Author Archives: bluedepth

A Lesson I Learned the Hard Way

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The setting was at work, and the lesson was one of privacy. A while back I was coping with a rather difficult situation involving a persistent failure in communications and I grew angry and vented my anger onto my blog. At the time I had not developed any privacy controls and let it ride. I didn’t use any proper names and what I wrote was protected speech under the 1st Amendment, but that didn’t stop management from staging an intervention. The message was not for them and I know who played the role of the little snitch. Right afterwards I parted the red sea of privacy between my “work persona” and my real self. I took my Twitter stream private, I started to password protect my blog entries and only share the password with people I trust. I then divided the sea in Facebook. Now everyone I work with is summarily sent to the gulag of “NoWall” and “MysteryMeat”. They can friend me, but they can’t see ANYTHING AT ALL.

What I really think and who I really am is now hidden away from them and will be forever. They will not get to know me and they will not be a part of my life outside of work. They can enjoy my public work-persona, but they have permanently lost my respect and lost access to who I really am. I refuse to accept cowards and those that gain advantage from cowardly acts. I also refuse to accept those that are traitors to confidence. The best way to help myself is to help them, by blinding them after a fashion. As I have told them afterwards “You’ll never be bothered that way again.” Amen.

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Bouncing Along

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While plowing through articles that I had stuffed in my Instapaper account I ran across this article from io9 blog: http://io9.com/5694701/does-cosmic-background-radiation-reveal-the-universe-before-the-big-bang.
It’s neat in that Roger Penrose has declared with some authority that the Universe bounces along from big crunch to big bang and that certain features of the cosmic background radiation are hallmarks from a previous incarnation of the universes existence. I’ve always thought that the universe really deserves this sense of endless cycling, a kind of edge-on symmetry.

It’s also quite handy because it dashes the last hidey-hole that “God” could be stuffed into. Without the need of a prime mover pushing the Big Bang out, there is no need for a cosmic father-figure to flick the marble of existence into being. The Big Bang could be “pushed” by the ass end of the previous Big Crunch. It’s delightfully forever and starts people thinking about the metaverse. A concept of a metaverse could be just the thing to give some place for Everett’s solution to stretch it’s legs, as well as the whole possible symmetry of black holes and white holes to play around in. Popular physics despises the concept of a metaverse because we can’t go there and we cant experiment with it. But we could think about it.

Creeping Dead Zones

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Has anyone else noticed that there appears to be two very prominent creeping dead zones that surround the weekend? I mean, think about it. Nobody is really conscious Friday after lunch, and when you get to “High Tea” around 3pm, where really civilized countries are napping already, you could strip buck naked and streak through the office and NOBODY WOULD NOTICE. The same fuzzy non-time surrounds the beginning of the week too, that nothing of meaning ever happens between Friday afternoon and Monday afternoon.

The comical part of me sees this as a creeping problem. First we lose Friday afternoons and Monday mornings. Then as time goes on, people start making allowances for Friday mid-mornings and Monday afternoons. The work week is being effectively gnawed down on both sides by this creeping inertia.

Case in point, a help desk’s ticket throughput during these dead zones. Nobody has problems, principally because they’ve already checked out and can’t be bothered. I swear that sometimes you can hear tumbleweeds dashing along our office during these dead zones, it’s so quiet. So we keep busy. I bet a monumental amount of network traffic is bound for Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, and yes, my dear readers, WordPress.

The people who manage productivity should be alarmed. The weekend has sharp pointy teeth and it’s getting bigger! 😉

P.S. This is the first time the WordPress Proofreader didn’t have piss OR vinegar for me. YAY!

Family

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As a general rule there are some things you don’t discuss because they are inappropriate, bad form, tacky and or tasteless. Pinless grenades dangling from a flak jacket. Don’t discuss politics, religion, the weather (which always kind of mystified me, I mean, it’s right out there, but whatever) and I today was a clear call for the last thing that really shouldn’t come up in pleasant conversation and that is airing family laundry. Especially when family happens to be reading! Saying something you feel in the moment just sits there and expands and before you know it you have (or are) Godzilla facing an island full of screaming fleeing citizenry. Does Godzilla ever feel awkward? Hmmm… (the real question should be, does Godzilla call his mother? NO HE DOES NOT. He sets Tokyo on fire. I suspect it’s all about the guilt.)

It’s not that the issues that come up are wrong, but the medium isn’t right. So there are some things that I won’t ever bring up in this blog again. “Dear, we don’t talk about those sorts of things…” mostly because no matter how you try to explain what you feel the written word never really works well. It always comes out as an excuse or a cop-out or any one of a million other miswritten things. Some of these things are best reserved for highly paid therapists who have easy access to recreational pharmaceuticals. And before anyone throws a fit, all pharmaceuticals are recreational. So there…

So I pledge to keep things all light and fuzzy around here from now on. I’m quite a number of things, mostly related to being one or many aspects of monstrous, as anyone who meets me for the first time can immediately attest, just ask any of our foreign students, if you can keep them from squeaking and trying to flee at the merest mention of my name. If you are going to aspect Kali, you might as well go all out is what I say!

Family will keep to itself and life will go on. Love them, or hate them, chat them up incessantly or check-in sparingly, no proclamation ever really is lasting or serious and no, nobody really feels that badly about someone else in their family. Unless they happen to be conservatives, in that case, they are dead to us. Yes, us. Sybil, Sybil, *twitch twitch* 😉

And this will be the last time I use the F word on this blog! So there!

Life without a Thumb

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Last night I had an accident. I was slicing radishes with a mandoline slicer and as I was working along I was going to fast and accidentally took an 1/4 inch slice from the blade on my right thumb. I wasn’t using the included safety chuck because I was in a hurry and didn’t care enough. So here I am with half a thumb that doesn’t work properly.

I started to notice just how many places a thumb is useful. Browsing an iPad? Yeah, a challenge. Try tying shoelaces or buttoning pants. It’s quite marvelous to see just how many places your thumb shows up as a key player. You never really think about it until it’s bleeding all over you and screaming in pain.

It was comic watching me cope last night after I had so savagely sliced myself for dinner. My consistent response is to get really quiet and run away. Specifically to the bathroom. Got pressure on the cut and then I was struggling with the instant bandage kit from Band-Aid. Usually that’s where I go to when I have a rather smooth slice from a knife or mandoline. Quietly cussing and swearing and getting more and more upset as I was fumbling with the little applicator and trying to unscrew the tiny tube of glue that serves as the instant bandage. In my minds eye I was entertaining images of hunting down the bright bulbs at Band-Aid who designed the package and the materials the way they did and after a good and healthy beating, throw them a kit and see how they cope. Difficult to manage huh? Yeah it is! Ye bastards! But I was able to find a butterfly (or whatever the hell you call it) bandage and that took care of my leaking issue for the night.

Damn thing fell off this morning though, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore, now it’s just nasty looking and tender to the touch. And before anyone gets all worked up about what “nasty looking” is, it isn’t infected and it’s not in pain, so put down your WebMD and back away slowly from crazy-town. I don’t need to see a doctor.

What amazes me is how important hands are and what a terrible joke played upon us by a creator (if he has the audacity to exist) that the most important things in life are the most prone to horrible terrible nasty damage. It’s almost as if, if there was a God, that it’s a very old joke that he smiles over when he’s sitting all alone.

My Fitness Routine

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My fitness routine used to include a rather rigorous trip through WiiFit. Ever since Halloween '10 that was derailed and I haven't gotten back to it. I've gotten over my wish to lose weight and to be thin, it's just not going to happen. So I'm not thinking about my weight any longer. I figure life will unfold naturally all on it's own and doesn't really care wether or not I fret about not being able to lose the weight I previously was so dedicated to. It's probably a seasonal thing and later on in the year I'll change my tune, but for now I'm not trying to impress anyone. There really isn't anything beyond eating right and exercise, the rest is pretty much flapping lip-service to what we should be doing and then not feeling good about ourselves for not doing what we should. Much like how I don't care about my missing hair, I don't really care so much about my missing thin-person. 🙂

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Say Goodbye Gracie

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Got this little marvel in the mail:

Employees using University owned cell phone/PDAs will be taxed on the fair market value, (in this case the cost to WMU), of the phone and plan.  All applicable payroll taxes will be applied.  For phones and devices already in use, we will tax the value of the plan only.  In order to properly account for University monies used to pay for dual use cell phones and ensure the fringe benefits are taxed properly, the voucher given to accounts payable to pay for such phone service must include or have attached a detail of the names and employee numbers of the employees and the respective amounts being paid for their phone/device.  For plans where the cost isn’t already broken down by phone, you will need to allocate the total cost to the phones if you are not already doing so for general ledger posting purposes.  Accounts payable will submit the cost information to the payroll department after they review to make sure all the cost is being accounted for.    Departments that are paying for University owned cell phones with a procurement card should submit the same information to the payroll department on a monthly basis.  No department should be paying for a non-University owned cell phone plan with a procurement card.

So on February 1st I will be surrendering my line at 269-599-7798. This will conclude my mobile telephony reach as well. I will most likely not be having any other phone as I cannot afford one. As a practical upshot to this, after February 1st I will be unavailable to telephone traffic for quite some time. There won’t be a replacement number as I don’t have the funds available to afford to replace such technology. If I am not at my office, I won’t be reachable. In the case of emergencies, they will have to be queued and held for me until I reach a place where I can access telephony equipment. Likewise, if I have an emergency I will be unable to call 911. Lets hope we don’t run into any of that sort of thing. This is 21st Century progress at it’s finest, folks. Let us rejoice.

As for our business mobile infrastructure?

Say Goodbye Gracie.