9 out of 10 monkeys believe they are not behind glass

I was watching part 3 of the Lost Room mini-series on SciFi last night, and while the mini-series was pretty good (and I didn’t even see part 1), the commercials in between made me want to stick a white hot fork in my eye.

Repeatedly.

Dear Microsoft, Microsoft Live, NBC, SciFI, and The Office people…

If I wanted to see your stupid commercial 50 thousand times advertising Microsoft Live and NBC’s The Office, I would hit YouTube and click on the repeat button until my eyes bled and head imploded. Last night (and the night before it, and probably the night before that), the use of the stupid “Leggings” commercial has convinced me to never use Microsoft Live and never watch The Office. Both of which, based on the commercial, suck balls.

And I am sure that every other geek that was watching the most pimped SciFi mini-series of the season, probably felt the same way. Most probably repressed it and just went back to web surfing and tuned it all out. I would have done the same, but I was pulled into it, like watching some awful train wreck.

Its like some horror movie.

(Twilight Zone music… dee, dee, dee, dee, dee… Voice over begins.)

A man… on a couch, unable to close eyes, witnessing the unbelievable lovecraftian horror borne of the deep wastes of space, come to earth to feed on the minds of all geeks. To wantonly hump the brains out through the eye sockets until nothing but a hollow shell remains. Can this man escape the evil that seeks to undo him?

We will find out…. in the Twilight Zone.

(dee, dee, dee, dee, deelaDEEEEEEEE!)

Some people really enjoy managing others.

Yeah, you know the type, and for the record, they are called assholes.

I just don’t enjoy the management styles as defined by those assholes. It is a pain in my side, and frankly I have better things to do around here.

The question is, at that point, does that actually make me a good manager?

The dichotomy is surprising to think about. By not trying out every management flavor of the week and by my staying out of my people’s way, am I actually doing the best I can in a very complex environment? A part of me thinks so. At least the part of me that hates authority figures. The irony of my position gives me killer ha-has when I think about it.

I tell my guys that their jobs are up to them to define. I can point to the horizon and say take us there, but how they do it, how they choose to do it, is up to them. Because when it all boils down, personal responsibility is the only way to do right by the company. I trust them. They know it. So they do right.

And if they don’t, I tell them. But that is rare. Very rare. And it usually only is done once. I find that if they need help, they ask. They seek me, not the other way around. And that is just the way it is supposed to be.

I do my part on keeping up on what is happening, but it is unobtrusive as I can make it. It is my duty to perform due diligence to keep up on my small slice of the world, not theirs. Reports, meetings and intrusive micromanagement is for all those assholes that call themselves “engaging managers”.

Engage this, muddyfudgers. (Insert crotch grab and squeeze here).

My old boss was that way. At first I thought he was a great boss, because he let me do it all my way. Then he had to start taking management classes and reading a bajillion management books, and creating meetings and forms and reports and generally pissing his entire dept off. Then he up and left us to our own devices and transferred out of our department altogether. I wasn’t really sad about it and that is a bummer. Because I like the guy, just not the management style.

My dragon style will defeat your pathetic monkey style with much justice! (My engrish is a little lax as of late, and for that I apologize to my seven samurai sensei.)

Anyways. My advice to all those management hopefuls (that actually want to manage people), take a moment and think about your teenage years and all those feelings of rebellion. Think about all the heroes in your life, your memories of childhood movie favorites, etc. Because if you are an asshole, then you just wrote “Darth Vader” across your chest and every single one of your people will sabotage you and your death star.

Just saying.

Via BoingBoing

DB Fletcher’s Capstan Tables are amazing, expanding round dinner-tables. When you spin them by the outer edges, they separate into sseveral pie-shaped radial slices, revealing more slives beneath that rise up to make a seamless, much larger surface. Spin the table-edge the other way and the table shrinks back again. The videos have to be seen to be believed.

Watch the videos!

Food for thought: (from wikipedia)

Adolf Hitler was brought up in his family’s religion by his Roman Catholic parents, but as a school boy he began to reject the Church and Catholicism. After he had left home, he never attended Mass or received the Sacraments. However, he was never excommunicated, so he could be considered a Catholic in good standinguntil his death by suicide. This is significant when one reads claims that he persecuted Catholics, as well as Jews. If he had done so, he would have been excommunicated, and the entire nation could have been placed under interdict. This never happened.

In later life, Hitler’s religious beliefs present a discrepant picture: In public statements, he frequently spoke positively about the Christian heritage of German culture and belief in Christ. Hitler’s private statements, reported by his intimates, are more mixed, showing Hitler as a religious but also anti-Christian man. However, in contrast to other Nazi leaders, Hitler did not adhere to esoteric ideas, occultism, or neo-paganism, and ridiculed such beliefs in his book Mein Kampf. Rather, Hitler advocated a “Positive Christianity”, a belief system purged from what he objected to in traditional Christianity, and reinvented Jesus as a fighter against the Jews.

Hitler believed in a Social Darwinist struggle for survival between the different races, among which the “Aryan race” was supposed to be the torchbearers of civilization and the Jews as enemies of all civilization. Whether his anti-semitism was influenced by older Christian ideas remains disputed. Hitler also strongly believed that “Providence” was guiding him in this fight.

Among Christian denominations, Hitler favoured Protestantism, which was more open to such reinterpretations, but at the same time imitated some elements of Catholic church organization, liturgy, and phraseology in his politics.

Any other leaders come to mind that have also claimed that ““Providence” was guiding him in this fight“?

Hmmmmm. Weird. I swear I heard Bush Jr. say that too. Not that Dubya is Hitler or anything.

He sure isn’t as good of a speaker as Hitler. That is for damn sure. Clinton is closer in that regard.

Sometimes contrasting two people from different circumstances and different times leads to insights for both of those being contrasted. Compare Clinton to FDR, or Bush Jr. to Hitler, or even Bush Jr. to Lincoln. What kind of things do you find?

History repeating itself? Interesting insights into the human condition? What drives us as a species into conflict resulting in legalized murder?

It sparks the imagination.

There are a couple things that I am scared of to death in this world. Deep water and forces larger than me. I guess they can almost be considered the same thing, so forces larger than me has to take the cake. Deep water is a big force and when you can’t see the bottom, I do believe that is the perfect time to panic.

The force-larger-than-me that scares me the most is the consensus of a group. When the consensus is wrong, horribly horribly wrong, or has been twisted by a very clever and cunning member of that group, I am always very worried. More often than not, I happen to be the member of the group that is in opposition to the popular opinion. If there are stormtroopers around, I am usually the rebellion sympathizer without a blaster or a plan.

This fear, be default, makes talking politics with my family a taboo subject. A veritable minefield of avoided topics which inevitably lead to quiet inquiries about the weather. My family is very politically minded, which is fine by me, as someone in this world should be politically minded. It is just that I am afraid that they are too focused on the existing system to understand the folly of the “great consensus”. The gathering of so many people on a subject that in the end, the lowest common denominator is what makes the choice.

Give America a small set of choices and the retards will be the ones that vote the most and make it appear the system actually works, if you know what I mean. But when the politicians with the most money can brainwash enough retards to vote enough times, democracy is not working. That is not representation. That is just scary in my opinion. Democracy is great, don’t get me wrong. I think the USA is the best country in almost every respect that has ever existed. Rome be damned.

But. (There had to be a but.)

Much like any system, governments require “corrections” every once in a while. The founding fathers understood this and hoped to make a system of checks and balances that would slowly or constantly enforce those changes. But the question needs to be asked if those corrections are occurring. The recent Democrat takeover would lead most people to believe that yes, things are indeed changing. But as most of us know, it really isn’t. Democrats and Republicans all belong to the same country clubs. They all have the same stock portfolios and they all believe in the same thing. What makes it seem like they don’t is that they split hairs over silly things. Things to divert attention, things to capture thought, things to shift away from the horrible fact that the US is slowly rotting from within. Things like who is sleeping with who’s intern and who voted for that war thing and who can be blamed for the budget overruns.

And my answer to all that?

Pick up a mirror.