A fine distinction

BarbinMD starts with the following quote and then proceeds to point out a number of ways in which McCain has assisted lobbyists and special interest groups:

I've never done any favors for anybody — lobbyist or special interest group — that's a clear, 24-year record.  -  John McCain

Given that most of the people McCain has helped seem to be contributors, that's probably true. It's not a favor if you're getting paid.

Random photos from the phone

This has quickly turned into an afternoon of troubleshooting. First I couldn't get the bluetooth file transfer to work so that I could move photos from my camera to the computer, and then the folder actions that make posting images easier inexplicably broke. At any rate, here are some random images from my phone.

A terrible mess, indeed

Quick, Robin! The Bat-chad!

Fun things to try at work

I had a new experience today. In the course of a meeting where I was trying to get some information about a recent decision (well, sort of recent...but more on that later), I was told in essence that I could either be a "team player," or I could get out of the way. While I had been warned in the past that upper management has a tendency to use this tactic, it was the first time I have experienced it directly. The sensation was not pleasant, though I'm not sure it had the intended effect.

Some background may be in order. I'll keep this somewhat vague to protect the innocent, but will try to offer enough detail to paint a picture of the overall situation. I am a manager of a small group within a larger IT department. The larger department has a business office that handles the things that business offices handle-- purchasing, invoices, contracts, financial records, etc. Historically, the central business office has provided substandard service, and groups all over the department have been maintaining shadow copies of the books to try and better keep up with their finances. Our department has taken this a step further, and we have our own business manager to help run our accounts. This is not only because of the poor service we have received in the past, but also because our needs are somewhat specialized in comparison with the rest of the department. Over the last few years, this has proven to be very successful, even while the central office continues to flounder. For example, near the end of last fiscal year everyone was told to cease all purchasing because no one knew how much money units in the department had...except for us.

Here's where it gets interesting-- when I first moved into my current managerial position, I learned that upper administration wanted to move our business manager into the main business office. The stated reason was (and continues to be) to improve "efficiency and effectiveness." This move has been fought vigorously by nearly everyone who has experienced typical business office performance, but no matter how much we protested, the decision seemed to stand. There was a brief period where the idea seems to have been put aside, but within the last week we went from "they're talking about business office consolidation again" to "they've made a decision on business office consolidation, and they're promoting one of the key employees that everyone is complaining about."

Which brings us to today. I had a meeting with the head of the business office to express my concerns, and to try and get a sense of what's going on. I met with immediate resistance, including the "team player" comment noted above. I've been trying to work out why that particular comment bothers me so much, and it finally dawned on me. This may be a classic example of groupthink. There is a small group of decision makers who are wedded to this business office consolidation idea, and who will not let it go in spite of any and all arguments against it. Rather than listen to dissenting voices, they either ignore them or try to shut them down through intimidation. If I were an outsider I would find this fascinating, but as someone who has to deal with it...not so much.

No blood for oil

Nice.

At the conclusion of a town hall held this morning outside in Denver, McCain decided to toss in a plug for his upcoming energy policy rollout. But in the midst of decrying the dangers of Americans reliance on foreign oil, McCain seemed to suggest that this reliance caused the current struggle in Iraq.

"My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will -- that will then prevent us -- that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East,” McCain said.

Does Pac-Man encourage gorging?

One of a gadjillion stories on the alleged horrors of Grand Theft Auto, and yet another story that misses the point entirely. I forget where I saw it originally, but it needs to be pointed out that prostitutes are to GTA what the big dots are to Pac-Man. That is, they are power-ups. There are three things that are fundamental to GTA-- your health, your wealth, and your wanted status. Hooking up with a prostitute increases your health score, just like grabbing a medkit will any number of other games. Killing a prostitute will get you money. For all the noise that gets generated with every GTA release, this simple fact gets overlooked a lot.

I hate it when that happens

In one of my lives, I work on an online database for managing cattle. The latest thing we're working on is a way to manage semen inventories for artificial insemination. We've been going back and forth on the system specs this week trying to iron things out, and one of the sidebar conversations involved ways in which semen is lost. I saw a documentary once that looked at semen collection, so I knew that sometimes it goes shooting off onto the collector's shirt, and I assumed that other times it gets spilled in other ways (been there, done that). However, I was not prepared for my client to say, "Sometimes it explodes."

Turns out, semen is saved in straws, which are kept frozen in liquid nitrogen tanks. Sometimes a bit of the nitrogen gets in the straws, and when the straw is removed from the tank the nitrogen rapids heats up and pop goes the semen.