Alamo Live Oak, Remember
Yesterday’s balmy sixty degree weather flipped like a light switch back to today’s return of winter, or maybe I should say, like a lightning switch? Rain, hail, thunder and lightning blew into town, around two, and didn’t leave until it was time to get up. The tornado sirens blew in town too. We suffered no damage, this time, unlike a similar storm last winter, which caused our large fir-tree to come down upon both our house and our neighbor’s house. After this restless night, I went to work, somewhat sleep deprived, just like the rest of Saint Louis.
My workday went well, right up until near its end. I attended a meeting on a project that I use to work on, but have not worked for a few years. The stated purpose of the meeting was to review my past work, with the goal of improving the result. When I worked this activity before, I enjoyed the job immensely and I thought that I had done a good job too. Hey, I got a promotion out of it. Today, I learned that this opinion was not universally shared. The stated goal, “improvement”, became an excuse to dismantle all of the good work that I had done. They had their reasons; some of them valid, but the glee with which they prosecuted this task made it clear that there was a personal agenda too. I tried pushing back, to which one of them exclaimed, “I remember what you a-holes did.” I take exception to his perversion of the truth. We followed the rules to the letter; we sought and received management’s approval, in open forum. No one protested then. Months later, when they finally realized what had been agreed upon, they felt cheated. It is not my fault that they did not pay attention to what they were agreeing too. I realize that this post comes dangerously close to touching the third-rail of blogging, telling tales out of school, but I have been circumspect and have not mentioned any names.
On Wednesday Jan. 18th thousands of sites will go dark to protest SOPA & PIPA, two US bills racing through Congress that threaten prosperity, online security, and freedom of expression.
Notable sites include Google, Wikipedia and a personal favorite, I Can Has Cheezburger? I elected not to go dark, but instead chose to show support with the ribbon, “Stop Censorship”, in the upper righthand corner. Click on it. I feel threatened by these bills, not because I pirate movies, I don’t, but because I excerpt lyrics and quotes. I feel that this falls under fair use. I fear that these bills will threaten this.