all the poverty statistics and the largest group in there is children. Now I have said many times that if you are of moderate intelligence and are not hit by catastrophic disease, drug or alcohol addiction (And I believe that these are diseases and should be treated as such. Drug addicts should go to treatment centers and not to prisons), or some sort of catastrophic accident, there is absolutely no excuse for being poor in this country. All you have to do is follow these three simple rules:
It does not take a village to raise a child. It takes two parents to raise a child. It does not take government to raise a child. It takes two parents to raise a child. It does not take my hard earned money to raise your child. It takes your hard earned money and two parents to raise your child.
OK GOC, I guess what you're saying is they're too darned many children. So you're for abortion right?
Nope. Abortion has nothing to do with it. What I am saying is that any woman who wants any government assistance for her and her children must get sterilized. I'm not talking birth control pills here. I'm talking tubal ligation. There is absolutely no excuse for anyone on government assistance having children. I'll pay for your tubal ligation so I won't have to support your rugrats for the next 18 years.
Aha, you racist bastard! Caught ya! You're talking about blacks again!
Nope. I realize that there are more white people than black people on welfare. I'm advocating this for everyone: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, whatever. If you want government assistance, you agree to have no more children and to enforce that agreement you go into the hospital and get your tubes tied. No operation, no money.
But GOC, it's their right to have those children.
And it's my right to tell them to support their own children and don't come knocking at my door whining about being poor. Let me quote sumpin' here:
We the people, of the United States of America,
In order to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution,
for the United States of America.
I realize that most people who have been brainwashed indoctrinated educated in our fine government schools over the last twenty years do not recognize the preceeding quote, but it is the preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America. I see absolutely nothing in there about Aid to Families with Dependent Children. I see nothing in there about the ponzi scheme (that in the private sector would be illegal) known as Social Security. I see nothing in there about Medicare or prescription drugs. And I see absolutely nothing in there about poor people having children and expecting me to support them. I didn't get an education and work my butt off so you could stay home, have kids, and watch Oprah.
I realize this sounds like a fascist solution like forced abortions in China, but this is simply requiring people to take responsibility for their own actions, which is, of course, why it will not be implemented. People can have as many kids as they want. If they starve it's not my problem.
We are approaching a meltdown in this country. Currently, 46% of the people in this country pay absolutely no income tax whatsoever. Every tax reform bill removes even more people from the tax roles. The Democrats, with the acquiesence of the Republicans, are moving toward the goal of having 51% of the people paying no income tax at all. And to top it off, the Democrats are trying to cut payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare) for the poor because they didn't get a tax cut last time around. They didn't get an income tax cut because they pay no freaking income tax!
Alexis de Toqueville wrote, The American republic will endure until the politicians find they can bribe the people with their own money. Our politicians are taking this to the next level. They plan on bribing 51% of the people with the money of the other 49%.
It's happening now.
Last night for Christmas dinner, my sister's husband, Ryan, drove up to Rock Hill to get his mother and bring her down for Christmas dinner. My sister didn't cook her usual Christmas dinner which is her Thanksgiving dinner (turkey and all the trimmings), since there were only four of us, but instead she cooked her Christmas Eve dinner which is Honey Baked Ham. We didn't have that on Christmas Eve. We had steaks instead. Also, for last night's dessert, we had the world's best apple pie. Eat your heart out, my sis' former neighbor!
To show how nice we are to my sis' former neighbor, Ryan took a picture this morning of the last piece of the world's best apple pie (It's made by my sister in case you haven't guessed that.), uploaded it to the PC, and sent it off to my sis' former neighbor. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh, my sis' former neighbor, one more thing. Ryan and I had apple pie for breakfast.
This afternoon we went over to some woods property that Ryan's mother owns and fired off some ammunition. My sister has a .38 revolver that is a real neat little gun. I haven't fired a handgun in over 30 years, but I was eventually able to hit the target. My sister does much better, but she has after all qualified for a concealed carry permit in South Carolina. Ryan pretty much obliterated the target.
I did much better with the .45. Ah, a manly gun! Kim du Toit would be proud that we celebrated Boxing Day by blowing holes in paper targets.
Tonight we're going to eat at a real nice restaurant they discovered.
Tomorrow, I bid farewell to Westville and drive back to Atlanta.
It's Christmas Day. I'm in a rather mellow mood so I'm not gonna rant about anything.
It looks like the Blogosphere may get a nice Christmas present from Rachel Lucas. She's thinking of blogging again.
Once of the nice things about being one of the evil hated rich (at least the way the Dimocrats define the rich), is I can do nice things and give nice gifts to my friends. For example, I gave my friends Michael and Cindy a bottle of Delamain cognac for Christmas. I would have given them Vesper, but Green's still doesn't stock it!!
I reserve Thursday for my Faxes From Babs posts (and she is running out of people to fax hint hint), but since it's Christmas, and I am, as I wrote earlier, in a mellow mood, I'm not gonna write anything. Instead, for those of you who missed the comments on last week's fax, Grognard told me the fax jammed and the second page was not sent and he posted it for us. Here 'tis:
p.s. Don't worry about the big deal the media is making about your joke about our friend Osamama the other night. They're all controlled by the Republicans and are just trying to make you look bad. I still think you're beautiful anyway. I'm gonna send you a thong for Chanukah.p.p.s. Why were you in the make-out room with Milton Corndrake, anyway?
Eeewwww! A thong? The mental image is horrifying!
Short post today.
We drove around historic Camden, South Carolina and saw some beautiful old homes.
We then went to see the new house that my sister and her husband are having built. It is almost completed.
We are having steak tonight and I'm probably gonna get blasted. We're gonna have a bottle of wine with the meal and Champagne before the meal to celebrate Christmas. The wine is Bonny Doon's La Cigare Volant which my friends, Michael and Cindy, gave me for Christmas and the Champagne will be Roederer Brut from the Anderson Valley.
I was gonna fisk a Leonard Pitts column that was in the South Carolina newspaper but I don't have time. Maybe tomorrow.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Fuck that Happy Holidays bullshit! The holiday is Christmas! If hearing someone say Merry Christmas offends you, tough shit! I don't care. I'm an atheist and nativity scenes don't bother me. Christmas carols don't bother me. If you are upset and offended you are welcome to leave, otherwise STFU! I am tired of all the political correctness bullshit.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
I am currently in beautiful Westville, South Carolina.
South Carolina? What are you doing there? I thought you went out to San Francisco every year.
True, but my sister sold her house in California and she and her husband are living in the thriving metropolis (400 people and the 25 beagles in the beagle farm next door) of Westville until their new house outside of Columbia is finished.
So, did you fly up??
In a matter of speaking. I drove my Z3 and it doesn't seem to want to go any slower than 80 MPH, which brings up a point that really pissed me off on the way up here. Georgia drivers do not know how to drive on Interstate Highways.
It frosts my ass when I get behind some booger eatin' moh-ron driving in the left hand lane and I have to pass him on the right!
What if he's doing the speed limit?
What part of "Keep right except to pass" is hard to understand? It is not that butthead's job to control the speed on the highway. That job belongs to the highway patrol. Anyway, in Georgia, the posted speed limits are mostly suggestions. If someone is holding up traffic, that someone should move over.
I used to drive from Atlanta to St. Louis twice a year, and driving through Tennesee, all the cars would pull over into the right lane except the cars with Georgia license plates. Assholes!
Anyway, it was a nice drive other than having to pass buttmunches on the right. I made it in four hours. I would have made even better time, except there was an accident on I-285 which held me up for 10 minutes.
Do y'all remember my Hey Dudes post from last week where I penned a letter from Bush to the Axis of Weasels? One paragraph:
So now Saddam is gonna start talking. Are you dudes worried? We should be able to get details on how you three have been violating the arms embargo. I already know that the insurgents are using French missiles. I expect to find out exactly why you three dudes were so against the United States taking out Saddam.
So Jim Baker headed off to Europe and had a little talk with Chiraq and Shroeder. Hmmmm. Shortly thereafter, they said that, sure, they would be willing to forgive some of Iraq's debt.
At that time, Russia said no way they would even think of writing off some of the debt. Right after Putin talked to Baker, he did an about face and said that he would gladly forgive some of the debt.
What was in that briefcase that Baker had with him?
Or it could have been this:
I'm sending my daddy's friend Jim Baker, to talk to you dudes about forgiving some of Iraq's debts. Let me explain why it would be in your best interests. Those debts were run up by Saddam Hussein. You may have noticed that he is no longer in power. What's to stop the new Iraqi government from telling you that they're not gonna honor the debts? What are you gonna do, declare war? Wouldn't it be nice to get a little bit of money instead of none. I'm wondering how the new Iraqi government is gonna feel when they find out just how much support you three provided Saddam.
Either way it worked.
Hey, maybe Bush isn't too bad at this diplomacy shit after all.
It can't be too hard if a <sarcasm>moron</sarcasm> like Dubya can do it.
So Colonel Kadaffy sez he's getting out of the WMD business. And who is responsible? According to Weasley Clark it is none other than Blowjob Bill.
Democratic presidential hopeful Gen. Wesley Clark said Sunday that his old boss Bill Clinton - not President Bush - deserved credit for forcing Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to abandon his weapons of mass destruction programs, even though Gadhafi's turnaround came nearly three years after Clinton left office.
The only way the Clintons could have had anything to do with it is if they told him that Bush was gonna invade, capture him, and then make him listen to the audio version of Living History.
"It's a program of squeezing Libya that's gone on for more than a decade," Clark told a Derry, N.H., audience, according to the Concord Monitor. "The Clinton administration was very much involved with this."
GMAFB! The only squeezing that went on during the Clinton administration had nothing to do with Libya.
In a slap at Bush, Clark said, it "shows that you don't need to use force to get your way in world affairs,"
From the architect of the Bombing in the Balkans.
adding that Prime Minister Tony Blair deserved credit for the Ghahafi breakthrough as well.
I admit that Tony Blair did have a lot to do with it, but Bill Clinton did not.
Of course, we're gonna hear about how this was a triumph of diplomacy over war. Like in this article.
"It clearly proves that diplomacy can win over proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons," added Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy representative.
Especially when the diplomacy has a picture of a two bit tyrant hiding in a hole in the ground. Hey Kadaffy, you're next.
China, another critic of the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq, joined the diplomacy-is-best camp, with spokesman Liu Jianchao saying: "Political and diplomatic approaches are the most effective forms to achieve the goal of nonproliferation."
Yeah. Let's send Jimmy Carter back over there to demonstrate his unique brand of diplomacy.
n related news, Howard Dean said that Libya abandoning it's WMD porgram did not make America any safer. He also said that he needs to be restrained.
Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean admitted on Monday that he sometimes gets so angry over political attacks on his character and record that he needs to be "restrained."
Well golly, does this show that Dean has the required "gravitas" to be president? And are we gonna hear that bullshit word during this election? Since Dean does not have "gravitas", I'm sure we won't.
Calling himself "a street fighter," Dean said that some of the worst attacks have been prompted by reports that he avoided service in Vietnam by telling draft board doctors that he a back injury - before heading off to Aspen to spend the next ten months skiing.
He admitted that he took x-rays of his back to his physical. He also spent a year as a ski bum. Is he pissed because people are telling the truth about him?
Anyway Howard, at the next debate, I want you to have a nice long talk with Weasley who will explain to you how force never solves anything.
Can't we all just get along?
Someone had to do it. I stole this from this guy.
Hopefully, he's squealing like a pig and that is his Christmas present to us.
There was a Tom Friedman column in Sunday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation that just cracked me up. It starts off
If we ever run out of room to store our gold in Fort Knox, I know just the place to put it: the new U.S. Consulate in Istanbul. It looks just like Fort Knox --- without the charm.
What's your point, Tom?
The U.S. Consulate used to be in the heart of the city, where it was easy for Turks to pop in for a visa or to use the library.
Or, perchance to blow up. This wouldn't have to be a Turk. It could just be a Muslim. Exploding seems to be part of their religion.
For security reasons, though, it was recently moved 45 minutes away to the outskirts of Istanbul, on a bluff overlooking the Bosporus --
Probably right by the bridge over the Bosphorus. I've been to Istanbul. It is a fantastic view on the bluffs overlooking the Bosphorous.
- surrounded by a tall wall. The new consulate looks like a maximum security prison. All that's missing is a moat with alligators and a sign that says: ''Attention! You are now approaching a U.S. Consulate. Any sudden movement and you will be shot. All visitors welcome.''
Except those with bomb belts.
But here's the stone cold truth: A lot of U.S. diplomats are probably alive today because they moved into this fortress. One of the captured terrorists involved in the Nov. 20 attack on the British Consulate in Istanbul --- which was just a short walk from the old U.S. Consulate --- reportedly told Turkish police that his group was interested in blowing up the new U.S. Consulate, but when they cased the place, they found it was so secure ''they don't let birds fly'' there.
Holy shit! Someone in the State Department actually has some brains!
This is where we've come to after two decades of anti-U.S. terrorism and 9/11: The cops are now in charge --- not the diplomats.
That's because the diplomats usually fuck up.
As one U.S. diplomat in Europe put it to me, ''The upside is that we are more secure.
And the downside is ... ?
The downside is you lose the human contact and it makes it way harder to have interactions with people who are not part of the elite. It makes my job less fun. Some days you might as well be in Cleveland, looking at the world through a bulletproof plate glass window.''
Yeah. It's lots of fun watching people explode. This guy sounds like an idiot. I guess he would have enjoyed the interactions he could have had with the Iranian "students" when they took over our embassy in Tehran.
Some of our embassies have such a Crusader castle look,
Nice simile, Tom. Crusader castle in Istanbul. That's gotta make a lot of Muslims happy.
they're actually becoming tourist sites. Fuat Ozbekli, a Turkish industrialist, told me: ''I was just on a tour to Amman [Syria] and we stopped our tourist van in front of the U.S. Embassy there. We asked the guide why they need all these tanks around it, and the guy told us that within this American Embassy, they have everything they need so they can survive without going outside. . . . I felt really sorry for the Americans there.''
Why? Because they're safe? They can leave the embassy any time they want, but while they're there they are probably in the safest spot in Istanbul.
And that brings us to our immigration policies.
It's not just the brick walls that our embassies are now putting up that are increasing American isolation. Beginning next year, to get a visa to the United States, you will have to go to the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate and be fingerprinted first. Some European diplomats have already started warning their American counterparts not to expect them in the United States anytime soon --- if they have to submit to fingerprinting.
Boo fucking hoo! We don't give a flying fuck! If you don't want to be fingerprinted to enter the United States stay the fuck home. It won't bother me a bit. And I bet it won't bother the majority of Americans either, except dipshit liberals like Howard Dean, Tom Dasshole, Nancy Pelosi, and Ted Kennedy.
U.S. diplomats understand the security reasons for this. But, they note, it is really awkward to call up a Turkish writer or a Chinese dissident, extend an invitation to come to America on a State Department exchange program, and then say: ''But first you have to come into the embassy and get fingerprinted.
Give me the telephone. I'll tell 'em. It won't bother me a bit.
Give us your tired, your poor and your properly fingerprinted.
Sounds just fine to me.
Serhat Guvenc, a lecturer at Bilgi University in Istanbul, was actually flying to the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and was diverted to Canada. He's been avoiding the United States since because of all the already intrusive visa requirements. ''All the new measures the United States introduced intimidated me,'' he said. ''In Turkey, unless you are a criminal or a potential criminal, you would never be asked to leave your fingerprints. It is kind of humiliating. It's uncomfortable.''
Then don't come. Simple problem. Simple solution.
Many people would still line up for America if we charged $1,000 per visa and demanded their dental X-rays.
They hate us, but they want to live here.
But others, especially young Europeans, are thinking twice because they don't want the hassle. Better to go to France or Germany. Add to this the shrinking capacity of U.S. diplomats to reach out and, in 20 more years, we could wake up and find that we've gone from America the accessible to America the isolated. The only Americans foreigners will meet will be those wearing U.S. Army uniforms and body armor.
And that would be bad because ... ?
We need to figure out a better system. Because where birds don't fly, ideas don't fly,
Huh? WTF? What do birds have to do with ideas?
friendships don't fly
Friendships fly?
and mutual understanding never takes off.
As opposed to all the mutual understanding we have now.
Listen Tom. If the rest of the world thinks it's an inconvenience to be fingerprinted to come to this country that's just too fucking bad. They can just stay in their own pissant countries. (Jesus, I'm channeling Pat Buchanan.) One 9/11 is enough. It's about time we started getting tough about our porous borders and lax immigration policies. And as for making our embassies look like Crusader castles, one embassy takeover was enough. The rest of the world didn't care when the Iranians violated international law and took our diplomats as hostages, so we're now gonna start taking care of ourselves, thank you.
To the rest of the world: If fingerprinting is a big hassle, fuck off and stay home. We don't care.
This weekend's rerun will explain why we have some of the problems that our users brought up in the circle jerk round table that I wrote about in yesterday's post.
For all of you who are expecting some sort of racist, bigoted, misanthropic, politically incorrect rant, I'm sorry to say I'm gonna disappoint you. Instead, I'm gonna talk about accounting. So this may bore you. But, if you work for a bureaucracy, you may find this interesting.
TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) has been given a clean bill of health. Our books are in order. And, I know one of the reasons is SHTS. For those of you who came in late, SHTS is our Stupid Hourly Tracking System. I discussed SHTS in more detail in my here.
Here's another bit of review. TCIDNN is made up of several organizations. I happen to work for MPOOTCIDNN (My Particular Organization Of TCIDNN). Also MPOOTCIDNN is made up of business units. So, to be more precise, I work for MBUOMPOOTCIDNN (My Business Unit Of MPOOTCIDNN). I am in tech support. I am a systems programmer, which means I install and maintain operating systems (by these, I mean operating systems that actually work, unlike the abominations Microsoft has inflicted upon us) that MBUOMPOOTCIDNN uses to provide services for customers. We have a good accounting system. You won't hear, 'I say Smedley, we seem to be missing $4 billion. You haven't seen it anywhere have you?' 'Geez boss, I looked under every desk. Can't find it anywhere.'
Tech support is overhead. We do not produce any revenue. We support people who do. And we have two types of customers we support:
Understanding all this is relatively easy if you just think of money as beans. The money that we get from external customers is made up of green beans. The money we get from internal customers is made up of white beans.
The way tech support used to work, was we were given a bunch of white beans from the main bean jar. This was our budget and we used it to fund all the hardware and software. Then, we tried to figger out how much each of our supporting segments used of our resources and they paid us in beans. If the segment supported external customers, we got green beans. If the segment supported internal customers, we got white beans. Naturally, green beans are better than white beans, 'cause green beans are real money. We put all of our beans back in the main bean jar. If we put more in than we took out, that was profit.
Remember, the budget is made up of white beans. When budgets are approved, everyone gets to go to the main bean jar and pull out the number of white beans corresponding to their budgets. Tech support was very efficient, and we never used all of our white beans (even though we could have). As a result, we saved white beans every year, and our second and third line managers probably got bonuses. Even so, they decided tech support was gonna cut costs and they came up with a real good way to do it.
Tech support wasn't gonna be able to get any white beans for hardware and software. This was now the responsibility of the segments (Our internal customers who actually provide services to our external customers. The segments actually make money.). And this is the sneaky part. They would not give the segments enough white beans to fund the required up to date hardware unless the segments pooled their white beans, but there was not a process for pooling white beans! Beautiful! There would be white beans left over. So, we would not be up to date, but we would save a lot of white beans.
Now, the next thing they would have to figger out is what is everybody doing. Remember, people have to get paid, so you have to have beans for that also. Once again, since tech support is overhead, everyone has to pay tech support in beans. That's where SHTS comes in. Everytime I do a job for someone, I have to code it in SHTS. SHTS keeps track of beans, and, depending on how I code my SHTS, determines how beans flow through the system. Now the segment managers can look at SHTS reports and see what parts of the segments they manage are using the most beans in tech support costs.
The entire system, therefore, depends upon accurate SHTS reporting. Ah, there's the rub. One of my jobs is to install the base system that eventually all of our users are gonna be using. I asked my manager how I was supposed to allocate my SHTS time since what I was doing was affecting everyone. He gave me a typical bullshit manager non-answer. Have you ever tried to nail jello to a wall? They must teach this shit in manager school. Oh yeah, they do. I have a blog about that. So, we are basing business decisions and bean flow on the numbers that I have to make up by guessing at usage of my base system. I also do some work tied directly to particular projects and there is no problem there.
After I build my base system, it is turned over to some other programmers, who make it into our common platform. They have the same problem I do. They have to pull allocation numbers out of the air and guess the usage of the various segments.
We've been doing this since the start of the year and now the segment managers are griping because they don't think their beans are going where they think they should be going. And now our EPS (Empty Polo Shirt) manager has said that we need to be more granular in our SHTS reporting. And we have replied, 'And how will we do that? We asked you about that in January?'
I just love it when a manager looks at you and you can tell that the thought gears in his head have totally locked up. You can almost see the smoke start rising from his head. And guess what the solution is? We have to assign a PM (Project Manager) to it.
Please. Please. Please. Do not assign the MPM (Meeting PM) to it. His solution to every problem is, and I quote 'We will have to call a meeting on that'. And it is not just one meeting. It is countless meetings. I think the fix is, our users get tired of all the meetings and decide to live with the problem. The MPM is the apple of my manager's eye because he makes problems go away.
When I moved into my current job four years ago, I worked for the internal segment. My systems were always at later releases than the systems used to support the external segments so they transferred me to full time tech support with the understanding that 50% of my time would be spent in supporting the internal segment. I asked the manager of the internal segment yesterday if he would like me to upgrade his systems. He said he couldn't afford it. He couldn't spend the white beans on me. As a result, I have had a lot of spare time lately. Fortunately, I got a new system in today and can start installing it and making up SHTS numbers.
I can't really decide which is more fun and which requires the most creativity: Installing the system or making up the SHTS numbers.
Let the beans flow.
I am eligible for full retirement from TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name), but I stick around for the following reasons:
1. I get paid a lot of money.
2. I don't have enough money to retire and still maintain my lifestyle. I'm close.
3. Every month I work, my pension goes up.
4. I like my work, it's my job that sucks.
5. Sometimes the bullshit is really amusing and gives me good material for my blog.
And sure 'nuff, reason 5 came through for me on Thursday and Friday.
My friend Brian, got to attend a conference call circle jerk round table with a HMMM® (High Mucky-Muck Manager). Now I have told him many times, when on a conference call with management, remember this: Mute is my friend! Keep your mouth shut. He didn't heed my advice.
One of the things that was brought up in this circle jerk round table was the fact that IT support (That's my group) does not have the hardware to support the latest software coming down the pipe. Now why is that?
Long time readers may recall that from January to November we have been working on a project that I named Death Spiral, that involved us providing host support to our counterparts in Europe. This all came about because their IT support was raising their price from $2.7 million a year to $2.9 million a year. We got involved and after countless meeetings and writing and rewriting proposals we told them we could provide support for $1.7 million a year.
After a month of this bullshit, I realized that our counterparts were just using us as a bargaining chip. I tried to explain this to my CDSM® (Clueless Dipshit Manager), but I was accused of having an "attitude problem" and not being a "team player". I truly know how Cassandra must have felt. I guess the shit hit the fan when I remarked in one of the meetings that our users were pissed that we were spending all of our time trying to nail down this project rather than concentrating on our real customers. My CDSM® accused me of telling this to our users. As a result, I wasn't invited to any more meetings which as you can probably imagine really broke my heart.
We had been planning on using Death Spiral to finance our hardware upgrades. When the project fell through in November (Actually my CDSM® still thinks we have a chance even though the IT support group in Germany dropped their price to $1.5 million) there was no backup plan, so we have no financing for needed upgrades. In the meantime, my CDSM®'s manager (who was also a CDSM®) retired and my CDSM® was promoted to take his place. Can anyone say Peter Principle?
And just last week, that same user group, who has been telling us we needed to upgrade our hardware, had me on a conference call to France to discuss having them provide host support since our hardware was almost obsolete. This was the group that my CDSM® accused me of telling that we were spending more time with Hans und Fritz than we were trying to provide solutions to them. This group had to go to France for support eight years ago because we didn't have the hardware to support them. It turns out that what they were paying France then was more than enough to pay for us to upgrade our hardware. But, here we are, eight years later, going through the same old bullshit again! The more things change, the more they remain the same.
But, back to the circle jerk round table. All of this was related to the HMMM® (who just happens to be my CDSM®'s immediate superior) and he assured them that just that morning my CDSM® had made an "aggressive hardware purchase".
Immediately after the circle jerk round table, Brian came down to my office and related this to me. My team lead and I looked at each other and realized that maybe we were gonna get the DASD subsystem, tape drive and 500 tapes that we had been trying to get for over a year. After hooting with laughter about this "aggressive hardware purchase", we asked what else went on during the circle jerk round table.
Indeed there was more. The HMMM® was told that we were no longer gonna be able to share hardware with the division that was splitting off from us.
"That cannot be", he said.
"Oh yes it can", said Brian. (Mute is my friend! Mute is my friend!)
"Oh, surely not. That would not provide synergy."
On Friday morning when I got to work and checked my mail, there was a note from my CDSM®, asking me what hardware we were sharing with the other division, why we weren't sharing hardware with them, and what could we do to share more hardware with them. Obviously, the HMMM® checked with him about the split.
I replied to the note that I had been spending the last two months working on the reverse synergy hardware non-leveraging project. We had had two meetings with the other division discussing this (He had been at both of them.) and I had been updating the team about what I was doing in our Waste 15 Minutes Every Other Tuesday concerence call. We had also discussed this in the weekly Host Team Meeting, that he usually monitors. The only hardware that we are sharing is about 32 addresses on one of our DASD subsystems so they could have a spinning backup of their systems and since we back up all the volumes on that subsystem we would back up their data, which we are charging them for.
I know that somehow this is all gonna wind up being my fault. But I don't care. The bullshit at TCIDNN does not really bother me any more. It's just too funny.
To: Margaret Allbrite, former Secretary of Foreign Things
From: Barbra Streisand
Dear Marion,
You go girl! It's about time someone has the balls to point out how politically craven the Busch administration is. Not only have they already captured Osama Ben Lenin and are waiting for the right political moment to produce him, they've obviously had Sodom Huessein in captivity for quite some time. I believe Joe McDermis of Washington. They were probably keeping him imprisoned in that hole in the ground and that is why he looked so bad. What next? Are we going to find out that there were weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq that they didn't tell us about and they've been holding that information back also? I wouldn't put anything past these evil Republicans.
And I'm glad to see that Harold Dean and some other people are now beginning to see that Cynthia McKinney was right. Those of us in the mainstream knew all along that Jeb Bush knew about 9/11 in advance and did nothing about it. It is time to impeach this president! He is a moron and a disgrace! Mickey Moore is right. Even though he won't talk to me anymore, ( And this is why - GOC), I still loved his autobiography, Stupid Fat White Man and the sequel, Dude, Where Are My Feet?
We definitely need for more soldiers to die in Iraq. Maybe then we could get the French, the Germans and the United Nations to join us. The nerve of this president to take us to war with no allies. We have thousands of Americans dying in Iraq and he tells the French, the Germans, and the Russians to go to hell. You and Bill Clinton wouldn't have done that. You would have asked permission from the French before embarking on this quagmire.
Even though I would like to see Helen Clinton or Jimmy Looberman as president, I think Henry Deen will do a good job and I really hope that he gives you your old job back or, even better, he gives it to Jimmy Carter. Now there would be the right person to direct our foreign things. He even won the Noble Prize from Finland. What an incredible diplomat! He could solve the North Korean problem just like he solved it back in 1984. I heard him say that if he had been re-elected, he would have had a "final solution" for Israel. What a shame this fine man was not given another term!
Once again, I am so proud that the Democratic Party has such an intelligent person like you to give advice on things about other countries. You're so much better than that Uncle Tom, Colon Power.
Luv ya,
Babs
Memo to Howard Dean and the other Dimocrat nitwits who are screaming for the United Nations to get involved in Iraq look what the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, has to say
''Settling scores with the U.S.-led coalition should not be at the cost of helping to bring stability to the Iraqi people,'' Zebari said in language unusually scolding for an occupant of the guest seat at the end of the curving Security Council table.
Ya hear that, you Axis of Weasels assholes?
''Squabbling over political differences takes a back seat to the daily struggle for security, jobs, basic freedoms and all the rights the U.N. is chartered to uphold,'' said Zebari, a blunt-spoken Kurd with a history of fighting Saddam as a mountain guerrilla.
How 'bout helping us out here?
Taking a harsh view of the inability of quarreling members of the Security Council to endorse military action in Iraq, Zebari, one of the 25 Cabinet ministers named by the Iraqi Governing Council in September, said, ''One year ago, the Security Council was divided between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wanted to hold him accountable.''The United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure.
We at the United Nations can't help it if we are a bunch of cowardly pussies. We were just following the French.
''The U.N. must not fail the Iraqi people again,'' he said.
In other words, thanks a bunch for letting Saddam murder and rape us for the last 35 years you dickheads!
So what did Klueless Kofi Annan have to say about being bitch slapped?
''Now is not the time to pin blame and point fingers,'' he told reporters. Saying that Zebari was ''obviously entitled to his opinion,'' Annan said that the United Nations had done as much for Iraq as it could under the circumstances
I mean, how could we help you when we were trying to obstruct the United States from doing the right thing?
and was prepared to do more.
As long as there is no real work involved. We hold meetings. We hold lots of meetings. We're good at that.
''Quite honestly,'' he reiterated, ''now is not the time to hurl accusations and counter-accusations.''
Now is the time to do what we do best. Hold lots of meetings and blame all the world's problems on the United States.
So Klueless Kofi, when is the United Nations gonna do what the Dimocrat dimwits want and take over in Iraq? Well golly in this article in Wednesday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation we find out what Klueless Kofi thinks:
But U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented the council with a report in which he said Iraq --- where a bombing at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad killed at least 23 people in August --- remained too dangerous.
Ya hear that Howie? Your precious UN is too fucking scared to take over in Iraq. There goes your Plan A if you get elected. Do you have a plan B? No? Didn't think so.
So now we also have the Dims saying that capturing Saddam would not stop the insurgents. In fact, they say, it's only gonna get worse.
Have any of you ever heard of a little pest called a chigger? It is this little tiny parasite that burrows into your skin and sucks blood. When you get a chigger it itches like crazy. You can tell where the bastard is 'cause there's a little red spot. To get rid of a chigger, you just put some fingernail polish on the red spot. This cuts off the chigger's air and it dies. But, before it dies, it goes crazy and tries to dig its way out. It hurts like hell for just a little bit until the sumbitch dies.
That's what we got in Iraq. We just bagged Saddam and a few more of the top leaders of the insurgency. Like a chigger, the insurgency is going crazy right before it dies. We're winning. Who knows? In a few more months it might even be safe enough for the United Nations to go back in.
In the meantime, they'll continue what they do best: Hold lots of meetings, tell us what we're doing wrong in Iraq, and blame all the world's problems on us.
And the Jews. Mustn't forget the Jews. After all, they run the United States don't they?
I really need to start a new category called GMAFB for when I run into incredibly stupid bullshit like this twaddle written by someone named Amy Ross that I read in Tuesday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation.
There is broad consensus that Saddam Hussein is linked to massive atrocities. Far less agreement exists on how he should be held accountable.
Here's my suggestion: turn him over to the Iraqis. I think they will know what to do with him.
With the capture of Saddam, the Bush administration is presented with the opportunity to correct its chief failure in the conduct of this war.
Break out the bullshit repellent spray because here comes the bullshit!
Like so many other moments in the crisis involving Iraq, the correct way would be to proceed within the framework of the United Nations and international law.
Told ya! If we had waited for the United Nations and international fucking law, Saddam and his two sons would still be killing and raping innocent Iraqis. And speaking of the United Nations, are they still in Iraq? Nope. They cut and ran at the first sign of danger.
Such an agenda would involve establishing an international court to try crimes committed in Iraq, including those attributed to Saddam. It would meld Iraqi and international interests in the pursuit of justice.
GMAFB! Exactly who would be on this international court? Would it be the same countries that are on the Human Rights Commission? Ya know, countries known for human rights like Libya, Syria, Cuba, and Iran?
The dossier of evidence against Saddam is thick. The charges include those of the most serious nature: crimes against humanity and genocide. These acts are considered so heinous as to be of importance to all of humanity, rather than simply the locale where the acts occurred.
Yet, to much of the Arab world, this man was considered a hero. The Syrians and the Palestinians love him.
Particularly since the arrest of Chile's Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998, human rights activists have increasingly sought out foreign jurisdictions to pursue cases that have been stymied by impunity at home.
I don't think there will be any problem with the Iraqis giving Saddam the justice he deserves. I do think we should be allowed to make him listen to the Barney theme until he tells us everything he knows. Or maybe we could make him watch the Britney Spears' movie Crossroads. He'd be screaming for mercy! Amnesty International would probably declare that as cruel and inhumane punishment.
National courts --- especially in Western Europe, such as in Brussels and Madrid --- have been transformed into international arenas in the process. This phenomenon has been described as the "externalization of justice" or "justice without borders." The indictment, arrest and trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague shows that (despite the difficulties) it is possible to bring a barbaric tyrant before a civilized legal proceeding.
"despite the difficulties"? There won't be any difficulties. This is an Iraqi affair. Once we squeeze all the info out of this worthless bastard, we turn him over to the Iraqis who give him a fair trial and hang him. Fuck the UN. Fuck international courts. Where the fuck was Brussels and the United Nations when we were doing the heavy lifting? Sorry assholes. We did the work. We decide the outcome. If you want to start with the international law bullshit, explain to us where international law was when the Iranians violated international law by taking American diplomats hostages for 444 days. Where was your international law then? Stick your international law up your cowardly international asses!
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which sits in Arusha, Tanzania, has also conducted fair and open trials against those of the highest rank considered responsible for the genocide. A newly established U.N. War Crimes Tribunal for Sierra Leone recently flexed its muscles in pursuit of Liberia's ex-president, Charles Taylor.
If the world is serious about Africa, they're gonna be overwhelmed with Zimbabwe, Sudan, Somalia, Sierra Leone, and most of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. And like most of the rest of the United Nations it is gonna be totally useless.
Each of these courts has lessons to offer a future international tribunal for Iraq. Perhaps the main lesson is that something entirely new can be created: a custom-made court taking into account local, national and global interests. In this sense, each successive war crimes tribunal should be seen as a "trial run" in the historical development of human rights.
I want some of whatever it is that she's smoking. It has got to be really good shit.
It would be unlikely that an international tribunal could agree on the death penalty as a possible punishment for Saddam. But what's important is a fair trial. The extent of the maximum punishment is of lesser concern.
Yep! This is a guy who has killed millions of people. I repeat: give him a fair trial and hang him.
I do not give a flying fuck about the international community! The international community hates the United States. International law sucks. Once again I bring up Iran's violation of international law in taking diplomats hostage. Where was international law then? Where was the isolation of Iran?
And now for the grand conclusion.
In his news conference on Monday, President Bush said that any trial of Saddam would "withstand international scrutiny." He can do better than that and turn his No. 1 prisoner over to an international court.
Dream on. Ain't gonna happen. Take another toke. Don't worry your silly little head. Go to sleep. Grownups are on the job here.
To: Jack Chiraq, Chief frog of Frogistan
Vlad Putin, the head Rooskie
Gerhard Shroeder, the big ol' Sour Kraut
Hey Dudes,
Guess what? We caught that Saddam dude! How do you like them apples? Found the bastard hiding like a rat in a hole. And I'll bet he smelled worse than a Frenchman. So what do you think of the Cowboy now? Did you see Howard Dean on television yesterday? He looked like he was trying to pass a kidney stone the size of a bowling ball. The economy is back, we got Saddam, and if we can get Osama, I'll beat him like a red headed stepchild in the next election. Probably won't even need Osama but it would be nice.
So now Saddam is gonna start talking. Are you dudes worried? We should be able to get details on how you three have been violating the arms embargo. I already know that the insurgents are using French missiles. I expect to find out exactly why you three dudes were so against the United States taking out Saddam.
I hear you guys are also pissed about the fact that you're not gonna get any of the reconstruction contracts. Hell, Gerhard, I heard that you said I might be violating international law. I'll have to check with my lawyer. BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Since you guys actively opposed me and aren't gonna pony up any bucks for the reconstruction, why should I even think of giving any of your companies money provided by the American taxpayers. Who do you think I am, Jimmy Carter?
I'm sending my daddy's friend Jim Baker, to talk to you dudes about forgiving some of Iraq's debts. Let me explain why it would be in your best interests. Those debts were run up by Saddam Hussein. You may have noticed that he is no longer in power. What's to stop the new Iraqi government from telling you that they're not gonna honor the debts? What are you gonna do, declare war? Wouldn't it be nice to get a little bit of money instead of none. I'm wondering how the new Iraqi government is gonna feel when they find out just how much support you three provided Saddam.
Gotta go. Hope I've given you three dudes something to think about. In the meantime, I'm leaving you with the words of Bruce Willis in Die Hard:
Yippee Ki Yay MF!
The Cowboy
Today is my sister's birthday.
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday Dear Sherry
Happy Birthday to you.
I went to the Sommelier Guild's annual Champagne tasting at Sage restaurant in Decatur Georgia. Here is the menu with the bubbly served.
Speaker's Wine Piper Heidsieck Brut NV
Blanc de Blanc Flight Jacques Seylosses NV, Duval Leroy 1996,
Tattinger Comte de Champagne 1996
Flash fried baby calamari with a mix of field greens, sunflower seeds, feta cheese, red onions in a mild balsamic vinaigrette
Rose Flight Nicolas Feuillatte NV, Deutz 1996, Duval Leroy 1996
Seared Atlantic Salmon with potato cake and okra corn sauté
Grand Cru Flight Mailly Les Echansons 1996, Dom Perignon 1996
Krug Grand Cru NV
North Carolina rainbow trout topped with walnut, capers & brown butter served with haricot verts and roasted new potatoes.
It's a rough job, but someone has to do it.
For this weekend's rerun, I'm reposting sumpin' I wrote back in 2002 when I still had a sense of humor. It is about a quality program called CTF (Crawl To Failure).
Oh, and an update. My sister typo'ed when she said I had put up some pity posts lately. She meant to say that my "writing had gotten pithy lately".
"Really?" I asked." "Yeth", she replied.
When we left our fearless hero (dat's me) last week, he was anxiously awaiting for his database password to propagate to all the servers out in TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) Server Land. That was so I could get back to CTF (Crawl to Failure). For those of you who came in late, I covered CTF here. For those who don't want to follow that link back, let's do a quick review of how corporate America works.
When companies get in trouble, there are three actions they usually take:
1. Lay off employees. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of layoffs! (With apologies to Shakespeare) Anyway here at TCIDNN we call layoffs skill rebalancing. As in we're skill rebalancing you right out the door. Here's your cardboard box. See ya.
2. Reengineer processes. Not to be confused with skill rebalancing, tho' sometimes reengineering processes does lead to skill rebalancing. Most of the time, tho', it leads to a FQP (Quality Program). And, of course management always swears that this is not AFQP (Another Quality Program). We were only kidding with the all the other FQP's. This time we really mean it. Honest.
3. An employee competency program. After all it's always the employees' fault. We managers are doing everything right. It's those pesky employees. I know, let's waste some money and reeducate them. And from that, we get CTF.
Anyway, on Friday, I'm chomping at the bit to get started on module three of CTF. It's taken me a week to get the authorization, download a local copy of the database, and get a password to access the database out on the server. So I go on out to the server and after I access it the first thing I read is 'You don't need a special password to access the database. Your company intranet password will work.' Huh? Hey, thanks for sharing that valuable info with me three days ago! I could use some choice words about now, but my officemate said if I don't clean up my language he was gonna quit reading my blogs. He mainly gets pissed off when I say f***, so I'll do my best not to say f*** too often. So, I was glowering at my terminal and I was patiently saying 'This shit really pisses me the f*** off!'
I calm down and access the database. As part of the instructions I received when I was given authorization to the database, I click on Education. Then I start clicking on things that expand to other things to click on until I get to click on something that initiates a popup window to view, launch, or detach. I dutifully click on launch and sit back and am immediately stunned.
A multimedia presentation starts up. Someone is saying something and on the screen are circles with spokes emanating from them. On the spokes are other circles. And they're spinning. I am really impressed! Then the spinning circle-spoke-circle spinning things are replaced by a bunch of squares and there are lines connecting the squares but they are in no discernable pattern. I get it. The spinning things represent our management spinning in circles trying to figure out what to do next. And the squares with the interconnecting lines represent our organizational chart. Right? Did I guess right? No! I've missed the point entirely. It means something else. Right! It means something that has absolutely nothing to do with my job.
But I do have to admit, it was well done. I turned to my officemate and said, 'Officemate, why didn't you tell me how peachy, neat, keen, and super (mustn't forget super) module three was?'
Ya see, he has already completed CTF. As I watched the presentations, that were really well done (peachy, neat, keen and super) all I could think of was that someone had put in a lot of time and effort to put this presentation together. And, it wasn't just one presentation. No, after every presentation (which had a pause and a replay button displayed on the bottom so you could pause and gaze off into space in awe and wonder and return and restart where you left off or replay the presentation so you could get the most out of it), by golly there was another one to watch. Why, you could keep this up for hours (I've got about three hours invested already and I'm still not done) and be amazed.
What amazed me the most was how much this stuff must have cost to put together. How much additional money has TCIDNN thrown down the rathole of another management fad.
Ya know, I think professors at MBA programs at colleges sit around smoking dope and try to think up the most outlandish, stupid things they can teach to young heroes in their MBA programs. Yeah use synergy to work smarter not harder and make sure you think outside the box and be ready to make a paradigm shift. If all else fails, pull your head out of your ass.
But wait. It gets better. It's now Friday at 10:30 AM and I have to do my SHTS (Stupid Hourly Tracking System) entries for the week. We have to have ours done by noon. It really needs to be in by 8:00 PM on Friday. I can just see our general manager waiting in breathless anticipation every Friday night for the SHTS reports. Of course this doesn't happen you silly goose. He actually looks at them at 10:00 PM. We have to have ours in by noon, so our manager can make sure everything is correct from his people. That way he looks good to his boss.
I fire up my SHTS system and start entering stuff. Now, CTF is productive education. Yes, they do have a code for nonproductive education and no, I don't know why we would have to have education that was nonproductive. Maybe that's diversity training.
I look up the code for CTF. Let's just say it is CTFSUXO1. And the activity for productive education is DUHO01. I enter this into SHTS and it comes back and tells me it's invalid. How could this be? I try again. Still invalid. Nothing else to do but shoot off a note to the SA (SHTS Administator) and the PMICOS (Project Manager In Charge Of SHTS). I get a message telling me the PMICOS is on vacation. My last hope is the SA.
Let's pause now for an amusing story told to me by the SA. It seems she was surplussed (that's what we called skill rebalancing back then) last October. Three weeks later, I am not making this up, one of the third line managers asked why he wasn't getting any SHTS reports. Upon further investigation, it was revealed that the SHTS reports came from the SA who had been surplussed. How did this happen? 'I dunnoh boss. She was the SA? No one told me. Had I known she actually did sumpin' I wouldn't have surplussed her. Pretty funny, huh? What do we do now?' They brought her back as a contractor.
Here at TCIDNN we have a system similar to AOL Instant Messenger called FARTS (Fast Available Real Time System). If someone is online, you can just FART at them. So the SA, who sees I'm online FARTs me a message: 'What's wrong?' I FART back: 'I'm having trouble with SHTS. It won't take the CTF code.' She FARTs back: Did you enter CTFSUXO1 where the O is the character O as opposed to the numeral?' 'Yep' I FARTed back. 'Hmmmm' , she FARTs.'Let me check it out.'
Since she is the SA, she can do magical stuff with SHTS. Five minutes later she FARTs at me: 'I've entered the appropriate codes on your panel. See if SHTS will let you save it.' I try. It works! I FART back to her: 'Thanks SA. You sure do know your SHTS.' We FART back and forth for the next few minutes exchanging pleasantries. She used to work near my offfice and it was always fun because she and another one of the administrative people (who also got surplussed) would spend most of the day laughing. Ah...the good old days. It is nice to know that she is only a FART away.
After that, the rest of the day was anticlimactic.
I did some more of CTF. I'm still on module three. I'm still amazed. The circle-spoke-circle things are still spinning. The squares still look like our organizational chart.
And this still has absolutely nothing to do with my job.
When I moved to Atlanta back in 1985 I did so with some trepidation. This was only gonna be a waystation on my career path with TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) so I only expected to be here a few years. I did not really want to live in the state that had given the country Jimmah Carter, whom I thought to be one of the most inept men to have ever held the office of President of the United States. Fortunately, at that time, Jimmah was keeping a rather low profile.
It was in the late 80's that he started his rehabilitation. First it was Habitat For Humanity and then it was travelling around the world monitoring elections. He soon got the reputation for being one of the best ex-presidents this country had ever seen. I actually found myself liking and admiring the man. But then, he turned back into a buffoon.
He has this obsessive attitude about world peace. Yes, world peace is a wonderful concept. After all, Israel could have peace if they would only disarm and welcome the Palestinians with open arms. They would have eternal peace in mass graves. RIP Israel. And, with no sense of irony, he even says that if he would have had another term in office he could have brokered a "final solution" to the Israeli/Palestinian problem. It's like he doesn't believe that there are things worth fighting for. Y'know, things like freedom and liberty. Like Neville Chamberlain, he thinks tyrants can be reasoned with and appeased to have "peace in our time".
It was Jimmah who brokered that wonderful deal with Kim Yuk Foo (I stole that from Kim du Toit. I like it. I use it.). Both he and Bill Clinton got snookered on that deal and then they have the unmitigated gall to blame North Korea's nuclear program on Bush. They even say we need to come to another bogus agreement. That's all we need foreign policy advice from Jimmah and Bubba.
His Nobel Peace Prize was a slap at American foreign policy, and clueless asshole that he was, he accepted it and in the process slammed his country. Like I said, all we need is foreign policy advice from the architect of a disasterous foreign policy during the train wreck that was his four years in office. One example was the humiliation by a pissant country like Iran holding American diplomats hostage in violation of international law. Where the fuck was the United Nations then?
Not content to undermine American foreign policy, he now has to weigh in on Zell Miller.
Carter, appearing on the radio program "Fox News Live With Alan Colmes," said Wednesday that "one of the worst mistakes" Roy Barnes made during his term as Georgia governor was appointing Miller to the Senate following the July 2000 death of Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell. Miller later won a special election to fill the rest of Coverdell's term.
One of the worst mistakes this country ever made was electing Jimmah Carter president. That was much worse than anything Roy Barnes did.
"He has really betrayed all the basic principles that I thought he and I and others shared," Carter told Colmes
And what principles are those Jimmah? Appeasement. Ignoring terrorism? Signing bogus treaties? Running around the globe undermining your country's foreign policy?
Here's what Zell had to say:
"Jimmy Carter and I have been friends for more than 40 years," Miller said. "And over those 40-plus years, I bet I've received about two dozen personal notes from Jimmy Carter. Half of them are giving me hell, and the other half are bragging on me. So, I figure I'm doing OK batting .500 with Jimmy Carter."
Unlike the country, which between 1977 and 1980 struck out with Jimmah. Remember gas lines? Remember the misery index? Remember the hostages? Remember malaise? Remember Jimmah in a cardigan turning down the thermostats in the White House to save energy? Remember the killer rabbit?
Also in the Urinal and Constipation was this tidbet.
Former President Jimmy Carter, in an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live" slated to air at 9 tonight, says he is impressed by Howard Dean, the Democratic presidential nomination front-runner,
Go Dean! Right after he wins the nomination we need to get a picture of him in a tank a la Dukakis.
although he has no immediate plans to endorse a candidate.
If he were gonna endorse a candidate it would probably be Kucinich. I think they're probably kindred spirits.
He says Dean's campaign is similar to his own 1976 run for the presidency but has the added boost of Internet financing.
Be afraid! Be very afraid!
He also says he thinks it would be a mistake for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to get into the race now, despite her popularity.
Like Hillary is gonna listen to Jimmah Carter.
It's "going to take a few years to separate herself from her husband and let the general public know that she can stand on her own feet and that she has her own agenda and she's a good political player on her own," Carter tells King.
Too true. Hillary terrifies me. Bill's only ideology was getting Bill Clinton elected. Hillary's ideology is socialism. She would be a bigger disaster for this country than Jimmah could even dream of being.
Jimmah is an idiot! I wish he would just go away and STFU!
On the other hand, he did give me a topic to write about tonight so I guess he's good for sumpin'.