Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

So I shaved my head. Duh Wife has been “encouraging” me to do so for a few years, ever since I started developing the dreaded “horseshoe.”

I waited until the weather got nice, but it psyched me out. We had a brief spell of upper 80′s days and, at the end of the last one, I went and had the deed done. I don’t think it’s reached 70 since then. Perhaps by no coincidence, I’ve had a low-grade cold of some kind every since.

I don’t exactly know what the difference is. In the past, I’ve had my hair cut down to a “1″ with a razor, scarcely leaving but the shortest bristles behind. And yet, as soon as I shave those last vestiges away, everything is different. And everyone notices. The comments have ranged from sexy (Duh Wife) to telling me I look like a penis (Duh Dad). Two people at tae kwon do commented that it made me aerodynamic, although I’ve seen no marked improvement in my abilities. And, after a week, I’ve finally had my first person ask if they could touch it. On average, women seem to like it more than men, but perhaps men just have less tact (oddly enough, the reverse would be true if they were talking about the change to a woman’s appearance; the women would be more catty and the men would be more complimentary).

For my part, I can’t decide if I like it or not. No hair is more maintenance than little hair. I’ve already had to shave it again three times. Before then, I rarely combed it that often (at least when I kept it short). I like the fact that Duh Wife thinks it’s sexy, although I have yet to reap any material benefits from that. And I’ve gottent ot he point where I’m not really aware of it quite so much (at least until I meet someone who hasn’t seen it yet and they point and gasp, “Oh my God, what happened to your head?!”).

At this point, the jury’s still out. I’ll probably keep it for the summer at any rate. We’ll see what grows back in the fall. Maybe by then, it won’t really be a matter of choice anymore!

When Pigs Fly

Hey, have you heard? There’s a new flu out that’s going to kill us all! Get yours today!

So today, the World Health Orangization will probably elevate the Swine Flu status to DefCon 6 (also known as full fledged panic…I mean pandemic). Does this worry you? Are you scared yet? Is it time to stock up on Tamflu and surgical masks?

I don’t think so. I may be wrong. After all, I’m not a professional. So far be it from me to disagree with the WHO (after all, their music isn’t bad). I mean, sooner or later, we will be overtaken by a superbug. But I don’t think this is it.

Okay, a bunch of people in several countries are getting sick, which is technically a pandemic. But how many have died in the United States? One. A toddler from Mexico where health care is more of a suggestion really. Globally, the death toll is up to a whopping seven whole people. Your standard run of the mill flu kills about 30,000 people per year. We’ve got a ways to go before this pandemic becomes anything to really worry about.

Now, yes, if you’re really young or really old, you might want to be more careful. But your average American will experience nothing but a bad cold, with the proper medical care. There’s no need to panic. Be careful, take care of yourself, wash your hands and, most importantly, live your life. On the unlikely chance you get swine flu (sorry, I forgot…”swine” flu is offensive to Jews and Muslims…we’re supposed to call it the “Mexican flu” now, since that’s not offensive to anyone…and apparently you can get it by eating Mexicans…), you have an even unliklier chance of actually dying from it. So stop worrying about the media-induced panic and get on with your life.

For the record, as I write this, my body aches and I’ve been coughing up small amounts of blood for a day and a half, so I have a bit of perspective when I say “Don’t worry about getting sick.” I haven’t been to the doctor yet, but will probably go if it persists. I doubt it’s the swine flu. Probably something much more commonplace, like tuberculosis. If that’s the case, I’m sure the WHO will be bleating about an epidemic in New York’s capital district in the near future.

What Earth Day Means To Me

First off, if this page looks different than usual, do not attempt to adjust your set. Following in the footsteps of NBC, USA and FOX among others who have changed their logos green to show solidarity with thr environment, I, too, have selected a temporary theme for my blog, that I feel is appropriate for “Green Week.” And as with NBC, USA and FOX, I hope it effectively conveys to you how much I truly care about the environment. Because, after all, showing you care is much more important than actually doing something about it.

So, today is Earth Day. Much like occasions such as Administrative Assistant’s Week (formerly known as Secretary’s Day), or Kwanza, Earth Day is a made up holiday. These made up holidays start out with good intentions, but in reality they result in something different. (For the record, most legitimate holidays, like Christmas, Memorial Day and, yes, even Halloween, have also lost most of their original intent.) Secretary’s Day is a Hallmark holiday (like Father’s Day) was designed to force us to show appreciation for people that we SHOULD appreciate year round (but, now that we have a holiday for it, we can ignore them the rest of the time). Kwanza was made up in the Sixties so that a wrongfully oppressed people could argue for unity with one breath while adamantly delcaring their differences with the next. And Earth Day was created in 1970 to bring awareness to the damage we evil humans are doing to our delicate planet, all of which would lead to Global Cooling and another Ice Age. I guess those early Earth Days must have been really effective, since we apparently overcompensated for global cooling and went right into global warming. On the plus side, it is now starting to seem that we got that pesky warming under control because now the enviromentalists are starting to warn about global cooling again. The slightly smarter environmentalists have switched to a more all-encompassing phrase: climate change. If mankind keeps on with its evil consumption and disregard for the environment, the climate with CHANGE! Could go up, could go down, who knows. But either way, it’s BAD! And it’s YOUR fault! In fact, just in the last twelve months, we’ve had temperatures as high as 95 and as low as 40 below. We’ve had droughts, floods, blizzards, hurricanes, tornados! The climate is changing so frickin’ quickly we can’t keep up! OMFG! It’s already gone up two degrees just this morning! We’ll all be toast by the time American Idol comes on tonight. Unless, of course, it starts to cool off, in which case we could freeze to death by morning!

Climate change is crap.

Rather, the fear of climate change is crap. The insistence that man somehow has the power to destroy the environment, but not the power to help it, is crap. Here’s the deal. The planet has been around LONG before us, and it’ll be here long after we’re nothing but the remnants of a bad dream. Nothing we do is going to hurt the planet. And if we do, the planet will get rid of us like a dog shaking water off its back. To quote that late great evil conservative, George Carlin, “The planet is fine. It’s the people that are f*cked.”

Which brings me back to these fools who celebrate Earth Day. Look, I know I sound obnoxious and ranting, so let me try and dial it down a notch and give credit where credit is due. If you are one of those people who truly cares about the environment, I’m not talking about you. If you think hemp is God’s gift to man (you know, if there was a God), and you only bathe once a week to conserve water and you drive a frickin’ Smart car and only eat soy products and drink purified urine, good for you! I do not agree with you and, yes, I admit, will probably even mock you, but I DO admire you for standing up for the convictions of your beliefs. At least in this blog, you’re not the ones I’m talking about.

I’m looking at those Earth Day environmentalists. You know, the left wing version of Easter or Christmas Christians. The ones who think that if they wear green on Earth Day that they are making a difference. Honestly, I feel about them the same way I felt about much of the tea baggers last week (see my previous post). I feel that symbolic measures accomplish nothing. NBC and USA (both under the same parent company) or FOX, changing their logos green for a week and running a couple special ads telling everyone else to live green and mean it, does nothing to help the environment. It would be different if they were actually changing something (for example, like 24, which is carbon neutral (although this carbon nonsense is crap, too, but at least they’re doing something)…and, by the way, does 24 seem to you like the most schizophrenic show out there? On the one hand, it panders to the right by showing that torture is actually necessary and useful in certain situations, and so on, while, on the other hand, it panders to the left by going “green” and reminding us that not all Muslims are bad…just the bad ones). And, to be fair, maybe they are. 24 is on FOX, so I guess that’s to their credit. Although, if I may digress once more, FOX is starting to piss me off. Specifically, I’m thinking of Bones. What is this nonsense with the recap at the half hour mark? Do they really think that Americans have gotten so dumb that we need to be reminded, 30 minutes into the show, what we just saw? USA was doing this for a while with Law & Order, but I think they’ve realized how lame it is. So, anyway, be careful FOX; you’re skirting with my naughty list.

The point I’m making is changing your logos means nothing. For the record, I don’t necessarily buy into the conspiracy that NBC parent, General Electric, is promoting green week so it can sell more of those compact flourescent lightbulbs. For one reason, the law’s already been passed; once again, the government wants to regulate something I do in my own home that has no impact on anyone else and is forcing us, in a couple years, to all switch over to compact flourescents. So there’s no reason for GE to need to push the issue; they already won. And, it just so happens, I like the compact flourescents. They are not your Daddy’s pale-white, “make everything look drained of color and suck out your soul” flourescents. The light is comparable to real lightbulbs, and they don’t get as hot, which is a plus to a fat sweaty pig like me. Supposedly they also save you money, but I’ve only got two of them in my house so far, and not quite for a month yet, so I can’t speak to that. So, okay, yes, you need a Hazmat team to clean up the mercury spill if you break one of them. I’m not concerned about that. Someone, somewhere will find a way to fix that and will, probably in the near future, come out with a less hazardous version of the bulb. That’s how capitalism works. Just like capitalism is working when I decided to switch to the flourescents. I didn’t do it because George W. or Obama say I have to. I did it because I believe it’s a better product.

I am, however, livid at NBC for moving frickin’ Jay Leno to 10:00 every night. That cuts out five hours of actual television. Hopefully it will be some mindless comedies rather than their much better dramas. And God help them if they cancel Heroes to make more room for him. Yes, I know it’s been renewed already, but they can change their minds any time they want. Isn’t that their slogan? “We’re NBC. You have no choice.”

But I digress. Again.

As far as individuals, if you only worry about the environment around Earth Day, you’re a hypocrite. Those of you who go halfway get half credit. Maybe you use a canvas bag when you grocery shop, for example. Good for you. You are making a difference. The difference is a small one, like cutting less than 1% of a multi-trillion dollar national budget, or less than 1% of a bloated State workforce, but it’s a start. Never mind that, if you use canvas bags for your entire life, the impact will be cancelled out in the first couple of seconds that China brings a new coal reactor on line, but at least you care enough to do more than pay lip service to the issue.

This is apropos of nothing, but it’s been bugging me for a while and I didn’t think I could make a full length blog out of it. So, let me take a break from bitching about earth Day to say this. Screw you, Pepsi! I’ve always been a Pepsi fan (though not as avidly as the anti-Pepsi friend I had in college, who wouldn’t patronize any place that served Pepsi. Apparently he blamed them for destroying his family) but their latest advertising campaign is just flat out stupid. First off, the new bottle designs are horrible. You only have about 700 different styles of Pepsi, so maybe you want to make words like “diet”, “caffeine free”, or “with lime” a little larger and more obvious. I’m not in advertising, but I am a thinker (as well as a disgruntled consumer who needs better glasses to figure out which style of Pepsi he’s buying…also why the hell can’t i find Diet Pepsi Max anymore?). you canhave that suggestion for free. Tropicana learned their lesson from their horrible new design (which, much like Pepsi’s emphasizes the brand name and minimizes which of the 376 styles of orange juice is in the carton) and, rumor has it, they will be going back to their old packaging. Pepsi should do the same. And, yes, goody for you, you “modernized” the logo again. It looks more like an ad for the Grateful Dead than anything (and don’t even get me started on the Dead. They were in Albany last week and I had to walk through a freaking tent city just to get back to my car from my job. I had been propositioned twice (despite the fact that, with my collared shirt and briefcase I stood out more than Big Bird in Munchkinland) and had a distinct contact high by the time I reached my car.) So, your new logo is bad and your billboard campaign is worse. LOL? Sodypop? Frickin’ SODYPOP!? These are the best words your dingbats in advertising could come up with that had the letter “O” in them that you could oh, so cleverly replace with the logo? Bah. Screw you, Pepsi. If only you weren’t so tasty. Why can’t I quit you?

And, finally, to end on a lighter note, I’m surprised that we’re still allowed to have Green Week. Isn’t that insensitive to all the other colors in this environment where everything and everyone is equal? You should have “Rainbow Week.” It still evokes the touchy-feely envionmental stuff and it doesn’t descriminate against other colors (except for brown, black, white or grey but, really, who cares what THEY think)? Consider the Rainbow Week suggestion my gift to you, one-day-a-year environmentalists. I’d suggest you adopt it soon, though. I hear the color blue is planning a protest rally next week.

One Lump Or Two? (Or – Why I Bagged the Tea Party)

I have long been an Evil Conservative with Libretarian tendencies. I’m proud of this and if, according to the recent Department of Homeland Security memo, that particular political leaning puts me on some terrorist watch list, so be it. Watch away! We’ll see which one of us dies from boredom first. I’m too old, fat and tired to care enough to be a revolutionary. (That said, I’ve been tinkering with a draft for the Declaration of Independence (Mark II), and a Constitution of the New United States. If I decide to take an interest in politics again sometime in the future (or if I’m just bored), I’ll probably put down something concrete here. Or maybe I’ll just save it and submit it for consideration after the revolution is over. (And there is a revolution coming. I don’t necessarily support it, but it’s brewing and all it will take is one martyr to set the country ablaze. It’s unfortunate. I agree we need a change (not an Obamatized change, but a positive one), but I’d much rather see a peaceful secession than an outright battle between the citizens and the government. Especially since the government would probably win an armed conflict (hint – they have bombs. You don’t. (I hope.)). The only ones that might stand a chance in an armed conflict against the government are the crazy people in the woods who have been planning their own personal revolution since the end of the Eisenhower administration. And, honestly, I don’t want them in charge anymore than I want the current government. AND, just so we’re clear, that’s not a political thing, it’s a politician thing. I disagreed with much of Bush’s actions, and I disagree with almost all of Obama’s, but they are only symptoms of the much larger problem. Look, empires typically only last about 200 years or so. We’re due. We’re almost to the point where people are going to get fed up and actually take this country back. My best case scenario is that we take the country, shake it like a frickin’ etch-a-sketch, and start over, preferably as two countries. Those who want to go socialist can have one part; those who want to go back to the Constitution (with a few modern revisions) can have the other part. We redraw the map, everyone lives happily ever after. It can be done peacefully; I hope it is done peacefully. I just don’t know if it will. But, hey, when all the smoke clears, get back to me about that whole Constitution of the New United States thing. “Founding Father” would look pretty spiffy on a resume.))

Hmmm…

That was a bit of a digression. It all goes to the point I’m trying to make, though. Where I was originally going with this is that I’m tired of politics. I’m tired of the Right being portrayed as racist, sexist, homophobic (although I am opposed to Paterson’s recent bid to legalize gay marriage in New York, but, really, I don’t know why I feel that way), fear-mongering warlords. And I’m sick of the Right portraying the Left as limp-wristed, granola-eating, sandle-wearing, pot-smoking, free-loving throwbacks to an era the current president probably doesn’t even remember. (Truthfully, I have no idea how old Obama is, nor do I care if he actually remembers the 60′s; it’s called literary license. You want facts, read an encyclopedia.)

The POINT, if I could ever get to it, is I’m washing my hands of politics for now. I know our country is on the brink but, in all reality, how much impact does government really have on my day to day life? I pay my taxes (and for the record, even if you got a refund, you’re still paying taxes; they only refund the money that you OVERpaid. It boggles my mind how many people can’t understand this) but I couldn’t tell you what percentage I pay, because I don’t care. Duh Wife and I aren’t starving or homeless, nor do I anticipate that in the near future, so taxes don’t bother me.

What else? Restrictive laws? The government telling me how to live my life? Look, it’s a lame example, but it demonstrates my point. I wear my seatbelt in the car. I don’t wear it because New York State says it’s a LAW and I’ll be PUNISHED if I don’t. I wear it because, if I have an accident, the odds of me needing the jaws of life to pry my fat ass out of the charred remains of the U.S.S. Low Twelve (NCC-92608) because I’m wearing my seat belt are much lower than the odds of my blubberous bulk being splattered across the steering wheel and dashboard because I wasn’t wearing it. If I’m driving the block and a half to the store, I don’t wear the seatbelt because I know I won’t be driving much faster than a fast jog. If I get a ticket, I deserve it, because I knew the law getting into the car. I don’t agree with the law – it’s none of the government’s business whether I wear my seatbelt or not because I’m not affecting a single other person by that action. But it is the law and, if I cared enough, I have the legal right to go through the propoer channels to change it. I don’t care enough, so I don’t. I simply live my life the way I choose.

I guess that’s what it comes down to. I want to live my life and I’m tired of hearing about how government is going to make it worse or better (depending which side you listen to). Government is irrelevant. I find my joy in the things that make up my life – Duh Wife, tae kwon do, Masonry, computer games, etc. If the government outlawed Freemasonry as a clandestine revolutionary group, restricted the martial arts to prevent an uprising of revolutionaries who can kill with their bare hands, banned my computer access because of blogs like this that they might think are inflammatory, and dissolved my marriage because they couldn’t come up with a definition of “marriage” that satisfied everyone and they ultimately decided to just scrap the whole damned thing…if they did all that…I would find my joy elsewhere. I decide whether to feel happy or oppressed. The government can take away every right and privilege that they, as Americans, are sworn to protect. But, in the immortal words of Mel Gibson, they’ll never take our freedom. Up here, in my mind, I’m always free.

So. Deep thoughts aside, that was one reason I didn’t attend a tea party. I don’t need to. Honestly, I wasn’t even going to get into all that. The stuff from here down is all I had actually planned to write. That all just flowed from me. Guess for all my bluff and bluster I do care a little.

The main reason I didn’t go to a tea party, even though there was one in walking distance from my office and it was a beautiful spring day yesterday, is that I think they were a waste of time. Sorry, I do. The media won’t cover them accurately, without portraying it (at best) as anything other than just another pointless protest or (at worst) a bunch of crazy people who need to be stopped. I can see the State Capitol from my office window (okay, it’s not MY window; I’m in a frickin’ cubby. But there’s a large window over there on the other side of the room and, when the people who DO have cubbies by the window aren’t there, I can go and look out of it). There’s always some kind of protest going on and to my knowledge, not one of them has done a tinker’s damn bit of good. The protesters feel better afterwards, but nothing changes. To all you Tea Partiers out there, I ask this question. What now? Your protests have come and gone, the media patted you on the head and the government, for the most part, ignored you. I anticipate that at least half of you will go back to your lives and get on with them, either disgruntled or deceived that you made a difference. But what are the rest of you going to do for your next trick? Refuse to pay your taxes? Good luck with that.

You may not realize it from that statement, but I support the Tea Parties. I agree with their message of trying to take back control of our country. I just don’t believe their method accomplishes their goal. Think about it. When THE Tea party took place, it made sense. There was an unfair tax on tea. The Colonists showed the europeans just where they could stick their tea. The Party had a direct correlation to the issue. These Tea Parties, while emotionally stirring, are only symbolic. You haven’t hit them where it hurts or demonstrately concretely what the problems is. I don’t know how you do that, and I am absolutely not advocating violence. I just know that protests don’t work. When the Colonists threw the tea in the harbor, it had a concrete effect – no tea, no taxes. If you want government to change, sadly, the only effective way to do that is to take the ball into their court. Challenge them legally. Don’t get together and protest; get together and go through the legal process of getting referendums put forward that fix the things you think are wrong.
As I said early on, I believe the only real solution to this is allowing states, maybe even cities, to seceed and form a new nation. Our Founding Fathers had an advantage we don’t. When European government became too oppressive, there was a whole new world to move to, in order to get away from that government. (Yes, yes, there were Indians here, we’re horrible white men stealing what wasn’t ours. Much like slavery, it’s a vile blemish on our past, but no one who is alive now was responsible for it; get over it.) There are few frontiers left for disgruntled Americans to escape to (maybe if we hold out another 50 years or so, we can start colonizing the moon, but we’re not there yet). So the only peaceful way to get out from under government’s thumb is to seceed and to be allowed to reform into a new United States. Frankly, I would think both sides would be glad to be rid of the other. It doesn’t need to be bloody and, though it will certainly be more complicated than I portray it, it can and should be done. It’s the right solution.

At least until the two new countries collapse under their own weight again…probably in about 200 years.

Not In My Name

“Seven and a half cents doesn’t buy a hell or a lot.
Seven and a half cents doesn’t mean a thing.
But give it to me every hour, every hour every week,
That’s enough for me to be living like a king.”

- from “The Pajama Game”

 

I was in this play in high school. (Yes, that’s right; I used to be a thespian trapped in a man’s body.)  The play centered around a battle between a pajama company and its employees over a seven-and-a-half cent per hour raise.  The song has been stuck in my head off and on since New York first proposed eliminating State employees’ 3% salary increase this year.

Three percent may not sound like a lot.  In my case, it adds up to about $15 a week.  This may not sound like a lot to you but when you are $33,262.79 in debt (approximately), every bit adds up.  I may have my debt paid off before I retire some 25+ years from now.  So I heartily support the unions for adamantly refusing to budge on this issue.

Savor that.  It’s a sentence I never thought I’d utter.

In reality, I believe labor unions were conceived in the deepest, darkest bowels of hell and that the union bosses are, in fact, minions of Satan himself sent to grind American production, efficiency and common sense into a fine paste.  Unions suck and a small piece of my soul is devoured at the rate of $17.09 every two weeks when I see that reminder on my paycheck that, in order for the privilege of working for New York State, I have to pay some fat cat to go out in public and let the world know that the union stands for everything I hate.  I oppose 99% of everything the unions do, say, think and are.  I do not vote for the candidates they endorse, not because I refuse to be led like a lamb to the slaughter but because they are wrong.  There have been times I have been tempted to avail myself of every conceivable benefit the union offers just to try and get something for the blood money that they suck from me as I try to just make a living but, at least in this particular case, I have so far steadfastly stuck to my principles.  Unions blow great big bloated chunks and I don’t want anythign to do with them, good or bad.

I hope I’ve made my feelings clear on this.

Now, the only thing I hate just about as much as unions is govermental incompetence.  Please forgive the redundancy.  Because the uniosn refused to give up that 3% raise, Governor Patterson has put through a motion in the newly approved Budget cutting around 8900 State jobs.  I know that I am in the silent minority here, but, as a State employee, I applaud this decision and am glad that he’s sticking to his guns about it.

In the interest of complete transparency, I have to admit that I say this knowing that, at the moment, I have less than a 5% chance of being included in the layoffs.  If my job were more seriously in jeopardy, I would probably be less supportive of this decision.  I am man enough to admit that I am primarily motivated by my own self-interest.

Let’s be clear.  My feelings for Governor Patterson have been hot and cold for a while.  I liked him when he first came to office and liked that he would speak his mind even if it hurt someone’s dewicate wittle feewings.  Our government is such a quagmire because more people don’t do that.  Now, admittedly, Patterson ranked high when he first started because we were comparing him to that scum-sucking slimeball sleazebag Spitzer (who I wasn’t particularly fond off, even before he became governor). 

Still, I liked his style and, in this case, his style is part of what I agree with.  I like that he’s willing to make an unpopular move or two and is willing to stand up against the unions to make cuts.  I’d enjoy it even more if i wasn’t stuck in the middle but could stand outside of the ring and watch these two cancers devouring each other.  But my point is, I agree with him making cuts.  The stereotype of the overpaid, underwork State worker didn’t just invent itself, people.

(ADD Sidebar – When the layoffs come, I wish the could be done in a more democratic kind of fashion.  I’m thinking a vote, a la Survivor, where we all sit around a meeting table and write down who we want voted out and stick the votes into an inter-office mail envelope.  Then the head of the department can tally the votes and the loser gets his ID taken from him and maybe something ceremonial like unplugging his computer.  “The office has spoken.  You are the weakest link.  Good-bye.”  (Sorry, I changed channels for a moment there.)  I already have my first two votes planned out.  And for the record, I had the idea long before this announcement came out. And, yes, it’s a FOX show, why do you ask?)

What I’m trying, in my own buckshot splatter pattern kind of way, to get at is this:  Governor Patterson is right to make some staffing cuts, provided the right ones are made (no guarantee of this, I know).  There are bloated departments, primarily due to unions and their big, bad “don’t make us go on strike” sticks.  (Sorry, one more side note…if and when we do go on strike (because you just know that’ll be next), I plan to come to work, if it is at all conceivable.  Just one more piece of not supporting anything the union does because they are just so wrong.)  So, the State government does need to trim some fat.

That said, there’s so much still wrong with this plan.  First off, there was a hiring surge about twenty-five years ago.  For you math geniuses out there, this means that we’re on the cusp of a massive wave of retirements.  A large portion of the State workforce will cut itself if you just leave it alone.  And, more than likely, if you freeze hiring, the rest of us that are left doing double or triple duty will probably work ourselves to death before you ever have to pay for our retirement, so see, it’s a win-win.

Secondly, you’re simply doing it wrong.  There are plenty of “consultants” that can be cut to make up the same amount of money you might save from cutting your staff who are committed (or should be).  That said, I envy consultants.  To be able to work with the State without having to deal (as much) with the unions must be sweet.  If I had any marketable skills, I might do that.  Of course, if I had any marketable skills, I wouldn’t be working for the State in the first place.

Thirdly, at the risk of eliminating my own position, more money can be saved by cutting some simply fruitless and idiotic programs that New York State provides.  I won’t go into details, less I risk some sort of conflict of interest, but there are programs and contracts that go across my desk that make me weep at their utter inanity and pointlessness.  It’s no wonder we’re in the mess we’re in.  Simply spewing money out of a firehose at a problem has never solved it (unless the problem was “Gee, I wish I was being pelted with money…” and, gee, haven’t we all wished that from time to time?).  As a rough, ball-park “fact”, we have spent enough money on homelessness in this State over the last twenty years to buy every homeless man, woman and child a frickin’ house.  (Please note – do not be distracted by the use of the word “fact” in this sentence.  This is really just a gross generalization formed from my own experience and used to exemplify how, as most governments tend to go, we are just doing it wrong.)

Look it boils down to this.  Until I get a piece of paper telling me I have the requisite eight weeks to clear out my desk, I’m not going to worry about the job cuts.  I’ll probably take my 3% raise and stick it in the bank and try to save up some money so that, when the smoke clears, if I need something to fall back on, it’s there.  But I’m not worried.  Do I agree with the cuts?  Yes and no.  More than refusing our raises or forcing us to defer another week’s worth of pay, but not as much as I support cutting some of the true fat out of the Budget.  And, of course, the big question.  Does anyone, from the governor to the unions, really care what I, or any of my fellow State employees, think?

Do I really need to answer that?

Turning Japanese

When I started this blog many moons ago, I promised the occasional restaurant review. Since then I’ve done exactly zero of them, mostly because we just haven’t been eating out much. Well, we finally did and so now I present you.. (insert fanfare here) ..the the first Duh Frog sanctioned Restaurant Review.

Last night we went to Hana Japanese Steakhouse in Guilderland, NY (outside Albany). I don’t know if this is a chain restaurant or not – a quick Google search shows a couple others turning up, but they appear to be far flung, so it could be a coincidence.

I don’t speak Japanese (aside from things like “teriyaki”, “hibachi” and “Domo Yomagato, Mr. Roboto”). From tae kwon do, however, I have learned that “Hana” is the Korean word for “One”. (I have also learned that with enough practice even a fat guy like me can get airborne long enough to break a board with a flying side kick.) At any rate, if Hana has a similar meaning in Japanese, then this restaurant is aptly named – it is definitely our new top favorite Japanese restaurant.

When you walk in, the atmosphere engulfs you. The blue lights in the entranceway may be a little disconcerting at first, but as you adapt, you realize that the restaurant is done in an Oriental style that is consistent and complete without being overly obnoxious or garish. We also discovered the restaurant is somehow larger on the inside than on the outside, and has many nooks and crannies for cozy, private dining.

The centerpiece of the restaurant is what appeared to be a gleaming, well-stocked sushi bar, great for the mingling of yuppies. I don’t like sushi. To be fair, I don’t like the idea of sushi; I’ve never actually eaten it, nor do I want to. but if you’re into that kind of thing, have at it. Instead, Duh Princess, Duh Parents, and I had reservations for a hibachi table. (For the uninitiated, this is where they put on a show as they prepare the food right in front of you. Think of the scene from one of the Police Academy movies where the commissioner’s fish boiled in its bowl because he set it on the grill while they were eating…. What? Too obscure?)

The menu is a bit on the novel side. By which, I don’t mean there’s anything particularly unique; I talking about how long it is. The only page that interested me was the hibachi page, although I did peek at the alcholic drinks (Duh Father got a “Sunrise” – a nonalcoholic mixture of orange juice and grenadine – but there were also some cleverly named drinks. I thought about a Ninja Turtle, while Duh Wife considered a Hello Kitty, but I had to drive and she was headed off to work after dinner so we declined.

Most Japanese restaurants include miso soup and a small salad with your hibachi order. At Hana, soup and salad were extra ($1 and $2 respectively). However, since the price for the hibachi entrees themselves was about par for the course, this is acceptable, especially since you are offered a little more flexibility. Instead of just a little lettuce with ginger dressing, the salad is a bowl of mixed greens and you have the choice of ginger or balsamic dressing. Also, the soup was either miso or “clear” soup (which, apparently, is what I’ve always thought was miso soup at other restaurants; it’s basically chicken broth with some fried onions and mushrooms. The description for miso soup, however, included such words as “soy” and “seaweed” and, if memory serves, “tofu”, none of which I typically put into the overall category that I call “Food”). At any rate, I enjoyed the flexibility of have a soup or salad or both, if I chose, as well as the option of having a different dressing (I still went for the ginger dressing; I eat balsamic all the time so it was a treat). Duh Wife had the soup and declared it the best she’s had, particularly with the bits of tempura onion, and says that, had she thought of it, she would have ordered an extra cup of it to take to work with her.

In addition to our main course, we also shared a plate of tempura vegetables. The batter was thin and, honestly, a bit flavorless, but the vegetables were tasty. They included a mushroom, an onion, a piece of broccoli, a sweet potato and something that we all tried but were unable to identify, but we ate it anyway because, hey, it wasn’t bad.

For our main courses, we all opted for the hibachi entrees of course. Duh Mom and I went with chicken, Duh Princess had vegetable and Duh Dad had the seafood combination (Shrimp, scallops and lobster tail). There was already another couple sitting at the table when we arrived and they got their salads while we were ordering. Unlike some places, Hana doesn’t make you wait until everyone at the table is done with their soup and salad before the show begins. This is a good thing, if you get there first, but I felt it was a little rushed, and would have liked to have been done with my salad first, so I could pay more attention to the show.

The show itself was average, full of the usual Hibachi 101 gags and props (swirling the spatula around his finger, making the big oil flame to start the show and prep the grill, making the onion volcano and putting it out with a little fireman squirt bottle that pees on it, spinning the egg and cracking it, mid-air, witht he spatula, etc). These are all entertaining stunts, but they can get tired. Our chef did try to flip pieces of vegetable into our mouths (usually missing on the first try and sometimes on the second try as well). I know this can be a little risky sometimes (depending who your tossing the food at, they might not take kindly if you miss), but I like to see this more often. In fact, this is the first way I ate a shrimp many years ago. A chef flipped it at me without warning and it was either catch it in my mouth or take it in the face. The shrimp was yummy and that began my long, still tenuous baby steps into the world of seafood, where I’m still not inclined to visit without some encouragement. I do like hibachi shrimp, though, and ate my two-shrimp appetizer last night, as well as Duh Princess’s two shrimps. The chef did a good jump in presentation, and the food was excellent, but he lacked flair. He wasn’t very engaging. I got the impression that the only English he knew were the words he needed during his presentation, and he was still struggling with them. He may have been the exception rather than the rule, though, judging from some convert examination of the shows going on at the other tables around us.

Dinner consisted of fried rice (Duh Parents got noodles, and white rice was also available), the usual array of zucchini and onions, etc. for vegetables, and then the entree. The rice was excellent, though it was a little too loose for me to eat with chopsticks. (I am, by no sense of the word, a professional chopstick wielder. I have, however, evolved past my initial stage of using them as skewers.) The vegetables were nice and not overcooked. My chicken tasted good, but the texture was just a little spongy. One thing I was very impressed by, though, was the vegetable entree that Duh Princess had. Most places just give you an extra helping of the vegetables that everyone else gets, but Hana actually puts together a separate mixture with some additional vegetables like bell peppers and snow peas. It’s pretty to look at and, as I sit here digesting her leftovers that i had for lunch, I can testify that they are delicious as well. And so good for me (if not for all the butter and oil they use, but we won’t talk about that…).

I was the last one to finish because I was the only one using chopsticks so I grudgingly switched over to a fork at the endof the meal to scoop up the rest of my rice and smaller veggies. They had a few deserts. I’m partial to green tea ice cream myself but Duh Princess “suggested” that Mr. Fatty McFatpants forego dessert. I’m on a calorie counting kick at the moment and I was sated, so I agreed. Duh Parents, however, split a fried green tea ice cream. I love fried ice cream and hadn’t seen it at a Japanese restaurant before. It must have been good because they polished it off. I didn’t even get to lick the spoon.

All in all, dinner for four with the dessert, the appetizer, Duh Father’s two Sunrise (the lush!) and Duh Mom’s wine came to $147 (including tax and tip). I’d planned on $150, so that worked out well. Duh Princess and I could eat there for less than $60.

If you enjoy Japanese food, Hana is a step above the rest. It should be Number One in your book as well.

Ratings:
1 fly (worst) to 5 flies (best)

Decor – 4 flies
Service (including presentation) – 3 flies
Food – 4 flies
Price – 3 flies
Overall – 4 flies

Their website is equally as professional and classy as the restaurant itself. Check it out for more information. (http://www.hanaalbany.com/#)

Rage Against the Machine

I’ve decided to abandon the Hotmail email account I’ve had for almost a decade. It wasn’t an easy choice, but it was one I’ve been threatening (at least in my mind, or under my breath) for several months now.

The first inklings of disgust came when they switched over to this “Windows Live” nonsense, haphazardly linking various services together with your email, a situation which they only exacerbated when they “upgraded” it a couple weeks ago, adding this stupid and, frankly, intrusive “network” feature.

Look, I feel the same about this as I feel about cell phones. I want a cell phone that provides quality service wherever I am and, if possible, one that doesn’t feel like I’m going to crush it in my beefy paws. Bigger buttons for my fat little sausage-like fingers would be nice too. What I don’t want, or need, or use are a calendar, a camera, a stopwatch, an alarm clock, a world clock, a notepad, a calculator, etc., etc., ad nauseum. If I want any of those, I’ll get one (and, with the exception of a stopwatch and a world clock, I have them). What I don’t have is a cell phone that I can hear clearly or one is solid enough not to need replacement every year or so. Maybe we could stop with the pointless features and just improve the device’s ability to do what it’s supposed to do.

Which brings me back to the bastards at Microsoft and the abortion that is Hotmail. I want email. Yes, a contact list is a handy feature, but that’s about it. I don’t need an instant messenger, a calendar, the latest headlines (including weather in your local area), or birthday reminders. I want email that I can access, read and save or delete as I see fit. And I want them to stay the hell out of my way and don’t bother me unless I have a question for them. I don’t need frequent junk mail touting your latest “improvements.” Maintain it and don’t bother me unless there’s a problem.

And that, dear reader, was the straw that finally broke this frog’s back. For nearly five days, I was completely unable to access my email. “Maintenance,” they said. “To guarantee optimal performance,” they added. Returning mail service was a “high priority,” they promised. “Screw off,” I told them.

Now I understand needing to do routine maintenance. I can even accept that sometimes, the unexpected happens. I can easily envision a situation where they were trying to do routine maintenance on my Hotmail server (snt108, in case you’re curious) and the system crashed and, worst case scenario, they needed to replace the machine. Things happen, and I understand that. I’m willing to accept it.

What is inexcusable, and the reason I’ve abandoned them, is because of the piss poor communication they demonstrated during this situation. To begin, there was no warning that they would be doing any maintenance. They have no problem sending junk mail to tell me about the latest feature; would it be so hard to say “We plan to do maintenance on such and such a day between these hours. Your service may be interrupted. please plan accordingly and we apologize for the inconvenience.”? Apparently it would. So, in short, we had no warning that his was coming. Strike One.

When I tried to log into my email, all I would get was a simple page explaining that my server was undergoing maintenance and should be available soon. There was a link to follow if I’d been waiting for more than an hour. I first received this error on Saturday afternoon. When I got to work on Monday morning and still got this message, after using a different machine and a different browser (because I’m not the idiot that Microsoft treats their customers like), I finally clicked the link. rather than going to a simple “report your problem here” kind of page, I had to set up a separate account (because apparently Microsoft Live links everything together except the site where you go with issues about Microsoft Live) and it was only by sheer dumb luck that I finally found the right forum and figured out HOW to report that I had been without service for a day and a half. Poor communication, poor web design and Strike Two.

Then, as I and the many others who actually managed to find our way there (I can only imagine that we were the minority and that the majority of users couldn’t figure out how to report their problem), started posting about having the exact same problem, the techs began to reply. And every reply was some variation of the same canned, worthless, pointless, brainless, dickless, spineless answer. “Your server is undergoing maintenance.” (No kidding!) “This is to guarantee optimal performance.” (Bull crap!) “This has been given a high priority and we hope to have it resolved soon.” (If this is a high priority, I’d hate to see how a low priority is handled.) Despite our desperate pleas and begging, not one of the techs would admit that this was anything other than routine maintenance. One of them finally did show a crack in his inhumanity and admit that they weren’t sure when things would be back up.

All I wanted was for them to be human. All I wanted was for them to admit there was a problem and tell us what it was. What I didn’t want was a run around. I also didn’t want the response that frequently came back, suggesting we clear our cache or try to log in from a different machine – pointless suggestions that they knew wouldn’t solve the problem but which they hoped would buy them a little time. All I wanted from them was honesty. If they’d had the balls to admit they had to replace the server, I would still be a Hotmail customer. It also would have been nice if they had warned everyone that, when the machine was replaced, we would have lost any mail that came in since it first went down for maintenance. They didn’t, which, of course, harkens back to their first mistake – no pre-emptive communication. Strike three. I’m outta there.

Now I’m self-aware enough to know I sound like a whiny, greed liberal (sorry, I mean, progressive). Here I am, getting a service for free and I’m complaining about it. So let me reiterate, I’m not complaining about the service. I’m complaining about their communication and compassion for their customer…or lack thereof. I’m also smart enough to know that Gmail will still have some of the problems I complained about. They want to be an all in one networking package, too. I understand that, and I signed up for their service knowing full well what I was getting. In the end though, capitalism, and freedom of choice, won out. Because whatever other issues may be involved, Gmail has one thing going for them that Hotmail doesn’t – they aren’t Hotmail.

A Day In The Life… (Part Three – Evening)

6:31 pm – Miss me? Well, here’s what I’ve been doing.

I left work at 3:30 and got home a little before 4:00. I took the dog out and Duh Princess and I adjourned to the bedroom, where I changed into my sweats and bathrobe and my slippers (even though Duh Brother thinks they’re gay). We ate dinner in bed. She made me a meatball in a cherry pepper dish that she saw on Rachel Ray today (she had been planning to make the meatloaf anyway and the peppers were a unique way to serve it. Tasty, too. Yum-o!). Also a salad with line and basil vinegrette. Nothing too filling, and I don’t think it will impact my ability to get my butt kicked tonight. She had more of her fish and cole slaw.
It turns out American Idol wasn’t on last night because of President Obama’s “Not the State of the Union” address, so we watching of her nature shows about a penguin raised in capitivity. We starting watching another episode, about lions and she settled in and fell asleep about fifteen minutes ago. I slipped away and set the timer on the television to go off in about five minutes. Between the television, the closed door and the loud humidifier we have, I could have a party down here and she wouldn’t know, were I so inclined. Unfortunately, no time for that. Tae kwon do starts at 7:15 and I want to fill her gas tank beforehand, because I know that I’ll have no energy to do so afterwards. One of the surprises she had for me was $50 to put in our jug towards our vacation; she got $100 tip from a lucky lottery customer today (I’m guessing he won more than $3…) and after splurging a little on dinner and a couple little things for herself, she wants to save the rest. I think we’re making good progress.
Now I need to get dressed and get ready to go. I’ll update when I get home.

8:22 pm – A night of sparring is like a plane crash. Any one that you can walk away from was a good one. I’m still standing and, in fact, feeling pretty good right now, since my muscles are still warm and haven’t had a chance to tighten up. I’ll probably be crippled come morning.
At any rate, I took Duh Princess’s car to get gas. She gave me $35 but I put $40 worth in because that’s just the kind of guy I am (read: to cheap to fill it all the way…).
Tonight’s tae kwon do class was smaller than a usual Wednesday. There were nine people, only three of which were black belts. Still this seemed like better odds than Monday night when there were eight of us, four black belts (who then each paired up with one of us lower belts and took turns sparring with us…by the end I was working my on my defensive moves…like running away…). As it turned out, the class was fast-paced by not really full contact. After some brief warmups, we were paired up. We got a brief talk about how proud our instructor was of all of those who competed in the tournament last weekend (I didn’t, for fear of public humiliation, but am tempted to try next time). I usually dread sparring with this instructor, because he takes it seriously (this is actually a good thing, I know. He’s an excellent teacher and he’s very assertive that you give it your all during his class…which is also a good thing, even if my body may not agree with that). Anyway, I think I saw him in a slightly different light tonight. It’s always a cool thing when you see a new facet of someone and get a more complete picture of their personality.
As far as actual sparring goes, there wasn’t any per se. We worked on four front leg kick techniues with a partner for the remainder of the class, which works much better for me. I like working on techniques. I’m just too fat and slow when it comes having to adapt to actual sparring, but I can do the same move over and over again and come out smiling. So, it was a good class. And, as I said, I felt much better afterwards, once my muscles were loosened up. One of the black belts suggested that a nice hot soak in a tub when I got home would help alleviate the tensing up of my muscles as they cool and it sounded tempting. However – a) the only tub is in the bathroom adjacent to where Duh Princess is currently asleep and b) I don’t mind sweating when I’m working out but I really can’t see myself doing something that’s going to make me hotter when I’m already dripping. Still I may give a try tomorrow night when, glutton for punishment that I am, I go back again. With my schedule the way it is, I just need to take classes whenever I can, whether they’re sparring or not. It’s all good for me in the long run, so I really shouldn’t complain.
Now I’m home. I have a few things to do. Put the dishes away that Duh Princess washed today, straighten up the couches that Duh Snard has torn apart just by being big and fat and hopping up and down off them, etc. Typically at this point in my day, I’d be, well, sitting right here. I’ll check my Facebook (and have already changed my status). And I play Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword. I admit to being hooked on the game, sometimes to the chagrin of Duh Princess. However, I just finished a game yesterday and, well, you may have noticed I’m a bit anal retentive. I’m playing the games in a certain order and I don’t remember what leader to start with next. My list is at the office. So I risk starting a game with the wrong leader and my anal retentive, OCD, ADHD , whatever it is just won’t let me do that. Fortunately, I still haven’t watched Heroes from Monday night. So I’ll probably put the dishes away and sit down to watch that.

9:45 pm – (Warning: Spoilers for the “Cold Wars” episode of Heroes abound within…)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m pretty tired of people trashing Heroes. I thought that was a perfectly acceptable episode. I like the way they find ways to do “time travel” episodes to fill in backstories, without actually using time travel (although you’ll have people insisting this was really a time travel episode, since it only went back about five weeks, and you’ll have others who hate time travel episodes, period. I’m partial to them myself). I suspected Noah was still working for Angela (and, by the way, I think Angela is going to turn out to be “Rebel” who texted Claire and Faxed Hiro in the previous episode…just a hunch). I think the painting of the bomb blowing up DC at the end was a little over the top. I mean, yes there were plenty of references to the first season in this episode (“I’m okay with morally grey…”) and it’s probably an attempt to recapture some of the feeling of the first season, but don’t do the same story again. I’m okay with another “Save the world” story, but change it up a little. I also liked seeing Parkman go rogue. I’ve always felt a little sorry for him and I hope that this time, he gets to be the real hero. (BTW, until they refered to the bomb belt guy in the painting as Matt, I thought it looked more like Sylar myself….)
Any way, the dishes ar eput away, Duh Snard is fed and will be taken out on more time in a moment. I watched Heroes while eating some baby carrots and fat free garlic and vegetable dip that Duh Princess made the other night. I think I’m going to take advantage of my lack of a Civ IV game to go to bed a little early tonight. True to form, I’ll watch an episode or two of Married…With Children until sleep comes and takes me.
And then tomorrow…I’ll do it all over again.

I hope you’ve enjoyed walking a mile or two in my moccasins today. I know that, after reading this it will be a long time before Duh Princess asks me what I did at work that day. But have we answered the question – “Is it hard being me?” I think we have. The answer is…no. In fact, I kind of enjoy it.

Respectfully Submitted,
Duh Frog
February 25, 2009
9:57 PM

A Day In The Life… (Part Two – Afternoon)

12:40 pm – If you haven’t already, you should read my previous entry for an explanation of what I’m doing. Or I could save you time – I giving you, the poor schlub reading this, a blow-by-blow account of my day, to answer the age old question, “What’s it like being you?” And now, the saga continues…

Man, that was yummy! I forgot how tasty that chicken that Duh Princess made for Valentine’s Day was. It was a flattened breast stuffed with spinach and blue cheese and some other tasty things before light breaded and pan fried, with some pasta and peas. A balsamic glaze figures heavily into the recipe as well. De-frickin’-licious. I topped it off with one of my apples for dessert.
While waiting for my lunch to cook in the microwave, I flipped through a coupon magazine someone had left sitting next to the donuts, and managed to find (and take) a couple coupons for a restaurant my inlaws frequent, and a couple for a store Duh Princess shops at. There were still 30 seconds left before my food was done and, rather than grab another donut hole, I decided to walk through the first few steps of my current tae kwon do form (Won Hyo). And yes, despite my best efforts to be subtle about it, I did do an open belt side turn to find a coworker standing behind me somewhat befuddled. As I was eating, I called Duh Princess to tell her how yummy it was and to encourage her to read part one of this blog (since really, if you’re not reading this in real time, it’s just a long, LONG tedious entry…). She was also eating lunch and shared her fish and cole slaw dining experience with me.
Now, momentarily satiated, I’m ready to take on the afternoon.

1:08 pm – I checked my email (another piece of junk offering replica Rolex watches, and a facebook comment from Duh Brother, calling me gay because I own slippers) and Fark (new interesting stories include a break-in at Victoria’s Secret (interesting because, well, I’m a guy and I’m paticularly partial to Victoria’s Secret lingerie (on women, mind you)) and a person having a worse day at work than I am because a komodo dragon came through his window and attacked him).
Also, I forgot to mention that, also before lunch, I did some research on a list of vouchers that had already been paid. I’ll need to change the coding on them (picture it as paying for something with money from the wrong pocket and then having to replace that money from the right one…) once the replacement money has been approved. Did I mention Budget confuses me?
And I just brought the errant voucher down to Program. They’re four floor sdown, so i usually take the stairs on the way down. If I’m feeling ambitious (or stupid) I’ll take them back up, too. Not today. Anyway, not only did the voucher go to the wrong office and have the wrong contract number on it, but the advance they were requesting was equal to the full first year’s amount of their contract! Although I can understand a desire to get as much money out of the government now while you can, they are still only entitled to a 25% advance. So I’ve advised them to slap the contractor silly and have them fix the voucher. Turns out Program’s vouchering unit (not to be confused with Contract Management’s vouchering unit) considers this contractor’s bookkeeper the worst person they have to deal with in the course of their life at work. They’ve obviously never dealt directly with OSC. On the plus side, I mentioned this to my supervisor and it reminded her to let us all know that we now need to report to Budget any voucher for more than $200,000 that gets paid with State funds, in preparation for the end of the fiscal year. Efficiency at work.

1:48 pm – So I had two more contracts in my stack that are ready to begin processing. I got them off to Budget and my supervisor as needed (actually, I haven’t walked Budget’s copies upstairs to them yet). As mentioned earlier, I decided to time myself and see just how much time each contract takes me and how much the State pays me to in the course of business to set up a new contract from start to finish. For the record, on the one contract I’m using as a sample, I’m already at eleven minutes (or about $4.64). That will go up a little when I walk the contracts upstairs to Budget. I also included the time it took me to walk over to the satellite office next door to use their stapler. We have a large capacity stapler in this office, but it’s out of staples and no one seems to know where to find more. (Must be the rationing…) In a flash of insight, I pocketed a strip of staples for the other office’s stapler. Maybe they’ll fit ours. (As an aside, I’ve begun stapling things with my left hand. Since I’m right handed, my left is my weak side but I never realized how weak it was until i tried stapling three pieces of paper and couldn’t do it with my left hand alone (unless I placed the stapler on the desk of course).) I’ve also eaten one of my apples, and, ever since my Diet Pepsi Max ran dry this morning, I’ve been nursing a half full selzer water (Adirondack Wildberry) that I opened yesterday. I brought another bottle with me today, but I don’t think I’ll need to open it today.
Meanwhile, as is often the case, more stuff came in while I was working on something else. I just received a stack of AC-340′s (the forms needed to encumber/unencumber money). these are from a slew of transactions I did yesterday, at the behest of Budget, to, essentially, move a bunch of money from one pocket to another. I have to sign all of them and then bring them to my supervisor for a countersignature.
For the record, I normally wouldn’t be doing a lot of work after lunch; that’s usually my kick back and surf the Web/read a book time. Anything that comes in in the afternoon becomes the next morning’s labors. However, I figure I’ve spent at least an hour and a half so far today with this blog, so I suppose I owe it to the state to work a little longer today. Still, if I don’t leave myself anything for tomorrow, I’ll be bored, bored, bored.
I’m also listening to Rush Limbaugh now. I’m not really a big fan of Rush. I used to be, but I just am not interested enough in the constant barrage of politics (that’s another reason I dropped Glenn’s Insider; he was getting too political prior to the election). I also don’t care much for Rush’s (admittedly well deserved) pomposity. I much prefer the self-effacement of Glenn Beck (who spent at least ten minutes today talking about Johnny Cash’s One Piece at a Time), or the simple, straight forwardness of Sean Hannity. usually in the afternoon, I listen to music or, better yet, I’ll bring in a DVD to watch/listen to. I rewatched Heroes recently and I’m thinking of either Sliders or Stargate SG-1 next. Maybe Moonlighting.

2:09 pm – Just ate my pudding (chocolate) and my yogurt (“pineapple coconut”…sounds like pina colada to me…). Also I was wrong. Only one of that stack of papers that Dawn brought me need a signature. The others are okay as they are (I thought they were, but I only looked at the first one on the stack earlier). So I got that going for me. And Duh Princess just called to let us know that one of the old women that we used to be in a cribbage club with, back when we first started dating, passed away. She was nice lady and it’s a shame, but she was about 90. We haven’t talked to her in many years, so it’s not a big blow, but it’s sad nonetheless. And I got another “fire,” a request from budget about moving yet another pocketful of money to a different pocket. That is being left in the queue to be printed in tomorrow’s batch of emails

2:29 pm – God, I hate elevators. They aren’t at the top, but they definitely are on the list with planes, cruise ships, caves, deep sea diving, and basically anything that takes me away from terra firma. (I’m not scared of stairs, necessarily, although the higher up i get the more aware of it I am as my fear of heights kicks in.) Anyway, I just went down to the little shop in the lobby that sells all those losing lottery tickets I’ve been buying. I rolled my three dollar winner into a new investment for Thursday’s drawing (and threw in two more dollars for good measure). On the way up, the elevator decided to do a little jerking, dipping, bobbing and weaving kind of thing. it probably wasn’t that drastic, but it just takes one variation in the constant speed to get me going and then i made the mistake of closing my eyes. I was good and nauseous by the time I reached my hell away from home on the 13th floor.
I also went up and dropped off the contracts at Budget (bringing me to a nice $5.49 for this new contract so far).
When I got back my voice mail was flashing. It was my father and I called him back. he had a question about whether or not reminder cards went out to the Lodge widows for the roast beef dinner earlier this month, and to remind me about sending the post cards for next month’s corned beef dinner. We agreed they shouldn’t go out too soon, sice i think that’s what happened for this last dinner and some of the widows just forgot or didn’t realize the postcards were for the roast beef dinner. We also discussed the importance of getting some sort of notice about the black-tie fundraising Event in our district’s emailed 4-week calendar.
I’m not wearing my headphones right now, but I should. Coworkers are flocking outside my cubby, yammering about their kids and the office water club and who knows what else. It’s not that I’m antisocial. I just don’t like distractions.

2:40 pm – Duh Princess may be evil. I haven’t decided yet. Just as I was posting my earlier update, she called and, at the end of our conversations, mentioned hse had lots of surprises for me and then said, “Okay, bye.” and hung up when i asked what they were. We also talked about eating dinner in bed when I get home, and watching American Idol. (She worked over night last night, but has to work at 6:00 tomorrow morning, so she didn’t go to sleep yet and has been up for nearly 24 hours.) I know i mocked my coworkers who are raving Idol fanatics. I’m mildly entertained by the show. I enjoy some of the really bad auditions early on, but now it’s starting to get into that boring stage where all they do is sing. Duh Princess enjoys the show, though, but fortunately, we can watch an episode of it on DVR in about twenty minutes, especially when she lets me fast forward through the annoying singing portions.
we also received two more tourist brochures in the mail today – Wisconsin and Minnesota. We’re planning a trip in the fall of 2010, where we will hop in the car and spend two weeks driving from interesting point to interesting point and exploring this great country of ours. We’re limiting this trip to the upper midwest, no further than Nebraska, if that far. We plan to hit as many Amish communities as we can find, and I’d like to visit some of the other state’s Lodges or even Grand Lodges. And we definitely want to find as many little “harvest festival” kind of events as we can along the way. We’ve already received brochures for Kansas (which looks like a lot of fun), maryland 9which has been declared “stupid”) and Nebraska (which may have potential, depending where our route takes us).

3:00 pm – Ate my second apple. Just got back three contracts from the AG’s office. Put them on the stack for tomorrow. Scanning FARK for anything interesting to hold my attention for the next hour until it’s time to go. I smell garlic, but usually I’m the only one in the office eating anything that strong, especially this time of day.

3:26 pm – Duh Princess called again, excited about Wisconsin. We are particularly fond of cheese, after all, and they seem to be famous for it…. So much so that we skip Yoder, Kansas, a big Amish community.
Meanwhile, I spent a little time working on a logic problem. I bought the magazine last April when I was scheduled to have some minor surgery and was planning to be laid up for a few days. i want to get the maagzine done, though, because Duh Princess got me new one for Valentine’s Day that I’m eager to start.
I’m listening to Hannity, but it’s not enough to drown out the chirping in the next cubicle. We have one particularly…vocal woman in our office and she’s on a roll right now. I should be able to hear something that is being fed directly into my ears by noise-canceling headphones over her, shouldn’t I? Guess not.
checked my email once more. Another viagara offer, and something from Nigeria. deleted them. Also Duh Brother tagged me in a new photo on Facebook. I’ll look at that tonight (can’t get to Facebook from work, thanks OFT).
Fortunately, it’s time to go. I’ll pick up Part Three when I get home, even if it’s not technically evening at that point.

A Day In The Life… (Part One – The Morning)

People sometimes look at me, usually with a look of confusion, and wonder if it’s hard being me. usually this is immediately after I’ve done something stupid. Typically, I’ll admit that it has its ups and downs, yes, and thank you very much for reminding me of that so pointedly. But it got me thinking about a little experiment. So today (and possibly over the next couple days depending on how quickly I get bored with the project), I am going to give you, the lucky reader, a blow by blow account of my day. I’ll update every hour or so and let you know all the exciting things that have happened. Then you can judge for yourself…is it hard being me?

It is now 8:09am. My alarm went off at 5:56 as usual and it was one of those rare times when it actually woke me as opposed to me already drifting awake before then. At this point in the week, when I stay up until 11:00 to see Duh princess off to work and then try to get up by 6:00 the next morning that the lack of a full eight hours a night of beauty sleep start to get to me. So the alarm goes off and i start the day off with my traditional grumble. Being fat and all of 38 years old, i managed to hurt my back again last night while sleeping. I grabbed my glasses from the bedside table, took the remote and hobbled to the bathroom where I watched the weather and the morning headlines before switching the television over to a TiVo’d episode of Married…With Children. for the record, the television is not in the bathroom, but it is visible and audible from the toilet.
I waddled downstairs and called Duh Princess to let her know the beast was awake. She is in a particularly cheerful mood today, but refuses to tell me why. I quickly update my Facebook page and scan my wall for anything of interest, and cue up an old podcast of Glenn Beck (April 4, 2008, Hour 2) to listen to in the shower. (Most days I play music, since my computer plays it louder and I can hear it clearly from the shower – in fact my neighbors can probably hear it clearly from their showers…- but I only have a handful of songs and sometimes that gets repetitive.) I’m not really listening, it’s just background noise. In the bathroom, I weigh myself. I do this once or twice a week, but only track my weight every other Wednesday. I weigh myself five times and average it out because my bathroom floor is uneven and, depending where and how the scale is placed, my weight can fluctuate by as much as three pounds. I average out at 264.8, an increase of about half a pound from two weeks ago, almost four pounds higher than my goal weight for this point in 2009, but about four pounds lighter than I was this time last year. I’ve been feeling my weight a lot though, lately, especially since monday night was my first night back to tae kwon do in about two weeks (so, of course, we had a sparring class, so everyone could take turns kicking the sweaty fat man in the chest. i am not a good sparrer. On the plus side, I can only get better).

I shower, pause Glenn and go upstairs to get dressed and make the bed. I finish one episode of Married…With Children (which I fell asleep during last night) and start another one. The show is a classic, and I may very well do a blog about WWAD (What Would Al Do?) someday. Even though it was only 15 years ago, the world has changed so much since then and, really, I think we’d be a lot better off now if Al Bundy were in charge of the world. Jsut sayin’.

Dressed, I go back downstairs. The shower has helped my back so I’m moving along at a steady gait now. I update my Facebook status again, turn Glenn back on and am off to the kitchen. I throw together a lunch – usually Duh Princess has one set aside for me, but sometimes not when she’s working overnight. I grab a granola bar, a pack of 100 calorie peanut butter crisps, two apples, a fat free pudding and a tupperware container out of the freezer containing leftovers from the yummy chicken Duh Princess made me for Valentine’s Day. I feed Duh St. Bernard and take her out to water the lawn. I consider bringing the bag of coffee grounds Duh Princess has brought home from work a few nights ago, so that I can scatter them in the yard (coffee grounds attract worms and are good for soil, making them very good for gardens and since a lot of the yard is clay, we need all the help we can get for another bountiful harvest come gardening season this year). However, it’s difficult scattering them with a hyper, 140 pound beast attached to my wrist so i leave them be. Maybe tonight. I start my car and let it warm up a little. Once Duh S’nard is back inside, I grab my hat and earmuffs and gloves, my lunch, my jacket and my briefcase and head off to work.
Duh Princess calls on the cell phone as I’m walking from my parking lot to my office. I have to cut her short because my hand is going numb from holding the phone up to my ear, which is also cold because I have to move the earmuffs in order to hear her. (By the way, if you’re picturing some sort of fuzzy pink earmuff, you’re wrong. I wear the much more masculine flat, black ear gripping things, which may very well be one of the best inventions mankind has come up with.) Once in the office, I call her back and we make plans for me to take St. Patrick’s Day off from work. She has a catering job that she needs help with and I have a floating holiday I need to use up anyway.
I unpack. Turns out I really didn’t have anythign in my briefcase that I need today, so i could have left it home. I place my frozen lunch in front of my fan on my desk, for two reasons. If I put it in the refrigerator, it won’t be thawed out by lunchtime. Also, it appears to be mandatory that, regardless of the actualy temperature outside, if it’s winter, the heat MUST be cranked up to 100 degrees in my office and, by putting the frozen dinner in front of my fan, I create a sort of “swamp cooler” effect, so it actually circulates colder air around the cubicle that is my own little slice of hell.
I eat my granola bar, open up the usual applications on my computer, update the graph I keep of me weight, read Pearls Before Swine, check my bank account and do the Word Jumble (woo hoo! Finished in 32 seconds, though not as good as my personal best of 17 seconds.) and go to the bathroom. I decide I should do a blog about a day in my life and…well, here we are. It is now 8:33 am, Eastern Time.

9:38 am - What a busy hour. First, so you don’t think I’m just sitting here not working, I sent all the emails that built up yesterday to the printer so that i can look at them later today. I also managed to wait out my coworkers until one of them brought the printouts to me from the printer. I’ve also peed for the second time since I got here. I’ve been nursing a Diet Pepsi Max that I started yesterday. I need the caffeine burst then, I needed it this morning and, honestly, I still need it. I’m so frickin’ tired. I also ate my granola bar.
My exhaustion is showing; it took me eight minutes and thirty-two seconds to finish my crossword puzzle this morning, my worst time for a Wednesday puzzle this month. I did pretty well with the Cricklers, though. I like them better anyway and I’m glad that I can access them again (for a long time, the Office fro Technology had that paged blocked but, as they are wont to do, they’ve apparently arbitraily changed their minds again). Dawn, the office manager, brought me a stack of vouchers to process. I threw them on top of the stack (actually I placed them there somewhat gently).
I checked my lottery tickets and I won! Three whole dollars, baby! Not bad, until you consider I’ve spent $12 on the Megamillions this week (two five dollar purchases of my own, plus a dollar each time into the office pool).
I tuned into Glenn Beck a minute late – writing my first blog entry threw my morning timing off. I listen to him from a streaming radio station in Kentcuky. I used to be an Insider, but I decided i needed to cut back on some unnecessary expenses and since, streaming media is one of those arbitrary things that OFT likes to block access to, it wasn’t really worth it (though I do miss being able to download the podcasts; I don’t know what I’ll listen to at my home computer once I’ve caught up on the podcasts I have there). At any rate, somehow this station in Kentucky manages to slip through the streaming media barricade, so that’s where I listen. I’ve also got some nice 1970′s style big bulky headphones that help block out the mindless prattle of my officemates (except when they get particularly squawky in the next cubicle over about such hot topics as American Idol or where to get lunch.
I caught up on the news at Fark.com (I read the Not News, Geek and Showbiz tabs). Only interesting topics were the 30th anniversary of the barcode (which, of course, they claim is a Masonic plot for world domination…if only they knew…bwahahaha), and yet another article bashing Heroes. Much like everyone complaining about the economy helped trigger this so-called recession, I’m afraid that everyone complaining about how bad Heroes is will result in NBC cancelling it next season, especially now that their programming time has been drastically cut by the incredibly stupid idea of moving Jay Frickin’ Leno to 10:00. Honestly, if you don’t like a show, stop watching it, but don’t go harpooning it constently in the media and spoiling it for the rest of us who aren’t so finicky.
And finally, I checked my email. Plans from my mother for my father’s birthday on Sunday, and my daily Dilbert comic. This one mocks the people complaining about auto executives flying private jets to the bailout hearings and earns a place on my cabinet, which is now just about full of Dilbert strips, Pearls Before Swine strips, the occasional work-related sticky-note, and a couple pictures of friends and family.

10:36 am – This hour I worked (mostly). I moved a few things around on my cabinet door so i could add the latest Dilbert comic. I had to be careful though because, we’re rationing tape here at the office. Along with other non-essential items like file folders, paper and staples. Normally at this point in my day, I would take care of any personal or Masonic business I had on my plate but this is one of those rare days when i don’t have anything pressing going on. So I glugged the last of my Diet Pepsi max and set to work on the vouchers.
I typically do vouchers first because they are the most time-oriented (in theory they accrue interest after 30 days), and because they usually go pretty quickly. Of course, because the smartest thing to do when you’re rationing office supplies and trying not to waste a penny is to add as many regulations and added steps to making things flow smoothly, there’s now an extra step in the voucher processing process. First I enter the data into an overall tracking spreadsheet for each program. this ensures that I can answers questions down the line about the voucher. Then I add the line-by-line information from each voucher to a sopreasheet for that particular contract, and ensure that my numbers, particularly how much is left for each line item, matches what’s on the voucher. This ensures that my records match the Program Office’s numbers (which, in theory, match the contractor’s numbers). I checked the information on the voucher against our contracting database (known as CATS), to make sure that the information matches what the Office for the State Comptroller (OSC or, as I like to call them, the soulless bastards that have to oversee every frickin’ thing we do) has. You’d be surprised how many contractor’s don’t know their own address. Now, the new step, we have to figure out if the voucher needs an Attachment A or and Attachment B or none, to get paid. These vile pieces of paper from the main desk of Hell itself originated last November, when the economy started going south. Every contract, every voucher, anything having to do with money now requires an attachment with the approval of three different regulators to spend the money. Well, now that’s efficient. Fortunately, most of my contracts are Attachment B’s (which spend mostly federal funds and so, therefore, we aren’t as concerned with them, so the Attachment B is a blanket approval for the whole program). I have a couple Attachment A’s (which are contract-specific and require a different form for each contract). In fact, I just got an email from my supervisor that one of my Attachment A’s which was rejected back in November has finally been approved, so I can got back to setting up that contract…which was supposed to start on November 1st and was already behind schedule before this Attachment nonsense started. At any rate, of the ten vouchers I processed, none of them needed an attachment (because their contracts were processed prior to november of last year). But I still have to write “None” on the top right corner of each one to verify that. As my own little act of rebellion, I only write “No.” That would be me taking a firm stand against “the Man.” Plus it makes me more efficient, because it takes less time to write.
Meanwhile, my supervisor has approved my leave slips for March – the St. Patrick’s day catering event and a half hour next week when I have to leave early for a doctor’s appointment.
Also, Duh Princess called to see if i need anything while she’s out shopping. We made tentative plans to eat when I get home, as long as it’s something light. The only thing worse than being fat and out of shape while sparring is trying to do so on a full stomach. I haven’t thrown up during tae kwon do yet, but there’s always a first time. She also wants to get home quickly to meet her mother so she can hand over a couple of her paychecks (most of what Duh Princess makes goes towards paying off some money we borrowed from her parents many moons ago, before we became self-sufficient grown ups). Now I’m going to eat my peanut butter crisps.

11:41 am - This hour, i finally broke down and forked over my dollar for the office lottery pool. It’s peer pressure, really. The jackpot is $171 million and I don’t want to be the last one here if we win. I’ll probably turn my $3 winner into three more tickets of my own as well.
Meanwhile, someone has put a box of donuts holes out for public consumption. I hate when people do that. Don’t these people realize I have no self control? I don’t even like donuts, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing a cinammon and sugar. Only one, though. I’m entitled to a treat once in a while, right? Right? Bueller?
Also I have processed two contracts that came back to me yesterday. These two are in the early stages of processing. One is for the Career Pathways program (which hasn’t, technically, even been approved by OSC Almighty yet) and the other is for Educational Resources II: Electic Boogaloo. These programs aren’t as bad as some that I handle, since they are actually, at least on paper, oriented towards providing education to welfare recipients and steering them towards productive employment.
Just so you have a better understanding of how well things run here at the government, here’s a run down of the process a contract goes throguh before it’s actually approved. First the Program unit has to submit it to Contract Management (me), Budget and Legal for review. we have two weeks to review and comment, at which time any changes are made and the contract and five copies of the signature page are sent to the contractor for signature. In theory they want to work and get it back to us in a timely manner. In most cases, it’s a good theory. Once it comes back, Program sends it to me, along with four extra copies of the contract. I give a copy to my supervisor with the signature pages, to get her signature (about one day turn around). I also submit a copy to Budget with a request for coding. (Think of it this way. I have money in different pockets but they’re all in the same pair of pants. The State has a pot of money, but we can only pay certain contracts with money from certain pockets. I don’t know why. Most of what Budget does is a mystery to me, and that’s the main reason that they come in at #2, right behind OSC, on my Hit Parade of people that make my job a nightmare.) Anyway, I usually get the coding back in about a day, about the same time I get the contracts back from my supervisor. Once the contract is signed by my supervisor, I send four signature pages (the fifth is a spare in case of a problem down the line) and the original and two copies of the contract to the Attorney General’s office. This goes via courier. the courier picks up at my office on Tuesdays and Fridays. I don’t know when he delivers to the AG’s office, but I usually get the contracts back within 5-7 business days. I could probably streamline it by hand delivering the contracts (the AG’s office is only around the corner), but it would probably violate all sorts of union laws – if I deliver my own contracts, we might not need the courier! Oh, the horror! Meanwhile, I go into our database and encumber the money as specified by Budget. This is a request to actually make the money available to pay for this contract. I have to send the form that it generates upstairs to the Finance Office. (Though they are on the same floor, the Budget office and the Finance office are apparently NOT the same thing. I don’t know what the difference is except that, although the people in the Finance office are surlier, they cause me less frequent headaches.) When the Fiance approval and the AG’s approval and signature come back, then I put the package together for OSC. This is where it gets exciting (in a nerdy, spending my life in government office hell kind of way). Thanks to all the new regulation and tracking safeguards we’ve put in place, I get all these extra things to include now. (Some day I want to figure out exactly how much the state pays me for processing a contract from start to finish.) Anyway, the packet includes two copies of my cover letter (because for some reason they keep a copy and if they send it back without one, Dawn doesn’t know who to give the contract to), the finance approval, one copy of the contract (for some reason, the AG usually sends back at least one copy of the contract; at this point I usually have three left), a copy of the procurement approval (procurement is a whole other process that I need to do, to get approval to actually set up the contracts…please, don’t get me started…), a copy of an email from the Attorney General’s charities bureau certifying that the contractor is up to date on their charities registration filing (assuming they are not-for-profit, which most of my contracts are), a vednor responsibility profile detailing any issues with the contractor and their resolutions, a contractor questionnaire (as well as questionnaires for any subcontractors), proof that they are up to date with their worker’s compensation insurance, and, of course, the ubiquitous Attachment A or B as needed. Again this is sent by courier and then OSC has four weeks to approve it. With travel time, I may not see a contract back in a month and a half. During the good times, I could get a contract back in about two and a half weeks. Lately, these have not been good times. If anything is missing or they have any questions (or, I believe, if they just see my nameon the cover letter), OSC will call and want to work out any kinks with the contract before finally approving it (or, God forbid, “non-approving” it; apparently non-approving sounds more touchy-feely than “rejecting”, so i don’t get my delicate little feelings hurt). if it’s rejected, then i get to fix whatever problems there were and resubmit the contract for another 2-6 week lag period. Once the Great and Wonderful OSC has returned the approval to me (they keep their copy of the contract), I send two complete signature pages and two copies of the contract back to program, and put all my paperwork in a big red accordion folder (which we are also rationing now…) and stick it in a file cabinet (somehow my contracts always seem to end up in the bottom drawers). program keeps a copy and sends the last one back to the contractor who then, finally, usually about two months into the contract term, can actually begin working, safe and secure in the knowledge that New York State might actually pay them for their trouble.
Fortunately, these two contracts were just going to the AG’s and Finance, so they was pretty easy. I also had the opportunity to check my email again. One piece of junk mail (no more Viagara, thank you) and four notices about comments made on my newly added Facebook photos from a friend and brother Mason. I also checked Fark, but nothign new there. Though Glenn is mostly background noise, I did hear him mention tickets to a live taping of his show on Fox News on March 13 so i took a chance and emailed, requesting a pair of tickets (if Duh Princess doesn’t want to go, maybe I can drag along Duh Brother). There are only 150 available and, just as I was about to write the email, Duh Princess called to let me know she was done shopping and her mother was already waiting at home for her, so could I take her car to tae kwon do tonight so I can fill it with gas, so I was probably too late getting my request in to actually get tickets, but it was worth a shot.
And, as I was typing this (it’s been almost forty-five minuets now; it takes almost as long to describe the contract process as it does to do it…), my supervisor came over with my first “fire” of the day. Fire is a term I use to describe any non-routine issue that comes up. Apparently a voucher made its way to our office after being delivered to the wrong office. This voucher is for one of my contracts, requesting an advance. However, the contract in question is nearly expended and over. it appears they are requesting an advance from their new contract for the next phase of that Program, but used the wrong contract number, as well as as sending it to the wrong office. This is a five-year contract, and if this is how they plan to send their vouchers in, it could be a long five years. I will need to bring the voucher down to Program (since they should receive them and do whatever paperwork they need to first, before they send them to us) and straighten it out. But I’ll do that after lunch.
Because this entry is getting SO long, I’ve decided to break my day into three sections, hypothetically termed Morning, Afternoon and Evening. So, look for my next post soon.
(Are we having fun yet?)