It’s only a ‘word’

It’s only a ‘word’.

It’s only a ‘word’

Sorry but today’s entry isn’t funny. Once again a famous person has let loose the “R” word in a negative reference to his opponent, and once again people are out defending him, saying it only a word.
Maybe it’s because I’m an aspiring author, maybe it’s because I enjoy history, maybe it’s because I have an IQ in the triple digits, one of those factors is keeping me from getting on board this ‘only a word’ concept.
It was only words that started the revolutionary war, ‘We the people’ it was only words that advanced science and stretched the human experience ‘we will go to the moon’ Honestly if I wanted to I could spend the day and find thousands of examples of ‘only words’ and how they changed the course of our history, for better or worse.
There are simple rules that people could follow to decide if something is ‘only a word’. Sadly human beings have a crap record with rules, but still here goes.

1) If it has ever been used as a pejorative – it still is one.
2) If it has ever been used to dehumanize another being – it still does
3) If it has ever been used to inflict pain – it still will.
4) If you wouldn’t say it to a family member that has been hurt by it, you shouldn’t say it at all.

There are thousands of words in the English language, if Retarded is the only on you can use, perhaps you should examine who it really applies to!

How Calendars make you ill

My company, like most I have worked for use calendars to help employees keep track of their schedules and commitments. Unfortunately there is a side effect. People like me (and I am unsure how many of those there really are) will look at their calendars and start to see their headaches in advance.

For instance, tomorrow my calendar says “train co-worker in basic board operations”. The coworker in question I wouldn’t trust babysitting my pet rock. Letting him use my board and expecting any good result is optimism on my boss’s part. Of course this is a needed thing, someone needs to run my board on days like tomorrow, because I have a field appointment “work with client on miscellaneous issues” This translates to “someone ½ assed a job and you have to clean it up and make the client happy” good for time, bad for effect. Tack on to that a system audit and efficiency report both being wanted and it is clear that while I can think of many four letter words for the day, only one is productive

Sick

I am about sure I will be taking a sick day, and thanks to the calendar being pre-populated, I know that I need to start setting the ground work for this today. So some adult tricks to set up your sick day:

Tell your co-workers you feel drained. You can’t say you’re sick already, that would be something they could see is a lie, but drained is perfect.

Schedule something that you enjoy, and your boss knows you like. You would never schedule something on a day you’re going to be sick.

Mention how sick someone else in your house is. This trick works better when you mention kids and spouses then it does if you try it with Pets (and it completely fails if you try pet rocks)

Skip lunch and be sure if anyone asks you mention “I just have no appetite”

Watch the news for any bug that’s making its rounds.

Ok that’s enough thoughts for the day. I need to be sure to get all my work wrapped up before my sickness sets in

Tuesday – (not to funny this time)

Today’s meeting with the bosses the subject came up ‘what do you want to do’
To my good fortune I was able to not blurt out “breast inspector at a four star strip club” or “race car driver” instead I found some platitudes about wanting more field time and having to deal less with the cleanup. With my co-workers cleanup is a constant challenge. Like most techs, they tend to think that if anyone can do it they can. Personally I avoid such promises. The easier the request the better the odds that someone isn’t telling me something.
Lying to your tech or lawyer or doctor is pointless, it’s not like they won’t figure out somewhere between instantly and immediately that you have. And in the end, all your lie does is run your bill higher, and get you not only the dumbass label you were trying to lie your way out of, but an additional “Lying” put on the front.
The most honest and easy people to deal with start out “I don’t know”

Mondays

I know not everyone hate Mondays, some people who work odd shifts always say “my Monday is on Wednesday”. However after years in the work force, I’ve figured out that this logic is wrong. The reason it’s wrong is because hatred of Monday is a collective trait. Everyone on Monday is coming off a near euphoric high of the weekend to return to whatever form of drudgery that pays their bills together. And much like a nasty flu bug we all want to share this annoyance. This is why the calls I get are so much more inane on Mondays (and if you had any idea how inane these calls were in the first place, you would realize what a feat that actually is)

I would love to blame my co-workers ‘interesting’ actions also on Mondays, but really all they do is aggravate an already annoying situation.

So for all of you what drug yourself out of bed today, realized you didn’t win the lotto and that in spite of all your efforts and prayers, Monday has returned, I salute you. And for those of you that don’t get to enjoy the collective hatred of Monday, I envy you. I would kill if my first day of the week were 2 days after the rest of humanity got over the sudden crash that is Monday.

On a related note: sorry this is little late today MONDAY SUCKS!!!

I need better expletives.

I work in a ‘professional’ office. I have found that this means that everyone tries to dress to the same standard, keep their tattoos hidden, and try to avoid excessive use of expletives around clients & the general public.

Away from the ears of others, the language in the office becomes much more colorful. One of my coworkers has mastered the fine art of using an expletive every 8th word, or less. This is just enough to make him sound almost ignorant, but not so much that you can tune out everything he is saying.

I on the other hand have mastered the polite peppering technique. This is where I almost never use them, and avoid the big one, the F Bomb, until I am really pushed. I find this gives the word, and the entire sentence it’s tied to, a level of power. When the man who never cusses says “He will god damn well get to the bottom of this” Coworkers & Clients believe him and the subject usually ends.

In truth unless we are talking about a beer bottle, I will never get to the bottom of it, I won’t care enough to. If I cared enough to, I wouldn’t have used expletives to end the conversation.

But all the not cussing is work, hard work. I think I need a whole new set of expletives that I can use while avoiding the big 7.

The Reckless Red show

I went out last night to see a local band called “Reckless Red” at a place called the Zypher

I have to admit, dive lounges on east Colfax are not on my normal or abnormal list of places I go, but it was a buddy’s birthday and I’ve been needing to stretch myself a bit, and I have full insurance so there was really no reason not to go.

The lounge was as much of a Dive as I thought it would be. It looked like something left over from the 60’s, it was small but not too crowded. To be honest I thought I saw the remains of crime scene tape on one of the posts outside, and this morning I am debating if I should go get a tetanus shot. It had a dingy feel to it, even though it was clean.

I could go on for a bit about the lounge, and I will admit to being a coward; somehow the results of dive lounge spring rolls scared me, but the real focus of this should be the band.

The band is very old school, one drummer, 1 guitar, 1 base and a singer. How they managed to pack that much talent and sound into that package I will never understand. The lead singer CJ is one hell of a singer, sounding like a hybrid between Joplin & Ethridge. The guitar player is a phenomenon I swear that he could make his guitar do tricks. The drummer kept the pace and set together and the base player stretched his sound to make the whole thing work.

If you ever get a chance to hear them play, you really should – it would be worth the tetanus shot & the hangover.

Co-workers & Friends

I have a theory; Friends are god’s way of apologizing for your family. If that theory is true, then co-workers are his way of saying “opps I overpaid with the friends”
We are losing one of my co-workers today, nice guy and one of the few human that I work with that I would actually associate with outside the office. Most of my coworkers are alive simply because I don’t feel like carrying the bodies down 6 flights of stairs to the dumpster. He is leaving for because he is ‘sick of the bullsh1t.’ I almost wanted to point out ‘the grass is always greener where the bullsh1t is piled the highest’ but I doubt he would understand that wisdom.
I’ve also decided to expand my list of friends, in my quest for knowledge (and to get insights to fill in my writing characters) I need to stop being so safe with my friendships. After all my two best friends in the world and I should have never been friends. Yet 32 years later we are.
Letting perceptions & Stereotypes [both mine and everyone around else’s] define who I make friends with is stupid, so if you see my friending people that are too young, too old, too liberal, too conservative, too strange, too normal or some other condition that would preclude me from adding them, please take your opinion, package it and seek medical attention for where to put it.
Too bad it took me this long to learn that.

What I Want to Be when I Grow Up

On my 16th anniversary (give or take a few months) of my 30th birthday I am finding myself wondering what I want to be when I grow up. Right now I am putting not a small amount of effort into being an author. This may seem like a strange selection for someone in the IT field. There are a number of factors that lead to this decision.

The first being I enjoy telling stories. Up to this point, most of the stories I told started the same “No mother that’s not what happened” or “No Officer that’s not what happened” or “No Honey, that’s not what happened”. It has been a combination of telling those stories that has helped me hone my skills, knowing what people will and won’t believe. I could have saved myself a lot of days grounded, money for tickets or nights on the couch had I developed these skills sooner, but I did finally develop them.

The second factor is job burnout. After 21 years of dealing with the inanity of the human population. I find myself dreading when my phone rings. When I started in this career field, I would answer my phone “Hello and thanks for calling My name is Robert, how can I help you today” these days I am closer to answering “shut up, reboot and call back if that fails”. While I haven’t’ sank that far down yet, the slide seems all but inevitable. The fact the technology shifts constantly slowed down the inevitable slide, but having to know 3 different ways to do the same function is tedious.

The third factor is the praise. I have to admit I have been writing stories for years. Most of them I would delete or not finish. My latest project nearly got derailed when 2 people close to me wouldn’t read it (1 lacked the time, the other lacked the interest) To my fortune, the person I asked to help edit (ok to do all the editing, my spelling and grammar suck) liked the story. Another person, who gave me a huge amount of technical advice, told me how much they loved the story. Those two gave my ego a boost and kept the story alive. At some point I will need to start the “get rejected” phase of things – IE try to find a publisher. But that is a bit away still.

I suppose if I am going to be completely honest with myself and everyone, I should also mention that in spite of checking Craigslist every day for over a year, there are no positions at the strip club for breast inspectors.

So author it is. I have all the tools I need – a laptop, several good ideas, a few crappy ones I can stretch, and a stash of cardboard with “will write for food” written on them

Questions I refuse to have to ask

Today, after yet another case of my indirect boss offering me tips on how to be a better tech I find my self on the internet ranting as opposed to going on some sort of massive crime spree. When ever my indirect boss helps, always cracks me up being as he is an accountant trying to run a tech company. This is as logical as a giraffe teaching a lion to hunt.

Today’s pointer was about how I ‘don’t ask the big questions’. His argument is somewhat accurate, twice this year, both in the last 2 months. I have rolled a tech to a location only to discover that the client failed to mention some detail.
The clients I work with are Doctors, Lawyers, and Accountants. Their staffs are all white-collar professionals, much like myself. As a result there are questions I will NEVER ask.

1. Do you smell smoke?
2. Are you standing in water?
3. Does your building have power?
4. Did you spill anything on it?

The reason I refuse to ask these questions is if they haven’t told me this information during their desperate call for help, they never will.

I have been doing computer and computer support for 22 years now. That’s longer then I have been married, older than my youngest child, and with the exception of an antique shotgun, older than any of the possessions in my house.

I can safely say that while I haven’t seen it all, I’ve seen enough. My boss assumes that those conditions are ‘normal’, I disagree, those conditions are far from. The Clients apparently think I have a remote camera in their office. Based on what they do with their computers, I don’t want to see what they do in real life. Honestly if the person I am dealing with doesn’t know enough to tell me any of those things, they don’t really need a computer tech, they need a swift kick.

That’s not something I can do for them remotely.