Is The Audience Listening?

I started to write a blog post refuting NASA's latest claims that Global Warming is on temporary hiatus, but rest assured it is just around the corner waiting to steal your lunch money and have unprotected sex with you when you least expect it.

Kind of like The Spanish Inquisition. No one expects The Spanish Inquisition!

I didn't write about it. Despite articles pointing to no increase in global temperatures for 15+ years.  Despite articles explaining the Arctic Ice sheet is at its highest summer level in years. Despite even the coolest Summer on record in years.

Did I not write about this because I am afraid? Because I am a flat-Earther or a Luddite or because I cannot bear to understand the intricacies in my tiny brain?

No, I didn't write about it because everyone has already made their minds up.  Writing about it will only be ignored on the Left, and sounding into an echo chamber on the Right.  Everyone thinks their opinion is the only one that is right.  The key there is "Opinion".

Most of us are not educated scientists. I'm a tech support geek.  I dropped out of college.  I will most likely never run a fortune 500 company or be a millionaire.   When I die, my family and some friends will care, but the majority of the world won't.  In short, I'm nobody.  My opinion doesn't matter.  I am to pay my taxes and complain about politics like a good minion.  My opinion means  nothing.

What my life and my career has taught me above all else is "Trust but verify."  Remember that phrase from the 80's?  Talking about our nuclear arsenal and our disarmament methods with the Soviet Union.  I always begin by giving the other side the benefit of the doubt.  Their intentions may be pure. I then verify the facts.  Very often (but not always) we find something they insisted they had "Already checked" which they missed.  I then graciously agree that it was weird that the setting changed itself on its own and wow, I'll be on the lookout for problems like that in the future.

I truly believe the customer was 100% confident and sincere in their statements, however it's my job to figure out why their phones don't work.

Global Warming folks (aka Climate Scientists) are continuing to rail into the night skies that the end is near, man will destroy the world.  Only their short-term predictions haven't come through.

BUT YOU GUYS BETTER BELIEVE THEIR LONG TERM PREDICTIONS WILL COME THROUGH BECAUSE... SCIENCE!!!

I'm reminded of several years back when the local meteorologists predicted a Winter storm that was going to dump several inches of snow on Dallas.  They told us when it was going to start and the local news had reporters at major intersections to record the chaos.  Those reporters stood in the cold describing how ominous the skies looked,  how it could break loose at any second and how despite no Winter precipitation the roads were going to be treacherous.

It never came.  The snow completely missed us.  We watched through the night as the snowfall estimates were adjusted lower, and lower, and lower, until they were forced to admit we "Dodged a bullet."

The meteorologists did just what the Climate Scientists are doing.  Changing the facts, to fit their prediction.

Weird, I wrote about Climate Change after all.

Six Years Of Crap

...and more to come. God bless Bill Whittle.

Dumb And Dumberer

HT Israel Matzav

Observations From Our Trip To Memphis

- Texarkana occasionally smells like deviled eggs three hours after Thanksgiving Dinner.

- Always bring THE WIFE on a road trip. You never know when your debit card will be suddenly cancelled by your bank. Like when you don't have enough gas to get back to Dallas or forward to Memphis.

- My cousin Emily is still the most loving soul on the planet. She is a constant source of hope for me.

- My father and my cousin Randy hit it off right away. I knew they would when Randy showed up still carrying his Glock from his latest shooting competition and the subject changed to companies moving to Texas. My dad chimed in with, "Oh yeah, did you see the graphic in the NRA magazine...?"

Randy had. :)

- My beautiful granddaughter (aka: pookie, lumpy, or moonbeam) is a road warrior and a constant source of smiles and laughs.

- The Pink palace museum has a shrunken human head on exhibit. Sadie was fascinated by it and carefully read the recipe for making one.

- The boys Sadie date in the future will have a tough time deciding whether to be more afraid of me, or her. (I still will have access to a wood chipper, although now I may have to save the head for her in my process.)

- I am blessed more than anyone can ever know.

50 Cent's Gift To Obama

If only he had been wearing "Mom Jeans." :D

True Green Energy

Man, I hope this animated GIF runs. If not...

Go here: http://iwastesomuchtime.com/on/?i=90773

We Are All Comrades Now!

Comrades,

I have had a change of heart.  My old, cruel Capitalist ways have gotten me nowhere.  I have now seen the glory of the Socialist dream!  There is enough of everyone else's for all of us!

Little did I know that years ago when THE WIFE (The Comrade Who Must Be Obeyed) and I came up with Tater Tots for the Masses I was already harboring the Socialist dream deep in my red bosom.  I mean, after all, the Tater Tots were for the Masses, not for me.  I was distributing technical support drivel and pain like golden drops from the mouth of Lenin himself. (Vlad, not John.)

I accept my new role in life.  I plan to redesign the site to take part in the glorious workers revolution.

I have a dream!  A dream that one day we may all have equal amounts of Tater Tots!*  We shall all live and work as one!

Yours in Glorious Socialism,
Comrade Tots


*Some amounts more equal than others.  As has always been the worker's way.

On Blogging... And Itching

So, let me recap the last bit and why I don't really exist anymore.

I took a job with a giant software company and stopped blogging and writing for the most part.  I just didn't have time any longer.  I found myself working 12 and 14 hour days just to keep up.  Things were busy.

I've left that job, a large part so I could have a life outside of work.  I wanted to spend time with my kids without feeling that I would be punished for not producing.  It was a LOT of work harder, not smarter.

Think of it like this, I had my boss who reviewed what I did and I was assigned cases daily.  Once I got my cases, they were added to my backlog.  Also daily we had a "Crit Watch" for cases the customer deemed "Critical".  Every day we would get a "Critical" case escalated and those of us in the watch during that time period would do a version of Rock, Paper Scissors to decide who would work it.

None of us had the bandwidth to ever take it.

So, that's fairly stressful, but the kicker was the group of "Technical Account Managers".  Their job was to be advocates for the customer.  That's a good thing, except, they had the power to hit us up directly and demand we work on their customer's case now.  90% of the guys were good, but the 10% who were unreasonable drove me insane.  If we didn't work according to their satisfaction, they would raise the severity, ping my boss etc...  So the reality was a user who had a problem in the big picture was cosmetic or an annoyance, would get more attention than a customer with problems making actual calls.

I was pretty depressed.

Some of the guys stood up to them and my boss backed them.  It didn't seem to work that way for me.  It seemed like when I took a stand I got bit.

I moved to another job with a smaller phone manufacturer.  The hours are fewer, the stress is much lower and the work is filtered through my boss, so I don't have 500 bosses all telling me how their customer wants things fixed NOW!

The flip side is, metrics.  It's always metrics.  How many calls do you take, how long are you on the phone, etc...?  I could play the metrics game, but the question is how good is that?  I have seen some of the work from folks who play the game (and have been rewarded for it) and it sucks.

It's the age old struggle when you work for someone else.

Now that I have changed, I have an itch again.  The writing itch, the drawing itch, the itch that has been gone for so long.

Will I scratch that itch?  Will it get infected if I do?  Wait, maybe it's not the writing itch, maybe I caught something from the toilet seat?

The UN Gets Into IT

So with some time to let the whole ICANN thing stew in my brain a bit, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I don't like the idea of the UN running the internet.

Yeah, I know. Shocker, right?

Seeing as how my career has been tied to the internet for the last ten years or so I can't imagine why anyone would thing I do approve of this load of crap.

There are some good countries in the UN.  Countries like the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Israel, etc...  There are also some crap countries. Countries like Iran, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan (pronounced Pock-EE- Stahn), Saudi Arabia, etc...

Why would the US, who is the last hope for freedom int he world give up control of the backbone of society today? Can you imagine when the UN gets involved and starts putting restrictions on what can and can't be said?

"Oh, but Tots," you say, "it's only the naming convention.  So they will just be in control of who gets web URLS.  It's not like they will be putting firewalls on the web."

Yeah, and I'm saving $2,500 on my insurance this year... NOT

With the new tax accounting system counting my insurance as income, even with four kids and tons of donations I'm lucky to break even.

Put down the Kool Aid and wake up people!

Day By Day Nails It

The third party won't happen in time for 2016.  I pray to God we have a chance for 2020.