Path to Enlightened Insanity

This entry was originally posted at Roaming Seattlite. For more information see Uh, the other blog..

So I wrote about clubbing on my other blog. The other thing I didn’t mention over there is I think the guys really thought my bald head was hot.. ;-)

I went out dancing at a club for the first time in a long long time. I forgot how much fun the raw sexual energy, and just the energy in general was.

Dancing on a crowed floor is kind of like foreplay with a hundred plus other people. Its glorious to lose yourself in.

I’ve been working my way through Star Trek: Enterprise.

One of the things that really strikes me is that its really a very liberal piece of entertainment. Some might argue that Star Trek was always liberal, but I’ve read analysises that Star Trek: The Next Generation has a Neo-conservative bent to it. Deep Space Nine did as well, until Steven Ira Behr got ahold of it and made it some of the finest entertainment on television. (The latter seasons would have been at home on HBO.)

Sure some people will pull out the fact that no Star Trek series has had an openly gay character. That is definitely a deficiency that perhaps could be remedied in the future, but I think at this point Star Trek has missed the boat. But they did a one up and tackled consensual non-monogonomy in Enterprise.

One Kudos I will give to Enterprise is that perhaps with the exception of the original series, it was the most timely in addressing the issues of its time in a big consistent way. Sure TNG, DS9, and Voyager stopped for an episode or two and did a nice “issue” episode, but Enterprise spent whole seasons on it.

There is a strong argument against Xenophobia and Colonialism in Jonathan Archer and his fellow explorers.

Time for a detour here.

I’ve thought that the form of “democracy” that we’ve brought to Iraq is an idiotic falsehood. Sure people have elections have happened but when you mass exoduses driven by your need for safety does it really matter if you can vote for your leader? The well identified pitfall is that the collation forces didn’t make allies of the preexisting non-political power structures. (e.g. We disbanded the Baathist functionary government officials and the Iraqi Army.)

Archer ends up being a proponent of cooperation and alliance building even when Earth is faced with decimation. Compare this to the past seven years of the United States’s leadership.

So that was a bit of rambling, but the bottom line of the whole thing is Enterprise is a damn good series..

So, I’m quite convinced that one or both of the felines that infest my living space are practicing buddhists or perhaps they’re just lazy stoics.

The evidence that points in this direction:

1. They haven’t killed me yet despite all of my crazy antics:
   1. Feline aerobatics.
   2. Feline caps (a la coonskin caps).
   3. Neglected litter pans.
   4. A four day trip in the car followed by a week stay in a hotel.
   5. Bringing home random cats that want to have the run of the place to themselves while they puke and shit everywhere.
   6. Leaving one of them out on the roof for New Year’s Eve. (It was his fault, I spent 45 damn minutes trying to find the cat and get him to come in!).
   7. Attempting to determine why they lick themselves by joining in.
   8. Figuring out how much static electricity you can make by rubbing two cats together. (Not Much.)
   9. Forgetting to feed them before I went on a weekend vacation.
   10. Monthly claw clippings.
   11. I haven’t figured out which one is George and which one is Shaun yet.

2. I watched one of them for a full 5 minutes move litter around the pan, without urinating or defecating. Can we say sand art?

This entry was originally posted at Roaming Seattlite. For more information see Uh, the other blog..

Note to self: Read cover letters out loud to yourself.. You catch stupid business speak.

This entry was originally posted at Roaming Seattlite. For more information see Uh, the other blog..

I fear the job hunt.

I’m insanely underemployed at the moment, but its a stable job that I don’t mind with consistent pay with consistent hours. (e.g. its not Starbucks.)

Last time I did the job hunt thing I remember spending an insane amount of time writing out cover letters, sending in resumes, fielding calls from recruiters, and going to interviews for nothing.

The one job that I finally got and settled on I hated so much I left after two weeks. Then I went to Starbucks, something that I knew I’d be underemployed at, but I figured I could find my way to something else within the company. That was until I got fired.

I hate fruitless work. (or to be more specific work with a really low ratio of success.) I think the best example of this is from when I worked for Citigroup. Initially I was working on gas card accounts that were 4-6 months past due. I was working on predictive dialer, where the computer made all the telephone calls for us. In an average eight hour day I’d go through something like 500-600 telephone calls. From that I’d leave a whole bunch of messages, talk to a bunch of people who weren’t the account holder, talk to a few account holders who wouldn’t pay, and talk to between 2 and 8 card holders who paid. So overall its a really low ratio of success (just over 1%) but the mere fact that in a day I’d have success eight times was pretty good.

I need success to drive me.

I was listening to an episode of The Conversation on KUOW about "the most-praised generation", and I had to and still am taking a hard look at if I fall into that situation. I know I like to hear a a simple “thank you” at times from my supervisors, and I already need success, but do I require praise? I want to say no, but I am not willing to say one way or the other for myself.

I’m having trouble psyching myself up to put in the effort given how fruitless my search was last time. That sheet of paper I just got from Northern Kentucky University doesn’t ease my mind one way or the other about the prospect.

I know I need to do this, but convincing myself is another matter….

This entry was originally posted at Roaming Seattlite. For more information see Uh, the other blog..

I think one of the things that really bugs me about being fired from Starbucks is that I was fired under a “three strikes and you’re out” rule. Specifically a rule regarding punctuality.

One of the things I have come to firmly believe from both my experiences in the workplace and from my academic work around managing employees is that people’s individual needs and differences should be reasonably accommodated, while also taking into account their relative contribution to the organization. Thats a kind of fancy way of saying that you should treat people as individuals not automatons.

So for the sake of fairness here is a summary of the three incidents where I was late:

1. I was scheduled to open the store at 4:45 AM Saturday morning with the Assistant Manager. I did my usual where I set three alarms as usual. (One light set to go on, my clock radio alarm, and my cell phone alarm.) I woke up for no reason at all around 1:30 AM and went back to sleep about 2:00 AM, wanting to get as much rest as possible. I awoke late at 4:50 AM, and immediately got dressed and got in my car and sped to the store to open. I didn’t call anyone because I didn’t have the assistant store manager’s cell phone number. (Although, I did have her home phone number I didn’t use it because she should not have been at home.) I arrived at 5:05 AM and immediately got to work getting the store open. We opened on time with everything mostly in place. So the net effect was that the store saved 20 minutes of labor, gave the assistant manager some unnecessary stress, and a policy was violated.
2. This time I just was late in getting going after waking up. I called in advance to let the manager know I was going to be late, and I was 11 minutes late. There is no additional explanation for this lateness.
3. The final time I had a DSL installer scheduled to arrive between 12 noon to 4 PM. I had picked up a shift from another employee from 4:45 PM to 9:30 PM on the same day, not realizing the scheduling overlap. (The only reason the shift was available was because another employee had no called no showed and was terminated.) Once I realized this, I considered the situation and realized it would be tight, but it should be doable. The DSL installer arrived around 3:10 PM and began his work. While he was doing his work I received a call from the store asking me to come in early. I told the shift supervisor that I had the DSL installer here at the moment, but as soon as he was done I would be on my way. I changed my clothing in the restroom while the DSL installer was working, and followed him out the door at about 4:15 PM. This should have been plenty of time to drive however I-90, the route that I use, was unusually congested. I kept an eye on the clock, and still believed there was a possibility that I would be able to get to work on time. When it got to the time I was supposed to arrive I called the store to let the shift know that I was running late, and that I would arrive in three or four minutes. (I didn’t call earlier because I knew they were busy, and any shift supervisor who is running their shift on 4 minute tolerances really needs to do a better job, I know I was a shift supervisor.) So I arrived at about 4:51, six minutes past the time I was supposed to. Additionally the shift supervisor had started a timer when she spoke to me and I arrived about 3 minutes and 40 seconds after we spoke. So this time I was late because I failed to anticipate unusually heavy traffic.)

So in total I was 37 minutes late over a period of two months. Admittedly this isn’t the best performance. But I’ve omitted several times where I stayed late, came in early, and performed other tasks that went above and beyond what was expected of me.

Although I do understand this from a cultural preservation perspective, I believe when considering this from a holistic perspective I don’t think this ultimately was an appropriate decision. The employee who goes above and beyond is penalized for three slip ups.

This entry was originally posted at Roaming Seattlite. For more information see Uh, the other blog..

So one of the reasons I started this blog is that I didn’t want my mother to know that I had lost my primary job.

The second reason is that I didn’t want my mother to know that I’m now wearing my hair in a mohawk.

I’ve wanted a mohawk for a while. I usually think guys with a mohawk look sexy. There is nothing like seeing a nicely cut strip of hair down the middle that doesn’t have any grooming issues surrounded by a nice clean scalp on either side.

Being fucked by a fit guy with mohawk hair is a fun fantasy for me.

There are a few funny things I’m discovering about a mohawk are that getting out of the habit of drying your hair normally doesn’t happen quickly; it feels funny to rub a towel on the bald parts of your scalp. I also haven’t gotten used to my t-shirt getting stuck on the stubble on the back of my head.

Also odd is that I’m wearing a hat out in public. I think part of this is that I’m insecure about the hair, like I’m a poser or something… I need to work up some guts, but I think it’ll come in a day or two.

Oh, and every time I see myself in the mirror I get a huge grin..

This entry was originally posted at Roaming Seattlite. For more information see Uh, the other blog..

This is probably a funny spot to start a blog, but I’ll start it here anyway.

On Friday, I was terminated from Starbucks Coffee Company. The store I was at had a pretty strong three times late and you’re terminated policy…

Friday wasn’t the best day I’ve ever had. (nor was it the worst)

At the moment I think I’ll be fine, Starbucks’s pension for only scheduling people the minimal number of hours kindof worked in my favor as I already snagged myself a second job at Target overnight.

But really I’m kind of interested in the employer-employee relationship right now. What strikes me is how both tend to treat the other like shit. This isn’t to say that every employer treats its employees like shit, and every employee treats their employer like shit, but overall it doesn’t seem to be a happy relationship.

I’ve left a few employers that I’ve been unhappy with not not quite great terms, but this is the first time I think I’ve ever gotten it the other way. (Although there have been a few times that we both weren’t on good terms.)

So the next part (well actually one of the first steps) of what I’m calling Seattle 2.0 is going to involve putting in a full blown search for a job that uses my degree… Honestly thats a job that I’m a bit weary of… Perhaps I’ll find a better place to have a relationship with..

I’ve been doing this blogging thing for a long while, at the moment just about four and a half years…

I’ve struggled with thinking about who my audience is and why and who I write for. The general concept of why I write is that I write for me, and me alone.

The Path to Enlightened Insanity via Defacted Musings is a narcissistic therapeutic venture that has taken me all sorts of places, from the annals of the US Government Federal Budget to the inner workings of my sarcastic colon (yes, I know from anals to colons isn’t that far, but there is a huge cottage industry within the pharmaceutical business dedicated to relaxing the passage between the two.)

I hit into an interesting predicament within the past year when I realized (or perhaps I introduced, I don’t remember) my parents were/had read this.

The funny thing is I don’t quite mind perfect strangers from knowing whats going on in my head, but at times I do struggle with letting those I know into my thoughts, especially when I don’t have the luxury of working toward shared meaning in conversation. People think they fully understand the situation, but I’ve come upon several times when talking in person with those who read this I come to realize that there is a communications gap here.

So what I’m wandering toward is that I’m going to start up another blog, probably on one of the public blogging sites that everyone and their mother uses. I’m not going to associate that blog with this one at the moment, but there is the possibility that I’ll somehow integrate the two at a later date, but just not right now.