Packaged departures

I’m not saying there’s a connection to me causing five layers of management to approve blowing nearly $18 of corporate funds on a computer mouse for me, but there is a raftload of people leaving the company permanently. Today the air in the cubicle/mushroom-farm around me was full of the sounds of packing tape being peeled off rolls and sealing up moving cartons.

Also, there were corks popping after people got back from a three-hour lunch.

Actually, the deal is that, back when the CEO announced that the company was, ah, not performing to expectations, part of the “fix” was to shed jobs like a python does skin. And in addition to unnumbered layoffs (still TBD), they offered retirement packages to (apparently) every employee with a combination of age plus years with the company that equals 65. And a lot of them have accepted the offer.

Not a lot of lead time on the leaving, either: the head of the engineering group on the product I’m working on announced to the team on the 27^th that he was “taking the package”. And this past Tuesday he told us that today is his final day.

And as of Tuesday he had no idea who would be stepping into his management shoes. All he knew was that the company had sent him a shipping label (he works remotely) to return his computer gear today.

One of my product management colleagues, barely 30 but a ten-year veteran with the company, seems to think that anyone who wouldn’t take a package and get out is an idiot. Since he otherwise is a person of extraordinarily positive attitude, I need to find out more about this.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll take a little sweep around the cube farm. See if anyone’s left a monitor or keyboard lying unattended.

¡Aí, Chihuahua!

I’m not sure whether this is animal abuse or what; have a look for yourself.

I will say, however, that when I was a kid my family had a Chihuahua mix that used to howl at “Malagueña Salerosa”. That was the only song she ever paid any attention to, but it got so that when the guitar intro came on, she recognized it. She’d stop whatever she was doing, cock her head & wait for the falsetto part. Then she would howl as though she were a great, big soulful old hound.

Not a word of a lie, here, mis amigos. 

Still—the best part of the video is the very last part. I hope that perro either got a great big treat or else peed on those shoes. 

Are you a manager or are you a mouse?

In case you’re wondering why US corporations seem sludgy and slow despite all the posturing and demands for taxpayer largesse over the past few years, let me tell you about my request for a mouse.

Yes—I requested a mouse. Because when I started this gig with one of the giants of telecoms, I was issued…a single, clapped-out laptop. (And it took more than a week for me to get set up in all required internal systems; but that’s a different kvetch.) No monitor, no external keyboard, not even a mouse stirred at my cubicle desk.

When I asked the jumped-up onsite “administrator” (read: coordinator) for my agency, she informed me that there was “no budget” for such accoutrements. This was her way of telling me, “we don’t want to spend anything on giving you basic tools for getting your job done; we’d rather keep every nickel possible, so just leave me alone.”

However, there was one conference call where I was walking colleagues through a lengthy document with a raft of tables in it, and I drove them completely up the wall because the finger pad on this POS laptop made scrolling impossible and the screen view kept jumping to different places in the document.

Following that painful experience one of those colleagues told me he would order me a mouse. Which he did—invited me to his cube to pick out what I wanted and he placed the order. Today he sent me the order trail from the procurement system.

And here’s where corporate America just swirls down the drain:

There are five levels of approval on the request for a $17.93 mouse. It’s not even a wireless mouse. I’m surprised they didn’t run it up to the CEO for check-off.

I know times are tough; and; two months ago said CEO announced that, to make up for a less-than-stellar quarter, the company will cut costs (CEO-speak for cut jobs) and blah, blah, blah. But to require five tiers of approval for a bleeding mouse is absolutely beyond the beyond.

I only hope the shareholders appreciate all the money saved by involving so many managers in the ordering of a tiny productivity tool.

The selfishest souls

Yesterday being Independence Day, I was thinking further about Congress, & the delta between what was envisioned more than 200 years ago & what we have today.

I do not venerate the Founding Fathers—they were human males with plenty of flaws; womanizers, failed businessmen, political manipulators & slaveholders as well as principled, thoughtful idealists. When they made the considered decision to overthrow British rule & build a new nation, they had to balance a lot of differing & conflicting commercial & philosophical interests.

They struggled with these issues & our first government, a confederation, didn’t work because all those interests kept the states from playing nicely with each other. (The Confederacy of 1861-1865 had exactly the same problem, which is why, for example, Georgia sent supplies to its own troops, but not to those of North Carolina or Tennessee. You may recall how that turned out.)

But the FF kept working on it, determined that this new government would succeed. This required that the representatives of each state sacrifice some interests toward the greater good of the nation.

The very location of the nation’s capital is an example of this: the Constitution stated that there should be a national capital separate from & therefore not owing to any individual state, but there was major disagreement about where that capital should be. The northern states wanted it in the north, the southern states in the south. Each region was afraid that the other would exercise undue influence over the national government—the north favoring industry, the south agrarian pursuits.

This may seem kind of petty these days, but it was serious business then. The north particularly objected to the capital being so close to the institution of slavery, & it was a contentious discussion.

Finally Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson & James Madison worked out the Compromise of 1790: northern states agreed to locate the capital along the Potomac River, on land donated by Maryland & Virginia, while the southern states signed up to retire all state war debts—by that time, mostly from the north. The north compromised on ideology, the south on finances.


Keep in mind that Hamilton & Jefferson couldn't agree on much of anything & entertained a cordial loathing for each other & their political philosophies. & yet they came to an agreement on this very contentious decision.

Now—can you imagine the Congressmorons currently sat in the Capitol, whining about having to work on the holiday, putting the common good ahead of their own special interests for anything short of someone holding an NRA-approved gun to their collective overcoiffed heads?

Sadly, I cannot.

& I cannot imagine the Founding Fathers ever imagined the Congress they put together with such care would become so self-serving & useless.

The native criminal class

As we celebrate the 235^th anniversary of driving the independence stake into the ground, with the issues of nearly ten years of two wars, the economy in a morass & a world to which we’re supposed to be the shining beacon of democratic hope, here’s what our national legislative branch is doing: squabbling about whether or not to pass bills that have no redeeming social value whatsoever.

I want to be positive—I do. With all our problems we are an amazing experiment in the belief that people of good will can in fact come together to create and live by reasonable laws, & thrive in the process. I come from the generation that really believed in that & it hurts me to feel the hollowness of that hope.

But I swear—every year our Congressmorons become more venal & petty than I’d thought humanly possible. Every year they bear out the truth of Mark Twain’s comment that they possess “…the smallest minds & the selfishest souls & the cowardliest hearts that God makes.”

I so want the nation to rise up & bury them in this message: grow the hell up. But they'd just find a way to misrepresent it.

O frabjous day!

The first of July carries a lot of significance. It’s the 144^th Canada Day—celebrating nationhood for our neighbors to the north. Hurrah for the Canadians, eh?

It’s also marks the 95^th anniversary of first day of the Somme—the monstrous battle that cost the attacking British 60,000 casualties before sundown. And it’s been 148 years since the battle of Gettysburg opened.

George Sand was born on 1^st July in 1804, which Frédéric Chopin probably appreciated a whole lot.

But what makes today—1 July 2011—absolutely the finest kind day of this or many another year is that my BFF’s tumor markers have been so good for so long that this is her final chemotherapy treatment.

This is marvelous—not only because she’s doing so well against the cancer, but because it means an end to the god-awful nausea she’s been suffering for more than six months.

Champagne glasses at the ready, people: this is the best possible reason to celebrate the day.

Go, Terps!

The Big Apple just can’t seem to retain its reptiles. A few months ago it was the Egyptian cobra that went slither-about from the Bronx Zoo. Now it’s turtles running rampant at JFK airport.

Well, trudging rampant.

The airport closed one of its runways because of the annual inundation by diamondback terrapins headed for a nice sandy spot to lay their eggs. This year, however, in addition to trudging the turtles are tweeting.

Well, of course they are.

They’re not nearly as witty as BronxZoosCobra, but then she’s footloose (well, she is) & fancy free, & they’re focused on procreation.

So I cut them some slack.In fact, I give both serpent & terrapins major props for going digital without, you know, real digits.

A new kind of freakonomics

Following on my dismay at the local library systems cutting back on hours & charging fees, the NY Times reports that school districts around the country are choosing to close libraries they can’t afford to staff.

We are living in sad, sad times when administrators have to decide between offering kindergarten or libraries, while legislators at every level are falling all over themselves giving businesses & billionaires big tax breaks.

All on account of economy

I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise, what with governments cutting back every way they can (except for salaries and benefits of elected officials) these days. But on the 19^th I received an email from Santa Clara County Library informing me that, starting 1 July, I’m going to have to pay $80 a year for the privilege of checking out books from their system.

This is because I don’t live in unincorporated county areas or nine specific cities (the ones that have county library branches). I’m still “welcome to visit our libraries, attend programs, and use resources inside the library.  However, a card is required to check out materials, use the full service computers, and have remote access to online databases.”

(In a related story, the San Jose city library system announced that their branches are only going to be open four days a week. This is also a cost-saving measure.)

I understand the necessity, although I think there’s something really, really wrong about an economic system in which global businesses (lured to states and cities with all sorts of financial incentives) rake in billions and billions annually without paying corporate taxes while working stiffs have to pay $80 per year for access to information that’s been part of the social contract for a long time. An informed electorate is the sine qua non of any democracy, and information institutions are moving beyond the reach of the common folk. 


Yeah, yeah, yeah--you can get all the data you want over the Internet. But what if your only Web access was via the local library?

Anyway, what gets me is that SCCL sent out the notification less than two weeks before I have to fork over the money. They couldn’t have eased us into this?

Potty mouth

It’s not often that this happens, but words just fail me: The Smoking Gun reports that police in Boulder, Colo., arrested a man who was hiding in the tank of a port-a-potty at a yoga festival.

There are further reports that Luke Chrisco has made a habit of this sort of thing for quite some time.

“It takes all kinds” just doesn’t seem to cover this.