Let’s All Rant.

I haven’t ranted in a while, but I recently saw on an image on Instagram that motivated me.

“There’s a name for people without beards… women”. “There’s a place for men without beards… the lady’s room”. Ah, such humor and wit can be found in these little memes that populate the Internet. Occasionally the sounds of the guffaws are deafening.

The next time you decide to perpetuate things such as “a face without a beard belongs on a woman”, please remember this:

• Men without beards are protecting your right to say stupid shit by serving in our military.
• Men without beards are protecting your stupid shit by being an officer of the law or a fireman.
• Men without beards are flying your stupid ass all over the world in airplanes.

So, by all means, please feel free to step onto Fort Drum or Fort Bragg or Quantico or Parris Island and tell the guys there that because they don’t have a beard, they are obviously not a “real man”.

And by the way, ladies are no more “less than” than men because they don’t have a beard. Someone in the world has to put up with stupid crap and quite frankly, the ladies do a fine job of it.

Some random rants that are going through my head today:

1. I’m starting to hear chatter on the various media outlets of who Hillary Clinton will select as her running mate for her presidential campaign. Aside from the fact that she hasn’t even officially announced any such campaign, the media apparently wants to beat down any excitement held by the average citizen of a presidential campaign that is over two years away by speculating, guessing, lying and stating that which assumed as absolute fact. In my honest opinion, the media is doing its best to expedite the decline of this country all in the name of revenue.

2. I’ve ranted about this before, but I am really getting tired of everything being dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, especially since the lowest common denominator keeps dropping. A local city government decided to protest the building of a roundabout at a busy intersection because too many motorists find roundabouts too confusing to navigate. Unfortunately I’m not completely surprised by this fact since many motorists now find parking between two lines in a parking lot to be too time consuming or too difficult. Traffic moving at a slow pace in an efficient circular motion must be mind boggling.

3. In case you’re curious about such things, I’m learning that general aviation aircraft mechanics are just as dubious in their ways as car mechanics. Our airplane has been in the shop for a required inspection for over 10 days, which is fine because making sure everything is running good is always helpful when you’re airborne. However, when someone says they’re going to call you or send you a bill or whatever, they should do it and not leave the customer hanging. Leaving the customer to second guess his schedule or whatever, all because the mechanic decided not to call you when he said he would, is just rude. I was hoping that the New American Way of “fuck the customer” would not be pervasive in the world of General Aviation, but apparently it can be.

4. Facebook is just plain shitty. Aside from the fact that you can’t sort the damn news feed into some semblance of a reasonable chronological order, there’s so much garbage polluting my news stream right now that I’m starting to dread even going on there. The problem is, more and more friends and family are starting to use Facebook as their sole contact outlet. I don’t know what’s going on with some of my friends and family unless I read about it on Facebook, which is nearly impossible to do after all of the quizzes about what toilet paper I should wipe my ass with, sage political headlines like “President Obama slapped Queen Elizabeth across the face with his Kenyan birth certificate” and “oh my god look at this, it’s a goldfish that sings the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ with bubbles in his mouth.” The ONLY thing good about Facebook is that there are people there, otherwise it’s an awful application, evil company and nothing more than a large ad whore.

So this morning we left Harrisburg, Pa. and made our way down to Savannah, Ga. in around 11 hours. The drive was not unpleasant; I changed up the route a little bit and opted to try out something called “E-ZPass Express” in the Washington, D.C. area. This helped keep things interesting.

As we got closer to our hotel, we decided that we needed to get some supper. Ruby Tuesday usually has a decent salad bar so we decided on finding the nearest one. Apple consulted Siri on his iPhone 4S. I consulted Google Maps. Both agreed on the location right around the corner from our hotel. Earl used Apple Maps for navigation.

The billboard said Exit 104.

Siri said Exit 102.

We decided to get with Exit 102. I exited, turned right onto US 80 and went 1.6 miles. I was then told to turn left onto Pooler Parkway. So far so good. Once on the parkway, we were promptly told to make a U-turn. On the parkway. I found a spot and spun the car around.

Proceeding in the direction we had just arrived from, Siri loudly proclaimed that we reached our destination. We were on top of the bridge over US 80. There was no Ruby Tuesday anywhere to be found.

To illustrate, see graphic below. We start at the yellow dot. We are going to point “A”. Siri took us along the makeshift red-line.

When we finally arrived at Ruby Tuesday, courtesy of Google Maps, I banished Apple Maps from Earl’s phone and installed Google Maps. I declared that no one in my family shall ever use Apple Maps again. Those who are smart will obey.

Apple really needs to get its act together.

Just for kicks, while relaxing in the hotel lobby, I asked Siri where Embassy Suites was located. Mind you, I was sitting in the lobby.

Siri told me that the closest Embassy Suites was quality Quality Inn Suites and was located on a road called International Blvd. 87 MILES AWAY.

Oy.

Tomorrow we shall continue the trek.

So The Weather Channel is already getting breathless about the snow that is expected to hit the region this weekend. They’ve named the storm and everything. Quite frankly, I think the Weather Channel is a completely assinine organization and a strong indicator of everything that is wrong with our society today. Be scared! Be afraid! Buy everything we throw at you in an advertisement! Support our advertisers! Watch for more! Be afraid! Very afraid! Boo!

I am actually looking forward to the storm. Since they’re predicting anywhere from 1/8″ to up to 24″ of snow for our area, I’m hoping that we’ll get more than that so I can go out in the Jeep and drive around, making videos and taking pictures and posting them to the Internet so I can say, “See! This is how the big boys play in the snow!”. Then I’ll laugh maniacally.

The bad part of this storm is that it’s coming up the coast and it’s going to hit New York City, which means the bloggers will get all hysterical, Rosie O’Donnell will be paralyzed with fear about the whole thing¹ and the national news anchors will look sad because their limos in midtown couldn’t make it to 30 Rock in time for a martini downstairs before they had to go on camera.

We’ll be driving around in the Jeep yelling “neener neener” into a video camera.

If you’re passing through the area on the Thruway during the storm and have absolutely no idea of what to do during a “named” winter storm (who’s idiotic idea was that?), please stay home. Use the time to pack up and move to Florida. We don’t want you up here anyways. We have places to go and people to see and we’re not going to let a little snowstorm slow us down.

¹ Per Twitter, apparently Rosie “panicked” when the lights went out during the Superbowl. Because she was sitting in Nyack. Get a grip.

I’m officially giving up on the American news media. This morning I listened to some woman use her “very spooky and scary” newscaster voice announce that stalkers are using the iPhones of mothers to steal children. The iPhone tags the photos with your GPS coordinates and when you upload your photo to Facebook, bad men are watching and will swoop in and steal your children right on the spot. At the very worst, they know where you have been.

The spooky and scary woman failed to mention:

– any sort of statistic as to how many of these abductions have happened
– how they’re getting the phones from the Moms
– the fact that most phones and many digital cameras do this, not just the iPhone
– the fact that the feature can easily be turned off
– any viable sense of urgency as to why this is headline news

Fox News is known for it’s rampant fear mongering (except to those that swear it’s the gospel) but most other news outlets are in it for the ratings and/or pledge money, so I don’t think any of them can be trusted. It’s kind of sad, but the most unbiased reports come from outside of the country… BBC, CBC, etc. Heck, even the English version of Al Jazeera gives a more balanced view. That’s kind of sad to me.

So for the morning commute I am sticking to tech podcasts, Stars on 45 and some of the GLBT podcasts. When I snap a photo of my ride, you’ll know where I am.

Just don’t steal my iPhone.

On the drive in this morning I took the opportunity to listen to the news. I don’t do this very often because hearing about the stupidity that is rampant in our country has a tendency to raise my blood pressure and sure enough, this little nugget of news did the trick.

The Town of Clifton Park (outside of Albany) is defining what constitutes a family in an effort to control the number of people living in a residential home. They’re trying to avoid the problem of single-family homes becoming boarding houses. They’re apparently worried about the wrong kind of urban sprawl (in their eyes). I see a veil of masked white supremacy, but then again, I can be cynical at times.

Quite frankly I hate this kind of shit.

Here’s the thing. First of all, I have the best biological family and in-laws in the world. I would not change one branch of my biological and related family tree. I love them and they love us and I am always quite grateful for that. But in addition to that which we were born and or married into, Earl and I have our own family. It might not be the traditional family unit that could be found next door to The Cleavers back in 1961 but it’s our family nonetheless and as a family unit, we are quite happy. There’s common ideals, there’s common hope and most importantly, there’s love. So if we lived in the Town of Clifton Park, we wouldn’t be able to have our family living under the same roof. Our home, which contains Earl and me, Jamie, Scott and the regular visits from Dave wouldn’t be possible, because we’re not blood related, Earl and I haven’t adopted anyone and the state of New York isn’t letting anyone of our ilk get married anytime soon. So basically, if we lived in the cranky town of Clifton Park, “do-gooders” (as my grandfather was fond of calling them) would be serving us papers, people would be picketing, Girls Scouts wouldn’t be allowed to sell us girl scout cookies (not even a box of Samoas) and then there would be lawsuits, a lack of a finely manicured landscaping around a beautiful house in ways only the gay can do and then I’d have to end the whole ordeal by firing a shotgun in the air like Ma Ingalls did when they were fighting over who was going to own Walnut Grove.

Why can’t the Town of Clifton Park just let people live and let live and not worry about defining the “family unit”. What makes a family? I’ve seen blood relations damn near kill each other. Would you want your neighbors to be the group that lives with one another in harmony, even though they’re not blood related or married, or a bunch of biologically related people who hate each other, throw knives, blow up cars and let their dogs poop in the lawn, but by god they’re blood related and/or got married in Vegas at a place where the Minister yells the vows back through the clown’s mouth at the drive thru stand?

Thought so.

Just another reason to add to my famous quote of: “Albany blows”. (I know, it’s Clifton Park, but it’s still in the general area, and if they’re going to be general, I’m going to be general).

I think I might have a reputation for going on a rant once in a while. I’m not sure that I enjoy this sort of reputation because I like to think that overall I’m a nice sort of guy, but once in a while something puts me in the mood to rant and rave. I’m sometimes told there are more important things to worry about and I should look at the big picture. As I have said before, I’m not even in the same art gallery looking at the same wall, let alone looking at the same picture as most, so I figure I can say what’s on my mind once in a while. I figure it’ll give folks a glimpse at my perspective.

My rants are usually associated with an OCD thing I might have going on. For example, the driver of the SUV on the other side of the parking lot has completely ignored the lines that denote a proper parking space. This makes me insane. Is this woman as haphazard in her approach to life? Does she feed her tiny kids milkshakes because after all, it’s milk? Would she like it if the woman at the beauty parlor drew her eyebrows on haphazardly, say vertically from the nose, instead of where they should be above the eye? Are her panties turned inside out? If she is this haphazard with her parking habits then she is surely just as messy with her everyday life. And if she doesn’t really care about the small details, why should we fund her basic needs with public assistance? If she doesn’t care, why should I care? I say park between the lines or being a victim of thinning the herd. We have more needy people that need the welfare cheese.

America’s fastest 3G network is sucking big time today. Is anyone as tired of the ads as I am? Is anyone a fan of the merging of giant corporations (I.e. AT&T and T-Mobile)? They push us to move our lives to the cloud and then they give us crappy service. Don’t promote it if you can’t furnish the goods. Empty promises. So many empty promises. Do we remember that the voices on our party lines (shared phone lines, not hubba hubba) sounded much clearer than what we accept as golden over our cell phones? We are settling for mediocrity. “The next version will be better with more features, but buy this version in the meantime.” I’m not buying anything. Earl just rolled his eyes.

There is a septic truck pulled up to Applebees making a really loud noise ( though it’s not a farting sound). This seems appropriate for lunch time. How about an appetizer to go with your honey wagon cocktail?

Why do young people start smoking these days? Have we raised such a stupid generation of people that they’ll go ahead and do something that they know will kill them prematurely? Perhaps it’s part of the master plan and we’ll be rid of them soon enough.

The weather guessers are predicting severe thunderstorms tonight. Because of this I plan on barbecuing under a clear sky with a mild breeze. Listen to the forecast and expect the opposite because no one really knows which side of the dice really means rain.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Today is my first “Workforce Reduction Day” under the effort to cut expenses at the company I work for. Salaries were cut by 10% across the board, and this is accomplished in my department by having one unpaid day off every two weeks. The days rotate in a systematic schedule so that there is complete fairness regarding the availability of three day weekends. I think that the manager of our department handled the matter well and came up with the best scenario to handle all of this. I have a lot of respect for my supervisor and the manager of the department. I’m happy to work for them.

Today is also the first pay day under the new plan. I’m afraid to see my paystub and the resulting impact of the cutbacks.

We have a company wide calendar that lists who is out of the office on any given day and we were given the task of listing our unpaid days off. I was one of the first to do so, and I listed each day as “WFR” (for WorkForce Reduction). Many others followed my lead and did the same. A few days later we received work from upper management telling us that instead it should be listed as “STO” , STO meaning “Scheduled Time Off”.

I took a little issue with this. And, surprisingly (?) I was vocal about it.

Here’s the thing. I believe using “STO” sugar coats the whole issue. I understand that the company is doing what it can to stay afloat and everyone reminds me that I wasn’t part of the layoffs that happened a few weeks ago, but still, I am now bringing home 10% less a week PLUS I have to work an additional four hours a week before I’m eligible for over-time when I’m on call AND I have lost my “pager pay”, the few extra hours I received for being inconvenienced with carrying a pager and being awoken in the middle of the night with random notifications. This pay cut has brought me below a threshold I had in my head, both financially and psychologically and quite frankly I don’t believe the issue should be sugar coated. It is a serious issue and by using the generic “STO” it seems like the issue is being swept under the rug and the company is operating as normal. But we are not operating as normal. Workloads have been increased, the stress level has tripled at the least, morale is very low and quite frankly we are doing everything we can do to just hold the place together and take care of customer concerns, let alone be happy about the whole thing.

I’m big on symbols. I find meaning in everything. I could document my time off with the slang term that’s starting to find it’s way into our corporate speak and refer to my day off today as “Punishment Time”, but I didn’t because that’s not appropriate. WFR says exactly what it is, WorkForce Reduction.

I understand that the powers that be are doing everything they believe they can to keep the company afloat and I guess I should be happy that I have a job in today’s economic climate. But I believe the situation warrants the respect and gravity that is actually present here, and this little sugar coating of changing “WFR” to “STO” is ridiculous. To even think that management had a meeting to discuss this and then told our supervisor that we needed to change our calendars is absurd.

It’s a little thing and I know that. I did the right thing and changed my calendar to “STO” like a good corporate (half-a-) cubicle resident¹.

I may be there only 90% of the time now, but I still deserve 100% of the respect.

¹ When we moved into our new headquarters in August 2007, new cubicles were purchased (along with all new office furniture) for the entire population of the building with the exception of our department. Our area, a separate room from the rest of the office, was given the old cubicles from our previous building (along with the old chairs) that are actually two quad areas, four “half cubicles” with two walls surrounding a common pole. Talking on the phone with a customer without the benefit of being surrounded by four walls lends itself to a LOT of “huh?”, “what” and “could you please repeat yourself, I couldn’t hear you”, not exactly the sort of thing a customer wants to hear when they are trying to get technical support on their technology based product.