Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

I happened to look at the Sunday ads today for all the electronics places I keep up with -- Best Buy, CompUSA, Office Depot and the like -- and saw that Windows Vista goes on sale(?) at Midnight, Monday night. Just like Harry Potter! So that we are all thoroughly confused, Windows Vista comes in four (count'em) four different versions, each with...well, I couldn't really tell you. Here's a chart that shows exactly what you get for your dough. I mean, this is a goddamn operating system, for pity's sake, not the second coming of Christ. The new Super Deluxe Ultimate Kitchen Sink version caught my eye. If purchased without an upgrade, it will cost you $400. More than your freaking computer, probably. My first reaction was, "What the Fuck?" My second reaction was, "This is definitely the year I switch over to Linux, once and for all." Eat me, Bill.

...That the reason I was tagged to do Six Sigma (or "Thick Thigma" as we like to call it in the cul-de-sac I call my career) was NOT that my supervisors decided I had that ineffable quality that makes for rising stars in the glittering firmament of Management. No, it's because the guy they (probably) had in mind, should have had in mind at any rate, just gave notice. So they had an empty slot to fill to make their goals for training this year. Damn, that's a relief to know.

In the post prior to this, I arrogantly mocked the corporate cult religion known as Six Sigma (go look it up yourself -- I can't bring myself to explain) by posting a Dilbert cartoon mocking it. Today, as I relaxed at my desk, preparing to slide out to lunch, my boss came and beckoned me to follow him. On our way to our unknown destination, he revealed to me I had been chosen (anointed?) to undergo Six Sigma Green Belt certification this year. Aieee! I've been asked to drink the Kool-Aid! The Gods once again reveal the twistedness of their sense of humor. On the bright side, I may have found the motherlode of absurdity to be mined for my next novel. (On a completely random note: did you know the 1960's British band Sigma 6 was a precursor to Pink Floyd? Me neither.)

From Dilbert today : It's scary...like the guy lives in the cube next to me or something.

I reset about 150 user passwords last night. Then I got up this morning, flipped to the comics page and read Dilbert : Damn....He's like some sort of Nostrildogmas! Freaky.

Got up at 4 this morning to let a persistent cat outside. A light dusting of snow coated the deck out back. Then at 6:15 the phone rang. I thought to myself, "Could that be D's school, calling to cancel classes?" Indeed it was! I flipped on the TeeVee and saw James the Weatherman (a personal friend), microphone in hand, shivering on camera for the amusement of those of us up at the crack of dawn. At his feet was a rather pathetic foot tall snowman he'd named David FinFlake (a little weatherman joke -- David Finfrock is the primetime weather guy). All the local schools had thrown up their hands and said "No school!" So I stayed home and telecommuted. Booyah, Beanie!

I haven't mentioned the Novel of late (had a dry spell over the holidays) but joys of my workplace inspired me to get serious again. I'm happy to say that over lunch today I managed to finish rewriting the 2nd draft (subject to fine-tuning based on suggestions offered by my writer's group). Now I go back to the beginning, re-read, and throw myself into the third draft -- which hopefully will result in something I can actually start circulating. For those of you who haven't been keeping up with this bit of self-indulgence, my book is about Intellectual Property (among other things). Whoo!

Usually I'm proud to admit I'm a Democrat. Not always. Hearing Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) and Joe Biden (D-Del) shill for the music industry makes me not proud. The RIAA, the thugs who can't squeeze enough money out of their customers are now busily working to pass legislation specifying what formats webcasters supply their content in. Hello? Remember the war in fucking Iraq? The Music and Movie industry, who have been steadily eroding consumers rights ( Earth to Dianne: consumers = voters ) to decide how they can listen to their purchased music, now has decided to mandate the forms in which online music can be delivered. To put it in more concrete terms, if I wanted to read this crap I write and release it as a podcast, Dianne and Joe would make it illegal to encode it to certain audio formats . The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) goes for the moral high ground on the issue of Digital Rights Management, but be not misled: this is the bunch who ha...

I grew up in the Cold War. As a child I always lived in large population centers (with strategic importance). One of the ongoing memories of my elementary school experience was the drill where we'd all file out of our classrooms, line up along the lockers in the hall, duck down and cover our heads with our little hands. Duck and cover. It was generally understood we practiced this exercise in case those perfidious Russkies dropped the Hydrogen Bomb on us. As I grew older, I came to understand this would accomplish little, save perhaps making it easier to sweep up our incinerated remains (assuming there was anyone left to do the sweeping). One of the few voices raised against the development and stockpiling of nuclear weapons -- which led to the insanity that came to be known serendipitously as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) -- was that of J. Robert Oppenheimer, subject of American Prometheus: the Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer , an excellent biography by Kai Bird ...

Yet another adventure in the old Dilbertocracy today -- the 2007 Sisyphean Corp IT department kick-off meeting this morning. Beany Countwell ("I'm a numbers man"), our CIO, fed us carbs and caffeine at an off-site location then hammered us with PowerPoint slides and business homilies. I've said it before but it bears repeating: if you listen carefully you can learn a lot more at these functions than management intends for you to learn. It's all in understanding the code. Management often speak in opposites. Example: when describing a soon-to-be-implemented system to track employees' time (in 15 minute increments), Beany emphasized it wasn't because management didn't trust us. No, that wasn't it at all. Meaning, of course, that was precisely why they were doing it. An HR rep discussed "taking charge of our careers," in which they revealed (with a curious lack of realization) that management kept a hit list of certain individuals to be...

Saw the headline " Bush aims to balance budget by 2012 " and my first thought was "What the F*CK???" I felt like I'd fallen into some weird alternate universe where GWB wasn't a lying bastard who spent money like a drunken fratboy with Daddy's American Express card. Isn't this the same GWB who inherited a 200 billion dollar budget surplus from Bill Clinton and burned through it like a crack addict? Last time I checked, we were running an 8 trillion dollar deficit . How convenient that he "aims" to have it balanced 4 years after he's out of office (that way it will be the Democrat's fault, since no doubt we've seen our last Republican administration for a couple of terms). He "aims" to balance the budget? Let's hope his "aim" is better than Dick Cheney's .

Back from my trip to Toronto, where number one son is now in the dorm. Classes start on the 3rd. We spent considerable time one night trying to find classes to add to his schedule. This was a challenge, since almost all were already closed. Still, we managed. Getting a cellphone proved to be a bit of a challenge - the Canadian providers all want to nickel and dime you to death adding features that came by default with our current US provider. So I'm still working it out. York was founded in 1959 and the campus architecture was largely cheery late Bauhaus - very European. Although fairly removed from Toronto proper, it is well connected via bus and subway. We made our way from the hotel where we were staying to the campus via Toronto's subway and bus system. Other than the time involved, it worked flawlessly. When we were finished on campus, I made my way back to the airport using public transport as well. As a comparison: we took a cab to the hotel from the airport which cost $...