Blacked Out
Local television NFL blackouts hurt drastically worse when you’re using up your one pro game of the weekend on a bad game. I saw a granny giving the double-thumbs-down to the Texans in the middle of the third quarter.
Local television NFL blackouts hurt drastically worse when you’re using up your one pro game of the weekend on a bad game. I saw a granny giving the double-thumbs-down to the Texans in the middle of the third quarter.
I just got AT&T SmartFilter’ed for “Adult/Sex” going to mobipocket.com to check out the ebook reader for Palm OS. This is out of hand.
Also: the fact that AT&T has managed to find two ways to take the hot poker to me, even in Turkey, is astounding to me.
Learning from AT&T hot poker #1: when a collections agency says to you, “Go ahead and pay, we’ll hit you back once the misunderstanding is resolved,” just think of Faust picking up the pen. Even if the guy is cool and from Colorado. It’s an act. He’s really a tax accountant from Tempe or something.
AT&T also blocks Project Gutenberg’s website as a “bandwidth hog.” So, I can get a 10 MB e-mail that went out to the entire Turkish organization, but I can’t take a look at a 100kb public domain eBook in plain text format?
The local intranet homepage is 200kb, which normally wouldn’t count, but we’re on a VPN to the Netherlands, so our “th1n p1p3” gets action from that, as well.
Another thought in light of the events of yesterday: we are at a fabulous time in computer history, best illuminated by the existence of the Python programming language. If it was easy enough to outsource to an effectively untrained individual, a computer would already be doing it. And it probably wouldn’t be too hard to implement.
Carrying on from there, I think that many things that are being outsourced are being underestimated in terms of difficulty. No, payroll processing is not rocket science, but it’s also not paint by numbers. Right now, “exception” is like a very bad word that should never be said but is said all the time.
The definition of “professional” often ends up being largely about decision-making. Managing exceptions. Many accountants and IT people (among others, I’m sure) - people in my kind of position - are now trying to argue that they are not professionals, which would ipso facto qualify them for overtime.
But, guys, welcome to the information economy. If you define yourself out of being a professional and aren’t swinging a hammer, I’ve got a netbook on my couch that has better job security than you within the corporate world. It’s only getting more severe as we go.
Brandon (to himself): Hmm, I haven’t been paid yet, and it’s a day after payday. Maybe I should inquire into this matter.
Brandon (writing an e-mail): I have not been paid. What’s up?
HR enters with great fanfare
HR: I am the Ghost of HR Help Desk! What’s the problem? You’ve been paid. Can I close the ticket?
Brandon (puzzled): Umm… I don’t have the money.
HR: Well, you’ve been paid. Call your bank. Can I close the ticket?
Brandon: How do you know?
HR: It says right here on my screen! Can I close the ticket?
Brandon: But -
Exit HR, who closes the ticket with a casual snap of the fingers
Brandon: Sigh.
Time passes
Brandon: Maybe I should ask someone in local -
A voice booms from above, startling Brandon
Voice: I am the Ghost of HR Local! This is out of scope! (Doppler effect signals retreat) Contact … the … Help … Desk!
Brandon: Who needs money, anyway?
(Brandon feels a tug on his pant hem; a small, well-dressed, self-aware grasshopper)
Grasshopper: (squeaking) I am the Ghost of HR Europe! I am out of scope as well, but I just found out you didn’t get paid. We’re doing a post mortem to resolve the issue within a few days!
Brandon: Thanks, little guy! You’re always hopping in when I need something. Can I contact you with any other queries? Heck, I’ve even talked to you in person and know your first name.
Grasshopper: Technically no, but yeah.
The moral to this story is not in final analysis critical in any way. It just says that knowing people, having a relationship, and knowing roles is the important part. Screw the system.
Sources close to the mission commented, “Is it okay for me to close your ticket based on this outcome?”
I have a lot of internal chaos about this whole healthcare debate. This blog probably generally reads like I have made up my mind and don’t like government options, but that’s just my thought processes at work.
I just skimmed Dadio’s link to the venerable FactCheck.org discussing the middle class. This gave me an idea which somewhat leads to my thoughts on healthcare.
The middle class is not a range; I think that’s the fatal flaw that’s always been made. The middle class is simply: a group of people that, to a varying degree, are clustered relatively closely around the median American living an acceptably comfortable life.
Of course, my corporate training would have me immediately jump on the indefinability of “acceptably comfortable,” but I don’t think it’s as hard as it seems. My income/taxation picture of middle class is a family that makes enough money to:
This is kind of a random thought, but what’s getting me right now is that this more moderated concept of the middle class seems to be the ones having trouble with healthcare. The destitute at least have a route to go within the system, although very few really like it.
But there’s something distinctly un-American to me about screwing the middle of our society. This country was founded to give the middle a chance. And it’s really the driver of our success. We tax the top and give to the bottom, but here the middle actually has no recourse. Leaving them alone seems to be an unworkable option.
Shell has pretty much impeccable benefits, and it’s kind of humbling to see the other options given to people in small businesses, the service industry, and the like. But what to do? Intentions are good and options are bad.
There is a reason I didn’t build a search engine (public or administrator) into Efendi. I am afraid I would come to realize my self-redundancy so sharply I would collapse in some kind of Conrad-esque horror-fit. Plus, if I don’t write things on this blog, I don’t exactly articulate those random daytime thoughts much of anywhere else most of the time, and my mental state would probably suffer for that.
Anyway, or shall I say forebodingly and flippantly say “any way,” I noticed something for probably the hundredth time that really drives me nuts. Just because a pair of words has a compound word associated with them doesn’t mean you can substitute the conglomeration willy-nilly. The compound word generally has its own meaning in the cases I’m pointing out here.
“Anyway” turned out to be an excellent example.
The correct: “You can walk there any way you want to go.”
Versus the awful: “You can walk there anyway you want to go.”
The second would be better punctuated, in terms of meaning, as: “You can walk there! Anyway, you want to go.”
Some are close calls, like “anytime.” It’s almost a draw here:
“We could see a dolphin at any time during this ride.”
“Anytime works for me.”
I think “anytime” is an actual single point in time, just not defined. If you’re saying any number of points of time, it’s “any time.”
I see in the online dictionary that “anytime” is defined as “at any time,” which seems to confirm my hypothesis.
But attention must be paid.
The unfortunate employment of the term “headache” makes it seem like Obama is getting “walled” as well.
I read that Obama’s domestic popularity is falling. I would think this is primarily because he is actually trying to fulfill his campaign promises on a reasonable time schedule. I mean, I don’t agree with the guy on most things, but you have to say he’s at least making some effort to follow through and cut some of the political inertia that seems to be content with waiting on hockey sticks out somewhere in the distant, unmapped future.
So this is why you don’t do this, traditionally, I suppose. You instead pull a Dubya and just sneak some bacon fat Medicare provision for seniors to win Florida in essentially the eleventh hour. You say you ran on “principles” and that’s what your mandate is based on. Carte blanche. We’ll reform something when the other guys take a hike.
Then again, maybe you “try” to get healthcare reform in place, etc., and then depend on the recency bias to wash memories of the failure in time for elections. If I were the aliens consorting with the Freemasons to run the country, that’s what I would do. Admit failure early and call for circuses with free bread toward the end of the first term. Subsidize post-immunization Dum-Dums or something. All would be forgiven.
This Cash for Clunkers business is a mess. A dealer was quoted to the effect of, “The government had no idea what goes on inside a car dealership.” Meaning they didn’t plan how they would get eleventy thousand reimbursement checks verified and cut in a number of weeks in a business that essentially breathes cash for its life. I’m telling you, this government doesn’t know how to spend money.
Much like our friend Mardi Gras, it seems most Istanbul-ites around here are more eager and willing to celebrate the end of Ramazan than they are to actually observe the fast.
But here, as with most things linguistic and cultural, the party is a suffix rather than a prefix, so everyone is booking their travel for the mid-September days off.
But, honestly, the fast is pretty tough cookies. I mean, Kristin and I couldn’t figure out if it was technically okay to brush one’s teeth after sun-up under the strict constructionism of the rules.
The tea gardens were about half full when I walked by today. They are normally just about standing room only, so I guess that shows something.
I’m very glad to see that I can readily blend in without observing the fast, although it might be a pretty fun challenge to get through. The waking up early to shove my face with food and water would not be my favorite part of the deal, though.
If there is absolutely no choice in the matter and the political tides are taking us certain ways, I had a thought.
I think one of the most repugnant aspects of American politics is the way programs are sold to us and then paid for by lawmakers. Specifically, the program is sold in theory, with the funding coming from some magic pot o’ gold at the end of a rainbow. But it turns out the leprechaun is just an IRS agent with a calculator and a hot poker. The attitude of the lower income folks is “why not?” The attitude of the liberal rich guy is “add it to the bill.” The attitude of the conservative rich guy tends to be a “whiskey tango foxtrot” type thing.
I think these grandiose ideas would be much more palatable if they tied the program funding to the program itself. Does that make sense? I’m saying, set it up (somehow, I need to go shower so I’m banging this one out quickly) where, when I pay my heavily corporate-subsidized health insurance premium, I understand that $X is being added to my bill to pay for 20% of a family of 5 in Tucson.
The US has 307 million people or so, with less than 50 million (even using pretty fat numbers, as I understand) uninsured. I’m seeing that around 20% of that figure elect to pass up already-available public insurance options. A bunch of them are young, in college and such, so you can assume some will come and some will continue to pass it up.
I think this, if properly implemented, could really help keep them honest. The SSA sends out lame-o annual statements, why not other real-life aspects of tax? I really have no interest if the Defense portion of my taxes goes for the paint coat on a Cruise missile, but I’d kind of be curious how far the “FDR portions” of my payments are going toward actually making peoples’ lives better.
In the end, if the government does this, I think the government is putting itself in the position of being a charity. We can talk about the pluses and minuses of this, but what I would stress is that - this being the case - the government should begin acting more like a charity in the way it spends and raises money: