| Rayne Today Searching for dharma, in spite of the weather...
Sorry for the false updates; I’m trying to implement titles with links on my weblog. It should help other bloggers who are getting XML feeds from my site. Please bear with me – and I’m open to suggestions if there’s a better way to do this. (p.s. Radio instructions are nominal on this matter, really. They stink on ice.)  comment []
Well, hardly civil; we should be getting down right ugly about the in-bred relations between Ashcroft and the White House. This nasty and inappropriate coziness may well result in a total blow-off of Valerie Plame’s outing as an undercover operative. Seriously, we should be encouraging Wilson and Plame file a civil suit as John Dean suggested in Salon.com today, to get to the bottom of this mess. They have both been damaged by this, their integrity impugned, their careers disrupted for doing nothing more than serving this nation. We should be encouraging Wilson and Plame by starting a fund for legal fees; why should they have to bear the cost of prosecuting this assault on their good names? Has anyone seen a fund set up yet? Are there any restrictions to doing so? Fill me in. I’ll forego some discretionary expense to help them. comment []
Several friends and my spouse have asked how yesterday’s interview went; I could only tell them that I really don’t know. I couldn't get a read on it. The three folks I met with were very nice, quite polite – but then you’d expect that from virtually any company, yes? They asked tough and easy questions. It was over in an hour since the interview was a team pile-on. The guy that runs the PMO, the incumbent, the project manager supported by the project coordinator role were all there to grill the next prospective applicant. I don’t know if I interviewed well; I really had no information about this company, expect what was on their website. Had I a little more insight on their culture, I might have been better prepared. They are relatively small compared to their competition, which means that my usual resources know little to nothing about them. They treat them as a flyspeck, even though this smaller, newer company has outbid them on small contracts and has the potential to grow like crazy by continuing to do so. There was simply no personal intelligence available on this outfit in advance of the interview. I could have done a lot better, in hindsight; I was cold on my feet on some of the questions. I could have done much worse; I had specific examples in my hand of project work I’ve done, ready when they asked for them even though they'd given no indication in advance that they'd want to see any examples. What I was completely unprepared for was an interview for a project management position – I was signing on a job as a project assistant, after all. They really didn’t conduct that kind of interview; 85% of the questions were about my project management skills. So now I sit and wait, stewing like our Miss Neva did after her last interview. I’m trying not to think about stupid crap like my need for a better manicure or lack of an example of a PowerPoint project presentation to share with them. I noticed a number of applications on the HR person’s desk; I’m sure there were more folks than myself who were interviewed that morning and after me yesterday afternoon. I’m also trying hard not to dwell on the workplace that I entered yesterday. As I waited in the foyer, I studied maps of the buildings’ layout. The site used to be an R&D and I wondered whether I had seen even one person who was directly employed by the Fortune 20 client/host company. Is this how we make everything today, through shell companies that hire fleets of contractors, swapping them out like interchangeable talking heads? Are corporations merely populations of changing viral loads, one bug changing out for another as contracts end and begin? Spooky stuff, seeing all these scurrying non-employees slaving away in their little boxes towards some mysterious objectives defined by masters who reside elsewhere, unnamed, undefined. Maxine’s right, we’re just somebody’s ant farm. And I’m just sitting here waiting to be another little squish-able ant under glass. comment []
Ever have a certain person on staff that begged for a nickname? You know what I mean, the kind of person to whom you may want to refer in conversation but not by name, the person who generally annoys everybody in the department with some really weird peccadilloes and generally obnoxious behavior? Yeah, that kind of person. We had one in my department, a senior manager who was a scrawny over-educated pain-in-the-ass kinder-gentler compassionate conservative. We were forbidden to wear perfume or cologne, could not serve cheese or chocolate at any group function because of his allergies. He was a pansy – no, I’m not making derogatory comments about sexuality – he only weighed about 135 soaking wet and couldn’t strain himself to do anything physical. His wife bemoaned the fact that he was inept at fixing things or doing yard work; she always had to contract the work out. In spite of a degree in engineering, he couldn’t find the business end of a screwdriver even if you handed it to him handle first. The guy was a nightmare for anyone who was center-to-left; he was all the way to the right, pegged it, blind to human issues. If you were a woman, you were invisible except when fetching was required. He gave me the creeps; shaking his weak, flabby, flaccid hand was a revolting experience. Don’t even bother with trying to explain the nature of obvious diversity problems on staff; he’d give you the deer-in-the-headlights look, defend his practices in a convoluted way, ask what exactly it was you expected of him in that ask-me-not-for-this manner. Duh. Leadership would have been a nice start. We could forgive the other personal weirdness -- we're all of us weird in some way -- but the lack of spine could not be overlooked. This guy required a nickname. Badly. We had a few that we tossed around, but they didn’t quite fit. They simply were too big for him, like an XL shirt on man with a 38-inch jacket. Literally – I think that’s what he wore on a good day. Don’t get me wrong here, I don’t have a thing about short or small men; my own father is a short man, jacket size 38. This particular guy was pint-sized not only in body but mind and soul. He merited something equally descriptive. There was a need to have something to use when in the grey zone; you know, that point near-earshot of the subject, when you might want to say to a co-worker, Pssst…what’s-his-nose is coming this way, ditch the chocolates… I had to set up travel arrangements for my own bosses, two of five executives who needed to be at a meeting in NYC. Unfortunately, the corporate jet only had room for four of the five guys. A debate ensued between the four executives who were not What’s-his-nose over who would be omitted from the flight and forced to take a commercial flight, arriving late for the meeting. It didn’t occur to them for a while that What’s-his-nose should be the one who caught the commercial flight. Eventually a certain television advertisement for Rold Gold pretzels featuring Jason Alexander getting thrown off the plane came up during the discussion. Heh. Pretzel Boy was born. Yeah, throw him off the plane. We still refer to him by this name even though he’s been retired for a couple of years; it stuck, well and truly, scrawny twig-thin spineless corporately-convoluted thing that he was. There’ve been times when I thought of that nickname first before even thinking of his real name; it simply fit too well. --- You can imagine my amusement this week when I read an opinion from the New York Times (via IHT) about George Bush and the bubble in which he appears to be living. He’s shielded from so much of life, from protesters to accusations of vacuity and wrong-doing by the wall his handlers have erected around him. Yeah, you guessed it. Bubble Boy is born. Will it stick? You be the judge. comment []
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