Category Archives: Work

Ruby Tuesday

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Roman Centurion

Roman Centurion

Yesterday was an interesting day. It started with a wild and wooly ride to work and ended with a beatific evening picnic in the park. I heard a peal of thunder, while I was getting ready for work. Checking the radar showed a near vertical line of thunderstorms that were already too close. Still, I resolved to get to work before they hit. I only made halfway there, before the front hit. A big blow knocked down a couple of orange construction signs, knocking them into the center highway lane. This in turn led to impromptu traffic jams as cars slowed and then had to merge right to go around the fallen signs. It was over by the time I made it to work though, so things worked out pretty well in the end, with only a little white-knuckle driving in-between. In the evening, I suggested that we go see this year’s Shakespeare play, “Antony and Cleopatra”. The evening’s weather looked especially inviting. We grabbed picnic supplies at the store, gathered up our collection of portable lawn furniture, picked up Joanie and then headed out to grab our spot in Shakespeare Glen. When we got there, it soon became apparent that Tuesday is the festival’s dark night. Still, we got a really, really good parking place. Instead of the glen, we decamped to Art Hill. There we dined and enjoyed the view of the Grand Basin. Part of our view included watching the steady stream of exercise aficionados, who were performing their workouts. We’ll have to try for the play on another night.

Everyone has one – Don’t be one

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Library of Congress Ceiling

Library of Congress Ceiling

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but three lefts do make a right. When we were cycling to dinner for Anne’s birthday, we observed a little traffic mishap, nothing serious really; actually it was more in the humorous vein. We were patiently waiting for the light at Lindell, in the right lane of Euclid. Another cyclist crossed in the cross-walk, on the left-hand side of the intersection, while at the red. There wasn’t any traffic coming then, except that when he had almost made it to the other side of the street, a car that had been waiting to turn right on the red honked at him. As soon as the cyclist had crossed, the driver pulled out, only to cutoff another driver, who had just arrived, speeding westbound on Lindell. That driver then honk voraciously at the first. Now that cyclist shouldn’t have crossed, but I’m not one to talk, because I have done the same thing numerous times, just maybe with a little bit more panache than that other cyclist.

The next day, I was leaving the grocery store and a van was idling in the road that runs along the front of the store. He was obviously waiting for someone, but he was also blocking the lane in front of the store. Another van comes up behind the first and because the first one is blocking the lane, the second guy begins honking at the first guy. After a little while, he gives up and then just pulls around him, since there never was any oncoming traffic. He pulls forward just one row and parks. I cross the street and also notice the woman who the first van had been waiting for, get in that vehicle. I also notice that the second van, the honking van has one of those blue multi-religious symbols bumper stickers that spell out the word ‘coexist’.

This week, I had to present my work. I have been doing a study that has been taking longer than my management had wanted. It was a trade study, but instead of actually discussing the study itself, I’ll use as an analogy that old Miller Lite ad slogan, “Great Taste…Less Filling!” Let’s just say that I was being asked to make the beer even less filling, without doing too much damage to the already “great” taste of Miller Lite. Present was the big boss and his little boss. I’ll cut to the chase; I presented a solution that made the beer even greater tasting and even more less-filling, a win-win. The big boss thanked me for a job well done. Then the little boss gripes about how long it took. The big boss said he wasn’t intending to mention that and he once again thanked me.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

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Phidippus audax the Jumping Spider

Phidippus audax the Jumping Spider

Today, the Perma Bear celebrated his 25th anniversary at Spacely Sprockets. The company sprung for a luncheon at Maggiano’s. Almost a dozen of us attended. Mrs. Bear was there too. They are going to Hawaii this summer. The last time that they went was in 2009, when I had to substitute for the Perma Bear and give his briefing. I mentioned this, because last week Jason, the IT guy, had come by and announced out of the blue that I had been in his dream the night before. Innocently, I asked him if there had been any sex in the dream. He made a face and said no. It turns out that his dream was about that briefing that I had given in 2009. Apparently, I had stupidly yelled at him that the overhead projector was not working, when in reality I had just neglected to turn it on. I hate it when I behave badly in other people’s subconscious. Can you really have reality in a dream? I don’t think that I have ever yelled at Jason and least of all at that briefing. All in all, it seems like a relatively inconsequential bit of emotional baggage to carry in one’s mind for all of these years. I wonder if I’ll haunt Jason’s dreams in the future.

In other news, the odometer in the Prius turned over 50,000 today and then Dan called to consult on problems with his car. It keeps stalling. He had just finished the end of school fashion show at Otis and was still rather pumped about that. In addition to his normal job of model wrangling, he also ran the fashion auction this year. The photo with this post is a portrait of an adult male Phidippus audax showing his iridescent chelicerae. Here is a much better photograph from Wiki.

I can’t resist it any longer. May the fourth be with you. It was new to me today.

Kindergarten Kop

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Australopithecus africanus

Australopithecus africanus

Anne spent this week dealing with small primates. She worked the Early Childhood Center. On Tuesday, she was in Kindergarten, where there were more than a few unruly children. She reported their deportment to their regular teacher, who decided to make an example of them and threw the book at them. On Wednesday, the teacher threw an art party, with snacks, for the “good” kids, those that Anne did not write-up. While those that were written up were given worksheets to do and forced to witness, but not allowed to participate in the other children’s merriment. Now there’s an object lesson for you. Yesterday, she was an ECC floater. When she tells me that she was a floater, I always envision her, face down in the water, with arms outstretched, doing the dead man’s float. Her day started out with a case of he said, he said, he said. Three boys had been involved in a shoving match on the bus ride into school. She straightened that incident out, at least to her own satisfaction. Later in the day, she heard a lot of noise coming from the girl’s bathroom and walked in on a case of she said, she said, she said. Two little girls were making bubbles using the soap dispenser. The sink counter was covered with soap and bubbles. A third little girl was trying to clean up the mess with paper towels, which she was throwing into the toilet. Anne cleaned off the sink counter, but decided that she doesn’t get paid enough to clean out the toilet. Later, she went looking for the poor janitor. Anne was walking them back to class, when their teacher showed up looking for them. Today, she didn’t have to work, but as is so often the case after spending time at ECC, she brought some of her work home with her. She has a sore throat now.

Picked Last Again

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Neanderthals

Neanderthals

In string theory, all particles are vibrations on a tiny rubber band; physics is the harmonies on the string; chemistry is the melodies we play on vibrating strings; the universe is a symphony of strings, and the ‘Mind of God’ is cosmic music resonating in 11-dimensional hyperspace. – Michio Kaku

Thanks to Joanie and the misfortune of another of her friends, I got to hear Michio Kaku speak last night at Powell. Dr. Kaku is a theoretical physicist and co-founder of the string field theory. This is a branch of string theory, which seeks to explain and unify the four fundamental forces of nature, the strong force, the weak force, gravity and electromagnetism. His talk deviated from his physicist background and seemed more like a futurist’s speech. Kaku talked about the coming Internet of things, robots and other possible advances in science over the next fifty years. After his speech, the curated Q&A session gave him the opportunity to revisit his physicist background.

As uplifting as Michio Kaku’s talk last night was, life at Spacely Sprockets this morning again ground me back down to base reality. Our quarterly report was good, we sold lots of sprockets and my name finally made it onto the org chart. I should be happy about that last part, but I am not. Years ago, when I went out for little league, the initial session was a tryout. All the boys and we were all boys back then, practiced our hitting, fielding and throwing for the spectating little league’s coaches. After we had demonstrated our skills, we were lined up around the dirt at the outer edge of the infield and one-by-one the coaches took turns picking their teams. I was picked last. That was a humiliating start to my one-and-only little league season. Flash-forward to today. The org charts have been out on a public drive for some time. Those whose names were already on it have been lording this fact over those whose names were not. I suppose that I should be happy that I was eventually picked, but I’m not.

In other Sprocket news, Rene, Alice and Chris’s son wants to come work for Mr. Spacely. I will try to help him navigate the Byzantium Spacely bureaucracy. I cannot think of a person that I would be happier with replacing me. I looked at his resume and it is impressive, way more than mine was when I got hired.

Intruder Alert

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Carbo-Iron Meteorite, Sonora, Mexico, 1923

Carbo-Iron Meteorite, Sonora, Mexico, 1923

My brush with corporate bureaucracy today involved a dose of mandatory training. Every year, I am assigned about a dozen online courses that cover a wide gambit of subjects, but can be lumped into one of two categories, either ethics or safety. I view the ethics classes as remedial attempts to teach me what I should have learned in kindergarten. “What do you mean that there are appearances of impropriety, if I accept this briefcase full of unmarked, non-sequential $100 bills from the Sultan of Brunei?”

I find these courses to be the most insulting, because they seem to assume that by my watching thirty minutes of slides and then parroting back the desired answers to their quiz questions, this will in some way instill in me the moral compass that before taking this course was sadly missing. I’m guessing that the real purpose of these ethics related courses is for when after I take the briefcase and then jet-off to South America, the company’s lawyers can tell the Feds, “Oh well, we tried.”

OK, I got that rant off my chest. Today’s training was actually in the safety column and had to do with the dangers of workplace violence or you’re not paranoid, your boss is really trying to kill you. This is a new course, so in the mantra of the movie, Groundhog’s Day, “Anything different is good.” One drawback with new courses is that you actually have to flip through the course’s slides and watch any videos, even if you don’t have sound, because someone has stolen the earphones from the public terminals.

Normally, with all of the repeat courses, you are offered the expedient opportunity to test out. This is what I always do, when it is available. Usually, there are 10-20 questions and a passing score is 80-90%. If you fail, then you must actually take the course, but I have discovered a flaw in the system.

After answering each question, you are told whether or not you were correct. If you do not have a perfect score, then you can abort out of the test before answering the last question. Then you can simply restart the test, answering all of the questions correctly this time. This is a lot more efficient than actually taking the course. I assume that this is ethical, because it is permitted and OBTW, I flunked kindergarten.

The workplace safety class introduced the mantra, “get out, hide out, and take out”, which is actually an abbreviated version of the full mantra that also includes a few other helpful strategies like “call out, spread out and keep out”. I think that these three other strategies are good to know, but they were not covered in the course. In the test portion all of the correct answers were to “contact your manager or human resources”. What if it is your manager who is wielding the gun? My favorite question though involved how to deal with the delusional employee. Said employee keeps complaining about getting all of these messages from the television and that the TV is speaking to him in voices. The correct answer was of course, “contact your manager or human resources”, but I so wanted to pick, “Tell him to turn off the [damn] TV.”