Month: October 2003

festival of tooth decay

Hallowe’en today, so we bundled the younger set into their costumes, some warm layers (it’s supposed to snow Sunday morning and it’s damn cold now), and headed off to the local shopping district to score some sweets.

The University Village was our destination, and the nippers did well, lots of loot, and a pretty consistent display of manners to all the nice folks who gave out candy. A lot of kids there, mostly pre-school age which makes sense: it’s a safe environment with a lot of similarly-minded people.

My favorite costume was the “movie theater floor.” Some kid had taken a dark T-shirt and stuck bits of popcorn, candy and wrappers to it: I guessed what it was immediately, which makes me wonder how my mind works, I suppose.

Of course, we may not see any kids here at Thistle Dew tonight: we usually only get half a dozen or so . . . .

posturing

A brief meeting with the Superior and Subordinate Professors yesterday. I was told in no uncertain terms that the Superior Professor was going to “exercise her management authority.” Trouble is, if you have to remind someone of your authority that forcefully, you might not actually have any.

Add to this, the Subordinate Professor was manifesting one of her more annoying tics, where she repeats the last syllable of each word someone says, a half-beat behind. I suppose it gives her the impression she’s following along, but I turned on her yesterday and told her to stop it. For that, I was called “hostile.” Later, it was all I could do not to laugh, as I realized they had no idea what hostile was.

The issue this time is my attendance at an educational program being held in Tacoma next week: being there will require leaving my house at 7 (in the company of the Superior Professor, one of the most inattentive motorists I have had the misfortune to ride with) and getting home Who Knows When. Since I am under a rigid workplan with mandated hours from 9:45 to 6:15, I don’t see how I could take my children to school AND go on this field trip. The Superior Professor’s solution? Public Transport. Um, I never said I didn’t have any way to get there: so how is that a solution?

By my estimates, that would take an hour and a half to two hours each way. So I’d be looking at a 14 hour day or so.

Now, it’s important to understand that someone was already been “volunteered” to take my place since the beginning of this week, so this whole exercise has been about posturing and “exercising management authority.” The workplan that I’m under is not negotiable by me, but can be changed at any time by the Professors. And when I reminded the Superior Professor that she had claimed the workplan was “non-negotiable” she first asked if anyone else was on the room, and then when she learned there were no witnesses, denied having said, adding that that’s the kind of mistake someone not trained in the law would make. I always find insulting people’s intelligence undermines one’s position, but perhaps that’s another artifact of not having been trained in the law.

Ah, one more week. I’m out today per doctor’s orders: I may have a stress fracture in my foot so schlepping all over the building on fool’s errands is not on my agenda.

the 13 oz pound, or what are you willing to put up with?

From the Desk of David Pogue: Customer-Service Cluelessness

Either there’s a plague of cluelessness sweeping the country’s customer-service systems, or a sinister, sneaky sort of thievery is going on. The worst part is that there’s no satisfaction in catching the culprits and calling them on it—because your time is worth something, too, and you don’t get any reimbursement for that.

I favor the “sinister, sneaky sort of thievery” argument.

Downsized packaging is nothing new: coffee companies introduced the 13 oz. pound years ago, and candy bars and bleach are among the many products that have converted to more diminutive sizes. Despite the downsizing furor, Mayfield expects to sell the same number of 56 oz. units this year as it sold 64 oz. cartons last year.

Give ’em an inch, and they think they’re a ruler, as my officemate said earlier this week. They’ll take whatever they can get away with. In the old days, when you watched the merchant fill your container, there was no way he could get away with this. But now, they figure it’s a “take it or leave it” proposition: do you take it or leave it?

$1,000 a minute: it adds up

Cost of War

[on the linked page] you will find a running total of the amount of money spent by the US Government to finance the war in Iraq. This total is based on estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

When I first looked at this, it was ticking along at about $1,000 a minute second, and the total was at $82 billion dollars.

from granola to gasoline addiction in a generation

CNN.com – The politics of getting around campus – Oct. 29, 2003

Robert Gardner’s Ford Explorer had “no” etched into its front windshield. Gardner, a sophomore from Memphis, Tennessee, was upset because driving an SUV for him isn’t so much a personal choice as a matter of financial circumstance.

“It’s just what my parents gave me,” he said. The politics of SUV driving don’t really concern him. “As far as gas mileage, I could care less to tell you the truth. As long as I have gas, that’s my only concern.”

A mixed message, to be sure. At first, I thought perhaps he was just afraid to say “thanks, mom and dad, but I’d rather have a hybrid.” But then he showed his true colors.

A student later in the article says that market forces should decide these issues, though he would rather see less gas guzzlers. As I suggest here, it’s the size and weight that have more of an impact on the infrastructure than fuel consumption. As alternative fuels or engine technologies come into play, we’ll still be tearing up the roads that were built for 2000 pound vehicles with ones that weigh twice that.

strategy

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: David Horsey
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” — Hermann Goering