The "talking science" merit badge

I was a Boy Scout and earned my Eagle Award. At one job interview, I was told that my resume had been put into the first read category simply because it included that I was an Eagle Scout. Apparently, the rest of the resume wasn't enough to land me that job but I'm still proud of it.

But there are more badges i can still earn. The Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique.

My first badge:

The "talking science" badge.
Required for all members. Assumes the recipient conducts himself/herself in such a manner as to talk science whenever he/she gets the chance. Not easily fazed by looks of disinterest from friends or the act of "zoning out" by well intentioned loved ones.

I have always been something of a science nerd and I reached something of a pinnacle when I was able to land a job at the Carnegie Science Center. I worked in the Works Theater doing science presentations. I played with lasers, Van De Graff generators, a big-ass Tesla coil (I also share my birthday with Nikola Tesla), liquid nitrogen and the foundry pouring molten metal. It was great. The best job I ever had.

One time, I went on a trip to Baltimore and visited the Maryland Science Center there (one of the perks of being Carnegie staff is that your ID badge got you into other science centers for free.) After seeing a liquid nitrogen demonstration there, I jumped in and showed them a neat trick they could add to their demos by pouring nitrogen into soapy water.

The harbor there also has the USS Torsk, a submarine of the same class as the USS Requin here in Pittsburgh. But there, tourists simply walk through on their own. When someone aboard asked a question, I naturally piped up with an answer because here in Pittsburgh there are volunteers, many of them retired mariners, who do tours and I had learned a thing or two from them. I spent the next half hour or so doing a guided tour of the sub.

My wife was not pleased that I left her waiting out on the dock.

Workstation locked

Today The Bank instituted a group policy that locks the
workstation after a 15 minutes of inactivity. No longer will people be able to walk away from their PCs and have them indefinitely logged in and available. This is just the latest in a flurry of increased security procedures.

They keep ratcheting up the security features in the system when the real threat continues to come from "human engineering." A Verisign study found that most people would give over their passwords in exchange for a premium Starbucks coffee. A pizza, bicycle delivery outfit or an armload of paper will get one past most physical security. How many hundreds of thousands of people have had their personal information compromised because someone left their laptop in an airport terminal? Demanding that passwords be more and more complex makes it more and more likely that users will write them down and stick them under their keyboards because they simply can't remember them.

Inconvenience equals security.

Oh look, another example. The Bank sent out a memo a while back that they would not be participating in Take your Child To Work Day in part because of security concerns. That day is here and I see plenty of employees with their children all over the office.

So much for security.

Filling in the gaps

Last week, I attended a public meeting with County Councilmen Dave Faucett and Jim Burn for them to present their plan for Allegheny County to have a riverfront park along all of its waterfront. This $100 million project would produce 100 miles of park along Pittsburgh's three rivers and would include trails and other amenities. The councilmen talked about the economic development that this would bring and, unlike a lot of other promised development from other projects (ie, the stadiums), this has actually already happened. Jim Burn, having been mayor of Millvale, talked about the development of his municipality when, after the devastation of Hurricane Ivan, their section of riverfront went from light industrial and abandoned, garbage strewn properties to park.

That was all well and good but I'll admit that I was specifically concerned with the Great Allegheny Passage and the last 9 miles connecting the end of the trail in McKeesport to Pittsburgh. I asked specifically about getting past Sandcastle, Kennywood and Duquesne. They didn't have any news about the Duquesne section but indicated that Sandcastle was still resisting allowing the trail past or through their property but that County Chief Executive Dan Onorato was "going to make it happen" as part of his plan to have the Passage complete in time for Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary
celebration.

That's next year so they are running out of time.

Yesterday, the Trib broke the story that US Steel was donating a 2 mile piece of property behind Kennywood for the trail. This all sounds very generous but I'm curious how much it really cost. The way I heard the story from several years back was that the property has an abandoned coke gas pipeline on it that the EPA is requiring be cleaned up. US Steel was always willing to give up the property to the trail so long as someone else also took care of the mandated EPA cleanup. The trail groups didn't have the millions of dollars necessary to clean up that mess so negotiations were at an impasse.

I wondered what sort of deal the city made to finally clinch this. Was the county going to foot the cleanup bill? At last weeks meeting, Dave Faucett was asked about some property owners holding out for more money and he seemed inclined to just pay them. Faucett and Burn seem so passionate about making this linear park happen that they're willing to fork out some extra money. Money I'm not sure the city really has. On the other hand, $280 million for Heinz Field, $260 million for PNC Park, $130 million for the new Penguin's arena, $145 million for the convention center, there's a lot of money being spent on these so-called regional assets, a few million to finalize the trail connecting Pittsburgh to Washington DC is a bargain.

The trail corridor is already attracting $14 million dollars a year to the communities along the way and that number is expected to triple now that it's contiguous with the C&O Canal Towpath. Pittsburgh, as the northern terminus of the trail, is due to get a good piece of this pie. That is, if they make the investment and complete the connection.

Later in the day, the headlines changed from saying that US Steel had donated the property to that the County had bought the property.

The official photo-op announcement of the County/US Steel deal was today at 2pm. I watched the new websites but didn't get any additional details.

After work, I attended a trail meeting in McKeesport with Mayor James Brewster (who pretty much ducked out after introducing himeslf), representatives of the Mon-Yough Trail Council, the National Park Service Rivers & Trails Program, the Regional Trail Corp., Steel Valley Trail Council and the Youth Earn & Learn Program. Most of it was about the McKeesport part of the trail and the development in that area but I was able to learn about the US Steel deal and other pieces of the trail.

US Steel cleaned up the pipeline and graded the surface, spending over a million dollars to do it. In "donating" this cleanup they are going to be able to leverage a nifty tax deduction on work that had already been mandated by the EPA. Pretty sweet, huh? The county is paying $500,000 to acquire the property.

I heard details about the trail behind the former tube works, across the Riverton RR bridge, about options through Duquesne and connecting to the Waterfront. There are still the ongoing issues with Sandcastle to contend with.

Dan Onorato is pledged to have the trail connected by Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary in 2008. Using my politico-speak translator it sounds more like their pledging to have it done by the end of 2008. And I'm wondering if they have enough time to resolve all the property disputes and alignment issues AND actually build the trail.

First against the wall

Naomi Wolf wrote an article for The Guardian entitled "Fascist America, in 10 easy steps". Go there and read the entire thing in all its horrific detail but I'll summarize it here.

"It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration."

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create a gulag.
3. Develop a thug caste.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Dissent equals treason.
10. Suspend the rule of law.

I note one item missing from this list: disarm the citizenry.

One might think that the 2nd Amendment was in place specifically to prevent this sort of thing, and you'd be right. Thomas Jefferson said, "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." And given that the current administration is also a very staunch support of gun rights you might be hard pressed to imagine them getting away with the above ten steps.

But, in an odd twist of politics, those with the most liberal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, that the rights afforded refer to all of the people, are those with the most conservative view of all the other rights that the administration is actively trampling upon. And when the revolution comes, well, there won't be much of a revolution because the so-called "gun nuts" of the NRA are already in the administration's camp. They will become the "thug cast" mentioned in step 3.

What we need are more liberals to actually take a liberal view of the 2nd Amendment. What could be a more liberal interpretation than to say that the 2nd Amendment guarantees the people the tools necessary to overthrow the government should it overstep the powers granted them by the rest of the Constitution.? It's why Jefferson put it there. It's why it says the rights "of the people" and not "the rights of the States" or "the rights of the Government to bear arms."

And don't for a minute try to pull that "well regulated militia" line. Just take a look at the dead and wounded coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, and tell me that the National Guard and Reserve are a militia. They are soldiers under the direct control of the Commander in Chief. Just read the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007. The 2nd Amendment wasn't written to protect them, it was written to protect us FROM them.

I want more democrats to join the NRA. I want more NRA members to also support the rest of the Bill of Rights by supporting the ACLU. I want the ACLU to defend ALL of the Bill of Rights, not just 90 percent.

I am the NRA. I am the ACLU.

If you read this, please comment

Blogging is an inherently egotistical undertaking founded on the assumption that everyone should care about what you have to say. My own is no exception and even the title asserts that I am, in fact, smarter than 90-some percent of people on this planet.

The question that naturally comes out of that pomposity is how many people are actually paying attention to what I have to say. If I didn't care, I'd write a diary and keep it under my pillow. Getting a web counter is easy enough. There are zillions of choices. I decided on one that not only plots the hits on a map but shows a daily hit count.

Typically, my hit count is on the order of half a dozen a day. I know a few friends and family that might be dropping by on a regular basis but the map shows hits all over the world. Are people all over the world actually reading my blog. Well, with a billion people surfing the web, it shouldn't be surprising if a few stumble across my website.

I don't usually look at the little map on the right side of my blog page as it had been hovering pretty consistently around the half dozen mark but last week say a ten fold increase in the daily hits. What the hell happened?


I'm guessing it's Virginia Tech. I posted a blog last week tangentially about the shooting about Virginia Tech but mostly about religious wingnuts blaming atheism, evolution and science in general for all the world's ills. I suspect that people worldwide doing web searches for VA Tech information came across my blog, and apparently continue to do so. My hit count will probably remain high for a month, dropping down when people loose interest and the posting drops into my blog archives.

Or, perhaps it's robots and spiders just crawling the web along search links. Perhaps those people aren't actually reading my blog, it's just programs hitting the site.

So, an experiment is in order! If you are reading this, post a comment. I don't care what you say. It doesn't have to be insightful or even relevant. Just click on the comment button and say that you read this posting. Then, and perhaps only then, will I know just how truly insignificant my lone voice is in this big, stinking pile of crap that is the Internet.

Two steps foreward. . .

In troubleshooting my issue with getting wireless connectivity on my Ubuntu laptop last week, I signed onto the WPLUG (Western PA Linux Users Group) IRC channel. I worked with someone there for quite some time with no success. The suggestion was made to upgrade from v6.06 to the due to come out any minute v7.04.

Before going to Erie for the weekend I had time to download the install disk but then realized that the disk is only for a clean install. I didn't have the time to upgrade through the web and left it for when I came back.

Yesterday, I completed the upgrade and suddenly lost my 1024x768 screen. I was stuck with 640x480. Ugh! I sifted through the forum archives, found some troubleshooting efforts but was unable to get it to work right. Since I didn't really have anything installed, I decided to wipe the whole thing out and start from scratch with a clean install.

That seemed to go normally. It didn't solve my wireless issue, however. And then, the laptop would not shut down. It would go through the unload bar and hang at a splash screen. I could manually power off but then the next reboot would hang after the splash at a blank screen. I would reboot again to the same result. The next reboot might come up normally or it may take a few more attempts.

The last lines of the system log before each restart is:
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth1: link is not ready
message handler not found under /com/redhat/dhcp/eth0 for sub-path eth0.dbus.get.reason

eth1 refers to the network card so I popped the network card and shutdown. It hung at the splash screen shutting down. It froze again booting up but the next reboot worked. The log had that message handler error again but not the link not ready message.

. . . one step back.

King of the Peninsula

Joe Root was an Erie native. Born in 1860, little is known about his childhood but at some point he fell in love with Presque Isle and in his teens he made it his home. As one of the peninsula's first permanent inhabitants, he built a number of shacks in various parts of the peninsula to suit the particular activity of any given day. He built his shacks out of driftwood, packing crates and anything else that washed up on shore.

He sustained himself by fishing, hunting without a gun or bow & arrow, gathering eggs and eating wild fruit including cranberries that grew in abundance on the Isle. When hunting, Joe would use a club or rock and his exceptional woodsmen skills to capture his prey. It is told that Joe could mimic any wild birdcall with his high squeaky voice.

Joe Root loved children and they grew to love him in return. A family would show up on the peninsula for a picnic meal and as soon as they would spread their blanket, Joe would magically appear. He would entertain the children with ventriloquism and stories about his friends, the Jee-Bees, unseen little people who could accurately predict the weather. Joe was an accomplished ventriloquist and he would carry on conversations with his hat or hollow tree stump. He would usually get invited to a free picnic meal at the urging of the children. Eventually families would pack extra food when visiting the peninsula in the hopes of seeing Joe Root.

On rare visits into town, Joe would swap stories of his business ideas in exchange for a drink. One idea was of a balloon factory using the prevailing westerly winds to transport travelers to Buffalo. Another idea was a feather factory utilizing the abundance of birds that can be found on Presque Isle. Joe's favorite idea was to begin a circus that would feature wild animals being transported in a wheelbarrow over a highwire stretched from the peninsula and the mainland.

Most people found Joe's ideas amusing and harmless, he never found the financial backing to realize his dreams. Others feared Joe would claim squatters' rights to the peninsula and in an event shrouded in secrecy he was committed to the State Hospital for the insane in Warren Pennsylvania on April 14, 1910 for an act of violence that witnesses say Joe was the victim. Joe died in 1912 longing for just one thing, to return to his beloved Presque Isle. How much would Joe's holdings be worth today if he had owned the peninsula?

Legend has it the sand replenishment needed each year is simply because Presque Isle loved Joe Root as much as he loved her. This is why she keeps slipping away in search of the "King of the Peninsula."
Copied from the menu of the Joe Root's Grill, a few blocks up from the entrance to the Presque Isle peninsula, Erie, PA.

Darwin Implicated in VA Tech Shooting

"Only the person who believes in God has a basis to make moral judgments to determine what is “good” and what is “bad.” Those who claim God does not exist have absolutely no authority upon which to call something right or wrong. If God doesn’t exist, who can objectively define what is good and what is bad? What basis could there be to make such judgments? The atheist has no basis upon which to call anything good or bad. They can talk about good and bad, and right and wrong—but it’s all relative, it’s all arbitrary. What’s “good” in one person’s mind might be completely “bad” in another’s."

This was Ken Ham, President of Answers in Genesis, in an essay less than 24 hours after the massacre at Virginia Tech. He goes on to blame some sort of Naturalism conspiracy for forcing an evolutionary agenda in schools, thus destroying the moral, religious culture. This is so wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin.

I haven't been able yet to find a web link to this but I recall reading an article wherein scientists did a social experiment with chimpanzees. One chimp was given a button whereby if it was pressed, he would receive food. However, pressing the button would also inflict a painful electric shock on another chimp. The study found that the chimp would literally starve himself rather than inflict that pain on a fellow chimp.

Chimpanzees don't have gods. They don't have commandments. They don't have churches, clergy or doctrine. They will act with compassion and sympathy and even against their own self-interest, not because they fear punishment for sin or reward for virtue in an afterlife, but because they have morals. Or, at least what we anthropomorphically call morals. Their behavior has been wired by millions of years of evolution towards behavior that supports the community. And chimps are not alone. All communal animals behave more or less in the interests of the community. Humans behave the same way, not because of some divine spark but because we are more likely to survive when we work together.

Let's approach his assertion from another angle. In Ham's contention, godlessness leads directly to lawlessness. If that were true, Norway, one of the most secular nations on the planet, should be absolutely rampant with crime and Nigeria, the most religious, should be a paragon of virtue. The exact opposite is true. Norway is an extremely civil and safe place to live while Nigeria is a death trap.

The religious fundamentalists would have you believe that atheism, the road to which begins with the acceptance of evolution, is lawless. That atheists are without morals and to allow secularism into public life will lead directly to chaos and anarchism. Religion is the only way to impose goodness and order.

Atheists didn't initiate the crusades. Atheists did not oversee the inquisition. Atheists didn't burn witches. Atheists don't firebomb abortion clinics. Atheists don't strap explosives to their bodies and blow up markets. Atheists do not hack their neighbors to death with machetes. Athiests don't behead journalists and post the video on the internet. An atheist didn't ask their followers to drink cyanide-laced kool-aid at Jonestown and no atheists actually drank from those cups. Anyone who says that religion is the foundation of morality is lying. Or delusional.

The Milgram experiment involved three people. One was a person hooked up to a machine to receive painful electric shocks. The second was an authority figure ordering higher and higher levels of voltage and the third was the actual subject of the experiment. This person was ordered by the authority figure to actually press the button that would administer the shocks for which he would be paid for his participation in the experiment. While the recipient of the shocks was actually an actor and no electricity was applied, two-thirds of the subjects did as they were ordered. No one who questioned their orders did so before the voltage reached 300 volts and not one of the people who refused to participate took the additional step of calling for the end of these sadistic experiments.

We could learn a thing or two from our ape ancestors.

History has shown that religion is not about morality, it is about order. The authority of the church, the authority of the bible, the authority of doctrine, each using the word of God to impose order. Not a natural order that would come about when people work together towards a collective benefit, but an order that reinforces the position of those in authority. And that authority fears and hates evolution because to understand evolution is to understand the true interconnectedness of the universe. The web of existence that can only reinforce ones concern for others as it ultimately comes around to affect you. And once that enlightenment takes place, one sees that they, the religious authorities, are really only concerned with themselves and the way they survive in their positions of authority is to keep people ignorant. Ignorant about evolution. Ignorant about science. Ignorant about reasoned investigation. Ignorant about critical thinking. Ignorant about the truth. They replace genuine truth with a concocted facsimile of truth using the Orwellian doublespeak of faith.

Ken Ham blames secularism, atheism, evolution and science for the tragedy at Virginia Tech. I do not make the counter claim that religion is at fault in that incident. There is no evidence that the delusional shooter was religiously delusional. But I do emphatically denounce Ham's claim that the lack of God is to blame.

CheerPod

Last year, I purchased an iPod and had a nightmare installing it, probably because I was using Windows 98. I've been trying to learn Linux and am very pleased to find out that if I plug my iPod in, Ubuntu recognizes it just like any other USB drive. A piece of cake.

Of course, that doesn't allow me to manage the music on the drive. For that, I found the appropriate posting at Ubuntu Forums, enabled universal packages in Synaptic and installed gtkpod.

It took a matter of minutes. That is, once I knew what I was doing. I spent quite a bit of time before that reading up on just what was what and seeking out the clearest instructions.

I'm liking this Ubuntu/Linux thing.

Job offer

I received a call from a headhunter representing a law firm who said that she found my resume on the internet and said that my experience was exactly what they were looking for to fill a help desk coordinator position.

Unfortunately, the job is in San Francisco.

Just to survive San Francisco's cost of living I would have to make at least twice what I'm making now (or rather, what I should be making). And, in calling them back, it turns out that is pretty much the offer. But they wouldn't cover my move and probably not the flight out for the interview. And it's also a three month contract to perm position. It's not that I'm even remotely in a position to take that sort of chance in a move to San Francisco but it's encouraging to know that people can look at my resume and think I'm worth something.

Online shopping

This may come under the category of "too much information" but I've been having a difficult time buying underwear.

When I was a kid living at home, I wore the "tighty whities." At college, however, I began commuting by bicycle and that very quickly destroyed the leg elastic. I set out to find a different style that I wouldn't wreck and found something cut pretty high. There then came a time that I was out shopping for replacements and could not find that style anymore. I settled for a different string bikini style that worked OK but wasn't quite as resistant to destruction. And going out this past week to replace underwear that had worn out I discover that neither style of underwear that I've been wearing for 20 years is available. I drove all over the place and in store after store, the only briefs they had were variations on the "tighty whities."

When you can't find a product in a brick and mortar store, you go online. I've spent far too much time surfing the web looking at photos om men's crotches in an attempt to find underwear. Buying underwear online?!?!?! Who would have ever imagined? The first stop was Hanes website because they used to have the right style. Not anymore. Thus I spent far too much time surfing the web looking at men's crotches. Eventually, I found an online store that had exactly what I was looking for. . . from Hanes.

That I do not understand. I can understand, perhaps, that a market like Pittsburgh couldn't support a certain style of underwear in big box retailers but why wouldn't Hanes carry it on their own website?

New discoveries of old things

We call it the French & Indian War but Europe knows it as the Seven Years War. Battles took place not only here in North America but also in France, Portugal, Germany, Eastern Europe, North Africa, India and the Philippines. And all that started right here with France and England squabbling over who would control this point of land at the confluence of three rivers.

The City and DCNR decided last year that they would fill in the Music Bastion of Ft. Pitt to better facilitate the use of Point State Park, not as a state historic park but as a concert venue. This burial of history would be completed just in time to celebrate the fall of the previous colonial fort to stand at the point, Ft. Duquesne, and the founding of the City of Pittsburgh. Their first rationalization was that the bastion wall had no historical significance because it was a merely a reconstruction. In point of fact, it was a restoration, original and new brick rebuilt on the period, intact foundation. Next, they claimed that burying it would protect it from damage. Of course, that would also prevent anyone from studying it or even knowing it was there, save for the historic markers which seem to be all we have left of the great French & Indian War. Finally, they said they had made these plans known several years before and no one had submitted any opposition. Sorry, but I remember those plans. I remember the outcry and I remember specifically submitting my own personal opposition.

When they found human remains last year, they tried to pooh-pooh the
archaeological significance by saying they were probably scattered by previous excavations, had lost their historical context, they had no way of knowing if they were from the period and thus there was no reason the delay construction any further.

Well, now they can't use that excuse anymore. Excavations have uncovered a powder magazine that was part of Ft. Pitt's main wall facing the Allegheny River. There it is, right where it has lain covered for over two centuries, full of nothing but historical context. And if that survived all the development and redevelopment that has gone on at the point over the centuries, what else could still be down there?

The "Forks of the Ohio" is a National Historic Landmark and the City, with their 250th anniversary theme of progress, seems intent on burying Pittsburgh's past. In their zeal to forget that the steel industry collapsed and financially wrecked the region, they are taking down all of history. They are robbing us of our history. And not just our history but the world's history. The City is just hoping that they don't uncover any other surprises so they can get on with the important business turning the point into an underutilized concert stage.

I would encourage you to contact the City and State to prevent them from lobotomizing our sense of history except that they didn't listen to us the first time, ignored us the second time and probably aren't listening even now.

Overheard on the elevator

"People can change if they allow the Lord to come in and circumcise their heart."

Errr, what?

Connectile Disfunction

This problem has been a long time developing, beginning with the slow internet connectivity problem that we blamed on Comcast but that turned out to be a bad router. To resolve that issue, we got a new combo router/wireless-AP. We got that up and the router part worked fine. We didn't test the wireless part because we had another wireless access point upstairs that worked just fine.

We have people over on a regular basis and last week when they showed up and tried to access our new wireless connection downstairs they couldn't. This began hours upon hours of troubleshooting. Ultimately, we ended up back where we started. The router was working but not as a wireless access point.

As a result of all the monkeying about, however, my laptop would not longer connect. It could get five bars of signal on the AP but would not get the network. On a reboot, I started getting a "New Hardware" prompt for a PCI Controller that drivers could not be found for. At one point I removed the device from the device manager and was able to get the network to work but the next reboot landed me back where I started again. But this time, deleting the device wouldn't do what it did before.

The final, fatal mistake was to attempt to re-install the wireless card. You see, several years ago, I got a wireless card for my daughter's laptop. I couldn't get it to work on her machine properly so I thought I'd give her the card I had and install that one on my laptop. I don't even remember all the details but there was some driver or something left over on my machine that I couldn't get rid of that prevented installing the card. Eventually I resolved it but I had forgotten about that all last night when I tried re-installing the card and the missing dll files reared their ugly heads.

I had enough. I pulled a few files off the machine onto a USB flash, wiped the hard drive and installed the Ubuntu-flavor of Linux.

Except, that I couldn't get the wireless card to work. It could get five bars of signal on the AP but would not get the network.

Today, in a search of the Internet, I found some documentation that was neither in the operating system's Help nor in the big ass book "Ubuntu Unleashed" that I purchased to learn this stuff:

"Step 5a. If your access point requires a WEP key, it must be entered with a dash after every fourth character, ie (xxxx-xxxx-xx)"

So, with the perceived answer in hand, I finally got home to try it out. . . and the laptop will not boot. It gets through much of the boot and then simply stops with a flashing cursor.

What the fsck.

As I've been writing this I was able to get it to boot from the disk. It looks like I'll be installing it again.

Virtual Promotion

I received an email invitation to join a demo of a new password reset utility. Actually, it was not an actual invitation but an email to someone else at Second Level Support and CCd to me indicating that they should invite me to this demo.

In any case, there were two interesting things in the email that had
nothing to do with passwords, demos or invitations. The first is that three analysts were listed as "Trainers", which shows me that the Help Desk now needs three people to do the job that I once did. The other thing is that my title is apparently now "Advanced Level Analyst" instead of just being "Analyst." Oooh. Ahhhh. They think enough about me to give me a more impressive title but not enough to give me a raise. I also note that I am on the list with trainers and yet I am an exile, completely isolated from the training process.

What's the point in that?

The Rocketeer

Spoked

When I was riding in DC a few weeks back, I discovered that some of the brake alignment issues I was having was due to a broken spoke. Actually, it was two broken spokes that cost me $15 to have replaced today. Something else I learned was that the spoke nipples had gotten corroded and were difficult if not impossible to adjust. Should I have more spokes break or if the wheel gets too far out of true, I'll be better off replacing the wheel entirely. That will give me a chance to get the wider rim that it originally had.

When I got home, the tire was flat. Taking it all apart it would seem that the techs at Iron City Bikes had not put the rim liner on properly. This had allowed one of the nipples to puncture the tube when it was re-inflated.

Stupid Procedure #387

A month ago, The Bank instituted new password complexity rules, requiring that certain passwords include special characters in addition to the standard letters and numbers. This has meant a 40% increase in password calls as people try to adapt.

There have been emails sent out to employees concerning this change since as far back as November. The actual implementation of this change was delayed three times and each time included additional e-mails. We at the Help Desk have been directed to send out even more emails. Each time we change someone's password, we are required to send out an email reminding them of the new rules.

If they didn't read the first 5 email instructions that were sent to them, why do we think they are going to pay attention to number 6?

The day before yesterday, Analyst J was directed by a Team Lead to go around to everyone and visually confirm that everyone had this email ready in the draft folder ready to go. It's terribly insulting to be treated like children in this way. Then today, one of the Team Leads sent out an email again asking for confirmation that the email was in the draft folder. Insulting AND a case of management not knowing what managers are actually doing.

Something of an aside related to previous issues. . . I have heard, over my cubicle wall, Analyst J complaining about his having been talked to about using abbreviations. Apparently, he would abbreviate things in his tickets in such a way that the Function Desk would not understand what he meant. His hyperbolic response was to verbally stink about it, saying that he would writ out everything, even threatening to spell out International Business Machines.

So, when he came to my cube to check on the password email, I gave him a look that reflected my disbelief at the way were being treated. He commented that he had the same expression when he was told by FD Analyst T about using abbreviations.

"I was going to get her a gift of heavy flow tampons but was told I
shouldn't."

That's an understatement! Remember the comment I made last week about "sexual harassment" and "a lawsuit waiting to happen"? Well, that would have been it right there.

Northern Crown/7th Sea game session #7

Those of you who are regular readers of my blog (And I know there may actually be one or two of you out there) may have noticed that the last posting in the continuing adventures of Orcish Grenadier Kurt von Sturmblähung was #2 way back in September. So, what has happened to sessions 3, 4, 5 and 6? Let me summarize:

After defeating the snake cult, the party's reward was mostly the loot stolen from the cult. Then there was some other sort of secret society causing trouble. The re-disappearance of the guy we were rescuing in the first place. Some high seas piracy gone bad. The snake cult again. Double-crosses. A supposedly good snake guy. Political intrigue. Triple crosses and daring escapes.

This all sounds very exciting when synopsized but there was also several game system changes. When this all started, it was going to be 7th Sea. The GM didn't like the fantasy world that only mirrored the real world so he brought up Northern Crown. This was to be the Caribbean but with magic and orcs. Northern Crown was a D20 campaign so D&D books filled in the rest. OK, then we got started. The city module he was using was Freeburg from 7th Sea. For some reason, he couldn't wrap his head around calling it Port Royal so the whole world morphed back to something more 7th Sea. I simply ignored this change and still considered Kurt to be from Bavaria instead of just some generic orcish mountain tribe. Then, the GM added "action dice". He also changed the way AC worked (absorbing damage instead of affecting to-hit probability). But then he chose a completely different game system. He took our character sheets and converted them to this new system. The new system appeared to be Deadlands, an undead western-genre game that uses multiple dice, poker chips in place of action dice and playing cards for initiative. Finally, last night, something else seemed to have changed. The combat system was using three dice instead of two and he had a book called Savage Worlds.

Having our characters unable to do the things they were originally created to do was frustrating enough but the final straw was the plot hammer.

The GM was running a module. That's all well and good but with all the double and triple crosses the party was reaching the point where we didn't trust anyone. We just wanted to get the hell out of there. But doing so would deviate from the linear nature of the module (of most modules) and the GM wouldn't allow that. The mostly empty boat that we were going to steal suddenly was full of crew members. When that plan went sour and we were arrested, we were going to cross the bay in a "launch." If the odds were even, we would have taken that boat over and made a run for it but suddenly this launch had a dozen crewmembers, something more like a sloop.

This is where the frustration reached a climax and the game collapsed with the GM throwing up his hands and saying "Fine! You attach the crew and all die. Happy now? You got what you wanted." He ranted about all the changes he had made "to make US happy." I made one pass at explaining how changing the game system multiple times was worse than operating in a flawed gaming system and that the linear nature of the campaign wasn't role playing, it was a novella and we were merely along for the ride. (I wanted to use the term "literary masturbation" but I passed on that.) While everyone else tried to assuage his ego, I packed up my stuff and walked out.

This isn't the first time I've done this either. Years ago when he was running a Star Trek game, he did the same "linear plot" thing. I had a Horta security officer as a character and when his inherent abilities (such as disguising himself as a rock and being able to burrow underground) threatened to unravel his plot, he started throwing absurd obstacles in my way. I walked out on that one, too.

I ran a Rolemaster/Middle-Earth campaign for three years and was able to keep people on plot. One key element was to have multiple plot lines. The major story arc and minor side adventures that actually fed into the arc. If they opted out of one plot hook, I could just put those elements somewhere else. The drawback is that even after that three years, we weren't half way through the arc.

I should probably try to run a game since most of my experiences over the past ten years being a player have ended poorly.

The term is Kleptocracy

More tax issues and, for a change, it's not the fault of my employer.

I received a letter from the PA Municipal Service indicating that I had apparently not paid my taxes for 2001, 2003 or 2003. With taxes and penalties they were hitting me up for over $1,600!

It took two hours of calling to finally get through and figure out that I can resolve this (hopefully) by sending them my W2s, which they somehow had no record of ever receiving (though they did have data on how much money I made for those years. I wonder how they got that without having my W2 forms.). Apparently the process works this way: My employer withholds the appropriate boro taxes from my paycheck. They send that money in a big block to. . . somewhere. At some point, the municipalities, through the PA Municipal Service, go to that block to withdraw the money for their coffers. The strange thing is that this is not done annually but every 5 years. So, when the request came through, PAMS suddenly discovered in 2007 that they didn't have the proper verification for four years previously, instantly racking up nearly $600 in penalties and interest.

Seems either slipshod or dishonest to me. Either they lack the capability to process this in a timely manner or they intentionally wait to process so that they can generate more revenue. We are told by this statement at the front of the IRS website to "Keep these records for at least 3 years from the date your return was due or filed" but hidden in Publication 552 is a table that says that "If you do not report income that you should and it is more than 25% of the gross income shown on your return" you should be able to provide that documentation back 6 years. They say, "Keep your records for three years but if we audit you, we'll go back 6 years and fine or imprison you if you can't prove your innocence." Is it any coincidence that the PA Municipal Service is asking for information exactly in that window; records from 4 to 6 years back? Had I thrown away my records after the recommended 3 years I wouldn't have any proof that this money was already paid and I would be stuck with paying them again plus a fine for their having lost my records.

Weather turning

Yesterday's bicycle commute home was blue skies and 75 degrees. Today it was 37 degrees and snow.

Welcome to Spring in Pittsburgh.

Tech Support Gets Medieval

The Collapse of Intelligence Design

The Dark Ages

Nearly half (48 percent) of the public rejects the scientific theory of evolution; one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.

No, these are not the views of some backward, pre-industrial country. This is Newsweek reporting on the United States. Of the 34 countries polled, only Turkey ranked lower than the US in their acceptance of evolutionary biology.

We like to project ourselves as an advanced and enlightened nation when, in fact, were a nation of delusional morons who believe that an invisible bearded guy living in the sky created us out of a pile of dirt exactly in his image (except for the invisible part, I suppose). No wonder the US is lagging behind of the rest of the world in science research when half of the nation rejects the scientific principal outright.

You realize that when I posted about Get Medieval yesterday, I was talking about a comedic webcomic, right? It was not a suggestion that we reject the Age of Enlightenment, the Renaissance and five-hundred years of knowledge in favor of blatant, state-endorsed ignorance.

Get Medieval

Yesterday, I discovered a webcomic called "Get Medieval", a story of a number of spacefarers trapped on Earth in the Middle Ages. I've been spending hours clicking through the archives until I finally got to what was apparently the last one:

Guys, I have a very sad announcement to make.

Last night, I recieved a Cease And Desist order from Monolith Productions, the company that makes the computer game 'Get Medieval'. They claim I am infringing on their copyright, and I've been ordered to stop producing comics and merchandise under the name 'Get Medieval' within twenty-four hours of recieving the letter. Being as I'm a starving student who can't afford a lawyer, while they're a software company making millions of dollars, I don't have much choice.

Farewell, folks. It's been fun.

Damn! I hate it when lawyers get their hands on something good and. . . . oh. Yea.

April 1st.

Damn. Got me.

Makin' copies. Not.

The Ex in FedEx/Kinko's is supposed to stand for Express. It doesn't. At least, not at the Monroeville store. I went there tonight to make get some copies made. I waited, second in line for over 5 minutes. There was one person who looked like she was making copies. Another had her back to the customers working intently on what I assumed was some sort of desktop publishing project and a third guy doing. . . something. I don't know what but it wasn't making copies and it wasn't waiting on customers.

Geis: "Ten pages. Ten copies. Collated and stapled. One page. Seven copies on my own label paper."

Kinkoid: "They should be ready in 30 minutes."

Geis: "Half an hour?!?! . . . I'll be back."

Fourty minutes later I returned and my originals were still sitting there uncopied. Recognizing that I had returned at the appointed time and my copies hadn't been done, the Kinkoid made my copies. It took her 90 seconds to do them wrong. She had to do them again.

It then took me 15 minutes to trim my label sheets. When I left the store, there was one person making copies. The other employees were nowhere to be seen and the same half dozen customers that were waiting for copies when I got mine were apparently still waiting.

I worked at Kinko's for five years in the Oakland store. The Monroeville store is easily three times the size of the Oakland store but with a third of the staff. When I was the delivery driver, I got to see all the stores and even way back then (15-odd years ago, now) Monroeville was woefully understaffed. Or, at least, under-performing. You can't blame staffing levels. I distinctly recall working one Sunday when I was the only person in the Oakland store. I had customers waiting. I had three machines running. I was taking care of everyone. Nobody was griping.

One might think that in 15 years, Monroeville might have caught onto that "customer service thing" but it never has.

Misuse of Scripture

The fundamentalists like to point out that the Bible is absolutely clear that homosexuality is an "abomination" by quoting Leviticus, chapter 18, verse 22.

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

What they never quote is just a few chapters earlier in Leviticus 11:10

And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:

And, if that isn't enough, it goes on for two more verses.

They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.

Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

Yea, though the Sodomites are abominations that will surely burn in Hell for their immoral behavior (but, since we don't mention wet, lesbian action, it's kosher), an even lower circle of torment is reserved for ye who dare partake of the three-times abominable Red Lobster shrimp feast. Lo, the very name of the place is an affront to all that is Holy (or Wholey) and these dens on inequity should be banished from this Christian Nation.

So, I ask you religious fundamentalists and bible literalists. . . how do you justify eating shrimp, lobster and surely violating a whole slew of other biblical laws while holding up other favored laws as The Immutable Truth™? If you can somehow explain away some laws, why can you not apply the same reasoning to the other laws? For if you can question the passages you don't want to follow because you like lobster, crab, scallops, catfish, eel, oysters or caviar, then everything else, every other passage, is also open to those same questions.

You are not fundamentalists or literalists. You are hypocrites! Hate mongers like Fred Phelps and Jack Chick, you don't follow The Law™ or The Word of God™, you merely pick and choose those passages that support your own narrow, self-serving and dare I say evil purposes and wrap it up in the lie that is your faith. Don't insult my intelligence by quoting scripture to me because by your own words you make it clear that you don't even believe it yourself.

All in good fun

The following conversation occurred on intra-helpdesk IM:

Team Lead R: "Can everyone who is in aux and should not be please either go available or explain to the Tactical Manager why your in aux."

Analyst W: "I am in aux because I don't know any betta"

Team Lead D: "this why we need to meet with you @ 14:45 in the Site Manager's office."

Analyst W: "Oh, I gotta go see the principal"

Analyst A: "you in BIG trouble. i'm telling!!!"

Team Lead D: "quit while you're ahead....please"

Tactical Manager: "May I see you back at my cubicle for a moment?"

At this point, there was a collective "Ooooooohhhhhhhh" from the floor, the kind of juvenile behavior of elementary school kids when someone got caught doing something wrong.

Team Lead D: "we need to do that more often.....W went to see the Tactical Manager and people got out of AUX.......hmmmm???"

This little exchange pointed out just the thing I had warned about last week when I said that the "banter" using IM would go to far. I sent an email to the Tactical Manager.

"You should recall from the end of last Summer when I was solicited for my opinions as to why morale was so poor here at the helpdesk. In that I pointed out Team Lead D's tendency to use public humiliation as a management technique was a significant factor. The message to have a disciplinary meeting with an analyst, even for so minor an issue, is really not appropriate to broadcast to the entire helpdesk.

You fell into the same trap by broadcasting this to the entire helpdesk and the public ridicule that was heaped on Analyst W for being "called to the principal's office" was juvenile and unprofessional but not wholly
unexpected.

And finally, there was Team Lead D's affirmation of the successful use of public embarrassment as a management technique.

Really, NONE of this should be going through IM to everyone. And that it went out not once but multiple times from a number of managers is really unprofessional. Doesn't anyone notice these things and think that maybe this sort of thing shouldn't be broadcast? I've been called into the office for being overheard talking about things management doesn't think I should be talking about. To have management then turn around and broadcast this sort of thing in a forum that is not only helpdesk-wide but can also be saved and documented really doesn't speak to a whole lot of fairness going on here."

The Tactical Manager responded:

"I did not see it the way that you articulated - as it was nothing more to me than an affirmation to Team Lead R of accountability to everyone for going into Aux unnecessarily.

I didn't fall into a trap - I wanted to participate as the majority found great humor in this. Not a whole lot of that going around lately - so I took advantage of what appeared to be a harmless reply to have Analyst W explain his IM to me.

It was a very effective method of expressing a very profound truth to the floor - by utilizing humor to cushion the blow - everyone needs to stay available - which in turn resulted in the 10 people in Aux going immediately available.

I'd say it worked - there is always room for improvement - and this provided a different approach that I took advantage of."

This really pushed all of my buttons.

"No doubt, Team Lead D thought he was being humorous when he sent the IM commenting on the way I smelled. And so, perhaps I am being overly sensitive.

But, no. I don't think so. It is because I have been the specific target of this sort of humiliation that I can recognize it for what it is. Using a public instant message to everyone to call one analyst into a managerial meeting is inappropriate no matter how much humor is attempted to be injected into it. It's not funny, it's harassment. And just because the majority thinks it's funny does not make it acceptable.

This humorous banter has shown me some disturbing trends. I have noticed that IM is being used more and more often for analysts to ridicule one another. Sure, much of it is supposedly good-natured ribbing but that environment has gone too far. Not everyone likes being harassed in this way. I have heard from behind my cubicle walls a disturbing increase in talk reflecting homophobia, sexual harassment, bigotry, outright racism and general ignorance.

This kind of behavior is dangerous. It is a lawsuit waiting to happen. And as a manager you should be very careful in endorsing this kind of behavior."

I included screen shots from last week's "eating paint chips" and "reporting them to INS" commentary as examples. I didn't get a response from him after that so perhaps my language (especially the words "sexual harassment" and "lawsuit waiting to happen") finally cut through his "all in good fun" attitude.

City Paper

While I was in DC, I picked up a City Paper. I didn't get the chance to read it until getting back home, though. It's the same format, same idea as Pittsburgh's City Paper, but with significant differences.

First off, it's a thicker paper. No surprise as Washington is a bigger
city, it's city paper would list a lot more things to do and thus need about twice as many pages to present it.

And while the content is pretty much the same sorts of things across the board, I was not expecting the vibrator advertisement on page 19. All of the adult ads in the Pittsburgh version have a lot of suggestion but this add had the product clearly presented for exactly what it was.

I'm pretty sure that wouldn't fly here in Pittsburgh.

Mount Vernon

One last thing before finishing our spring "vacation" was a visit to Mount Vernon. We did the tour of the grounds and mansion but one of the things that stuck out the most to me was in the museum. There were three rooms dedicated not to George Washington but to his friend and ally the Marquis de Lafayette. I was reminded of an article on NPR that spoke of the national fervor that occurred when after the Revolution, Lafayette returned to tour the young United States. This man was a genuine hero the likes of which are seldom seen. I was tempted to buy a Lafayette biography at the gift shop but actually have a number of books in my reading queue. I'll probably pick one up at the library.

Rock Creek Trail

Today's riding was along the Rock Creek Trail, 20 miles of pavement running north from Georgetown. It started with me getting a bit fed up with the misalignment of my brakes and attempting to adjust them. I learned that most of my problems were caused by a broken spoke (my second this year) and I had trouble adjusting the others to make up for the missing one because the nipples had gotten rusted.

The Rock Creek Trail is roughly three sections. The lowest end is along the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway. The trail crosses the creek several times, past the National Zoo and eventually gets up to Peirce Mill. The second section is along Beach Road until the DC border. There are some sections that are actual trail but most of it is on the road itself. On weekends and holidays the Park Service closes Beach Road to motorized vehicles which must be nice because I had to share the road with cars. It's too bad because the creek is very pretty along this section and I had to pay attention to the road rather than sightsee.

After 5 miles of this you reach the Maryland border and you're off the road again for the rest of the 14 miles to Needwood Lake. There are a number of marshy areas but no boardwalks like the Mt. Vernon Trail. There was an excellently constructed beaver dam just south of Needwood Lake.

When I got back, H**** and I walked up to Dupont Circle, specifically to look in an interesting bead shop she had seen on our long trek of the previous night. We ate at Zorba's Cafe, the Greek menu, music and atmosphere somewhat diminished by the Spanish-speaking staff.

Mt. Vernon Trail

After walking H**** to her meeting a couple of blocks from the hotel, I set off down M Street, through Georgetown, across the Key Bridge and to the Mount Vernon Trail. Starting from Roosevelt Island and running mostly between the Potomac River and the Mount Vernon Parkway it's about 18 miles of narrow pavement to Washington's mansion. There are plenty of twists and turns and because it's by the river there are a large number of boardwalks to keep the trail up out of the marshes.

Gravelly Point is right off the end of runway 19 of the Reagan National Airport and everyone stops here to watch that planes. When I was there, they were coming in to land. As soon as one touched down, another pulled in right behind if on the taxiway to take off. As that was happening, you could see the next one lining up to land as soon as the runway was cleared.

Every few minutes, there was a "boom" that came from the aircraft. Sort of like a backfire I'm guessing that it was the engines revving up and the exhaust going hypersonic. A true airplane geek would be able to tell me if my guess is right.

On the way back, I saw one who would probably qualify as a geek. He had his lawn chair. A pair of binoculars and at least two radios beside him. I assume they were tuned to air traffic or ground frequencies. I suppose there are different types of plane watchers just as there are different types of bird watchers.

I had lunch in the food court and browsed the gift shop at Mt. Vernon. I had read that the whole package of touring the mansion, grounds and museum can take up an entire day and plan to come back on Saturday for that.

The weather was terrific. 75 degrees and sunny. I even got sunburned on this the second full day of Spring. What I don't fully understand is how I could have a headwind both down and back.

When I got back into town, there was still some time before H**** was done so I rode around some to log a few geocaches. When H**** called on the cell to see she was done and was going to head back to the hotel I was just across the street and we walked back together.

We were met later by FuzzFace, whom H**** knows through mutual friends and his Bomb Shelter Radio webcast. So, after my riding 50 miles, we walked all over DC with his running commentary on local politics. Eventually H**** and I were very hungry and ended up at the Capitol City Brewery. I cannot wait for Pittsburgh to finally start enforcing their smoking ban. I'll be going to places like this more often once I know I'll have clean air.

Walking back there was more wandering about before we finally got back to the hotel. What is this, the Mythbuster's Channel?

What's in your wallet?

Worked half a day and got the hell out of there so I could drive down to Washington DC. H**** has some sort of business related training meeting going on and I decided to share the hotel room and bike some of the local trails. The DC Comfort Inn was an interesting contrast to the Millenicon Ramada experience of last week. Where that hotel had a large room that, while supposedly non-smoking, was not, this hotel was genuinely non-smoking but quite small. The room in Cincinnati cost $70-something a night and the DC room nearly half its size, cost nearly $200. The price you pay for being in the Nation's capital, I suppose.

Valet parking was a usurious $25 a night. I'm glad H****'s employer is footing the bill. To spend a few days down here on my own funds would bankrupt me. If I had to, I would park the car out near Potomac, MD, ride my bike down to the C&O at Great Falls and camp at the Swain's Lock hiker/biker campsite. It would involve riding the bike 20 miles each way into town but at least I'd still have some money for important things like food.

And speaking of food, it can be tough to find a place to eat in the evening. Many of the restaurants are open for breakfast and lunch but not for dinner. The streets don't roll up as badly as they do in Pittsburgh, though. We found a hole-in-the-wall Indian place.

On the walk back, we saw an interesting historical building and I was sure that there was a plaque on the front explaining it's history. I would have learned more than it was where the first transmission of Alexander Graham Bell's photophone occurred were it not for the huge rats loitering about the building. We didn't feel like staying that close to the local fauna and so retreated to the safety of our expensive hotel room.

Basic cable TV in DC sort of sucks.

The public forum

I have noticed a disturbing trend recently in the use of Instant Messenger for intraoffice banter. Some of it can be quite full of ridicule that's supposed to be good natured but tends to go too far. There have been occasional missives from Management saying that IM is to be used for business purposes but the Team Leads seem to be leading this latest wave of mis-use so I don't expect it to change.

Analyst J: "WTF?????? did everyone who is calling in eat paint chips today or what?"

We've all had difficult users to deal with and while I like to think that most of the difficult users are merely ignorant about computers but sometimes we run into people that are incapable of understanding simple instructions or questions and you are left to wonder how they actually do their jobs. OK, we sometimes express our frustration about these stupid users. Not a big deal. Usually.

Analyst W: "I feel like calling INS on these people"

This response came immediately after the one above and rather than merely showing frustration, exposes an underlying racism. The Bank employs a lot of people in a lot of markets and, as a nation of immigrants, a significant percentage of employees are foreign born or, if native born, have accents. This offensive statement assumes that "these people", deemed foreign only by their accents, are here illegally. That sort of assumption is simply repulsive.

Opting out.

On Thursday April 26, 2007, children across the country will participate in Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. This annual event was created to encourage young girls and boys to think about their dreams for the future for both work and family.

The Bank Operations business leaders have unanimously agreed to opt out of the event across all business lines this year because of issues related to privacy, production, security and safety.

Sure they talk about privacy, security and safety but really, those are non-issues. Kids aren't running around unsupervised, hacking customer accounts and raiding the vaults. There are no dangerous chemicals or heavy machinery to protect them from. We all know that bank profits are more important than our children's dreams for the future.

Now, before you give The Bank the benefit of the doubt on the safety
issues, know that a year after 9/11 when a city ordinance required that all building occupants participate in building evacuation drills, The Bank decided that the Help Desk and the Call Center were going to "opt out" of the drill, as if it were optional rather than required by law. Clearly they are not so concerned with safety as they are with keeping the machines running and the money flowing. They were unconcerned that this was illegal and simply took the fine issued by the Fire Marshal as the cost of doing business.

If The Bank is willing to break the law to make money, their children's dreams don't stand a chance.

Arrrrr, I got me a pirate sword.

I bought a pirate sword at Millennicon. I hadn't intended to purchase anything of the type but a friend of mine was looking to buy a baldric from a sword/chain mail/leather dealer. She asked if $50 was a good price and, based on what I was seeing when I was shopping for pirate garb, yes, $50 was a good price for this particular piece. With the con drawing to a close, I had convinced myself that it was such a good deal that I shouldn't pass up the opportunity to get one for myself. I found one that fit but a true fitting requires a sword. I tried a rapier but I wouldn't be carrying a rapier so he brought out a cutlass. He said that it was normally $40 but if it was purchased with the baldric he would knock another $10 off of it. It also had some cosmetic scuffs on the scabbard so he was willing to knock another $10 off. A $50 baldric plus a $20 cutlass? Sold.

Once I got home, I checked up on things and pretty much found what I
expected. The baldric was a pretty good deal for $50. The sword normally sells for $40 but I saw them on e-Bay for bids starting at $20 or Buy-it-now for $30. I didn't get a terrific deal there but I didn't get ripped off.

Confessions

"The purpose of torturing your prisoner is to get him to confess that he is the queen of England."

I believe this statement by a former Military Intelligence friend of mine to be true, supported by all the evidence of years of confessions obtained under duress. That six years later, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to planning the 9/11 attacks is dubious. For him to also confess to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the attempted assassination of every living US President stretches credibility. And to finally confess to personally beheading Daniel Pearl, well, I don't buy it.

Keep interrogating him and I'm sure they'll be able to get him to confess to the Lindberg kidnapping, to being the shooter on the grassy knoll and for assisting in the escape of John Wilkes Booth.

A confession obtained under duress isn't convincing. Show me EVIDENCE. If you have any real evidence of the horrible crime you have accused him of committing then present it in a court of law. Don't waste my time with this crap.

Secrets of the Workplace

The resubmission of my request for Friday off was approved on the condition that I keep it a secret. You see, that's how businesses work. If someone were to find out that I got Friday off then, well, that wouldn't be fair for me to get a day off when everyone else's request was rejected.

Don't make me laugh. This is never about fairness. It's about dissent.

When a new employee who was getting $10.00 an hour learned that people who were even newer were getting $11.00 he made a stink. Instead of addressing that inequity, the Corporate Overlords decided to repost the job on Monster.com without the pay rate. This didn't solve the problem but it did prevent anyone else from finding out about it so that the undercurrent of dissatisfaction did not spread.

I could go on about it and how many times I've gotten in trouble because I couldn't keep my mouth shut but I have to get some sleep so that I can take advantage of my secret day off and drive to Cincinnati.

Don't fear the Ides of March

Today was being billed as "D-Day." The day that new password complexity rules went into effect. Vacation time was canceled and a spree of hiring was implemented to fill seats in anticipation of an incredible call volume. Managers were visibly stressed. Conference calls with support we ready to go at a moment's notice.

All for naught.

Today went pretty much like any Wednesday. In fact, I think I had fewer password calls today than I did yesterday. I think this is the lightest Wednesday we've had in months.

So, I have pointed that fact out to my Team Lead and re-submitted my request for Friday off. Why should I be punished when the reason to have my time off rejected has just evaporated? Of course, if my request is rejected again I'm still not coming in of Friday, but I may be able to avoid that particular act of insubordination.

That is, if reason and fair play somehow takes hold.

Egg!

Not Spider-Man

I received my Spiderflex bike saddle this week and have been testing it out. Several days of commuting and plenty of adjustments have led me to the conclusion that it's just not going to work for me.

The initial intention was that, without the horn, the Spiderflex would completely eliminate the occasional circulation problem the previous seat caused. Instead, the seat changed my balance, put a lot more weight on my hands and turned an occasional numbness problem there into a more regular, nearly constant occurrence.

Lifting the pressure off my hands causes me to slide forward. Without a horn on the seat I'm pretty much sliding off. More weight on my legs means they are not only working to pedal but also expending energy to keep me in the seat. Wasted energy. I lowered the seat to try to mitigate this sliding-off issue but that changed the geometry of my legs, keeping me from getting the full extension.

I had upgraded to the previous Serfas Rx saddle from the Terry Liberator because the gel gave me more cushion for extended riding. The Spiderflex was a return to the more solid seat and I noticed it in 30 to 45 minutes. I would not look forward to 10 hours of that. In addition, the Spiderflex is has a fairly flat profile. Since my ass is not flat, this only increases the pressure on the ischium (the bottom "pointy" parts of the pelvis).

When I stand up on the pedals, to either take pressure off my backside or to better handle rough terrain, there is no horn for me to stabilize the bike by holding the saddle between my thighs. I don't like not having this control.

Another loss of control is when I take one hand off the handlebars. Because more pressure is on the hands, lifting one hand tends to turn the handlebars if I'm not careful.

The benefit does not balance out the negatives so I'll be sending it back.

Still springing

The stats compiled from yesterday show that the helpdesk took some 1,500 calls, 37% of which were Daylight Savings Time related. Again, we were all thankful that the worst of it was that the DST patches needed to be installed manually.

There is a definition of insanity variously attributed to Albert Einstein that says it is "the belief that one can get different results by doing the same thing." There were plenty of calls today from people who spent all of yesterday repeatedly setting their clocks ahead only to have the server set them back. These are the same people that reboot their machine over and over again hoping that the error they are having will mystically disappear or that the password that they just know is right will suddenly start working on the 5th or 6th try.

Spring ahead

Help Desk the Monday after Daylight Savings Time didn't go as badly as it could have considering that support was still rolling out patches as late as Friday afternoon. I had a few calls first thing in the morning about the time not rolling over wherein the user would set the clock forward to have it automatically fall back 15 minutes later. (The PCs were getting GMT time stamps from the server and adjusting because they hadn't received the patch.) This went on for a few hours before we finally received an e-mail with instructions on how to install the patch manually. This is the kind of thing we should have had before the day even started.

Even better, none of the "time stamp critical" systems, such as fax machines receiving market trades, seemed to have issues. Or, at least, I didn't field any of those calls and didn't see panicked warning appear on Instant Messenger.

All told, the call volume was not atypical for a Monday morning with about 16% of my calls devoted to Daylight Savings Time issues. A fairly painless rollout.

Wednesday may be a different matter when they roll out the long anticipated increase in password complexity. Passwords will now require several special characters. All vacation time has been canceled for the next week in anticipation of high call volumes.

Of course, this will not prevent me from skipping work on Friday to go to Millennicon.

Captain America Punished

First, a personal flashback. . .

Years ago, I was involved in a fantasy role playing game. In this game, my character was part of a party of heroes where were marginally employed by the King as a sort of secret service. The kingdom was facing a nebulous threat from a cult but couldn't gather enough evidence or even good intelligence to take any action. There may have been conspirators within the royal court. We were therefore the mercenary outsiders who were going to figure it all out.

Except we couldn't. Oh, we killed a few cultists and gleaned some slight information by scrying the corpses but, all in all, we weren't very successful. Then, all hell broke loose. The crown prince, while making a public appearance was mortally struck by an arrow fired from a distant rooftop. The royal guards attempted to chase down the assassin but he was able to escape into the crowd. He left behind a clue, however, a cloak with a badge that identified him as a member of a minor religion that, up until this point, was only suspected of being complicit in this cult.

Enraged at this affront, the kingdom leapt into action. Soldiers kicked in doors, rounded up cultists left and right, executed the leaders and put a stop to the conspiracy.

Except, that it was me up on the roof and the "mortally" wounded Crown Prince was wearing a hidden breastplate with fake blood packs. Since we couldn't get solid evidence, we dressed up our flimsy evidence in a faked assassination attempt and gave the King the excuse he needed for his pogrom.

Flash forward to when I heard that Captain America had been shot by a sniper at the end of the Civil War mega-series of comics. I had honestly lost interest in the whole Civil War plotline after J. Michael Straczynski stopped writing for Spider-Man and Fantastic Four and so hadn't been paying much attention anymore. Even so, aside from knowing that no one ever permanently dies in comic books, I knew there had to be a spin.

The Punisher.

I remember flipping through a comic on the comic shop shelves and saw that Frank Castle, The Punisher, had joined the rebellion with Captain America. It all fell into place. I'm betting that Frank put three bullets into Cap and left the rifle behind just as I had put an arrow into the Crown Prince and left the cloak and badge behind. It's a set-up. A professional assassin wouldn't be stupid enough to leave behind the rifle. I have no doubt that the trail of evidence leading back from that rifle will not lead back to the man who actually pulled the trigger. It will lead to someone else and only after that plot has revealed itself and justice is mettled out to the true villain will it be revealed that Steve Rogers has been convalescing in some undisclosed location and returns to reestablish justice.

OK, so that's my prediction. The Punisher shot Captain America. Cap isn't dead. Someone else is being set-up. Marvel will probably take a year to sort out that mess before bringing Captain America back.

Check back in 2008 to see if I was right.

of the people

When the preamble of the Constitution says "We the People", does it refer to all the people or does it refer only to those in the government who were writing the document?

When the First Amendment talks about "the right of the people peaceably to assemble," does it refer to all of the people or does it only convey that right to those that have submitted the proper forms to hold a rally or only to those in Free Speech Zones? When the Amendment goes on to say that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," does that apply to all religions equally or are some religions more equal than others? When it talks about the freedom of the Press, does that include bloggers or does it only apply to major media news organizations?

When the Fifth Amendment says "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury," does this apply to all people or does it only apply to those the government decides it should?

When the Fourth Ameddment says "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated," does this apply to all of the people?

So, if all of these rights "of the people" apply to everyone, why is it that it has taken two centuries for the courts to rule on the Second Amendment and say that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" applies to everyone?

Ahhh, there is that pesky first part:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Many have taken the phrase "well regulated Militia" to mean that this only applies to the Militia, the Reserve or National Guard. This is simply not true.

Everything in the Bill of Rights is about individual rights. The Ninth Amendments spells it out in saying, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." These are all about the rights of the people that cannot be taken away and then says, in essence, "If we forgot to mention something that is generally considered Common Law and the rights of the people, then they are still rights."

The government doesn't grant us these rights, they are already ours and the Bill of Rights is spelling that out.

It would be absurd to include in this Bill of Rights a guarantee of the right of the government to have weapons for its army, and make no mistake, today's Guard and Reserve are part of the standing army. Just ask any reservist that has been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. The 18th Century concept of the Militia was every able bodied male between the ages of 18 and 60 who could pick up a gun and defend his home or town from attack.

But finally, a Federal Appeals Court has ruled on the Second Amendment in overturning the Washington DC gun ban, saying the activities protected by the Second Amendment "are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent" on enrollment in a militia.

The Second Amendment, like all the other Amendments in the Bill of Rights, are the rights "of the People." Not just of some of the people. Not just for certain authorized arms of the government. All of us.

Dancing the dance

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
---Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5

Yesterday, I made the mistake of talking to some of the newer coworkers about the Help Desk. These poor, naive kids were finally let in on the fact that no one here had received a raise in 4 years and the prospects of anyone receiving a raise in the foreseeable future were virtually nonexistent. I told them a little about how the company that previously "owned" the Help Desk screwed up and ended up being bought by the current Corporate Overlords.

Today, I was called into the new Site Manager's office to receive a talking to about how unprofessional this is.

I knew that eventually I would actually have a discussion with the new Site Manager and am actually surprised that it took this long for it to happen. He started off with an attempt to make me understand how this sort of talk is inappropriate. I countered that I was frustrated and those frustrations will occasionally overflow so much that I forget that management wants me to just sit down and shut up instead of daring to voice my observations. He didn't want to characterize it as "sit down and shut up" but, given the environment, I pointed out that there really isn't a place for me to constructively voice my concerns. He said that I could come into his office and voice my concerns to him but I said that I had been doing that for years to no appreciable improvement so there really was little point in that. I told him the whole sordid story; the public humiliations, the being kept in the dark about my own "firing" from being the trainer, being persona non grata, and all the things that have lead me to skepticism about the likelihood of change.

He wanted me to understand that he sees many of the things that concern me, especially the "not getting a raise in four years", and he is working on it. He even had the temerity to say that I should expect good news in the near term.

"You know, your predecessor said exactly the same thing. His predecessor said the same thing. And even HIS predecessor said exactly the same thing about the changes that were on the horizon but that horizon has never gotten any closer. Nothing they ever said was coming ever actually came. I have absolutely no reason to believe, in spite of your words to the contrary, that this time will be any different than the last three times."

He said he wanted me to understand and I said I understood but couldn't promise anything any more than someone can promise they will never be involved in an auto accident.

"My behavior is a result of frustration. And the thing about frustration is that if it is not alleviated, it eventually leads us to say and do things that are not in our best interests. I've been in this office numerous times for exactly the same thing. And in all those times Management said the same things, made the same promises of change. We do this little dance all the time and nothing has changed. Nothing except the person sitting behind the desk. I can't promise you that it will never happen again because it will happen again. I guarantee it. UNLESS. . . something changes. And not just talk of change. Actual change."

We went round and round for a full hour. Ultimately, like all Managers before him, I was left with the impression that he didn't want my understanding, he wanted my compliance. And, being the ethical, honest and probably delusional realist that I am, I never said. "OK. You're right. I'll never do it again." If I had, it would have been a much shorter meeting. Of course, then I would have been lying and would have had to justify my not keeping my promise the next time I was called into the office. I, at least, save myself that hypocrisy.

An apolgy to Comcast

After the absolutely awful speeds of this morning, it was decided we had had enough. But before complaining to Comcast, I recommended connecting a PC straight into the cable modem because I knew that whatever tech drone we got a hold of at Comcast was going to say that they didn't support the network and we would have to do it anyway. So, having done that, our speeds improved dramatically.

It was our router all along.

Now, in my defense, We were fooled by two things. Firstly; the dramatic slowdown in performance came at exactly the same time as our migration from Adelphia to Comcast. We assumed that Comcast was the problem because we saw that as the only thing that had changed. We assumed that there was a correlation when, in fact, it was merely coincidence.

Secondly; after spending all day troubleshooting other people's problems, we came home disinclined to do any more work. We assumed that Comcast was the problem because we saw that as the only thing that had changed.

We are, admittedly, bad customers. We are exactly the kind of people we would have to have call us for support.

So, sorry, Comcast. Sorry for maligning your reputation on unverified evidence.

Comcastic dialup

This morning's speed test turned in an abysmal 36kbs. That's no better than dialup speeds. I'm sure Comcast would say something about usage by other people brings down speed but really, how many people are on at 5:30 in the morning? And my upload speed is still a consistent 359kbs, I have these kind of results on five different pc's running four different operating systems and two different browsers.

It's Craptacular.

That's so gay.

A few weeks ago, one of the newer analysts revealed his ignorance when, in talking about soy sauce he commented, "That's so gay." Later, during some conversation about fashion that I wasn't paying attention to, he again used the "That's so gay" description. I'm glad that there was a high cubicle wall between myself and this biggot who seems to have taken "gay" as a favorite derisive adjective.

I utilized the anonymous comment box that they have placed in the Help Desk to point this behavior out to management.

"I find this sort of hate-filled language to be offensive, distracting, inappropriate and unprofessional. Management must address this."

Apparently, they actually did because today, when the conversation was about "Lost" and somehow turned to "Seinfeld", he uttered; "Seinfield is gay. I mean, it's garbage. Seinfeld is garbage."

Not a particularly elegant save but at least he realized his mistake and it had been pointed out to him that it was a mistake.

What repulses me more than having to deal with this crap in the confines of my workplace is that the blatherings of hate-mongers like Ann Coulter go unpunished. In fact, the garbage she spews actually earns her speaking engagements with collective morons like the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). She earns her living off of her hatred of other people.

Actually, according to Crooks and Liars.com, it looks like some of the advertisers on Coulter's website are pulling their ads. "Oh, boo-hoo," they say. "Our freedom of speech is being oppressed by the blogosphere." That's bullshit, and you know it. You only support free speech when it's your speech. You want all the rest of us to shut the hell up.

Falcons are back

I had heard that the falcons were back in town but today was the first time that I actually saw them on the cameras (I hadn't been checking in).

Word is that the University of Pittsburgh is going to go ahead with a $4.8 million dollar cleaning and repair project come spring. Normally, such a project would begin at the top and work it's way down but Pitt is going to start at the bottom so as not to disturb the nesting falcons. By the time they get to working near the nest near the top, the new clutch will have fledged and moved out into the world on their own.

Acute numbness

I've spent a lot of time, effort and money in an attempt to prevent numbness while riding my bike, and for the most part I have been successful. The best gloves I've been able to find so far are the Trico Handshock 1000 which, for the most part, prevents numbness in my hands (although I still think the padding could be better distributed). My saddle is a Serfas RX which helps prevent circulation problems. . . elsewhere.

Today, with the riding season approaching, I put my bike up on the trainer and rode it stationary for several hours. Even though the bike geometry was the same and my geometry is the same as when I'm riding on the trail or the road, there was enough different that I experienced not only numbness in my hands and. . . elsewhere, my knee also bothered me some. All things being equal, things are not equal.

I've been thinking of getting yet another seat. I've gone through four saddles looking for the best one and have settled on the Serfas RX but think that perhaps I should do away with the horn all together. If having the seat between my legs causes circulation problems, do away with it. The Spiderflex bike saddle has no horn. It also costs $90. They have a 30-day money back guarantee so at least I get a chance to try it out. I get paid on Friday so I might order it and give it a go.