Monthly Archives: February 2012

Proper punctuation prevents poor performance…

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Some things we do are important and can have a real impact on real people scattered around the world. Those are the kinds of things you don’t mind spending hours working to perfect. Ensuring that there are the correct number of spaces following the various kinds of punctuation doesn’t generally fall into that category. Sure, formatting and general “prettiness” of a document are important insofar as you want it to be put together enough that people take your product seriously, but somehow I don’t think it’s important enough that we need to spend 20 or 30 man-hours making sure that everything in a 75 page document that no one outside these four walls will ever lay eyes on is “just so.” Then again, I have been wrong, or perhaps only misguided, before.

Look, I’m all for providing the best product possible, but I’m also a believer in the law of diminishing returns. There comes a point where it just isn’t cost effective to keep tweaking something around the margins. We all have personal pet peeves and certain ways we like to do things, but we’ve now officially letting perfection stand in the way of good enough to its illogical extreme. But hey, I’m not the guy signing the checks or deciding who works on what and for how long, so as long as the direct deposit doesn’t start bouncing, I’ll sit here plugging away at whatever someone tells me is the day’s priority. Today, like yesterday, it seems that that priority is word spacing and paragraph alignment. Don’t ask me why that is, but I’ll keep plugging away at it until someone tells me to shuffle on to something else.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Turned to mush…

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Hard as I’ve been trying to write today, I think it’s time to confess that my brain turned to mush before I even managed to leave the house this morning. Sure, it was firing well enough to do some editing and crank out a couple of emails, but it just wasn’t in a place today to do any heavy lifting. If you spend enough time writing, you’re going to have days like that now and then. It’s always good when they show up on days that don’t require that much editorial horsepower, though, since needing to write and not being able to squeeze anything out ranks right up there with any other kind of constipation on the ol’ Annoy-O-Meter. Since the week looks like it’s going to be more about exerting editorial influence than actually creating anything new or interesting, it might just be a good idea that it’s getting a period of pronounced mush out of the way now instead of showing up later when I really have something to say.

As a reader, I’m sure these occasional bouts of brain cramping are even less interesting for your as they are for me, but since there’s no real solution other than slogging through them, I’ll just keep plugging away until I hit on something that resonates. In the meantime, I think the best course of action is to find some mindless drivel on television and let the gray matter get some rest.

Ah, Saturday…

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I look forward to your coming all week, Saturday and yet somehow when you get here you’re never as awesome as I expected you to be. You always seem to turn into me sitting here paying bills, cleaning the bathroom, and going to the dump. That isn’t the glorious day off I had in mind when I yearned for you back on Wednesday. I could spend another half hour spelling out all the ways you’ve disappointed me this morning, but I need to go get a few more things done so I can at least salvage the afternoon.

Don’t go there…

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There are few things that generate a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach as fast as when a coworker randomly decides to pick my phone up off the desk and start poking around. Sure, there’s nothing technically illegal on there, but you’re just going to have to believe me when I say that there are images, files, bookmarks, and texts that would probably make their overly-sensitive eyes bug out of their heads. I’m not particularly easy to embarrass, but there are most assuredly some conversations that I don’t particularly want to have with my colleagues. That’s more to save them from mortification than anything else.

Unfortunately, some people just aren’t as good at picking up on subtlety as they are at picking things up off your desk… Which means you have to look them directly in the eye and tell them to be careful because they are going to end up seeing way more than they bargained for. It’s always fun to see the light slowly flicker on as it dawns on them what you’re talking about. It’s like suddenly your phone heated up to 300 degrees and they can’t get rid of it fast enough. For a minute, I actually thought the nosy coworker in question was actually going to drop it on the spot.

It would probably cost me a new phone at least, but maybe I’ll just let the next one get a good look at the ol’ photo archive. It might just be worth the replacement price and the week long trip to sensitivity training it would be sure to cause.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The Maryland Transportation Authority. Dear Asshats, if you’re going to chance what lane collects which kind of toll it might be a good idea to go ahead and let people know that in advance instead of surprising everyone with the new and improved layout during afternoon rush hour. That would have saved you from receiving many of spontaneous hand gestures and it would have saved us from sitting on the bridge banging our heads against the steering wheel while everyone at the front of the line tried wrapping their tiny little minds around what was happening.

2. Retirement. If I had to figure out the most talked about issue I’ve heard discussed since joining the workforce it would be retirement without question. It’s possible that it’s a national obsession. I’m looking forward to that happy day when I can tell The Man to shove it just like everyone else, but I don’t have an overwhelming need to talk about it at every opportunity. Maybe it’s because even after eight years I’m still usually the youngest guy in most rooms, but I don’t get the obsession these old codgers have with agonizing over every detail of the how’s and what’s. Check back with me in about 27 years and 332 days and maybe I’ll be singing a different tune, but for now, I think just quietly disappearing one day may be the best approach.

3. Donald Trump. Does this really require an explanation?

4. Thursday. For no other reason than it’s so close to the weekend yet still not Friday. It use to be passable back when Thursday was thirsty, but now that it’s just laundry night most of its allure has worn off. Now it’s just a second helping of Wednesday and there’s nothing cool about that at all.

Welcome to the People’s Republic of Maryland…

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One of the last discussions about taxes I remember hearing in Tennessee was the need for an amendment to the state constitution that would permanently bar the government from levying a state income tax. Lord knows the state, county, and city still got their cut of your income through use fees, car registration fees, sales taxes, and property taxes so it wasn’t exactly like Tennessee was some kind of bizarre tax-free never-never land. Now that I’m back in my beloved Maryland and starting to pay attention to things again, I’ve seen a governor that has already increased tolls across the state and now wants to increase the state income tax and gas tax as well as increasing just about any fee he can think of.

Now I had my share of issues with Tennessee, but the tax thing is one that they were addressing pretty well. If I would have rented an apartment instead of becoming a property owner, by tax footprint there would have been almost negligible. Here in Maryland I’m already seeing a ridiculous percentage of my pay getting sucked up my direct taxes and by a laundry list of special fees and excise taxes… and that’s before I get around to buying a house and paying yet more taxes. Still, the governor says he needs more, but hey, he was able to slow the rate of spending growth to only 2% this year so we should all be congratulating him. That’s not a 2% decrease in spending, people… It’s “only” growing spending at 2%. If my income were growing at the same 2%, I’d be happy to kick in a little extra every month, but since it’s been frozen for two years it’s hard to be very sympathetic.

Maybe the General Assembly will stave off some of the more wild-eyed increases, but I suspect that most of the governor’s agenda will pass in some form or another. It may not be a mortal lock, but it’s a safe bet that come July 1st, we’re all going to have more bills to pay. Thank Governor O’Malley, kids.