Kzinti's Kouch

You know what I'm saying? Mmmm-hmmm...

Things I am not Doing today:

• Working for the Man...
• Redoing charts for the fourteenth time, only with a blue trendline instead of a black one...
• Listening to myself sweat while in cotton pajamas
• Silently cursing my Goofy-ass boss. Er, Bosshole? Yeah... Bosshole...
• Wondering what to do about lunch since I forgot to bring it in
• Getting up with the sun
• Searching for a parking spot closer than a half mile from the front door
• Listening to everyone implode every time something breaks down
• Cutting the grass

Things I am Doing today:

• Enjoying every penny of A/C I can get my hands on
• Waking up at the crack of noon.
• Listening to the sound of silence and a fan...
• Minor Honey-do projects. At least two a day.
• Slightly peeling from sunburn
• Reclining, cool drink by my side and typing away
• Stressing. Not!
• Wondering about the difficult stuff. What's for dinner?
• Did I mention that A/C thing already? Yeah, lots of that...
• Pizza and a movie with the family last night too... Tri-fecta...

Hope your day is going as well. =)

Thanks for all the great discussion on the last topic. Some really great points made. Naturally, when I'm thinking on something, other things whirl about on tangents to that thought and some come to surface as partial thoughts themselves. One particular one is the following situation. You wake up tomorrow and things are different. You are living your life one way and suddenly, you have the opportunity to change everything. Where you live, where you work, who your friends are, cosmetic surgery, whatever. Everything that was, is now the beginning of some new possibility. Tomorrow is a whole new beginning.

First, in regards to employment, what would you really enjoy doing? Now that you've had time out in the job environment, if you had it to do over, would you stick where you are or find something else that interests you? I think that if I had the opportunity to go at it again, I might find myself doing somethign vastly different than what I am currently doing. I would like to be a software business analyst. Sure, lots of travel and long hours, but the sense of accomplishment, the challenge, the rewards... All things I'd like to have where I am, but isn't going to happen. Where I am right now is all the further I'll ever go, is all that I'll ever be. Which is good for stability, but then again, I've never really been about stability.

Next, as far as where I'd move to, I'd like to try down by Austin Texas, or Tybee Island Georgia, or maybe Port Angeles Washington. Someplace beautiful, has four seasons, nature nearby, maybe the ocean, who knows. Missouri has bene nice, but I want someplace new to adventure around, someplace I can take the RV out to and camp out for the weekend and enjoy the open spaces. Texas provides lots of desert, even the coast nearby, Georgia has the coast right there, with fresh seafood a local favorite and mine. But Washington offers the chance to whale watch which has been something I have wanted to go do for a long time. Just to be near a creature so gigantic yet majestic as they are...

For myself, I would get myself a personal trainer or a memebrship to a gym with access to one. I want to lose weight, but don't want to do it the easy way with sucking and surgery. I want it to come off the healthy way, slow and steady. I don't want to pound the weights several hours a day, I want to do this just like I put it on, slow and natural. Just not taking as many years though. One or two would be good. I mean, I do have over 100 pounds more to lose. I'm not the kind of person to do the cosmetic surgery, I don't want a cleft chin, pec implants, but lift or tummy tuck. I'm pretty happy with myself the way I am and as long as I am happy, who cares if anyone else thinks I'm a fat slob. Well, kind of a slob anyways. I pick up my dirty clothes, usually. LOL.

Finally, friends. I have a good group of friends, a few best friends and many acquaintances. I wouldn't want to lose any of the good friends, but I think that would never happen no matter where I moved or whatever I became. They'd still be there to send me a dirty email, call me to bug me once in a while or simply ask if I'm still alive. I think those bonds, once forged, are there forever. So, if you've read along this far into this mess, you should have realized one very important factor. If there is something you are wanting to change, something you would like to see different about yourself, there may never be a magic new beginning. Yet, there is always tomorrow, a new day waiting for new things to happen. All you have to do is have the confidence in yourself to see the change you want to become and make it happen.

I hope tomorrow finds all of you who are thinking of change not sitting idly by and waiting for something to happen for you, but instead getting out and making those things happen. As is oft quoted, the only things we regret are those that we failed to attempt. Now get out there and make something happen!

It's been a while since I wrote something of substance here, but I decided to do some public pondering. My wife and I have been having some discussions about relationships, all different aspects of them. A topic that came up last night was one about compromise. What does compromising really mean? If I want to do something, she doesn't and I do it anyway, is that a compromise? If she wants to paint the kitchen blue, I want red and it gets painted blue, is that a compromise? According to Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary, Compromise is defined as such:

• Settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions

Interesting. Mutual concession. So, I researched the root word of concession, Concede, and came up with this:

• To grant as a right or priviledge. To acknowledge grudgingly or hesitantly.

Sooo... Basically, if there is a decision to be made, one side must always give way? Or is the middle ground able to be found? In the kitchen example, what if the colors chosen were maybe blue tile with red edging, or something similar? To me, that's a true compromise, when both parties give a little. It's not red or blue, but somewhere in the middle. But what of matters where there is no middle? Like having kids or not having kids. No one has ever been slightly pregnant, or almost pregnant. Either you are or you aren't. How are those decisions made, those compromises resolved?

Is it truly a compromise when, say, in our house, my wife wanted a dog. I was extremely opposed to getting a dog and she was all for it. Needless to say we now have three of them. So, did I compromise? What was the compromise? Did she simply assert her right as an adult and go do what she wanted? Or the time I bought a piece of property she was vehemently against purchasing. Did she compromise even though I bought the property despite her objections? More questions than answers on this topic. What gets labeled as compromise and what gets labeled as "just doing it".

In my mind, compromise is when two people with two seperate ideas can sit down and find some common ground and make a new, third idea that, while it may not fully please both parties, pleases them enough to be willing to agree to the third idea. Otherwise it fits the definition of Acquiesce, which is defined as such:

•  To accept, comply, or submit tacitly or passively

This definition describes you just letting stuff happen, sitting by passively as it does so. Just accepting that what will be, will be. Which is odd, since most of the time we say that a compromise was reached. I just don't see what was compromised, I rather see Acquiescence the majority of the time. For example, in Green Acres, Mr. Douglas wants to live in the country on the farm, Mrs. Douglas wants to live in the city, so they go live in the country. That's Acquiescence. If it was compromise, they'd live in a major suburb with a few acres of land for him to enjoy, yet near to all the shopping and social stuff for her to enjoy. See, third choice, Compromise.

So, in your own relationships, do you tend to see more Acquiescence or Compromise? Do you work together and come up with unique solutions to solve both of your problems, or does one person give in and let the other have their way? And if so, is it a matter of knowing that something is more important for the other person so you just let them have their way, or that it's not worth a fight over whatever particular thing happens to come up, or even that you may not be qualified to make decisions about a certain thing. I'd be interested to hear from everyone on this. Acquiesce, or Compromise... You decide...

Things I am Loathing today:

• Hot, heat, all things hot related, except jalapenos and habaneros. Oh, and Halle Berry.
• Forgetting cheese for my tacos.
• Sunburn. Went to the ballgame and came home a lobster. Ooochie....
• Work. All management have lost sight of the goal and are instead focusing on the chart. All hail the chart.

Things I am Loving today:

• Tacos for lunch. Awesomeness... Even without cheese.
• Having almost enough cash to make it through the end of the month in the black.
• Went for ice cream yesterday. Blueberry Crunch Ice Cream... Nummers...
• Being able to leap tall Excel charts in a single bound...
• Finding a Coleco video game system in my desk drawer, way in the back. The battery operated kind...
• Being one of only three people in the office who knows how to make charts in MiniTab Statistical Software...
• Crushing my enemies, driving them before me and listening to the lamentations of their women...

OK, so here's the latest scoop. I have this big mess, called my workshop. Actually, It's the back half of a two car garage that I walled in and made into a computer workshop. It's been kind of the bane of my existence for quite a long time. Problem is, I have sooo much stuff in here, that at one point, it literally sunk the floor of the garage by over an inch. No, seriously!! LOL. I managed since then to get rid of over 20,000 pounds of computer equipment. Here is how what is left is such a  problem, I need the use of the full garage space the second week in July. I have a week off coming the first week of July, so I need to be ready to go on gettng all this stuff gone. Here is what I am asking:

With all this stuff, mainly pieces and parts of computer stuff, hard drives, cards, cases, etc... What is the best way to get all this stuff gone in the week I have off? I am open to eBay, Craigslist or whatever, even Freecycle for the stuff I can't sell. I just need some good advice from someone who has handled an epic mess of this proportion before. Where do I start, how do I proceed and most importantly how do I make sure this all gone in a week? I have a week of prep time this coming week, providing I'm not working twelve hour days, so anything that needs done ahead of time, that's my window of opportunity.

So, yeah. Any suggestions welcome. I am handy with a computer, so I can log stuff into a spreadsheet or what have you. Just need someone to help me get my head straight. I need this stuff gone, all of it, that week. No if, ands or buts. I can't stress that this project is of utmost importance. Alrighty then...

Comment lines are open and operators are standing by...

My Nightmare. A moving story of corruption, scandal and nekkedness in the IT Department. Well, maybe not nekkedness, but sex sells baby!!!

So... There I was. Long ago, in a facility far, far away, very near here. Just a peon. A tiny cog in the great wheel that is the American Automotive Industry. One step up from entry level. Yet, a peon with a dream and a hackneyed IT Degree. As the years passed at the giganto-multi-national corporation, certain patterns developed. The IT Department, the bane of all existence, the Gate Keepers and the Holders of Keys, who were supposed to be the pinnacle of customer service, alas, failed miserably to deliver. Ok, enough build up crap, let's get down to my nightmare right quick like. LOL

Our plant was on the list for a major software implementation/integration project that performs the following function: When properly installed, you can pull up a web browser and watch the equipment in our plant run from any computer on the corporate networked computer in the world. You could be sitting in Detroit, lovely downtown Detroit and see what's going on here in Missouri. It would let you run reports on what equipment is running slowest, had the most faults or even which one was bypassed when broken. All manner of things can be recorded, reported, monitored in real time or just plain charted in beautiful technicolor. It's a truly awesome system.

Enter me, peon extraordinaire. Eyes wide with wonder at all the amazing operations of the entire facility, soaking in all the info I can. I know the networks, the servers, the applications, phone extensions, where computer terminals are by computer name, everything. LOL. I can rule the world... When I get tasked to be the new administrator of this awesome system, I'm ecstatic. Not only do I get to go to Canada for training, but I get to be there for the entire project and look over everyones shoulders. Oh HELL yeah... <hip pumping motion> Can you feel that? MmmmHmmm... Of course, when the training was moved to downtown Detroit, I should have had a premonition of what was to come...

The Project. It was like watching the woman of your dreams taking off her clothes, only to find yourself in the middle of your own personal Crying Game. The Corporate IT people sent down this cluster-fied thing that in no way resembled the beautiful, magnificent piece of software that I had been educated on. Holy crap, Batman! What had they done? Reports are locked down and there are like ten. The data tags are put in 180 degrees out from the way they are supposed to be programmed. I mean, I was literally sick. I had worked my ass off to learn the ins and outs of the entire plant floor equipment, the data concentrators, their setup, programming... The whole memory map for the entire department resides in my head. Noooooooo...

Yeah, so, I'm nerdy and awesome like that. Shut up. When this crap was loaded on MY servers, that's right, MINE I tell you, I was slightly pissed. Oh, hell. I was ready to tear someone's head off and crap down the hole as a warning to the others. I fought, literally fought, with Corporate IT from day one of the project. I went all the way up the Corporate.ladder, as is the politically correct way to do that sort of thing, then I called out the big hammer. Let's just say that I know, errr, knew some big names up North and when I call, they know to hit and hit hard. LOL. I may be a peon, but I'm kind of the Super-Peon... LOL. Yeah, Super Nerd.. Shut up already. Again.

So, fast forward tot he big showdown scene. Tumbleweeds blwoing across the conference room floor, that odd whistling monkey sound... There we are, in the Plant Manager's office, him to my right, our Assistant Plant Manager to my left and every upper manager in my department around the table and we are doing a conference call to the IT Director in Detroit. The guy who hired the guy who runs the North American IT Department. LOL. The Head IT Cheese. Big Daddy IT. On the phone are the many members of the install, programming and development team. They are peppering me left and right regarding "What seems to be the problem?"...  Hardly a word was said on our end by anyone at the table but me. Here's the sooooo funny part of this whole story...

I detail, from memory mind you, cause I'm all kinds of Nerdy goodness in a big package, step by step how piss poor the whole project went. From the problems at every piece of equipment, the programming, the reports, even the crappy database setups that left us with a data black hole from where we cannot retrieve data once it has gone. I explain how basically they had spent $2 million dollars on this failed, piss poor, miserable dog-ass thing and they should, all of them, be praying to whatever God they believed in that I was not the IT Director. I said that if I was the Director over a project of that magnitude that was as horrible an implementation as this one, I would walk next door and FIRE every single person who touched that program. I then exlained detail by detail why I would fire every one of them and what my next course of action would be to try and salvage something out of this investment.

It wasn't two months later and it happened... They went through and cleaned house in Corporate IT, essentially firing all those who were involved with that project. Normally I would have felt guilty at having been the reason why people got fired. Normally I might even have been happy that they had been fired because they were all crapheads who deserved every bit and then some of what they got. But, I'm left with this massive headache that I have been fighting for the last few years. Researching thousands of lines of code from the floor level to the data concentrators to the servers, trying, in my head, to put a plan together to salvage something out of this wreckage.

• Good news. After these few years, I think I have it all put together.
• Better news, it will only cost roughly $350,000.
• Best news, I got Corporate Ok to go ahead with it this week.

• Bad news: The Corporate guy I'm dealing with was one of the few who didn't get fired in the fiasco, evidently he knows where enough skeletons are buried to escape the butcher's knife.
• Worse news: he's already trying to tell me what to do and how to do it.
• Worst news: He's trying to drag backing for his viewpoint into the picture from the Corporate guy who approved the check.

So, how does this soap opera end? Like any soap opera... I have some surprises in store for this guy. Say hello to my little friend... LOL. Actually, I have everything I need to keep this guy on a tight leash and remind him oh-so gently that I control this project and I WILL see him walked out of the plant before I let him compromise this project at any time.Again. Cause I'm all badass like that. LOL. Actually, he has received his warning shot today, while trying to flex his muscles at me. Postured emails are a poor medium to do that with. LOL. I simply corrected his mistaken assumptions and ideas, explained the correct ones, MINE, and sent kindest regards to him and a major player in the food chain who can, and will, yank his leash any time I need it yanked.

It's good to be the King. It's even better to be the guy behind the King. Usually, when the revolt comes, that guy doesn't get his head lopped off. LOL. SO, that's my little nightmare story about Corporate IT and how I may just be able to pull this sinking ship out of the one way no return zone. Awesomeness on so many levels. I feel like I'm in The Revenge of the Nerds right now, with We Are the Champions playing in the background... Me with my cape flapping slowly in the wind... LOL.

Have a great day peoples. I better go hit the showers and then bed soon...

Things I am Loathing today:

• Motorhome dude. Looks like it's repo time....
• Pain-in-the-ass boss is back... With a vengence...
• Trash. Again. <sigh> I quit...
• An uncertain future.
• Having everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE at work trying to be my boss.

Things I am Loving today:

• Having one of the safest jobs in the Auto Industry. We rock...
• Last payday. Getting paid for the equivalent of 118 hours. Three weeks pay in one check baby...
• Another roast, potatoes and carrots. Yummers. Made the whole office hungry today.
• Project money. I've helped secure almost $3 million in projects this week and possibly yet another $2 million...
• Personal Banks... I think I'm going to go for it...
• Friends. Best ever. EVER...
• And this brief conversation yesterday with a female engineer who is here to assist with our projects:
• VISITOR: Are you [redacted]?
• ME: Um, yep. That'd be me.
• VISITOR: [redacted] Told me to come see you.
• ME: What can I do for you?
• VISITOR: Do you have a mouse in your drawer?
• ME: Nope, just happy to see you...
• COWORKER: [blushes red all the way down his neck]
• ME: (smiling, reaches into drawer, pulls out spare USB mouse and hands it over) LOLOL

So, I surf the net a lot. You've heard it before. I do it generally when my mind needs to wander and slip the constraints of the workday grind. At home when I'm bored or can't sleep. Doesn't matter if it's politics, finance, science, cartoons, or anything. Just to get more imput, need more input... Well, there I was the other night, surfing around when I get this message from a buddy of mine whom I've not heard from in a while. He messages me to call him right then. I look over, it's two in the morning. Yeah, I can't sleep sometimes and so I stay up late surfing. Anyways, I call him and we talk for like two hours.

He sends me to this website of a guy located in our city who is doing something odd. Odd, not in the fashion of piercing his scrotum or getting surgical implants to look like Madonna, but odd in the fact that what he did, how he did it and what he did has rarely been done, yet apparently is something we ALL can do. This was so mind blowingly odd that I had to surf more details. And more details. Until I was dozens of sites deep in law books, the Constitution and thousands of more questions coming up. I still am doing research, but this particular thing is so odd, I know I'm taking a day off and go to this guy's trial coming up in August to see if the Government has anything to say about it. Yeah, you didn't think that something so odd wouldn't involve some sort of court case now did you? LOL

I know, you know, we all know, I get interested in paint flaking off the wall, a shiny new bauble or even a candle flickering in the breeze. SO what the hell would get me so interested like that? Something so odd that it just might work. In fact, has been working. This guy became his own private bank. Not banker, BANK. Say it with me now, B-A-N-K. How you ask? Well see the site for the fine details but basically, he took ownership of his Government issued bond account and filed several pieces of paperwork and became a private bank. He loans money. To people like you and me. Details on his website. The FBI said this was fraud, confiscated all his records and computers but have not charged him in over six months. I know! Private Bank...

I didn't initially know what to make of it really, except this guy either has huge brass balls or he wants a one way ticket to pound-em-in-the-ass prison. Judging by his grasp of the laws and other information on the site, this guy knows his stuff. Which makes me wonder. If this is real, and we can all become our own private banks, what the hell do we need banks for? Even scarier is the information about the US Monetary System, the National Debt and the fact that the whole Country is headed for insolvency. Doomsday crap? Maybe not the 2012 kind of hocus pocus, but very detailed information that doesn't just grab you by the nose and drag you to the point, they merely make the points and let you draw your own informed conclusion.

So, if you think I've gone off the farm, am nuts, then I put it to you to read through this guy's site, take in the information and do the research. Tell me where he is wrong. Tell me why what he is doing is a felony, crime, or fraud. I've looked for about two weeks now and for the life of me, this all makes very good sense, even if it goes against everything that we've ever been taught. Which is also his intent. Wake up people! LOL. And I don't mean anyone who has fallen asleep by now. Those people, I'm putting gum in their hair. Gum with spider eggs in it. LOL. So, again. Read it, then let's discuss it. I am really interested to hear what the general concensus is. Nutjob or Big Brass Balls. I started in the middle and at first wavered towards Nutjob, but after reading and researching, I am pushing over into the Ballsy. Extremely Ballsy...

Oh, before I forget, here is the LINK to his site. Check it out and seriously, as serious as I'll ever get online, let me know via comments, email, etc. what your thoughts are. Definitely curious... Alright, nothing further to see here, please go about your business elsewhere. LOL.