Left Houston Sunday, July 18th and convoyed to Gravette-by-god Arkansas with three other techs (two to a car) to work for an IT contractor that had hired me about this time last year to work on a Wal-Mart project. This go-round though I won’t be working as a project manager, but as a Network Technician. “What’s the job description?”, I asked of my recruiter. “Don’t worry”, she said, “you’re perfect for it”. And off we went. More about that in a future installment.
My car-mate for the ride up was a 6’ 3” Jamaican I’ll call Nathan, and he was good company. It took us ten hours to get up there and we talked at least six of it about politics and the world. Nathan was amazingly well informed, neither liberal or conservative. I’m always impressed when somebody knows as much about political events as me, a sure sign of political junkiness, not to mention the fact that he’s been in the country only ten years, and has an over-arching political philosophy to boot.
That said, you would not be surprised to hear that Nathan failed his blood test for THC, the active chemical in Marijuana, which is the stuff of legend in the popular portrayal of Jamaican culture. As Nathan put it: “I follow the Rastafarian teachings of Bob Marley. To Bob Marley, Ganja was a sacrament”. Fair enough, but it’s a deal killer too, at least for some employers. I and two other techs dropped him at a bus station on our way out of town, and he smiled and waved as if he had not a care in the world. The two guys I was riding with to St. Augustine, FL turned out not to be near as interesting conversationalists.
Reminds me of another Marijuana incident two weeks later. One of our Techs was trying to get his son hired, and called him to advise that he would have to pass a drug test. “How long has it been since you smoked any weed?”, he asked his son. “A couple weeks” was the answer. Another Tech advised him to go to GNC and get an herbal supplement that would mask THC, which stays in your system for several weeks otherwise. Yet another member of our group from Fayetteville, AR advised that before the test, he should drink a gallon of pickle juice. “It is 100% fool proof”, he announced, with the casual authority of a man raised in the hills of Ozarka, and the passer of many a drug test.
The rest of the group then compared notes on how long it takes to get various drugs out of your system, favored ways to defeat a drug test. Near as I can remember, the consensus was: cocaine: 4-7 days; Ecstasy: 2 days; Meth: 2 weeks; marijuana: 1 month. And everybody agreed that there were home remedies to block all of them from showing up on a drug test. I asked how long before the test you needed to drink the gallon of pickle juice to mask THC, and the pickle juice guy said at least one hour. Everybody agreed that Marijuana stayed in your bloodstream longer than anything else.
“That Weed will screw you every time”, said one guy, “and it ain’t nearly the high of those other things”. Did I mention Contract Techs are a diverse lot?
That reminds me of another story: As I mentioned earlier, last year I did a stint as a Project Manager for the same company, which involved me living in Northwest Arkansas for about 3 and 1/2 months. For most of that time I lived in a company-rented home with the company’s Senior Project Manager, a guy I’ll call Bob. Bob was a font of wisdom on the ins-and-outs of company politics, Project Management methodology, and living for extended periods of time on the road. He also had very strong opinions about the character, usefulness and reliability of Contract Technicians, which is pretty much all this company hires. Bob treated all of his Techs like crap, and I asked him why. He replied: “There’s not a one of them worth a damn”, says Bob. “If they were, they’d have regular jobs. None of them can get regular jobs because none of them is worth a damn".
Bob was himself a contract employee, and not a keen appreciator of irony.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Democrats Build More Pyramids, Call It Economic Activity
Show OffHisMeds a Democrat, and he’ll show you somebody who thinks all government employment and all government spending – regardless of how wasteful and pointless – is a good thing. This pathology takes many different forms: constantly reducing class size so as to hire more teachers; endless “infrastructure” projects; giving money to the states to subsidize Medicaid; outright transfer payments (known as Revenue Sharing) to states to help them meet payroll; the endless expansion of the bureaucracy.
The list goes on.
OffHisMeds calls this activity “Pyramid Building”. Like the ancient pyramids of old, the enterprise serves no practical purpose, it consumes vast amounts of wealth, and virtually nobody benefits from it other than the people involved in building, servicing and maintaining the pyramids. They are also monuments to the egos of their builders, who see in themselves a god-like stature not apparent to everybody else, although “everybody else” is picking up the tab.
There are a couple of important differences, though, between Modern pyramids and those of, say, ancient Egypt. For one thing, nothing tangible comes of Democrat pyramid building. Egypt built hundreds of towering structures made of stone and marble. Democrats built Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the National Institute of the Arts, AARP, as well as the departments of Energy, Education, Interior, Justice and Commerce, to name but a few.
Democrats also co-opt and render pointless other once functional institutions such as our military and NASA, making them havens for terrorists or bastions of entropy and political correctness, their primary functions long-abandoned, their sole purpose to build yet more pyramids, however insubstantial, and including (but not limited to) such follies as neighborhood outreach programs in Afghanistan, and building up the esteem of Islamists.
And unlike ancient pyramids of old, these modern pyramids aren’t impressive, will not stand the test of time, serve no useful purpose, and will never pay off; not even as tourist attractions some thousands of years in the future. In fact, virtually none of them have any physical substance at all.
For today’s example in Democrat pyramid building, I give you the National Transportation and Safety Board. As federal agencies go, the NTSB is particularly worthless, as this story will illustrate. The story is straightforward, and the causes painfully apparent to anybody who saw a picture of the destruction: A semi was stopped on a highway by an accident; a pickup truck crashed into it, despite there being no obstructions to the view of the driver; a school bus crashed into and rolled over the pickup; a second school bus crashed into the rear of the first. The pickup driver and a female student were killed.
After seeing the picture, I opined to a co-worker that all three vehicles involved in the chain reaction collision with the Semi clearly hadn’t been paying attention, and that the bus drivers in particular had lapsed into “herd” mode, blindly following the movement of the vehicle in front of them. Particularly inexplicable was the failure of the first bus driver to see the stopped Semi ahead over the pickup truck in front of her.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol concluded within hours that “the 75-year-old driver of the first bus was "inattentive," and the 38-year-old driver of the second was "following too closely." Enter the NTSB. When OffHisMeds heard that the NTSB had insinuated itself into the investigation, he wondered if he would hear what he always hears whenever the NTSB is involved in an accident: “the investigation will take 12 to 18 months”. As any follower of government folly knows, this little bit of Democrat-speak is a catch-all justification for endless government dithering, consumption of tax dollars, unaccountability and pointless employment.
Sure enough, NTSB Vice Chairman Christopher Hart said "people, vehicles and the environment at the crash scene will be evaluated by the team of 14 investigators, though a final report could take up to 18 months”.
OHM waits with bated breath to hear of the location where the NTSB will transport the damaged vehicles so as to reconstruct them in their entirety, employing CSI-like technology (including but not limited to lasers, infrared and all manner of exotic chemicals) to the wreckage and the expenditure of millions of dollars so as to reach the same conclusion as the Missouri State Highway Patrol and Yours Truly, who essentially did it for free.
OHM just wishes the NTSB jerk-offs would get on the same page as the rest of humanity and conclude their investigation in the same timeframe as the Missou SHP, content that the obvious answer is the answer, and requires neither a fourteen month investigation, or their continued presence.
Fat chance.
The list goes on.
OffHisMeds calls this activity “Pyramid Building”. Like the ancient pyramids of old, the enterprise serves no practical purpose, it consumes vast amounts of wealth, and virtually nobody benefits from it other than the people involved in building, servicing and maintaining the pyramids. They are also monuments to the egos of their builders, who see in themselves a god-like stature not apparent to everybody else, although “everybody else” is picking up the tab.
There are a couple of important differences, though, between Modern pyramids and those of, say, ancient Egypt. For one thing, nothing tangible comes of Democrat pyramid building. Egypt built hundreds of towering structures made of stone and marble. Democrats built Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the National Institute of the Arts, AARP, as well as the departments of Energy, Education, Interior, Justice and Commerce, to name but a few.
Democrats also co-opt and render pointless other once functional institutions such as our military and NASA, making them havens for terrorists or bastions of entropy and political correctness, their primary functions long-abandoned, their sole purpose to build yet more pyramids, however insubstantial, and including (but not limited to) such follies as neighborhood outreach programs in Afghanistan, and building up the esteem of Islamists.
And unlike ancient pyramids of old, these modern pyramids aren’t impressive, will not stand the test of time, serve no useful purpose, and will never pay off; not even as tourist attractions some thousands of years in the future. In fact, virtually none of them have any physical substance at all.
For today’s example in Democrat pyramid building, I give you the National Transportation and Safety Board. As federal agencies go, the NTSB is particularly worthless, as this story will illustrate. The story is straightforward, and the causes painfully apparent to anybody who saw a picture of the destruction: A semi was stopped on a highway by an accident; a pickup truck crashed into it, despite there being no obstructions to the view of the driver; a school bus crashed into and rolled over the pickup; a second school bus crashed into the rear of the first. The pickup driver and a female student were killed.
After seeing the picture, I opined to a co-worker that all three vehicles involved in the chain reaction collision with the Semi clearly hadn’t been paying attention, and that the bus drivers in particular had lapsed into “herd” mode, blindly following the movement of the vehicle in front of them. Particularly inexplicable was the failure of the first bus driver to see the stopped Semi ahead over the pickup truck in front of her.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol concluded within hours that “the 75-year-old driver of the first bus was "inattentive," and the 38-year-old driver of the second was "following too closely." Enter the NTSB. When OffHisMeds heard that the NTSB had insinuated itself into the investigation, he wondered if he would hear what he always hears whenever the NTSB is involved in an accident: “the investigation will take 12 to 18 months”. As any follower of government folly knows, this little bit of Democrat-speak is a catch-all justification for endless government dithering, consumption of tax dollars, unaccountability and pointless employment.
Sure enough, NTSB Vice Chairman Christopher Hart said "people, vehicles and the environment at the crash scene will be evaluated by the team of 14 investigators, though a final report could take up to 18 months”.
OHM waits with bated breath to hear of the location where the NTSB will transport the damaged vehicles so as to reconstruct them in their entirety, employing CSI-like technology (including but not limited to lasers, infrared and all manner of exotic chemicals) to the wreckage and the expenditure of millions of dollars so as to reach the same conclusion as the Missouri State Highway Patrol and Yours Truly, who essentially did it for free.
OHM just wishes the NTSB jerk-offs would get on the same page as the rest of humanity and conclude their investigation in the same timeframe as the Missou SHP, content that the obvious answer is the answer, and requires neither a fourteen month investigation, or their continued presence.
Fat chance.
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