Monthly Archives: October 2022

Back in the USSR…

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Maybe it’s having spent my formative years in the tail end of the long cold war between the United States and the USSR, but tuning in to the news only to hear nuclear threats spewing from Moscow doesn’t seem particularly alarming. It feels a little like home – the way the world is supposed to be, or the way it was before the Soviet Union up and collapsed and we declared the end of history.

Soviet behavior on the nuclear front was happily predictable. The Russian bear would find itself backed into a corner and then rattle its nuclear saber. It’s the kind of thing that was just expected back there and back then as a standard part of their negotiating posture.

Oh, sure, this time could be different, but it feels a lot like Uncle Vlad is cut from very similar cloth as the old Soviet leaders that came before him. It’s always possible, of course, that he’s just enough of a wild card to let a whopper fly when none of his predecessors were. Desperate men aren’t often known for their smoothly rational behavior.

Even given the nominal risk of global thermonuclear war, I’m firmly of the position that there is absolutely no strategic upside to giving in to nuclear blackmail. It’s not like we haven’t been here before… and given the performance we’ve seen from Russian equipment over the last six months, it feels more than possible that their birds are even more of a danger to their own launch facilities than they are to the targets. 

Chalk one up for Gen X’s trademark indifference, I guess, but I ain’t scared.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Elon Musk. My general feelings about Elon are, at best, complicated. In some ways he’s a visionary who sees deeper into the future than should be possible for a mere mortal. In other’s he’s a genuine crackpot, wading in to offer “expert” advice in areas where nothing in his background could reasonably be construed to give him standing. It’s the current version of “Elon the Peacemaker” that really has me wishing someone could get the guy to focus in on his lane and leave the serious work of international diplomacy to serious people.

2. Sleep, interrupted. I’ve been sleeping like dog shit for a few weeks. It’s not a problem falling asleep or lying awake all night, but rather tossing and turning and barrel rolling the sheets into a tangled mess and generally not feeling rested when morning comes.  I don’t usually get a lot of sleep – six hours is about standard – but with very few exceptions the sleep I typically get is deep and restful. It appears I’m currently getting the opportunity to enjoy one of those periods of exception to the rule. I hate it.

3. The willfully ignorant. Some people are always going to be stupid – hanging out there on the left edge of the intelligence bell curve. I don’t love it, but short of extreme measures, it’s one of those conditions that simply can’t be helped. Willful ignorance, being incurious about the world, however, is entirely within the individual control of most people. This group, the willfully ignorant, is where I place the principle blame for why blatant hucksters like Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson. They’re intelligent enough to know better, but there they are, tuning in on a regular basis and giving credence to nonsense spouting charlatans. They’re the only reason such fuckwits are anything more than an internet sideshow streaming live from mom’s basement. I can, if pressed, forgive the stupid for something they can’t help. I can’t, however, forgive people who have a working brain for not exercising it with a little bit of critical thinking from time to time.

Half a sick day…

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I took some sick leave this morning largely because I had a doctor’s appointment. In my head, though, that was just an invitation to “maximize” my use of sick time. As the only variety of leave that accumulates forever and can then be used to add time to your years of service at the end of your career, the stuff is precious. I try to dole it out as infrequently as possible. 

Since I was already going to be at the medical center, it only made sense to head across the street to get my blood drawn for a different appointment I have scheduled at the end of the month. And hey, since there’s a pharmacy at the opposite end of the shopping plaza, I might as well walk down there to see if they’ll dose me with a flu shot and the new and improved COVID booster. 

I had the very best of intentions here. I mean, from a time management perspective, knocking out all those things within 500 yards of each other makes eminent sense. What I failed to account for, however, was the net effect overall of two vaccinations, losing 7 or 8 vials of blood, having fasted for 16 hours, and there being absolutely no caffeine in my system. Let’s just say I spent a good part of the rest of the day feeling vaguely “muddled.”

After a couple of meals and a bottomless mug of tea, I’m feeling well enough for my troubles now. This evening, I’m mostly wondering if I’ll have the same reaction to Pfizer’s bivalent dose as I had to the two boosters from Moderna. If I do, sometime around 10 AM tomorrow morning my body will throw the switch from “feeling fine” to “feeling like hot microwaved trash” and that situation will persist for about 12 hours. 

That’s all a very wordy way of saying that I think I over scheduled the day today. Some things make perfect sense in terms of efficiency, but it pays to not forget checking in with other factors, too. It would have been nice to have that in mind this morning, but here we are.

By any other name…

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Once upon a time, not so very long ago, we studied something then called the Age of Discovery, or if you were feeling a bit more militant, the Age of Conquest. This was the period in history from the 15th through the 17th centuries when Europeans set out on a global search for faster trade routes, wealth, personal glory, and to extend the reach of their national flag. Not coincidentally, It’s also a period that corresponds with a then unprecedented explosion in knowledge about the natural world. 

Hundreds of millions of people lived and died during the three centuries of the Age of Discovery. Aside from kings and princes, we remember very few of them by name… and for those few, we don’t remember them because they spent their often-short lifetimes wringing their hands about the world around them, but because they dared to do what was hard and dangerous. They’re derided in the modern world, I suspect, because so many now live lives that are unfathomably easy and safe based on any measure of historical precedent.

During the Age of Conquest, some nations and civilizations did the conquering and others were vanquished. It’s happened since the dawn of recorded time and was happening long before written language existed to keep records. As often happens with the vanquished, we don’t hear much about their history. There’s a movement now to tell those stories. That’s a fine thing to do and certainly adds perspective to the proceedings. Increasing the sum total of human knowledge is almost never a bad thing… although that doesn’t mean I’ll be here rending my garments when told the tales of woe and sadness. 

At a time with no accurate maps, no global positioning systems, and no way to even accurately establish longitude, men went down to the sea in ships, and occupied their business in great waters. They had names like da Gama, Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci, Magellan, and Drake. The set out in fragile wooden ships, pointing their bows west into a world more unknown than known, and opened two continents to further exploration and conquest. They were hard men living in a hard world. Our modern, gentler world would want them hauled to The Hague and tried for crimes against humanity – but that’s the same modern world that wouldn’t exist without them. 

Columbus and the rest were unquestionably part heroic and part villainous, which makes them very much men of their age. Perhaps it makes them men of any age, as it’s impossible to be all one or all the other in this or any other time. Even if it leaves me squarely in the minority, today I’ll honor them.

Bathroom report supplemental…

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Two weeks ago, the plumbers that installed the works for my new bathroom were back to correct the mysterious problem of the shower handle that wouldn’t stay attached no matter how much or often the set screw was tightened down. To my mind it still feels flimsy, but to their credit it has stayed attached after their visit. If it breaks again, I’ll surely just call my own choice of plumbers to get after it rather than the guys who are subcontracted to the builder who did the renovation work.

The repair work for the handle involved some disassembly, a lot of fiddling around with the valve and stem, and reassembly to something that gave all appearances of working correctly.

About a day after that work was done, however, I noticed a steady, slow drip from the shower head. I’m not saying the two are necessarily connected, but one started immediately after the other was “fixed,” so I do have my suspicions.

I notified the plumbers that there was an issue a week ago today. So far it’s been radio silence. I just assume that’s going to mean yet another round of getting the prime contractor involved (again) in order to get anything done and the glaciated pace of everything involved in the last half of putting this bathroom together. I suspect the only reason he’s even remotely interested is his tile guy remains on the hook to come in and tweak a little bit of slope around the shower drain… which can’t happen until the steady trickle of water is stopped and they’ve got a nice dry floor to work with.

Truly this is the project without fucking end.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Mail in ballots. I printed out my general election ballot over the weekend. So far all it’s done is sit here on the corner of my desk like a lump. It hasn’t jumped up and subverted an election. It hasn’t even tried to multiply itself or throw itself into the trash so it couldn’t be counted. I’m highly disappointed that this mail in ballot doesn’t seem to have any of the magical qualities that Republicans have been warning me about for the last two years. In fact, it’s almost like they’re making up stories about evil mail in ballots on the spot and talking out their collective asses for their own devious purposes. 

2. The union. We’ve been paying attention to the Great Plague since about March 2020. That’s two and a half years the union that nominally represents most non-supervisory employees at my place of work has had to get their act together in negotiating what right looks like in terms of an updated policy for telework. Their failure to get it done has left us falling back on the policy that was in force in 2019 and bears little resemblance to the post-plague reality of information work. I don’t know what pie in the sky fuckery the executive board was demanding, but I know management’s proposal of two days per week in the office is miles ahead of where they wanted to be when the issue was discussed 18 months ago. From where I’m sitting, it looks like the union is all that’s standing between us and picking up an additional day of telework each week. I didn’t have much use for federal employee unions before this, but dragging out the process on this just adds insult to injury. I strongly encourage AFGE Local 1904 to unfuck themselves as soon as humanly possible because right now all they seem to be is an obstacle.

3. Vehicle repair. I’m driving a 12-year-old truck with nearly 140,000 miles on it. I’m all too aware that we’ve reached a point in our relationship when some repair work is just going to be unavoidable. More than the repairs themselves, it’s just the inconvenience of it that really gets to me. Getting it diagnosed, dropping it off for an unknown about of time to have the service done, arranging for alternate transportation from the shop to home and back again for pick up. It’s just filled with bits and bobs that conspire against my well worn in day-to-day habits.  So, you could say it’s more the inconvenience of it that the actual work that needs doing… and it’s all before whatever the absurd cost ends up being. Alas, that last bit is an inevitable consequence of my being a mechanical incompetent, so there’s no one to blame there but myself. 

A look back, fondly…

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I miss the early days of the Great Plague. Chalk that up to yet another unpopular opinion, but I said what I said.

I miss the complete lack of traffic on the roads during those moments when I couldn’t avoid leaving the house. I miss the wide berth that everyone gave one another as they scurried through the grocery store, masked, and avoiding eye contact. I miss living my best life “safer at home.”

For a guy who has never had much use for people at the very best of times, those days were a glimpse into a world I never imagined could exist. Despite the lingering threat of sudden and unexpected death lurking on the breath of every passerby, my blood pressure went down and my general level of annoyance became almost entirely manageable. You might even be forgiven for taking the impression that I enjoyed it.

Look, I’m not sociopathic enough to advocate for having ongoing, continuous waves of deadly virus spreading around the world just to make me more comfortable, but it has painted me a picture of a world that could be. The lately departed plague season feels increasingly like a preview of the world I’d want to build myself once I get past the stage of life that involves trading time for money. After that it’s venture out for food, venture out for books, and to hell with most everything else.

I wouldn’t have suspected it at the time, but it seems that those first, uncertain days of the plague will be the ones I look back on most fondly.

Value added synergy…

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In recognition of my first day back at the office under 2019 working conditions, I’m excited to provide an exhaustive list of things I did at the office that I couldn’t have done if I were home.

– Cleaned off a shelf in my cubicle to restock with coffee, tea, and corresponding additives and accessories. If I’m going to have to be here, mass quantities of caffeine are absolutely going to be necessary.

– Cleaned out a drawer in my cubicle that was filled with crackers, ketchup packets, and sundry foodstuffs that mostly expired early in 2020. Mostly this was just gross. For the record, I should note that mustard packets absolutely do not age well even when stored in a cool, dark place.

– Found two banker’s boxes with lids that someone was sending to recycling. Banker’s boxes are great for book storage. They’re now stashed in my cubicle awaiting a dry day when I can liberate them.

– I spent an hour in a meeting this morning. It was probably one of only 3 or 4 meetings I’ve attended in person in the last 30 months. I have no idea why I was invited as none of the topics were anywhere close to my lane. But there I was, because that’s where Outlook told me to be at 10:00. I could have dialed in for this meeting, but since I was there in person, I’m claiming it as an accomplishment for the day.

– Pushed the button to unlock our room door thrice. As far as I can tell, this is in fact one of my mission essential tasks. In light of that I’ve begun tracking how many times a day I push the button. If it’s going to be the thing that keeps us here in person, I want to make sure I get credit for it on my next performance appraisal.

– Got to listen to at least one person hack up a lung in each and every room I entered today. No idea if it was flu, cold, allergies, plague, or some new and exotic illness, but there they were, spraying the room and everyone in it with their aerosolized gunk throughout the course of the day. I’m just going with assumption now that the office is 100% where the Great Plague will finally catch up with me.

– It was Taco Tuesday featuring a selection of hard- and soft-shell tacos, homemade empanadas, all the appropriate toppings, and a selection of deserts. It was one of the rare occasions when I willingly violated my personal rules against participating in lunch events in badly lit conference rooms. 

There you have it. That’s what extra value you get for your money when I’ve schlepped over to cubicle hell instead doing business from the ease and comfort of my office at home. I’m sure it was all very “value added” or “synergistic” or “team-focused” or something.