Déjà vu computer issues

Oh, yes, this feels familiar.

So, there’s a problem with the access on my work account, things being what they are, not surprising. It’s one of those small annoyances that necessitates taking the very long way around to perform a mundane task, but its more just an inconvenience than an actual problem, so I’ve learned to live with it. It’s sort of like… having a door with a handle you have to jiggle a certain way to open it, you know, that kind of thing.

So resident tech decides to fix my problem for me.

Note that I didn’t ask for it.

Now, after two hours of Mr Resident Tech making strange noises and concerned faces and saying things along the order of “oh, no” and “huh?” and “ooo, wait a minute” problem… not solved, actually.

Problem exacerbated.

Problem … breeding and creating minions. Problemettes. Problemerolas. A whole hoard of smaller problems gleefully bouncing around and being problematic. So, now instead of having a door you have to jiggle the handle to I’ve got a door where you need to jiggle the handle, turn it three times, so a little counterclockwise dance and put a banana peel on your head. Not what I was hoping for.

And to top that all off, the guy then promptly dusts off his hands, stands up, strikes a hero post and goes “my work here is done”.

Sometimes I think we’re not even on the same team.

ROL

How to not lean on pathos when writing a job application…

So – I’ve told you about that whole random spontaneous application thing? Yeah, I have. People looking for work where none is to be had and all that? Yeah.

Also – you really should let a native speaker have a look at your letter.

So here’s another gem from a random hopeful:

”I like my job, I like to work between people.”

That’s a good one.

The other thing that boggles the mind about this particular application is that the lady in question tries to make the claim on the basis of pathos more than merit… Which is all kinds of not pertinent, really, and in classical rhetoric not recommended. You should never use an emotional appeal unless it supports the claim you’re making.

In this case the applicant says:

“I have a 4 years old daughter, I have to think of her life, of her future.”

To which I can only raise an eyebrow and go “yes, and this helps you in performing your duties how, exactly?” Better to tell me of your actual merits and experience. When we get to that part things also get interesting.

“I am quiet positive, in my previous workingplace my nickname was Smiley.”

I don’t really know how to respond to that.

See the thing is… when you’ve only got one shot at grabbing my attention, you really should try to make the most of it. And this gets my attention, sure, just not in the way you were hoping. And I don’t mean to ridicule “Smiley” – I’m sure she’s a sweetheart, but she really should have taken the ten minutes she needed to get this proofed by someone who could have gone “are you sure you’re saying what you need to be saying here?” and “is that really the word you’re looking for?” Especially when your next claim is “I speak English”.

See what I mean?

Just think about it.

ROL

The Source

Surprisingly often in my place of employment you find the source of the error is invariably the same.

It doesn’t matter if it’s on the tech side – like on Monday when I start my workstation and then almost immediately get tossed out on my metaphorical ass as the server acts up, or if it’s the telephones going dead or acting up ringing intermittently at random, or if it’s the company car that doesn’t run because it hasn’t been treated right, or if it’s the influx or outgoing invoices … or any of a miscellany of a great many other tiny details that conspire to kick the collective behinds of me an my colleagues in the trenches.

The Source of the Error is pretty much always the same.

It’s bipedal and bifocal-ed.

We are actually thinking of changing the sign on the door to his office to The Source of The Error.

And it wouldn’t be so funny if it wasn’t true.

ROL

Ah, technology… A Printer’s Tale

We have, and I kid you not, at least eight printers at my place of employment.

Eight.

So, I arrive at my station and the sun is shining and the birds they are a-singing and the flowers are in bloom.
I have a document that needs to be transformed from its electronic form to the higher form of paper. I tell my computer to ask the printer nicely if it wouldn’t mind performing this small service for me, as a kindness.

And it goes “uhm, no”.

-? goes I.
-Nope, goes the printer. “Don’t wanna.”
-Why?
-I just don’t feel like it. I have paper. I have ink. I am connected. I am all shiny. Everything on my display is lit up and blinking happily. I just don’t wanna.

Oh, the irony.

There’s something wrong, but there’s nothing actually, you know, wrong. Which means there’s nothing I can actually do about any of this. And no the old “turn it off and turn it back on” trick doesn’t work. On any of them.

There’s a ghost in the machine. In all of the machines, actually, and there’s a tech support which isn’t very supportive and there’s me leaning over the machine going “you have one purpose in life, only one, and if you don’t fulfil that then what good are you?” … which is … well, slightly threatening, I willingly concede. (I did that to the printer, but maybe I would have been better off doing it to the tech?)

One out of eight really isn’t too much to ask, now is it?

Except for how it obviously is.

Balls.

ROL

Excuse me while I kiss this guy…

Occasionally I amuse myself with the whole language thing. It actually started as research this time – trying to find the etymological origin of an expression – but I won’t bore you with that part, except to say that no, no one knows for sure where the expression “the dog’s bollocks” comes from. It’s probably a nonsense phrase, i.e. one of those things that just happen.

And because of that little research based scamper across the wild and windy moors of language I slipped, tripped and stumbled onto the following little gem of verbal acrobatics:

“Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who are spring chickens or who would actually hurt a fly?”

Or:

“Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through annals of history but not a single annal? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?”

For that last one there I think I would say “an odd end”.

And the reason for the header of this post? Random synchronicity. Jimi Hendrix Purple Haze came on the radio and I remember this really funny bit about some guy thinking the lyric  “excuse me while I kiss the sky” was “excuse me while I kiss this guy”… though thinking about that I think the odds are about 50/50 on that. It was the sixties after all.

ROL

Giving advice – and a witticism too…

On the topic of giving advice:

Don’t.

That’s the golden rule, yeah?

Just don’t.

It’s that whole seeing the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye but not the plank in your own, just like it says in the Bible. It is tempting, though.

I try not to offer advice unsolicited, but sometimes my brain gets ahead of me and you can sort of see the paths laid down for others, especially in the paths their thinking takes when they’ve gotten themselves stuck in a rutted track that they can’t get out of. So occasionally I offer some pieces of advice, mostly that’s just me sharing idle observations on behavior and behavioral patterns.

Now, believe me when I say I am not someone who’s advice you should take when it comes to how to live your life, because, fuck knows, the way I deal with my own problems is certainly not for everyone. It works for me, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone.

Okay, so this is just the lead in to be able to share the following piece of advice/parable/bon mot.

Having religion is like having a dick.
You don’t go waving it about in public and you should never try to stick it down someone’s throat without asking for permission first.

That’s the witticism I’m sharing today. Just think about it, okay? It’ll grow on you I promise (oh, dude, don’t even go there…)

ROL

You are the … dark eclipse and bloody sky of my life?

In the neighbourhood….

Well, here’s a new one for the books.

My neighbour has a propensity for playing bad music loudly. It’s an interesting phenomenon.

The other day I was treated to a very loud and very bad cover version of “You are the sunshine of my life” played on Hammond organ.

… I don’t really know how to respond to that.

So I sent a text to a couple of friends to share the joy. Mostly the replies I got were along the lines of “kill them” and “death is too good” and “oh, the pain, the torture”. To which I blithely replied that some people are their own punishment.

I don’t think I’m the sunshine of anyone’s life. But then again, there are those that inflict their sunshine on the rest of the world, and at least I’m not one of those either.

ROL

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies…

There are times when honesty might not be the best policy.
Yes, yes, I know, old news, right?

Take for example when you’re applying for a job. Here’s a little slice of real life, I just got this one today…
The young lady in question boasts about her skills regarding the English language, but I’m fairly certain that this probably sounds better in French.

And I quote;

“I would appreciate having this type of experience in your company to put into practice what I have learned in class by discovering the real world of work and to understand the work and tasks of unskilled workers that are often physically demanding uninspiring and repetitive.”

Yeah, way to endear yourself there, sweetheart. Those physically demanding and uninspiring tasks that you speak of? They’re actually my job.

So in one fell swoop you’ve just told me that you hold what I do in contempt and find the actual job boring and demeaning and not something you want to be doing anyway if not for the “real life experience”. Yeah. Okay.

First off, that’s what working is mostly. Set tasks performed with consistency and without appealing to your imagination and creativity. But more importantly – I can talk shit about my job all I want, because it’s mine and I do it really fucking well. It’s like when someone picks on your ugly cousin, you know? I’m allowed, because it’s my cousin, but I will kick the ass of anyone else who would have the gall.

So – honesty. Not always the best policy. And perhaps you should have someone else read your application and tell you if you’re really saying what you mean to be saying.
I’m just saying.

ROL

Five Dead Does Not a Massacre Make

Here’s one for the etymologically minded – at what point does a mindless killing spree become a massacre?

I guess I’m just old fashioned. See, to my mind it takes a lot of blood on the ground to make a massacre. The dictionary definition is “unnecessary, indiscriminate killing of a large number of human beings or animals, as in barbarous warfare or persecution for revenge or plunder”. You get the idea.

What prompted this ponder? Well, I was watching the news. I know, I know, not something I should do what with the aneurism and my temper and what not. But still, there I am, watching the news.

Now, I am not about to argue that a lone nut job opening fire with an automatic weapon in a crowd and thusly mowing down innocent bystanders isn’t bad. It’s a tragedy and it’s terrible and it shouldn’t happen and all that. But the body count was five dead when the screen announced it as a massacre with capital letters and all.

Why do I get stuck on something like that?

Well, see it works like this – hollowing out a word like massacre means that you actually belittle real massacres. The synonyms are “carnage, extermination, butchery, genocide”. Five dead is none of those things. I had this discussion with a couple of friends of mine – one of them was of the opinion that “no, five dead is just a regular Friday night in Mexico City” and the other offered no opinion other than the more sedate “you’re weird”, but that’s okay, I’m used to that. The estimated number of human casualties in Darfur in Sudan has been estimated somewhere between twenty thousand and several hundred thousand dead due to direct combat, starvation and disease caused by the conflict. The bit I saw on the news was, like I said, some random whackjob shooting up a shopping mall.

The news… well, the fall of man is of course directly connected to the amount of information we are subjected to daily, that’s hardly a new thought. This was the kind of random violence you can’t guard against, predict, or even pretend to be ready for. But all that does not a massacre make. It’s no less of an individual tragedy for each of the dead and their loved ones, but it’s still not anywhere near a massacre.

Bertold Brecht said it best;

What keeps mankind alive? The fact that millions
are daily tortured, stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed
Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance
in keeping its humanity repressed
And for once you must try not to shirk the facts
Mankind is kept alive
by bestial acts!

We need to take care where we put our words, irrespective of the fact that the signs are arbitrary, least the denotation starts drifting too far off course. We don’t only use words to describe our reality, we help define it through them. And they are at best slippery little things, so let’s not contribute to the the inherent instability of reality unnecessarily, shall we?

ROL

Oh, the many-legged food

If there is a problem, there are generally a couple of readily available solutions.

Me, personally? I like to try and find the easy ones. It’s not that I’m lazy… it’s just that there are better ways to expend your energy than to find the most complicated solution possible, the one that involves changing laws and building laboratories and hiring someone to think up a slogan.

Okay – so, case in point. I was watching the news, like a good citizen – and why I even bother trying to do that I’ll never know, because the only thing that happens is that my blood pressure goes up whilst my faith in mankind tumbles right down the crapper. That’s where I hear the most complicated solution imaginable to a fairly simple problem.

“The increasing demand for meat is putting a growing strain on the ecology: Is meat made out of insects the answer?”

Wait, what? Hold up, back that up and say it again.

Is meat made out of insects the answer?

I don’t even know where to start on that one.

How about this – if one of the leading health problems in the western world today is obesity and the gen.pop. wants more meat, why not stop fucking feeding your lard-asses all that meat in the first place and have a goddamned salad once a week. Problem solved.

Or – well, I can see how this could work environmentally. Cockroaches, man. They’re a problem already, and when the A-bomb hits they are going to be the only things to survive anyway. How about we eat those? That’s going to go over real well with the kids.
-What are we having for dinner, ma?
-Cockroaches. Stop crying.

The question “meat or fish?” is going to become even more tricky.

And “soilent green” might be people, but what the hell are you going to call insect meat to get people to eat it?

See? My blood pressure. Between that and the aneurism waiting to happen things really aren’t looking too good for me in the long run.

There really has to be a smarter, more sustainable and more thought-through answer to the quandary how we’re going to solve the whole pounds of meat per capita ratio.

Otherwise this is what is going to happen:
Scientists will discover that the best way to harvest and process cockroaches would be to genetically enhance them in such a way that they yield more meat per roach. They then begin to tinker with cockroach-DNA and produce a massive Belgian Blue version of roaches which then promptly escape from the lab they are kept in due to one slovenly scientist who turned a bit stupid and snoozy after his third bacon cheese burger and forgot to rehatch the lab door. The Roaches take to the sewers and multiply the way only roaches can and three weeks later they start running out of waste to eat after which they will climb the sewer system and start feeding on poodles and small children until they reach the size of a respectable cheetah and then they well really start chowing down on the gen.pop. because that’s what they do – eat and multiply (sort of like people, really). The national guard will get called in and martial law will have to be declared. Meanwhile roaches the size of small bulldozers are always going into move faster than us on their six legs and they will always be able to find us with their antennae scenting the air, so mankind will end up fucked, eaten and shat out onto the dung pile cockroach motel we’ve managed to turn the world into because we can’t seem to control our most basic urges.

I really shouldn’t watch the news. I’m just sayin’.

ROL