Don't Do WORK!!

Idiots will kill you. I know. Its been proven. I am dying. It’s the kind of slow fulminating death that comes from people missing the mark time and again. Examples? I can give you none that will elaborate very precisely without giving away government stupidity on a criminal scale, but I will try. Please note that writing it out like this prevents my girlfriend from killing me from hearing it all the time.

The guy upstairs isn’t home. You might think, hey he hired me, so he must be great. Yeah sure, that’s what I thought. Today was a reminder that appearances can be deceiving. Now I know that all he does is talk.

My team leader made some statements to the press that got everyone upstairs a little jazzed. Something about picking one vendor over another, which is completely not his decision, yet he’s close to retirement so it doesn’t matter what the fuck he says. The paperwork won’t clear before he’s gone. After pissing everyone off, he looks at me, says ‘Have fun with this mess, I’m going on vacation for 2 weeks’ and rolls out.

For a brief shining moment, I rejoiced in having everyone’s attention. Then I realized they weren’t happy. Best part is that I wasn’t even in town the day it happened. Now when I give a briefing, everyone imparts their view of the team leader onto me.

So. So. So. So. So. (when I write I type the word “So” at the beginning of every sentence and then have to delete it later. I’m very annoying to speak with)

On an email list today, a message popped up that asked about the particular program in question. Since my team leader was away, I answered it as factually as possible.

Yes we have that. We’re having training next month. Here’s the guy who knows about the training.

Pretty Simple… My boss emailed me a hour later, telling me not to make announcements without him looking over them.

1.) It was already announced, since everything the government does is announce in the Public Record

2.) We had trainings prior to this. All were invited to attend.

3.) The guy who is in charge is the lead IT contractor. He was emailed all the 2 months ago.

4.) The team leader announced it in the media.

So I tried to set the record straight. I’ll be reprimanded tomorrow about going off and doing things without permission. So I guess I should just do nothing…

Perhaps I’ll go back to school, get a degree and get a better job. And do all of that while i'm at work, cause working at work just causes pain.

Mental Fart

The other day I was in a meeting and began to have some really deep thoughts on how random things are. My apologies, but this diatribe will certainly contain some ideas that I learned getting a degree in physics, but I'll keep it as light as I can.
So I'm looking at this ex-vet contractor who's trying to sell me on a HUGE investment and I start wondering about the caliber of his personality. I mean, is he a generally good guy trying to make a living or is he a cold, calibrating marketing machine determined to make me a notch in his belt. Either way, I don't care cause its his product I'm after, but judging his character keeps me entertained through the meeting. After all, the personality type is basically random. From here, my thoughts on randomness follow. Apologies that it rambles, but I thought it would be much too rude to begin outlining my thoughts while the contractor was talking.



First, I'm going to accept that things are random. There is a chance (x/set(x)) that everything happens at. Just like the roll of a die. Now, there are many different sets of chances going on all the time, everywhere. trying to track all is too hard and you have to come up with really abstract rules, so lets track 1. The one I'm tracking right now is my desire to invest based off meetings with vendors.

In statistics, you need to come up with a general model of your target population to determine its distribution...

Hmm, I'll go slower.

So I'm meeting with 1 vendor, out of a sea of vendors. Sometimes for a statistics model, you can say the sea is infinite, which makes the modeling easier, but that's not appropriate right now. There really aren't that many vendors in my market, so I have a finite number of vendors. Forget that we don't know how many.

Anyway, vendors have a couple of attributes that are desirable and various grades are available for those prices. Like how gum is cheap in a vending machine, but doesn't satisfy like the microwave pop-corn. Unlike a normal curve, a random sampling would show that there is a pyramid of contractors, with many shabbier outfits down at the bottom and the better at the top. There might be a belt of good firms in the middle or some other clumping, but in all, more at the bottom. I found a nice picture below
As I sat there, I could feel the bottom dropping out of my life. OH NO!! I'm going to be spending the rest of my life sitting in meetings so boring that I'm resorting to statistics to relieve my mind!!! Exclamation points all around!!! So the more vendors I talk to, the more likely I am to find bottom feeders. I sat there, stunned.

Then I though so more and realized, well when I find a good vendor, I can just use them over and over again. That made me feel much better. So how do I find a good vendor?

Well I can look some more. Here's me with some cool military looking glasses.
I could ask around. (I tried looking for a picture of this but only came up with porn)

Or I can steal other peoples contractors. Hmmmm. I should go back to the porn

Rules For Drinking

As a government beauracrat, I feel it is my duty to formalize my personal rules on drinking in the following document.

No straight liquor before 5 pm (martinis and scotch)
Drinking before noon is only for vacation, funerals and all night parties
No rowdy behavior during shots unless you have a group of people (more than 4) who aren't dating

Using your loose change for tip is perfectly fine as long as its from the nights transactions and you haven't touched it yet. However once touched, you can only leave whole bills.

White Wine
- fish, chicken and white sauces
- Serve Chilled


Red Wine
- Serve any other time
- Open beforehand and let breathe
- drink until your teeth turn red

Martinis

-gin is preferential
-stirred only. Shaking martinis over ice cracks the ice, making it melt into the liquor faster. Martini spoons are specially notched to prevent this chipping. If you want a watery martini, go ahead, but you're missing the point.
-add a little olive juice if you so desire
-vermouth - pour a drop into a chilled martini glass, swirl it and pour out the excess
-garnish as appropriate


Scotch
-over ice or straight up
-10 years or older (this will increase as my income does)

Beer
-there is no bad beer, only subpar
-fruity/sweet = bad

Ciders
-fruity/sweet = bad

In Front Of the White House

Today I threw up on George Bush's front lawn.

The story begins with my colleague leaving us to go back to grad school. She was one of the few people in the organization who was my age, which made us automatic friends. Plus she's cute.

We all took her to the bar across the street from work to see her off. I had contributed to a gift for her and was shocked to find out that the lady who in charge of the event bought her a scale. WTF? Scales aren't something that you buy people who are leaving the office. But that's beside the point. I stayed at the bar with her until 11, when I staggered home, ate some mac and cheese and fell asleep on the couch.

I woke up at 4 in the morning and got into bed with my girlfriend. We live in sin.

Later, I got on the bus to work and started feeling a bit ill. Apparently gin martinis will do that if consumed in the proper quantities. The bus didn't help. I kept thinking, "breathe deep" and "don't puke on the bus." I got off at the White House and lingered by a trashcan but the feeling passed. I was walking through the park in front of the white house when it came back. I saw a trashcan by a group of tourists and made my way towards it but it was too late.

I truly hope that the tourists saw my gov id badge before I started hurling, as it would probably give them something much more memorable than pictures of the the white house gate. Its a shame I wasn't dressed up, cause puking businessmen are always great to see.

Excellence in Government

Apparently I am excellent.

I always had a sneaking suspicion, but the other day I received an invitation to an Excellence in Government reception an my suspicions were confirmed.

Thinking it was some type of mass email sent out, I called my friend and asked if she was gonna come.

"To what?"

She hadn't gotten the email. Must only be going to a select few. And she's a much more disciplined worker than I am. I've never been recognized for my excellence at a job. Needless to say, she has. I wonder if they'll serve scotch?

The whole experience is very stroking to the ego, especially since I was invited to some random luncheon of CFOs the other day. I don't know if they're looking for seat fillers, but they just sat and talked for 45 minutes about problems that I won't have for another 10 years. I'll definitely forget whatever it was they said, especially since I haven't worked in finance for years. But lunch was good and I got some compliments for dressing up.

I mentioned the story to my boss and he told me that after his many years in gov, he could go to a luncheon and reception everynight of the week and some weekends if he truly wanted too.
"But I want hot wings and Miller Lite."

touche`

The Straw Man

When I first started working at the government, I worked with a guy I'll call the Straw Man. He was great. Always friendly, willing to stop and get beers after work and shoot the shit. The only problem was that he doesn't know how to work. I'll give you an example.

One time we need him to call a friend of his at another office and find something out. Not a hard request right? A month went by and nothing happened. The team leader told me that I should ask him about it a every day until it happened and the second time I asked him, he told me I was good at being a bother. But he still didn't do it. So eventually the team leader and I went down and talked to them about it. Thanks Straw Man.

He got his name because at every meeting he refers to something as being "as strawman we all put together." Which is interesting cause a straw man is a rhetorical device used to set other people up for a fall. He's got some other great one liners he liked to put out there.

"I'd like to start teeing up..."

"I just threw it over the transom.."

My first presentation to the division director, he corrected a minor mistake I made about the difference between GPS and Lat/Long.

The most frustrating part about the story is that he was promoted out of our branch, even after all the BS he fed everyone.

Incompetence Squared

Today I saw my worst case of incompetence yet in the federal government.


But a little background first. I manage a gov database that contains locations of interest. That probably sounds a lot more ominous than it should, but I'm keeping the blog very generic, so please bear with me. There's another guy, who I'll call Roo, that wanted to create a way for people to go out to these sites and upload satellite data from Blackberrys with custom GPS units. Sounds good, but our job is to run IT projects, not develop tools. Anyway, many of us think Roo is a slacker, including the boss who began asking for products.

Roo responded by saying that he wanted to present to the branch, which would prepare him for a conference presentation. The boss agreed and some weeks ago the presentation came. This was the worst presentation I've ever seen in my life. Communicating with his audience wasn't his objective. But I persevered. Halfway through I noticed a bullet point about creating records in my database, which it couldn't since the records are only about things Congress mandated us to do. So I asked him if the point was true.

"Yes."

"No its not." I explained the situation to him. Which produced quite an enjoyably retarded scene.

Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to us running the database, Roo's project was all about uploading these records. For some bizarre reason, he never asked us about our end, basically wasting his effort.

On Nothing.

HEY! I'm saying your tax $$ were wasted by this jerk!

I was also shocked to learn that his idea would still need a laptop to download data from the unit and put it in the database.

So today we're in the branch meeting again and Roo asks me if I use type X of databases.

"No."

"Then my project doesn't work"

MY GOD!!!

He's spent almost a year on this and he never checked to see if it was even inside the realm of reality. I press him on it and there is no way for it to work, even if I would let him. The boss is so shocked that he ends the meeting and stalks off.

HOW INCOMPETENT

Yet I remember when my team leader complaining about GPS units. Something about expensive custom units for peoples PDAs. The boss was okaying this for Roo's project.

"What are we doing!?" the leader would ask rhetorically, pained grimace on his face. "Roo is buying hardware when we're software providers. This is Washington Post stuff." At the time I thought he was being a drama queen, but I was wrong. Apparently the boss gave Roo permission to go ahead, even against the strong protestations of the branch's highest ranking member. Once I remembered that, I figured out why Roo never discussed his project with us. He new my team leader would torpedo the project as an expensive way to do something we already could do. So during the requirements phase of the project, we weren't consulted.


Then the boss didn't manage Roo at all, even though Roo once fell asleep on the can and was found because people heard his snoring. So he had no clue as to what Roo was doing, which was apparently nothing productive. Now he's furious with Roo, which doesn't surprise me, but he's also partially responsible. So is it a mixture of incompetence and unconsciousness? I found this nice graphic to illustrate the point.

After the meeting Roo sent out some cryptic email to the entire branch about how he was offended by our conversation. I think he's trying to cover his ass, but do you know what happens when people mess up like that?

Pardoning Scooter

After the 2004 election, George Bush said he had earned "political capital" and intended to use it. The statement seemed to be an implicit acknowledgement that he had snuck into the Presidency by the barest of margins. As if only when he had finally acheived a majority could he exercise power as he willed. Really the only difference between this term and last is that at the end of this one, Bush will pardon all of his incriminated friends. A good thing for Scooter Libby but bad for the Republican Party.

While the personal tragedy of a trusted asset in the Republican Party will be lessened, the party will suffer the ravages for many years. As the election approaches, Democrats will be able to make hay over the security breaches of the Bush administration. In fact, the "Daddy" party hasn't been fulfilling its role in a number of "security" related areas, which will restrict their ability to negate the damages of the Libby saga. The pardon, which will almost certainly happen, will send a signal that Republicans are soft on crime, something that is almost universally attributed to Democrats.

We all know that when Presidents leave power, they give passes to all of their friends who did underhanded jobs in the pursuit of power. The mere fact that President's do have the ability to pardon gives their operatives the notion that their crimes are somehow less than those of others. Nixon's statements that he couldn't commit crimes because he was the president are a clear indication of the breadth of power conveyed by the office. Perhaps Scooter wouldn't have gone so far in his pursuit of the Wilson family without this reinsurance, but the power to acquit is a necessary component of the checks and balance that make the American government great. However it does ensure that a man convicted on multiple counts of obstructing justice will never serve a days time.