Smoke and Mirrors

When I was first told about the Help Desk opportunity down on The Pharm, I was a bit dubious. A long history with The Corporation had taught me never to take anything at face value and not to believe anything was true until it was put in writing. Even so, I was encouraged at the possibility.

But each step of the way lead to a more certain conclusion. I had been initially told that they were going to move "our best of the best" from The Bank to The Pharm. It sounded like it was a done deal and all that was required was the paperwork. But then we were told there was going to be an interview. The Site Manager tried to spin it as just another formality but, as I said, take nothing at face value.

When the interview finally came, it felt just like any other interview rather than the formality I had been lead to expect. Again, when the offer was first proposed, I was told that my training experience was part of the deal. They wanted me to be a trainer for the integration. But again, in the interview I learned that the integration was not what I had been told it was and my training experience was not actually necessary. I was being interviewed to be just another analyst.

Finally, I learned that after the interviews, they decided to hire only one. They had interviewed six people, three of us and three apparently from the general population (or perhaps from The Corporation but not this Help Desk) So, the idea that the best of the best were being transferred was completely debunked.

The reason, the Site Manager told me, was that I created my own policies and that it's not my place to do so. I had been asked what my weakness was and I said that I took the time necessary to resolve issues. This sometimes lead to conflicts with the desire to resolve issues in 7 minutes or open a ticket (not an actual policy but a regularly reiterated guideline) but, if I went over that, it was always in the interest of customer service. The interviewers nodded their heads and agreed that the desire to take as much time as is necessary to resolve the issue was a foundation on which their Help Desk was built. They said that they had no such policy artificially limiting the amount of time taken by an analyst on a call. But, in truth, they had already made their decision. They saw my willingness to ignore policy as a threat to corporate harmony and dropped me. They don't want people that care about clients more than they care about policies and procedures. They want drones that follow orders.

My Site Manager's reaction to this has me believing that he actually thought that I was being transferred to be a trainer. And since I'm pretty sure that the people at The Pharm knew what they wanted and would have conveyed it to our Corporate HR, it was then my own company that spun the tale.

Smoke and mirrors. HR uses the mirrors to reflect your dreams and aspirations back upon you. I was looking to do training so HR made it seem like I was going to be a trainer. I was skeptical so they made it seem like a done deal. They stroked my ego by saying I was the best of the best. HR uses the smoke as layer of obfuscation between me and the truth. They lied to my Site Manager so that he could pass on these untruths with a straight face and a clear conscience.

This all happened on Monday but I haven't written about it until now because, even though I wasn't surprised at the outcome, I was still disappointed. On top of that, there were a number of application rollouts this weekend and nearly half a dozen analysts have left the Help Desk so we were sorely understaffed for the increased call volume. It has been one call after another, all day, all week. Tuesday I took twice as many calls as usual. After those kinds of days I've just gone home, played some "Star Wars: Battlefront," watched some TV and gone to bed. I haven't been motivated to make something to eat, let alone be creative in a blog. And even being physically and emotionally exhausted and going to bed early, I've not been getting much sleep. I need a break but I have too much of a work ethic to blow off work for a mental health day.

So, I return to square one having learned a valuable lesson: Lie your ass off during the interview. When they ask what your weakness is, be prepared with something piddling and unrelated, even if you think the truth could be spun to your advantage. They are lying to you and don't deserve the truth in return.

Where the Calamari Orders You.

I was in New York this week for my nephew's High School graduation and afterwards we went with my brother's family to Benihana. I was immediately disturbed by the horror on the plates.

It was the great elder god Cthulhu set above what must have been a multi-eyed and tentacled Shoggoth. My wife insisted that I was looking at it upside down and that it was actually flowers in a vase but I simply wasn't buying it.

Visiting the Pharm

After five week, I finally got the chance to go out to the new client site and interview. (Since this is a pharmaceutical company, I will protect their identity by referring to them as "The Pharm.")

Three of us from The Bank Help Desk went out at the same time. The Pharm representatives appreciated this because they were able to bring us into the secure building all at once rather than having to run up and down the stairs for each of us. They had apparently been scheduled for 6 meetings, one every half hour.

Of the three, I was to go last so I loitered in the Help Desk area. And it was familiar, in a sense. There was one person that I had trained at The Bank and had moved out to The Pharm a year ago. In addition, there were four of the Old Guard who had also been at The Bank and had moved out. That was great because, in talking to them I got a sense of just how much better this was.

For one, they've unscrewed all the lights. Walking through the door into the Help Desk, you would think that everyone had gone home for the day but most people are working only by the light of their monitors. Others have desk lamps. Only the Notes Team seem to like the light so they are all on one side of the room with ceiling lights.

They have wireless headsets so that can move about freely. One person told me she had gone to the kitchen/break area while on a call but that was just a little too far and the signal was breaking up. I'm reminded of a webcomic I scripted two years ago.

The Pharm is much more interested in issue resolution than in clearing the queue like The Bank is. There is no one looking over your shoulder telling you that you've been on the call too long (7 minutes) and telling you to move on. They want the issue resolved and if it takes 30 or 45 minutes that that's how long you should take. There are metrics such as availability, first call resolution and the like but they are easily met by competent workers and there is no pressure.

When I got the chance to meet with the reps, I was comfortable and confident. They asked one of the common interview questions; "What do you think is your weakness?"

"I tend to take whatever time is necessary to resolve an issue in spite of company policy. I refuse to end a call just because my 7 minute time limit is up, and I've flat out told my managers that as well. Where that is a liability at The Bank, it sounds like that's actually the way you do things here."

When my Site Manager and Operations Manager first talked about this opportunity, I got the impression that my training experience would be utilized as part of what they called "the integration." I assumed that would be between The Pharm's helpdesk and the new staff from The Corporation. Well, I was mislead. The integration they were talking about is that The Pharm used to have a third party supplying their hardware support. The Corporation is now taking care of hardware and is also taking over the Help Desk. The integration will be between the Help Desk and Hardware arms, make them a contiguous spectrum of support. My training experience is probably not going to be a factor in that. They also rely a lot on their knowledge base application for training. I may yet be involved in that, but it's not going to be what I thought.

When I got back downtown, my Site Manager was excited to hear how it had gone. I think he was a little disappointed that I seemed so blase about the whole thing. It's not that I'm disappointed but I've gotten used to these things not panning out and what had at first seemed like a sure thing has been shown to not be so sure.

My ego did get a boost, though, when my Site Manager said that he had really wanted to do something for me. He said that I had done everything here at the Help Desk and should have been moved up to Team Lead or some other manager position but there simply wasn't such a position available.

He's looking at this move out to The Pharm as a promotion but I'm seeing it as a change of environment with more pay. How much more pay, I still don't know. Since I was talking to representatives of The Pharm, they only knew operational details. I'll have to wait for The Corporate Overlords to make their pay offer. The Pharm guys said that they want to start moving quickly so I might be hearing about this in a few weeks.

Harassment Citation

The investigating detective in my Eliza Furnace case called to let me know that Codename P and his lawyer came to the Zone 4 station to receive a summary citation for the charge of harassment. It was, unfortunately, the best that could be done for in all the instances of grease and toothpaste under the door handles occurring over the past year, I was the only one to file official reports with the police. And though the reports were filed as Malicious Mischief, because no significant damage was done to my vehicle, the most severe charge that could be levied is harassment.

I am told that a court date will be set, likely in a month or so. I don't see much point to it though. Codename P told the detective that he "wouldn't do it anymore" which strikes me as an admission of guilt. For summary offenses, much like traffic violations, if he simply sends in his check for the fine, that could well be the end of it. There hardly seems any need to enter a courtroom.

I would very much like to have seen that. To stand before a judge and have him asked why the hell he would do such a thing? What did he hope to accomplish?

The court date may yet occur but I suspect Codename P's lawyer will do all the talking, simply admit guilt, write the check and get his client the hell out of there.

And while justice has been served, the victory seems somewhat hollow. And just as the year before all this when he was telling people he would have them towed and, when confronted, said "he wouldn't do it anymore," will he simply change his tactics? A year from now will he forget the minor price he had to pay and choose another tactic?

The wheels of justice turn. And turn again.

The real old fashioned way

I spent most of my day at Meadowcroft competing in a World Atlatl Association competition. In the past, I have only spectated at the flint knappers making arrowheads and spear points but today I was recruited to sit down and learn something. I started on a point, knocking of flakes until it started to look vaguely like it could someday be an arrowhead. Then, *whack*, I hit at the wrong angle and broke the piece in half.

So, I started again with another piece of stone. I got about as far with this one as I had with the other when, *snap*, I knocked the point off of that one.

On the third try, I got a piece of flint that seemed to cooperate better. The flakes weren't coming off quite the way I wanted but they were too small rather than too large, which is easier to work with. Plus, I think I was starting to get the hang of it. I still didn't have a good eye as to where to strike to shape things the way I wanted but, with some guidance, I was able to produce a serviceable 2 inch arrowhead after about three hours total.

The pros said that it was very good for a first point. It looked better than their first points and it was even better than some authentic Native American points they had found in the field.

Even so, I don't see myself jumping into the hobby of flint knapping. I feel that I lack some of the subtlety, tendant towards wanting to tie a rock to a stick and calling it a club.

It's still a nice little point.

Getting the call

It was five weeks ago that I was "offered" a position at a new Help Desk client site. Last week, I was told that I would be getting a call from the Site Manager out there on either Friday or Monday. Well, Tuesday came and went without any response.

My current Site Manager followed up and on Wednesday everyone here got an update call. My own was left on my home answering machine and had an odd tinge to it. The first part seemed to be a disclaimer, along the sort of "I don't know what you've been told" message that makes it seem that my Site Manager's enthusiasm and impression that things were going to be happening quickly and that our moving out there were sure things wasn't so sure. The other part was the suggestion that the delay was because of a management change.

Well, of course there's a management change. The Corporation is taking over someone's Help Desk so it's a given that the current management is going to be replaced. I'm just concerned that we're going to be the first outsiders to invade with the expectation that everyone already there will be getting the axe to be replaced by us cheaper employees. That's what happened when The Corporation took over operations at The Bank just before I started there.

We got another update today. The Site Manager out there wants to do interviews next week. He also wants to get all of us at once. Not in the same room but pretty much at the same time with two sitting in the hall waiting while one is in interviewing. Or perhaps there will be several people interviewing and we'll be processed in a sort of "flash dating" round-robin.

Gruntled Henchmen

Narbonic is a terrific webcomic by Shaenon Garrity about mad scientist Helen B. Narbon and her henchmen. And, in keeping with the mad scientist theme, Shaenon has devised a diabolical website. You can read today's webcomic but you can't go back and read yesterday's without getting a subscription. You can read a few chapters but you can't learn the details of the Dave Conspiracy or what happened while henchman Dave Davenport was dead without either subscribing or ordering the printed collected volumes.

Well, she got me on that second one. Instead of eating dinner, I sat at the dinner table, read both volumes and laughed my ass off.

But, I don't feel used (well, not much, anyway) because she not only autographed both books but included original artwork on the mailing envelope. One can't feel exploited when the package comes with adorable gerbils.

It's Official: Big Ben is an Idiot.

I know it's unusual for a native Pittsburgher, but I pay little or no attention to local sports. But even with that level of inattentiveness I was able to hear some of the row over the past year about Steeler quarterback Ben Rothilsberger's refusal to wear a helmet when riding his motorcycle. I'm sure he used all the tired old augments that lobbyists used to get Pennsylvania's helmet laws repealed; "It's a matter of choice", "I drive safely", "I'm not taking risks."

I remember my Grandfather. As he got older, he wasn't able to drive himself anymore so I became his chauffeur. Trying to get him to wear a seatbelt was a major challenge.

"Drive so that I don't have to wear a seatbelt."

I always wanted to yell at him. It doesn't matter how safely I try to drive, if some other asshat on the road does something stupid, without a seatbelt you're going to be kissing the windshield. THAT'S why you wear one. Of course, my Grandfather accused me of being an "unsophisticated driver" because I drove with one foot for brake and accelerator rather than with one foot on the brake and the other for the gas.

Ben Rothilsberger made the same sort of arrogant mistake by deluding himself into believing that his safety on the road was entirely in his own hands. Some pinhead turned in front of him and he was unable to stop in time. BANG, into the car, richocheting his face off the windshield and then onto the concrete. According to news reports, he busted his jaw. If that's all the damage he sustained then he is incredibly lucky. But his survival still doesn't make him any less stupid.

It may be a matter of choice but it was an astronomically bad choice. A choice that he was repeatedly warned about in advance.

I ride a bicycle so I never get up to the highway speeds that motorcycle riders achieve but I still wear a helmet because I know that hitting the pavement at even a mild 10-15 mph can lead to a concussion. I've been forced off the road, sideswiped, broadside and any number of other road mishaps when I was obeying the traffic laws and riding as safely as I could. That attentiveness to safety still did not protect me from all the morons out there who believe that roads are only for them. Last year, I found myself taking off my helmet to rid the trail because I was getting uncomfortably hot. I realized the risk I was taking and spent nearly $200 to get a better ventilated helmet so that I could ride safe and cool.

I hate to say we told you so but, Ben, we did. Your coach told you. Your esteemed predecessor Terry Bradshaw (who knows a thing or two about football) told you. The doctors told you. The editorials in the paper told you. But you didn't listen. You listened to your own arrogance and illusions of immortality and now you're paying the price. If you had worn a helmet, you might have been able to walk away from that accident. Instead, you're going to spend the next 7 weeks healing a broken jaw. Was your machismo worth it? Have you learned anything at all from this?

Bike-Pgh BBQ Fundraiser

Bike-Pgh had a BBQ Fundraiser at Whole Foods in East Liberty today and I went to show my support to the cause. I also made flyers with the photograph of Codename P vandalizing my car so that I can spread the word to Pittsburgh's biking community.

On Thursday, three weeks since filing the report with the photographs included, I was contacted by the investigating detective from Zone 4. He had not gotten a response from the people at Bike-Pgh concerning other people who have been vandalized at the Eliza Furnace lot and, without that, he was going to proceed as if I were the only victim. At the BBQ I was able to talk to the Director of Bike-Pgh and remind him to contact the police so that they have everything they need.

One of the suggestions that came up during conversation with other cyclists was to go to UPMC. UPMC leases the lot from Codename P and I am sure they would not want to be associated with his vanadlaous ilk. Shaming someone into doing the right thing is certainly an option but I prefer the legal system. His harassing of bicycle commuters is wrong and I would not want to be thought of as harassing him in turn, going to UPMC or encouraging people to take matters into their own hands.

On the other hand, sometimes justice needs to be served from outside the system. A friend sent me a link about a New York City resident who's friend left her cell phone in a taxi. You can read the entire story here but, the short form is he left a message to the cell phone telling the people who found it how it could be returned for a reward. The people who found it, however, responded with abusive messages that they would not return it. His investigation was able to track down who these people were and he reported it to the police (an adventure in itself). But he also posted his story online and very quickly amassed a following of people not only reading his story but helping him.

The director of Bike-Pgh asked me if it was ok if he made a posting about the Eliza Furnace vandalism and my photograph to the Ride a Bike blog that he maintains. I said, "absolutely." Perhaps some additional coverage will get other cyclists to come foreward with additional reports. Each additional piece of evidence is valuable in bringing Codename P to justice.

WMD Insurance

My auto insurance policy came up for renewal recently. O don't normally pay much attention to the policy itself and just pay the bills as they come but this time I noticed something strange under the "Endorsements attached to your policy" section:

Nuclear, Bio-Chemical & Mold Exclusion Endorsement

It struck me as very odd, indeed. I can understand the nuclear, biological and chemical things being itemized together, but mold??? How does mold rank up there with the risks from Weapons of Mass destruction? I called my insurance provider and got the following details:

Aside from such losses caused by terrorism activities, we do not provide coverage for loss, damage, injury, liability, cost or expense, due to or as a consequence of, whether controlled or uncontrolled or however caused:

a. Nuclear Exposure, reaction or explosion including resulting fire, smoke, radiation or contamination; and/or
b. Biological or chemical attack or exposure to biological or chemical agents, or combination of such agents, including resulting contamination or pollution.

We do not provide coverage for loss, damage, injury, liability, cost or expense arising out of or aggravated by, in whole or in part, "mold, fungus, wet rot, dry rot, bacteria or virus."

"Mold, fungus, wet rot, dry rot, bacteria or virus" means any type or form of fungus, rot, virus or bacteria. This includes mold, mildew and any mycotoxins, other microbes, spores, scents or byproducts produced or released by mold, mildew, fungus, rot, bacteria, or virus.

Now, I can see how this was put together. There was at one time an exclusion for mold. I imaging the most likely instance of this would be a car with the windows left open getting wet and developing that funky mildew smell. Or perhaps, the car gets caught in a flood and, while the engine survives, the upholstery does not. But after 9/11 they felt compelled to add something about not covering the hot-button fears of the day. I still haven't figured out why they categorized it with mold except that the exception shared similar language.

And I particularly like the language at the end where it says, essentially, "when we say mold, we mean mold. And fungus means fungus."

If my car gets nuked by Al Qaeda then I'm covered because it's an act of terrorism. But, if Iran declares war on the US and my car gets nuked in the ensuing melee, it's not covered because it wasn't an act of terrorism. If I park my car next to a nuclear power plant and it melts down; not covered. If a tanker truck full of mustard gas crashes on the highway, inundating my car; not covered. If an avian flu infected bird takes a dump on the hood; not covered. Body in the trunk bloats and festers with rot and disease; not covered. Attacked by triffids? Coverage would depend on whether a triffid is considered an animal, an ambulatory fungus or some other sort of animated carnivorous plant. By insurance company logic, I'm sure they'd find a way to deny coverage in either case.

Shekels from Heaven

More that a week ago while I was walking down Grant Street, I saw a coin on the sidewalk and picked it up. It had Greek lettering on it but I didn't think much of it as the last Greek coin I had picked up off the ground turned out to be plated metal with a hole in it as part of cheap jewelry. I put it in my waist pack and forgot about it.

Today, I was looking for the tweezers for my mini Swiss Army knife in my belt pouch and came across the coin again. This time, I paid a little more attention.

On one side is a portrait in the Roman style and on the reverse is a bird of some sort and the Greek lettering. The minting is a bit off of center so it is clearly not a modern coin. It's about the size of a quarter but twice as heavy.

The weight got me to thinking it might be silver. Now I was really interested. I started an internet search and very quickly found what I was looking for.

It is a silver shekel issued by the Phoenician city of Tyre (c. 126 BCE - 66 CE). The face side features a representation of Melkart, the chief deity of the Phoenicians. The reverse shows an Egyptian-style eagle with its right claw resting on a ship's rudder (referring to Tyre's port), a club (Melkart is associated with Hercules), and the Greek inscription ΚΑΙΑΣΥΛΟΥ ΤΥΡΟΥΙΕΡΑΣ ("Tyre the Holy and Inviolable") and a date. These coins, produced in large quantities, became the standard silver coinage in the Phoenician-Judaean area, replacing the coins of Alexander the Great.

Because all the Roman coins had gods on them and the Romans required the payment of taxes, the Jews were in a bit of a fix because they weren't permitted to use them because of the First Commandment about not having other gods, graven images and all that. The Jewish leaders decided that this particular coin, with a minor god (at least by Roman standards) on the face, was the least offensive and thus was the only coin that would be authorized for tax payments. It didn't hurt that it was also a well minted coin with a consistent weight of silver for accounting purposes. And because they were common coins at the time, when a coin is mentioned in the Bible's New Testament it was likely this coin. This was the coin spilled to the floor when Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychanger's in the temple. This was the coin that Jesus had Peter pull from the fish's mouth to pay the temple tax. This was the coin that Judas was paid with for his betrayal.

My Internet search was unable to figure out more precisely how old the coin is. The date, located behind the eagle, consists of the number of years since the acknowledgment of Tyre's independence by Syria (126 BCE). For example, the Greek ΡΛ would represent 130 years or 3-4 CE. On my coin, I can't identify the single date character. There is an obsolete letter Qoppa which has a version that looks a little like the symbol on the coin. If so, Qoppa's numerical representation of 90 would make the coin's minting date about 36 BCE. I'm just guessing, though. It'd probably take a pro to tell for sure.

In any case, I may have found found an over 2,000 year old coin just walking down a Pittsburgh street. According to the websites I looked at, it could easily be worth hundreds of dollars. It could also just as easily be a replica coin worth nothing.

Differing levels of caring.

Progress towards my migration out of The Bank's Help Desk to another Help Desk is proceeding swiftly. At least, The Corporation seems intent on keeping me informed every step of the way. I had a short meeting again today with the Site Manager and Operations Manager wherein they told me who would likely be contacting me from The Corporation to set up an interview.

That's it. The whole meeting took less than a minute. I don't believe they are lavishing this attention on me because they care about me in particular. I suspect they are motivated by the pressure to put on a good show for the new client.

At the end of the micro-meeting, I mentioned so they might pass it on that I was going to be out of town after work on Wednesday to begin a bicycle ride to Washington DC. The conversation that followed was longer than the meeting. "Are you going to carry all your supplies to came or staying in motels?" "I'll be carrying it all. I bought a trailer for my bike." "A trailer? I've never seen a trailer for a bike." "Sure, just like a trailer for your car, it distributes the weight better and it's easier to tow it behind than strap it to the bike." And so on.

When I returned to my desk, I sent a pop message to the Site and Operations Managers with a link to a picture of me, my bike and trailer to show them what I was talking about.

When I immediately received a copy of the message I sent, I realized that I had made a mistake in addressing the message and had sent it to everyone at the Help Desk. I sent another message to that effect with a simple apology.

One coworker responded, "Nice legs" but otherwise it was a harmless mistake. Or so I thought. What I didn't know until it was pointed out to me at the end of the day was that Team Lead D**** had sent out a message immediately following mine:

". . . . like we care."

Of course, he edited his addressing carefully so that I didn't receive a copy of this juvenile sniping. As a manager, he should know better than to behave in this sort of harassment behind the backs of employees. Of course, this is not the first time that he's done this and he still hasn't learned his lesson and it really pisses me off that I am going to again take this up with Management.

In an odd way, I hope that he does this sort of backstabbing with everyone because then he would just be a bullying and small-minded tyrant of a manager. If he doesn't do this to everyone, then he has some sort of personal vendetta against me and this is workplace harassment.

In either case, what bothers me most about this is not the crap itself, I've been taking this shit from him for years, it is in the abysmally bad timing. Just as I'm looking to get out of this situation and I need to put on the best of impressions to my new clients, I have to go into the office and point out what sort of ass they continue to harbor in a management position. In so doing, I don't believe I will jeopardize this opportunity. I have not pulled any punches over the years and have issued some very harsh words about the goings on at the Help Desk and yet my competence still earned me the highest recommendation for this new position.

But, damn, why couldn't he just keep is fat mouth shut?

Are you curious about yourself?

That was the header on page 5 of the City Paper. A full page Personality Test care of Scientology Pittsburgh on the South Side. I won't go into great detail about this load of garbage (Read all about it at clambake.org) but in the lower right of the pager near the address box, I found this amusing direction:

"COMPLETELY FILL OUT BOX BELOW COMPLETELY"

This message brought to you by the Department of Tautological Pleonasms and Redundancies Department. Help stamp out and abolish redundancies!

Rain, rain, go away. . . .

It's been raining for ten days now. Well, not continuously, but it's been raining every day and I'm tired of bicycle commuting in the cold and wet. I've had a headache for a full day now and I'm wondering if riding in the rain all the time has made me sick. I don't have any other symptoms such as a runny nose or stuffed sinuses so it's hard to say.

So much for Bike to Work Week. But it's not like I've ever participated in those festivities anyway. My start time at the Help Desk is always before the scheduled "commuter breakfasts" and other celebratory events.

Hot Metal Bridge

I was originally going to mention this on Monday but the Post-Gazette had an article stating that bidding for the refurbishing of the Hot Metal Bridge opens next week. Construction of the $7 million project would begin in July and be complete by the fall of 2007. The concern I have is how this will affect traffic on the trail. Will they need to close the trail completely for construction or will they be able to allow passage as they did where there was Parkway East abutment construction a few years back?

Of course, if all goes well, I will be working elsewhere and won't be riding that section of trail on a daily basis so construction will not have a direct affect on me.I'm actually much more interested in the progress in connecting Pittsburgh to Mckeesport. Sandcastle still wants nothing to do with a trail running across or even by their property. If this could be resolved, I would make a short drive from Turtle Creek across the river to Homestead and ride the rest of the way into town. And further up the Mon, USS aparently would be willing to have the trail have a section of property so long as someone else pays the millions for the EPA mandated cleanup.

The Pursuit of Justice

I forwarded my photograph of the guy vandalizing my car to a short list of people involved in this issue. Several people with the city and bike advocacy groups. One of them was able to confirm the identity of the person in the picture as the owner of the neighboring lot. Given that legal action may be in the works, I will refer to him as "Codename P."

The discussion is what action to take next. The evidence has been given to the police and they will be investigating. Probably. Hopefully. But what will that accomplish? The photo does not show Codename P with toothpaste on his finger so is it actually proof of the commission of a crime? I would say that for all the photos taken during the day, only Codename P appears in the frame and, to trigger the camera and be so caught he needed to be standing there for 15 or 20 seconds. Is that enough to file criminal mischief charges? And what about the other half dozen reports I have filed or the reports filed by other victims in the lot? Can those be taken into account?

One suggestion was to put up posters for the trail users with a warning. "Have you seen this man?" These posters would not identify Codename P by name but would alert people that a vandal was in there area.

I see several flaws with this. If Codename P's objective is to drive people away (the speculation being that he wants to claim ownership of an underutilized lot for his own profit) then putting up posters saying that a vandal is on the loose may actually play into his hands. It could deter people from using the lot at all.

Putting up a poster could tip our hand, revealing that we have a hidden camera. One might think that this sort of surveillance would deter future crimes but, as evidenced by the scores of "Caught on Tape" TV shows, criminals tend to believe they won't get caught and will commit blatant crimes in front of even obvious security cameras. Should Codename P learn that there are hidden cameras, he may become more cautious but probably wouldn't be scared off. My camera isn't so well hidden that someone knowing that a camera was somewhere on the lot couldn't find it. Once found, it's gaze could be easily avoided.

He's been doing this for over a year. Before that, he was approached by the police and told to stop telling commuters that they couldn't park in the lot. He was not deterred by that, why should a vaguely worded poster have any effect?

No, I believe the only thing that will end this is criminal mischief
charges and a court date. A conviction would be nice. Sure, it's only a misdemeanor but I want this guy to have a criminal record and believe that only then will it stop. He needs to know that if any act of vandalism occurs in the lot, his will be the first door that police knock on.

Smile! You're on Candid Camera

For nearly two months now, I have been using a game camera disguised as a discarded plastic bag and hidden behind the Porta-John at the lot at the end of Eliza Furnace Trail to surveil for the vandal that has been putting grease and toothpaste under the doorhandles of trail users' cars for over a year. Today, my investment of time and money appears to have paid off.
Behold! The Squicky Vandal caught in the act.

Are you a cyclist who rides the Eliza Furnace trail? A jogger? A walker with children A Children's Hospital employee who daily parks in the lot next door? A shuttle driver who frequents that lot going to and from town? A city employee operating out of the Public Works warehouse across the way? If you are any one of these people and can recognize this person or his vehicle (just seen to the right in the image), please contact police officers of Zone 4 at 5858 Northumberland Street, Squirrel Hill, 412-422-6520. Mention police report number 93736.

Justice is served.

(One minor edit: I just realized that I forgot to set the clock on the camera ahead for daylight savings time, so the time stamp is actually 11:09 am.)

Career Pathing.

I got a call from a Financial Services Group employee who had gotten his workstation password locked. They are on a different subnet from us at the Help Desk and they don't user the same standard for Administrator passwords so I would be unable to help him and would have to open a ticket for Local Deskside support to solve his issue.

He pitched a fit. He just couldn't accept that I couldn't solve his problem, even after explaining it. I kept offering to open a ticket to have someone at second level solve his problem but he kept demanding that I solve it over the phone. I kept saying that I didn't have the power to do that and he eventually hung up.

Some 10 minutes later, I got an IM from the Site Manager, "Can I talk with you for a few minutes in my office. Very important."

Great.

As I walked over to the office, the Site Manager was outside and I was tempted to say, "Is this about that Financial Services Asshat?" No, I wouldn't say that, but I was actually tempted to ask if this was about the call I had taken.

He sits me down and offers me a new job.

Some months ago, The Corporation landed a sizable Help Desk contract with another major Pittsburgh company. Several Help Desk people had been trying to get over to that employer but when I heard that The Corporation was taking over operations, I lost interest. Why would I want to drive further across the city to work for the same company that has been screwing me for years.

More money.

Here at The Bank, the Site Manager admitted that he can't do anything about increasing salaries but, given the opportunity, he would recommend me to go to the new site where the salary would be more.

How much more? Don't know yet. I'm going to have to do some math to determine how much more gas money I'm going to have to spend to get over there. Unlike working downtown, I won't be able to drive half way and bike the rest.

I still have no loyalty to The Corporation so if something even better comes along I will be out of there faster than my shadow but a raise in salary is a raise in salary. And the new environment could be a help.

It feels like it's a done deal, based on what the Site Manager said, but I'm not feeling enthusiastic about it.

Big Raise.

I had heard that the Corporate Overlord had somehow earned himself a big bonus but I only today found out the specifics. For 2004 he had earned a salary of about half a million dollars and received $180,000 in stock compensation. For 2005, a year plagued with financial scandals, a $10 million dollar loss, accusations of spousal abuse, earnings restatements, the purchase of a corporate jet, the threat of NASDAQ delisting, failure to file the proper SEC documents and, in short, the worst year in The Corporation's history, the board saw fit to DOUBLE his salary to over a million dollars a year and give him a similar value in stocks. All told a 286% increase in his income.

I am at a loss for words.

Please, don't fire me.

I received the following election-season message:

Dear Neighbor:

I voted to Repeal the Pay Raise and I returned every penny I earned as a result of this ill-advised raise.

We all make mistakes; voting for the pay raise was a regretable mistake. I'm honest enough to admit that.

I have worked hard for this district and, except for this one mistake, I believe I have effectively served the communities and the citizens that I represent.

I would be grateful to continue to server you and the citizens of our community in the same honorable manner I had served before this single mistake.

I extend my sincerest apology and I assure you that I will not make this mistake again.

Sincerely,
Paul Costa, District 35 Representative.

First, let's review what lead to this plea. On July 7, 2005, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed pay increases for state lawmakers, judges, and top executive-branch officials. The raise increased legislators' base pay from 16% to 34% depending on position and making them the second higest paid state legislatiors in the nation. (In Costa's case, his base pay went from $69,647 to $81,050 anually) The vote took place at two in the morning without public review or commentary and Governor Rendell quickly signed the bill. In addition, they were able bypass the PA Constitution that forces legislators to wait until the end of the term before actually getting the raise by claiming "unvouchered expenses."

The government seemed shocked and somewhat indignant when the public took exception to this. It didn't take long, however, for them to see that Pennsylvanians were almost universally outraged and on November 16, 2005 the Governor signed unanimously passed bill repealing the pay raise.

So now, the primaries are coming up and my Representative is begging me for his political life. And he's not even doing a very good job of that.

The first obsfucation is in the first paragraph where he notes that he voted to repeal the pay raise without mentioning that he voted for it in the first place. He tries to dodge this by saying it was "ill-advised", blaming it on someone else. He says he "returned every penny" when, according to Article II, Section 8 of the Constution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he wasn't actually entired to a single penny of said pay raise until the end of his current term . But, by using "unvouchered expenses" he was going to be pulling in nearly $1,000 a month for the 17 months remaining in his term.

In two separate paragraphs, he claims that this vote was his "single mistake" made in seven years of service. Really? One mistake in all that time? And after violating the state constitution we are to believe that you made this one mistake and wish to server "our community in the same honorable manner?"

Sorry, Paul. I'm not buying it. Look here at the bottom of the mailing: "Paid for by Paul Costa for State Representative, Treasurer: Kathleen Gallant Costa." His wife is the treasurer of his re-election committee. His brother, State Senator Jay Costa, also voted for the pay increase and was also taking unvouchered expenses.

Oh, yea. I am overhwlemed with confidence.

It's payback time.

Got an e-mail today from the Operations Manager that everyone at the Help Desk was going to have the City of Pittsburgh Emergency and Municipal Services tax taken out of their next paycheck.

If you recall, it was well over a year ago that I first alerted Corporate HR that since I started in 1999, the Occupation Tax (and now the EMST) had never been withheld from my paycheck. After a year of them not doing anything about it, I reminded them and then called the City Auditor to turn them in. They finally deducted the tax that they were legally obligated to have been witholding all this time.

Since it took this long for them to take any sort of action with the taxes for everyone else at the Help Desk I suspect that they wouldn't have done anything at all until the City auditors caught up with them. Of course, the e-mail doesn't address why this was never done before. It's worded as if the change from the Occupation Tax to the EMST was something that happened recently even though it went into effect January 1st, 2005.

A small piece of justice. I hope they had some sort of fine or threat of legal action.

Chicks.

At least one Peregrine chick has hatched at the Gulf Tower nest.

My Daddy Workz Here

They call themselves the Hand Washing Committee. A shadowy, secret society who put up informational signs in the restroom warning of the dire circumstances that shall befall us should we not strictly adhere to their commands. They demand that building maintence refill the soap dispensers so that "their rules can be followed". They attempt to have people fired for not washing their hands, citing non-existent health codes.

Their latest campaign involves a new sign on the exterior door to the men's restroom that says, "WASH YOUR HANDS, MY DADDY WORKS HERE", replicating the PennDOT signs that warn people to slow down through construction zones.

I find a certain irony in using the juvenile backward "S" font. Firstly, I have never know an actual juvenile who ever actually wrote the S backwards. Second, this so-called Hand Washing Committee is behaving in a childish way I though had been left behind in elementary school. Is crying to your boss and getting his boss to call my boss's, boss's boss to chide me for not washing my hands the sort of behavior one would expect from professionals? Don't you have something important to do like, say, YOUR JOB? If you're so obsessed about it that you try to get me fired, you really need to seek help.

REAL professional help.

Hello, psychic helpdesk.

I have been described as being "psychically null", entirely insensitive to the energies of the world. One night, with K**** in Mellon Park, she had an overwhelming sensation of a presence. I recall asking if it was a zombie, vampire werewolf or ghost feeling. She didn't much like the skepticism in my comment but she described it as a werewolf-sort of feeling and she wanted to leave. For me, the darkness one the one side of the park was no different from that on the other side.

On the other hand, I have experienced some unexplainable "reactions". I have been known to wake from a deep sleep a minute or two before the phone rings. I'll be at work, leaning back in my chair with my arms crossed and my eyes closed, and I will, for no reason, open my eyes and sit up. My usual reaction is that I'm going to try to get more comfortable (which is impossible) but then the phone rings.

I had a strange occurrence today. A user called and when I asked for her login id, she gave me an id that ended with a two. For some reason when I wrote it down on my scratch paper I wrote a one at the end instead. Immediately realizing that I had not written what she had said I asked her to repeat the number, scratched out the one and wrote a two.

But when I searched for the id in the user database, it didn't come up. OK, that's not a big deal. Sometimes new users aren't yet in the Help Desk database, so I searched the mainframe database. It wasn't there either. I asked her to repeat it to make sure I had it right and when she confirmed that I did have it correct I asked her name. I did a database search on her name and it returned a number different from what she had told me. Users often don't remember their login ids because they type theme every day and it becomes a mechanical motion on the keyboard, an almost Pavlovian response to the request to type in a login. Sometimes they forget.

Her actual login id was not what she had told me but was in fact what I had initially written.

Oooooooo. Spooky.

Or not. I'm not sure if it's a form of dyslexia or if my brain is attempting to do some sort of pattern matching or random checksum calculation but I will sometime simply write a different number than what I intended to write. Usually it's the last digit of a login id and sometimes I'm even mumbling the correct number while writing the wrong one. So, it's entirely possible (in fact, it is much more likely) that my brain simply mis-fired and I just happened to hit the 1 in 10 chance of getting it right.

So, how do I respond before the phone rings? Am I not actually "psychically null" and tapping into the cosmic causality stream, reacting to the future before the event? Am I somehow super-sensitive to the electricity running through the lines, triggering a reaction in my subconscious mind before the electronics in the phone activate?

It's probably just a coincidence. I'm not waking up because the phone is about to ring. I'm waking up randomly and the phone just happens to ring. There are many other times that I have woken up and gone back to sleep without anything of note happening to keep me awake (such as the phone ringing). Those many instances are forgotten and the rare few that seem to be cause and effect are positively reinforced.

Mystery solved.

Empty temple and empty mind.

I drove to Wooster, Ohio today to participate in my first atlatl competition of the season. A short explanation, an atlatl is a stick with a hook on the end that is used to throw long arrow-like darts with tremendous power. Our Ice Age ancestors used them to hunt mammoths. The Aztecs used them to spear invading Conquistadors. The Inuit and Aboriginal Australians still use them today.

I did very well for not having thrown at all since the middle of last year. But when it came time in the afternoon to throw for the official World Atlatl Association score, I screwed up big time. When before I was hitting the target nearly every time (missing only once or twice in a set, very good for me) when it was time for the real deal I missed as many times as I hit. My only excuse was that it was the end of the day and my arm was tired. Had I thrown for the official score at 1pm instead of at 3pm I would have done better.

My second point. . .

In the latest Ohio Atlatl Association newsletter there was an review of "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann. It started with an illustration:From right to left, top to bottom, Atlatlists from the city empire of Teotihucan pay a visit to Tikal of the Maya, January 14, 378 A.D., resulting in the empty temple syndrome. The former Mayan ruler, having "entered the water", was replaced by the son of the ruler of Teotihucan.

I haven't read this book yet but this explanation of the carving's meaning seems needlessly euphemistic. It's pretty clear to me that the ruler of Teotihucan sent an army to visit his neighbor. The temple is empty because all the priests have been killed and the deposed Mayan ruler was probably tied up and chucked in the river to "swim with the fishes." Perhaps archaeologists and historians don't like to make assumptions about why the temple is empty after the atlatl-armed warriors pay a visit but I think that gives a skewed view of history.

"Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage" by Steven LeBlanc addresses the tendency of historians to romanticise pre-historic people. They look at "modern" examples such as the Native Americans and think that they lived peacefully with both their human and animal neighbors. This gets perpetuated in the media. In point of fact, early peoples did all the same things that their European conquerors did. They moved into new territories, depleted the local resources and came into conflict with their neighbors over those now scarce resources. Our impression of the natives living in harmony with nature is skewed because when we got to know these people their populations had already been decimated by diseases that the explorers had inflicted upon them. When most of your population dies, it's much easier for the survivors to find enough to eat. Europeans experienced just this sort of thing with the prosperity of the Renaissance coming after the horrors of the Black Death.

Ancient people were just like us and historians should say there was war instead of trying to call it "empty temple syndrome" like it's some sort of great mystery.

My third and almost unrelated point. . .

Tonight on the Sci-Fi channel, they are presenting the Sci-Fi Original "Mammoth." I think the line from the commercials says it all:

"We have an alien-possessed mammoth on the loose and if we don't stop it the government is gonna' kill all of us."

This gem of a line is delivered by Vincent Ventresca (Remember the "Invisible Man" series?) to Tom Skarrett, whose response is to fold over in in laughter. Yea, Tom, I'd laugh this guy out of the room as well.

Who writes this crap? The Sci-Fi channel has become the 21st Century's B-movie studio turning down "Farscape" and "Firefly" so they could churn out drek like "Mansquito". And a mammoth? They've had just about every other big animal they could think of run amok so they had to resort to bringing back a mammoth. Ok, I can imagine a mammoth frozen in the Siberian tundra being melted and brought back to life. ("Iceman" did a good job thawing out a caveman. Heck, even "Encino Man" was amusing.) But a re-animated mammoth probably isn't going to behave much differently than a wild elephant. Nothing exciting there. I know! Let's have it possessed by an alien. It's B-movie gold!

I wish I had a mammoth target to hurl darts at.

Flying off into the sunset.

The Corporate Overlords have announced half million share stock buyback program. So, after announcing a $10 million dollar lost for 2005, they are going to spend $4 million to take shares out of the market.

Why?

Well, the simple answer is that taking stock off the market increases the value of the remaining shares. Most often, this is done for stocks that are considered undervalued. Considering that the stock value of the Corporation is the lowest it's been in years, the market clearly doesn't consider it undervalued. If it's not an undervalued price, buybacks can keep the price up for insiders planning on exercising options.

So, are the top execs trying to take the money and run? I've been snooping on some market watch discussion boards and there has been some fascinating discussions about a recent conference call with the Chief Executive Overlord. Did he really get a big bonus ($500,000) and a new airplane (2005 Hawker 800XP)? According to one article, the Corporate Overlords claim that they are leasing the plane but the FAA says differently. If they aren't running, they are clearly bleeding the company for whatever they can personally get regardless of what it does to the company itself and the employees.

If they were genuinely interested in the company (or their customers), they would be investing in the product, not trying to float the stock prices. Produce a good product or service and the stock price will take care of itself. Of course, that would take someone who isn't a money grubbing bastard.

Fools rush in. . .

When I entered the building after lunch there was an alarm sounding. Flashing lights, annoyingly loud tones, announcements by security, the whole nine yards. I went back outside and waited for the whole thing to blow over.

For the 15 minutes or so that I stood there I could see security guards rushing about. Two fire trucks arrived and fully equipped firemen scouted around and, for all that, scores if not hundreds of people returning from lunch continued to enter the building and head for the elevators.

What the fuck is wrong with you people? A fire alarm means you LEAVE the building so that you don't die. Didn't they teach you that in Kindergarden? What the hell are you thinking? Sure, 99 times out of 100 the alarms are false but you're going to look really silly when Osiris is weighing your heart against the weight of a feather to see if you are worthy of entrance into the afterlife and says:

"So, let me get this straight. . . The alarm was going off, firemen were running around and yet you continued into the building to die a fiery death why?"

"I needed to check my e-mail before my lunch hour was over."

"OK. You're too STUPID to make it through your first life, we certainly aren't letting you into Paradise to be stupid for eternity. NEXT! Oh, hell, here's another one. . . "

I don't care how much they pay me or how important they think it is that I be in my cubicle answering phones, I am not going into a building when the fire alarm is going off.

The big letdown.

I didn't get the job with the Think Tank that was so eagerly anticipated. I'm not sure what feel. I shouldn't take it personally and it shouldn't be surprising if there are more qualified people out there applying for the same positions but they were hiring for six positions. So, out of two-score people they found half a dozen better than I.

So, is it me? Is it something so simple as someone being more qualified or is it something else? Do I seem too eager to leave my current position or am I not eager enough? Does the seven years I've spent with my current employer show loyalty and dedication or does it show a lack of initiative? Was it something I said? Something I didn't say? Was some ugly secret that even I didn't know about turn up in the background check? Did someone not like my beard?

The interview seemed to go well but did I miss something? Some telltale clue in an expression, posture or word that indicates that a decision has been made right there and then? Is there something I could have done? They never tell you why you didn't get the job so you have no real way of knowing if it was something you did or if it was completely out of your hands.

Self-doubt is an ugly, corrosive thing. Despair festers and builds and makes you to think you will never get ahead. It steals your dreams and leaves you with only ague hopes of getting something that is only marginally better than what you have now because the big steps are just too far. Beyond your reach.

In my mind, I know I'm better than that. But my heart keeps getting stabbed with disappointment.

Better late than never. Not.

The Corporate Overlords have finally gotten their act together to file the papers with the SEC needed back in October, restate their 3rd Quarter earnings and figure their 4th Quarter earnings for 2005. The answer? A net loss of $10 million for the year.

Now, they said that they were also going to do a "writedown of goodwill" to the tunes of $16 million. It took some study but I THINK it means that they aren't going to be posting as much income as initially expected because a bunch of that money is going into acquisitions. Goodwill is the difference between what they pay for the acquisition and what the acquisition is actually worth, trying to take into account things that don't have a solid value, such as patents, customer lists and trade names. A writedown means that you aren't going to be making as much money off of those things as you thought you would. The charming thing is that the aquisition that they are undervaluing is probably us.

Or something like that. It sounds like smoke an mirrors to me. Especially when, after screwing up with the SEC and NASDAQ for eight months and announcing $10 mil losses, the CEO says, "the Company continues to be well positioned with a strong balance sheet." Sorry, boss, but a $10 million dollar loss doesn't sound all that strong. And a $16 mil "writedown" says to me you're expecting more of the same.

Flash Dreams.

Dream 1: Two children are assembling a swing set, specifically the slide.

Dream 2: Yesterday, in realspace, I rode on the Ghost Town Trail in Indiana County. There was one place where there were some odd concentric semi-circular mounds beside what used to be the rail line. I couldn't quite tell what they were for, but in my dreamscape I saw a track junction and rail laid along these mounds as I rode by.

Dream 3: A red business-sized card has little mechanical feet, like those wind-up toys, and is walking along a asphalt sidewalk. There is some sort of writing on the card that I can't read. Two blue cards walk out of the grass to the right and advance menacingly on the red card.

Dream 4: I'm hiking on a trail that looks like one in south park and there's a side trail that I know will take me down to an intersection and then back to the parking area. Instead of taking that trail, I continue up further up to a different trail intersection that looks more like the Whitetail Trail near Uniontown.

What is disturbing about these dreams is not their content but that I was able to have them in-between calls sitting in my cube at the Help Desk. Normally, I don't go to sleep easily and it's not unusual for me to lay in bed for an hour before drifting off. But I have discovered that in the morning I can cross my arms, close my eyes and fall into a dream state yet still be alert enough that I can answer an incoming call before the second ring.

I think there are several things going on here. The first is simple sleep deprivation. Four or five hours of sleep is the norm for me during the week.

Second, is the lack of anything to get my brain actually working in the morning. Calls are mostly passwords and mail servers being down so it's easy to be done with a call and drop off without having to think much about it.

And thirdly, I think my mind might just be wired that way. When I'm not getting enough sleep, I've hallucinated. Usually it's when I'm trying to sleep or just waking up I'll be in the space where I'm awake enough to see my bed room but asleep enough to see the aliens or demons from my dreams superimposed. I haven't been having that happen to me recently but this may be something similar.

I read a recent article that people who have had near-death experiences also experienced REM Intrusion, the overlaying of rapid eye movement sleep and brain wave patters over waking consciousness. Well, my dreams aren't intruding into my wakefulness but the time between my being awake and dreaming is greatly reduced. In most people, going from being awake to REM sleep, where most dreaming happens, takes 90 minutes. I'm apparently , under the right conditions, able to be dreaming in only a few minutes.

A little more investigation into the issue have shows that some dreaming does take place during other stages of the sleep cycle (they call this "covert REM sleep"). So, I'm not experiencing REM Intrusion but dreaming between phone calls is still not normal.

Complex mathematics

User: ". . . It's still not taking my new password.
Geis: "New passwords must be six to eight characters long. . . "
User: "It is."
Geis: "It must contain both letters and numbers. . . "
User: "It does."
Geis: "It cannot contain common words. . . "
User: "It doesn't."
Geis: "And it must be something you haven't used before."
User: "I haven't. . . and it's still not working."
Geis: "How many characters ARE in your password."
User: "Seven letters and two numbers."
Geis: "That's nine. Passwords can have no more than EIGHT characters."
User: "Oh. . . " *click*

Avian Flu Resiliency Preparation

Recently there have been a number of instances where clients have questioned us about our plans and preparations for a possible outbreak of pandemic illness - specifically the Avian Flu.

That's how one of the many e-mails I get at work started out.

. . . The Bank has established a comprehensive, cross-functional scenario planning process, designed to identify exposures, business impact, existing control cap bilities, gaps and remediation recommendations based on major scenario types has been established. This process serves as the foundation of The Bank's "Scenario-Based Business Resiliency Planning" program and facilitates a more effective management prioritization process to invest and continue to enhance The Bank's business resiliency capabilities.

Now, I can appreciate that a large financial institution should have a business resiliancy plan for dealing with emergencies. Hell, I even worked on the Help Desk's plan after 9/11 when I became the floor warden (a plan that seems to have been forgotten in the years since). But, in all honesty, compared to Avian flu, I suspect my finances are at a greater risk from mis-statements of earnings and fraud perpetrated by overpaid executives than by a disease that has thus far only affected people who live with their chickens.

This fear-mongering is propagated by the sensationalistic news media and, much like drug company advertising drives people to demand treatment for non-diseases like "restless leg syndrome", the Avian flu panic is driving our financial institution to waste cycles on on this nonsense rather than doing what people really want it to do; manage their money.

Not to completely discount the risk of a influenza pandemic but should such a thing happen, the ability of my bank to provide good customer service for my financial services questions is going to be the least of my concerns.

On the other hand, one could conceive of a scenario wherein the banks are unable to to staff properly. The poor customer service causes people to fear that they won't be able to access their money leading to a run on the banks, a financial collapse of the American economy, chaos and anarchy.

I should write a made-for-TV movie script.

Dreaming in the Neighborhood.

Last night's dreams were not unlike many of my dreams. A major portion of it involved my defending against an alien invasion. (Large, tentacled monsters like those in "Half Life".) The space fighter I was climbing into was suspiciously like a WWII Spitfire. Then, like dreams are wont to do, it changed gears and I was entering a house that looked like that of my Great-Grandmother in Homestead. I was part of a tour, and once inside the scene changed again to that of the offices of WQED. Specifically, it was the set of Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

I grew up watching Mister Rogers on the television. Twenty years later while my daughter was growing up watching him on the TV, I met him a few times when I was a delivery driver for Kinkos. Metting him was little more than greetings in the hallway but from seeing him sitting on a couch reading or working behind the scenes to produce his show, one could easily see this was the same person. The Mister Rogers who sang "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood" while he changed from loafers to tennis shoes was not a persona he put on with his sweater or an act, it was exactly who he was. What you saw on television was the way he was in person and the way he was when he spoke before Congress. When the camera panned over the model of the neighborhood and he came through the door one had the impression that he had walked there because he had actually walked to work that morning. I saw him regularly walking through Oakland on his way to or from the studio.

And in my dreamscape, it wasn't incongruous for my Great-Grandmother's house to seamlessly transform into Mister Rogers' house. In a sense, he was like a part of the family. He was the kind of relative every child deserves to have instead of the asshat uncle we actually got.

In my dream, I turned the corner to the darkened Neighborhood of Make-Believe set. The castle of King Friday XIII. The tree of X the Owl and Henrietta Pussycat. It was exactly as it was on television, except that it was empty. Lifeless. Fred Rogers died of stomach cancer in 2003. In my dream, I cried alone in that darkened soundstage, tears unselfconsciously pouring down my face. Even now as I write this, I feel the sadness for the world having lost such an irrefutably good person.

Good-bye, Fred Rogers. We still miss you.

On the rim.

My bike was in the shop last week for some repairs. The gears had worn out, the crank, freewheel and chain were being replaced. This work was done at the new Iron City Bikes in Oakland, by the way. The technician pointed out a problem with my brakes. The pads were still ok but when I squeezed down on the lever, I used up almost all the slack in the cable of the side-pull brakes. I knew I had to do something about that but I didn't actually notice it until I was riding this weekend and the back brakes weren't working.

Only when I was at the hardware store buying some washers to take up some of that slack did I realize why this problem was happening in the first place. Last year, one of my rims broke and when the techs at TRM replaced my rims they did so with slightly narrower ones. Most of my riding is on trails and road so having slightly narrower rims and tires on my hybrid isn't a big deal but my brakes were designed for rims of a certain width and changing the one means I now have to adjust the other.

I should have insisted on rims of the same width but the rim was broken and they didn't have the identical size in stock so I had little choice but to get what they had. Thankfully, adjusting the brakes to work with the new rim width was a simple matter of adding some 1/4 inch washers.

Taking credit where credit isn't due.

We'd been really busy all day, starting with a server outage that lasted most of the morning. This afternoon, there was a little bit of a queue in the phone system, after which Team Lead D**** sent the following message:

not to worry everyone.............I cleared the queue for you.....you're welcome

Hmmmm, I looked at the number of calls I had taken so far for the day; 72, and compared it to the number of calls he had taken; 0. According to the ticket generation system, he had not generated any tickets at all. Not one. Yet he felt comfortable in announcing to the entire Help Desk that HE had cleared the queue.

I've also noticed a new addition to his repertoire. When the queue climbs a little bit and he thinks that too many people are not available or taking calls, he says "You're killing me." Sorry, but I don't think it quite reaches the level of life threatening.

And by the end of the day, my call total was 88. Not a record (I have cleared over 100 calls on two occasions) but one of the highest. Working that hard for what I'm making, now that's killing me.

Step three

I had my interview with the Think Tank today and I think it went well. Several times I heard one of the interviewers (by video conference at the Home Office) say "That's what I wanted to hear." They also said that they only hand out the form for the background check to people they are serious about. Then they handed me said form.

The Think Tank is in the process of moving to new offices so they won't be getting back to me probably until the begining of May but I have a really good feeling about this. There's a part of me saying, "I so have this job," but it could still go the other way.

*deep breath*

Second Step

I just returned from being out of town to find a message on my answering machine from the Think Tank, left on Thursday, asking me to come back for a face-to-face interview. In less than 24 hours they had decided they wanted to hear more.

Hoody Freakin' Hoo!

OK, now before I get too excited, this is just an interview. I don't have the job yet.

One small step

I had a phone interview today for a "Remote Support Specialist" (sp. Help Desk) position. It was all very preliminary but, hey, it's a start. A public policy think tank is expanding their Pittsburgh office and consolidating all their remote support in one location. The first good thing is that I got a call at all. The second is that they have gotten "dozens" of responses but are hiring half a dozen so the odds are in my favor, better even than my chances at my last interview where they started with over 400 applications and narrowed it down to three or four.

When I was in school working on my Information Science and Political Science degrees, I sort of hoped that one day I could get a job working for The Tank. I didn't think it was likely because I hadn't started in Poli Sci but now it looks like I might have my chance having taken the I.T. route.

Even with nearly two decades of dreaming of just such an opportunity, I'm trying not to get my hopes too high. If I spend too much on expectations, the crash will be even harder should success elude me.

Lego Dominatrix

Got the new Lego catalog today and they have a new Batman series. Batmobile, Batwing, Joker, Two-Face, batarangs and even henchmen.

Catwoman has a Lego whip.

Patently Silly

Found a link for a website called Patently Silly that features submissions to the U.S. Patent Office that are, well, stupid.

Though not featured on the website, one of my favorite patents is Chet Fleming's Device for perfusing an animal head.

This invention relates to a device, referred to herein as a 'cabinet,' which will provide physical and biochemical support for an animal's head which has been 'discorporated' or 'discorped' (i.e., severed from its body). This device can be used to supply a discorped head with oxygenated blood and nutrients, by means of tubes connected to arteries which pass through the neck. After circulating through the head, the deoxygenated blood returns to the cabinet by means of cannulae which are connected to veins that emerge from the neck. A series of processing components will remove carbon dioxide and replenish the oxygen level in the blood, and return the replenished blood to the discorped head via cannulae attached to arteries. If desired, waste products and other metabolites may be removed from the blood, and nutrients, therapeutic drugs, experimental drugs, and other substances may be added to the blood.

The cabinet will provide physical support for the head, by means of a collar around the neck, pins or other devices attached to one or more vertebrae, or similar mechanical means. If desired, the spine may be left attached to the discorped head.

The support provided to the discorped head will prolong various natural metabolic activities in the head after it has been severed from the body. This will allow various types of analyses to be performed on the head (including pharmaceutical, toxicological, hormonal, and neurological analysis) without being affected by various metabolites generated by digestive and other internal organs when such analyses are performed on intact animals.

The severed head preferably should retain all of the sensory organs, and the vocal cords if desired. Depending on the surgical procedures used to sever the head from the body and the type of blood processing and drugs used during and after the operation, the discorped head might experience a period of consciousness after it has been severed from the body.

The best part is that the patent consistantly says "animal" but the illustrations are of a human head.

Productivity

Today was one of the days I specified for spending some of the PTO I had accumulated before I loose it at the end of the month. I spend half of a day at work and the other half running errands.

For the half day I spent at work, when I had left I had taken a dozen calls, changing passwords, configuring VPN, changing printer settings and the like. In short, at the end of my time I had actually accomplished very little.

For my afternoon I went to a bike shop, had my bike tuned up and had some parts ordered to replace worn ones in anticipation of the summer biking season. Stopped at home to have a quick snack. Checked my porch to find that I had received the game camera I intend to use to catch the squicky vandal greasing my door handle at the Eliza Furnace Trail parking lot. I got a haircut. Got the oil changed in my car. Stopped by a Panera and had a another snack while I checked my e-mail using their wireless connection because I'm having problems with my network connection at home. I went to BestBuy and bought a new cable modem to solve said connectivity problems. And I bought some C-cell batteries and a charger to drive the game camera.

I wasn't quite home at my regular time but, as you can see, my time not working was much more productive than the time I spent at the Help Desk. Work is something I do to make money so I can be much more productive away from work.

Spring is in the air.

I hadn't been paying attention to the Gulf Tower Falcon Cam this weekend but watching this morning, the first day of Spring, I was able to see the female up off the nest enough to see at least two eggs.

[sound of crickets chirping]

Normally, even in my 48 square foot gulag, I can hear the activity on the rest of the floor. Phones ringing, people talking, signs of life. This afternoon, it seemed very quiet out on the floor while I was taking call after call. I stood up to look over the partition and it was like a ghost town. Most of the cubes were empty.

This is a direct result of the decision to cut hours after finally getting up to proper staffing levels. For the day I took 40% more calls than the next most productive person on the floor.

I hear that the Site Manager argued long and hard to keep staffing levels up to where they should be but he was inevitably overruled by the Corporate Overlord's Bean Counters. So, all the work I did over the summer training a score of new people is being eroded by the bottom line.

The birds are back in town

On NPR earlier this week, there was an news item about the return of Pale Male, the Red Tail hawk with a posh Manhattan address. This got me looking for our own high-rise birds of prey.

At the Gulf Tower.

And at the Cathedral of Learning.

Welcome home.

Take a bite out of crime

"How can I help. . . oh, it's you."

It doesn't sound like a flattering greeting but this is the response I got from the officer at the Squirrel Hill station when I walked in to report that my car had yet again been vandalized at the lot at the end of the Eliza Furnace Trail. This time, like another commuter a week and a half ago, it was toothpaste instead of the previous grease.

So, I guess vandal season has opened early this year. Last year the first attack was in April or May. I didn't pay attention because I thought it was a one-off. Then they came with a much greater regularity: June 3rd, July 8th, July 27th and August 18th.

Last year, I had made much noise about getting a game camera to capture the vandal in the act but nothing came of it. The attacks ended and I spent my money on other things. I've had enough and am going to get a camera. This week. A little bit of camouflage and a steel cable to keep it from being stolen should it be discovered and I have a plan.

Minty justice.

Information Science 101

Had a call today from a Financial Services group member saying that a W****** report hadn't loaded with data for a certain date and to have the report reloaded. I looked up W**** in the Help Desk Reference Manual and could find no documentation. I looked up in the Financial Services Procedures Manual and found only a few references but nothing that had procedures for loading reports. I did a keyword search in the database of previously opened tickets and saw some tickets so I opened a ticket just like those.

My Team Lead was doing a Service Observe at the time, that is, he was listening in on the call. Afterwards he informed me that the user actually needed to place a C*** Platter Request and that she needed to call the Data Delivery group directly.

This is a failing of Notes because when you do a search for documents in Notes databases, it doesn't search the entire document for the keywords. It searched only the designated keywords. This would be analogous to a web search like Google only searching META tags instead of indexing the entire webpage.

More than that, this is a failing of document writers because, knowing how Notes works, they neglected to create keyword lists that actually reflected the keywords of the document. If an application or procedure has synonyms that users might use, then those other terms must be included in the keyword list or a search will never turn up those documents. If you can't search a database, the documents in that database are worthless.

One of the first courses I took in college for Information Science was about keyword searches of abstracts. How do you formulate searches so that you get the data you are looking for. How do you construct an abstract so that searches can find the document. In this case, the keyword was W******. Doing a search for this returned no results because the documents that had this information did not have W****** in the keywords to be searched. Both W****** and C*** were in the document and clearly they had to do with one another so the only reason why it couldn't be searched on was because of the person who created the keyword list.

Come on, people. This is basic stuff here. I did this 20 years ago.

Told you so.

On the way into work this morning, NPR made mention of some of the latest legislation that again had provisions for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Sitting down in front of my PC to read some news, the BBC website had an article on an oil spill from the onshore pipeline at Prudhoe Bay. Over a quarter of a million gallons, the largest spill ever recorded on the North Slope. This spill happened 2 weeks ago but is only now being reported.

Reap what you sow

The huge amount of hiring and training that happened over the summer and fall was not only a desperate attempt to bring our staffing levels up to address the increase from the new Financial Services clients, but also playing catch-up for having been understaffed for years. Finally, we were told, we were up to the proper staffing levels for our call volumes. Huzzah!

Except that this week they started cutting the hours of our part time staff. It would seem that they discovered that having a full staff spends too much money. Oh, and there are simply too many people sitting idle waiting for calls.

Today, there was the pop-up message that we had a queue and that people should stay available because "we are short-staffed."

And who's fault is that? We can be fully staffed and when something goes wrong there will be a queue because hundreds of people are affected and they are all calling the help desk. If you want to be prepared to handle those problem times then you are going to have to accept that there are going to be times when people are doing nothing because nothing happens to be broken. Management is going to have to decide whether we are going to be fully staffed and have people idle or be understaffed and have queue problems.

Vandalism with some teeth

The squicky vandal who last year was putting grease under car door handles at the Eliza Furnace Trail parking lot has apparently returned for a new season. An e-mail from a fellow bicycle commuter tells me that his car was hit on Friday (3 March) but this time, instead of the grease it was toothpaste under the door handle. I happened not to be parking that day as I took the day off to pick up my daughter for spring break or else I probably would have been hit as well.

Well, at least toothpaste is water soluble.

Out in the cold.

The other handwashing shoe has dropped, so to speak. I was called into a meeting and was formally asked if I would wash my hands. The statement was made in such a way that, if I refused, I would be fired on the spot.

The Site Manager brought up that Pennsylvania is an "at-will" employment state and I can be let go at any time for any reason. So, they can use a nonexistent law to punish me and hold up another convenient law to let me know that there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.

This isn't about handwashing. I am not some back-to-nature, anti-fluoridation, neo-Luddite barbarian choosing to be filthy to make some sort of societal statement. I simply don't always stop by the sink on my way out of the rest room. A lot of people do it. I've seen them. But I've done nothing illegal and apparently all those other people haven't been called on the carpet. So, it's not about cleanliness or hygiene. It's politics. It's The Bank flexing it's contractual muscles against its Help Desk minions. The other Bank employees on the floor have regularly made it clear that we are not a part of the team. We are outsiders who, 7 years ago, usurped the status quo by replacing the previous Bank-run Help Desk.

And I am a convenient target. Someone made a stink when I came onto the floor in my biking gear forcing be to change in the bathroom on another floor. This handwashing accusation based on a lie about health codes is just another strike. Next time, it won't matter what the accusation is. It won't matter whether there is any truth to the matter or even if it's relevant at all, I know that my employers will do absolutely nothing to defend me. I will be sacrificed.

On the ironic side, I've read a new article that The Corporation isn't doing so well, either. They have missed another SEC filing deadline. They've gotten one more extension from NASDAQ to the end of the month or risk being delisted. Also, the CEO is in a bit of a tussle as his estranged wife is initiating a lawsuit charging him and his family with mismanagement, self-dealing and abusive use of corporate assets (including tens of thousands of dollars in reimbursements for strip club visits). In another suit, she charged her phone provider with allowing her husband access to her phone records. She also threw in charges that he beat her and forced her to engage in deviant sexual acts.

So, here I am having my career threatened for not washing my hands while the Corporate Overlord himself is raping both the company and his wife. And while he has the best lawyers his half-million dollar a year salary can buy, I have no recourse whatsoever. I haven't gotten a raise in four years so that the Corporate Overlord can spend the cash on hookers.

Welcome to the American Dream.

Mutants and Masterminds session #4

After the battle with the Red Hulk, Justice and Cosmic Kid fled the scene leaving Brian Czitrovszky to deal with the police. They wanted to take him downtown for questioning but Luther Lexington showed up and vouched for him. Oddly, though, that defense was not followed up on in any way.

Brian caught a bus home to work on repair his van. While doing that, Cosmic Kid and Nexus (a new player character, essentially a humanoid black hole) showed up tracking an energy signature. They are immediately fired upon by the lab's defenses. Cosmic Kid can withstand the paralyzing rays long enough to call the lab on his cell phone and ask to have the shooting stop.

They come in and ask Brian about the Unbihexium. Still working on the van, Brian says, "Sure, it's the box on the table over there. Knock yourself out." Whereupon, Cosmic Kid nearly does just that when he opens the box and is bathed in the Kryptonite, err, Unbihexium rays. (He looses 1 point from each of his stats.) Nexus closes the box and makes an exclamation about Brian's letting something so dangerous lying about.

"Poppycock!" Brian says and takes the crystalline ore out of the box to show that it has no effect on him. Cosmic Kid, however, takes more damage (2 more points) while Brian is fascinated by the effect it has on his alien physiology.

Deadpool teleports in with Flashdancer (another PC) and a cop from the Star Squad (yet another PC that hasn't chosen a superhero name yet). It was from the cop that Brian learns that Deadpool had stolen the Unbihexium sample. Brian was done with it and so had no problem with allowing the cops to take it back (with the hope the they would also arrest Deadpool and get him out of his hair.) Shortly after the fast ones left, half a dozen robots of the type that first attached Brian's lab show up.

Deadpool and Nexus fight them while Brian attempts to remote-hack. He is able to regularly break through the firewall but usually is only able to stun one of them to keep it out of the fight. Eventually, he's able to crack one wide open and he orders it to do a complete shutdown. Cosmic Kid and Flashdancer return and give fight. Flashdancer is a speedster (ala The Flash) and does the cliched "wrap the opponent in cable" trick. Brian connects the end of the cable to the power supply on his particle accelerator and fries the thing. Eventually, the rest are defeated and the game session ends.

Brian's goal for the fight (aside from staying alive) was to capture one of the robots. The robot's mission was clearly to either kill or capture meta-humans. Once that task was complete it would return from whence it came. The robot's memory has that information and with that, Brian will be able to track down who keeps sending these guys to wreck the lab. Another thing to deduce is how these robots are identifying metahumans. Are they programmed with individual information ("Capture Brian Czitrovszky!") or is there some sort of sensor that allows then to detect metahumans? Lastly, with the robot intact it should be able to be reprogrammed and set it to the task of defending the lab from other attacks.

Spelling Geneyus.

I was driving up Rt.66 on my way to pick up my daughter from Bradford for spring break. In Marienville there is a restaurant:I haven't been able to figure out why it's misspelled. It's not just a mistake on the sign. There is a smaller sign next to it and their website at http://www.route66dinor.com has it the same way. But on the menu, they do say that this is a diner, so it's not that they don't know how to spell the word. Perhaps it's some sort of tradition lost in the mists of time.

And right across the street:apparently, the Golden Arches is diversifying to prepare for all it's super-sized clients.

Cleanliness is next to harassment

I stand accused of not washing my hands. It seems that some Bank employee witnessed me leaving the restroom without my having washed my hands. He complained up the chain of command and it came back down from my manager's manager's manager that I was violating some sort of health code. I looked it up; there is no such code. I called the City, County and State health departments and they confirmed that the handwashing codes only apply to food service.

The last time I checked, Information Technology has nothing to do with food.

Yet, because a client complained I have received an official verbal reprimand for violating a law that doesn't exist.

I have asked if there is some sort of policy within the Bank or The Corporation that applies. I doubt it.

And this isn't the first time this has happened. I looked in my records and this happened December 1st of 2003. At the time, the Site Manager just said, "This has been reported", I told him it was bullshit and that was the end of it. This time I don't think things are going to go so well because this was made official with the Operations Manager and my Team Lead all in attendance and the statement being read off the e-mail.

They didn't even ask if it was true.