Author Archives: jdtharp

The joys of home ownership…

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Like pretty much everyone who purchased a house before 2007, I’m still trying to make my peace with the fact that my one time castle is worth about what it would have been had I bought it in 2002. It doesn’t quite make me want to jump off a bridge, but it does cry out for me to bash my head repeatedly against a blunt surface. I never expected my house to make me rich, but I had hoped it would, at least, have the decency not to make me poor. Since I had the foresight to buy just at the peak of the market, I’m doing my best to make peace with probably always having a house in Memphis… Unless it burns to the ground or otherwise gets smited by the finger of an angry God, the chances of being able to sell the place and just break even anytime in the next two decades would appear to be running somewhere between slim and none. That’s an obnoxious reality that I’m doing my best to ignore for the time being.

We’re a nation of 300 million souls and growing. They all have to live somewhere right? Surely at some point someone will be interested enough in a nice three bedroom, two bath house in Memphis to not make me feel like the prettiest guy in the prison shower when we get to the closing table.

Glass: The Danger in our Midst

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There is a grave danger to every man, woman, child, and distracted bird in this country now hidden in our midst. Multi-billion dollar corporations are allowed to build 15,000 square foot retail stores in areas commonly used by people for shopping. Then these companies then have the audacity to clad their storefronts with newfangled see-through glass doors and walls. These fancy glass doors represent a clear and present danger to any and all who seek to do commerce with those businesses and I say they must be stopped. How dare these companies use glass to allow passersby to see into their stores and allow their stores to be take advantage of natural ambient lighting. It’s too much! Too much, I say!

83-year olds like Evelyn Paswall and all our fellow citizens must be protected from the continued use of glass in construction around the country, because our corporations are patently “negligent … in allowing a clear, see-through glass wall and/or door to exist without proper warning.” We as a species have only been aware of glass for five millennia, clearly not a sufficient time for all of us to learn about the hazards of walking headlong into this dangerous substance as we go about our daily business in our homes and places of employment.

The courts must provide an immediate remedy for the egregious use of such a dangerous product, because clearly human beings have not been graced with the common sense that God gave the average house cat.

While this case is winding its way through the courts, I’ll be stockpiling supplies for my bunker… because civilization is obviously doomed.

A change is gonna come…

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I started this alternate blog on February 14th, 2011 mostly in an effort to shed some of the frustration of working in an environment I increasingly found to be intolerable. The good news is that I’m now working in an office that’s much more tolerable, even if it’s still plenty annoying. The bad news, of course, is that regular run of the mill annoying doesn’t necessarily lend itself to great narrative. The worse news is that I’ve made the decision to hang up my spurs for a while and focus on other writing projects I’ve been struggling to find time to take on.

The bottom line is that this will be my last regularly scheduled post here at Apathy is Green

I want to take the time to thank those of you who joined me on this adventure. Thanks for reading and commenting. Thanks for reminding me that no matter how stupid things get, they’re just as bad if not worse somewhere else.
I don’t think this is goodbye forever, because the chances of me shutting up that long are pretty slim. Of course I’ll check in from time to time and whenever something really gets under my skin, I’ll be right back here railing against it with every bit of indignation I can muster.

I’ve still got a few ideas up my sleeve for future projects, so hopefully this won’t be the end, just a start in different direction. Eventually I hope to unify all of these posts under my “official” blog and in my own name. Who knows what the situation will look like in five or ten years, right?

Anyway, thanks for sticking with me. It’s be a gas.

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.

Feelings…

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Sometimes it feels like I can’t get the words down on the page fast enough. This isn’t one of those times. Every word this week has been a struggle. Somewhere between the brain and keyboard most of them seem to get lost. Most of the “how to be a better writer books” tell you that you just have to push through these times and keep doing it. I take the more pragmatic approach. If my inner muse isn’t being very helpful, I just do something else until an idea jumps out at me. That might not be the professional writer’s approach to getting the job done, but conveniently I have the excuse of not being a professional writer. It also has the benefit of letting me sneak away to do things like laundry and mowing the lawn without feeling guilty about not hitting mu daily word count. Maybe it’s not the best approach, but it seems to work for me at the moment.

On an average week, I try to write at least 7000 words with an outside goal of 10,000. The blog here usually accounts for 1500 of those words. The rest go towards different book ideas and occasional contributions to other blogs. I’ve cracked 7000 a few times, but I’ve never come close to besting 10,000 words in a week. Maybe if I got really focused, didn’t go to work, and spent a week doing nothing but having good ideas, I’d hit the target. In a world that wants me to keep doing those other things, though, I suppose I’ll just have to leave it as a goal.

What was the point of all this? Well, with only 2500 words under my belt for this week, I’m feeling a little less than productive. Maybe a nice rainy weekend will be just what I need to kick the writing bug back into gear. It’s either that or lose an entire weekend to Call of Duty. Sigh. This is one of those times when being easily distracted sucks.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Anyone who is surprised that cocaine killed Whitney Houston. Instead of banner headlines on the news sites, maybe “Well, duh” buried on page 10 next to the ad for weekend specials at Donny’s Pancake House and Truck Stop would be slightly more appropriate.

2. People driving on a weekday afternoon like they don’t have a place in the world to be. I get that not everyone flies out the door at the end of the day at a dead sprint like I do, but still I’d think if you’re on the road during what approximates rush hour in northeastern Maryland you’d have some place you were trying to go. Apparently, though, there are a sizable contingent of people who are just out to have a look the scenery. In a Tharp administration, these people will be subject to targeting and neutralization by armed Predator drones circling high above major commuter routes. Sure, this might cause some additional delays, but at least those slow downs would have a legitimate reason for happening.

3. People who show up to things unprepared. I can’t throw down with the best slackers around when I set my mind to it, but one thing I never do is show up to a meeting or other activity without having a reasonable command of the subject matter. It doesn’t take that much effort to do your homework ahead of time. There’s a special place in hell reserved for people who wander in and waste two or three hours of your life because they don’t have a clue what’s going on around them.

4. It takes Friday entirely too long to show up every week. I think That one is pretty much self explanatory. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to start my three-day weekend. And in case you’re wondering, no, that last part does not annoy Jeff.

When the cat’s away…

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When the cat’s away, your office will inevitably be overseen by a overly officious colleague intoxicated by their temporary power. They’re going to do things like try to change procedures that have been in place in your office for as long as you’ve been there and tell you to do things that are patently incorrect. To fill the white space in their day, this individual will flit to whatever meetings they can find and generally try to make a nuisance of themselves on what should be a nice quiet day for getting caught up on those things you never seem to get to when the boss is around. It’s like turning over the office to that annoying kid you remember from elementary school that always had their hand up, always knew the answer, and always volunteered to make copies or keep the list of “bad” students when the teacher had to step out of the room. Since it only lasts for a day or two, you’re basically in Purgatory… assuming that Purgatory is run by a mentally deficient thirteen year old, since that’s basically the level of leadership you’ll be getting.

My advice in this situation? Smile and nod whenever possible. Avoid eye contact and if necessary feign digestive distress to minimize the amount of time you must spend in conversation with your tormenter. Absolutely nothing good with come from your engaging this pseudo-leader. At best, you’ll end up having to explain to your actual boss why you called this individual as useless as tits on a bull in front of several of your other colleagues. At worst, your boss may realize the error of his ways and leave you in charge next time he’s going to be away, which makes the cure far worse than the actual disease.

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.

The rites of spring…

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It’s the time of year again. The neighborhood is full of whirring lawnmowers (except the house behind mine of course), the plants are blooming, and everyone seems more or less ready to get on with the warm weather. Being completely anal retentive, I’ve been planning for this moment for the last two months. The lawn equipment has had its oil changed, blades sharpened, and a supply of premium fuel laid on. Spring isn’t so much about enjoying nature as bringing it to heel after it’s months long free for all during the cold season.

Since it’s been nice enough to live with the windows open in the evening, I haven’t started fiddling with bringing the air conditioners back to life… that was until I started to “un-winterize” the a/c unit the cools the entire downstairs. When I wrapped things up for the winter, I was pretty confident that I had killed off the mold that had been growing inside the unit. Sadly, I was wrong. This wasn’t a new fight, of course. I had waged holy war on this mold almost since the day I moved in, kicked on the air, and wondered “what’s that God-awful smell?” But I thought I had finally struck on the right combination of vinegar, bleach, and random HVAC cleaning supplies from Home Depot to set things right. As I mentioned before, yeah, I was most definitely wrong.

To help set the stage, you need to know that this is the single biggest window-mounted air conditioner that I have every personally seen. It’s so large that it’s actually permanently bolted and caulked into the window. Sure, technically it’s a window unit, but it’s basically like having a central air condenser bolted directly to the window. Seriously. It’s big. If I had to bet, I’d guess it’s 300 pounds easy. And that’s really where the problem starts.

You see, every website on earth tells you that to properly clean mold out of a window air conditioner, the first thing to do is take the unit out of the window and remove the metal housing so you can access the interior spaces where the nastiness is building up. Since this beast is bolted to the house, something tells me these particular directions are not going to apply. Even if I could do any of that without demolishing the window itself, there’s not a chance that I could pull it off as a one man job, which brings us to my point… It’s time for yet another awkward conversation with the landlord about appliances and the need for regular preventative maintenance.

I foresee our talk going something like this:

Me: The air conditioner in the living room is full of mold.

Landlord: Did you clean it?

Me: *rolls eyes* Of course. The mold is inside the housing. It needs to be disassembled and cleaned properly.

Landlord: You can’t do that?

Me: No.

Landlord: That’s going to be expensive.

Me: Probably, but less expensive than me buying a new air conditioner for the living room and deducting it from next month’s rent.

Landlord: %$#*

Me: *smirk*

That conversation should be taking place any time now. It happens less and less often these days, but it’s one of those friendly reminders that living in someone else’s house still sucks.

Back in the day…

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The days are getting longer. The air is warming up. Another lifetime ago when I was a teacher, this was the time of year when I could start to smell summer vacation coming on. Sure, it was still two months off, but in my head those glorious two months of having absolutely nothing to do were right around the corner. My itch to get on with vacation was every bit as strong as any student’s might be. Even now, after I’ve spent three times longer being not a teacher than I spent in the classroom, I still feel the almost gravitational draw of summer vacation. When June rolls around and I’m still sitting in the office, it still comes as something of a shock to the system.

All things considered, summer is pretty much the only thing I miss about the teaching profession. Sure, a couple of the students turned out to be real people who I legitimately enjoy staing in touch with (Yes, you know who you are). But seriously, talk about a career path that someone was completely ill-suited for. Sheesh. What was I thinking? Still, summer vacation is a pretty big draw. The price you have to pay to get those two months off was just do damned high for me.

Looking out the window at a sun filled spring morning, makes me wish just for a minute that things were different… but then I remember the parents, administrators, standardized tests, certifications, low pay, general lack discipline, requirements to leave no child behind, and the unbridled hell that was “service learning” and I’m reasonably happy to be sitting here in my cube.

Hot sweaty death by PowerPoint…

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I’ve never really understood the need of management to convey information by jamming as many people as possible into a room and then throwing PowerPoint charts at them until they want to gouge out their own eyes. These events are even more near and dear to my heart when the information could have been just as easily sent to me by email so I could read it at a convenient time rather than rejiggering my calendar to free up three hours in the middle of the week – a task I accomplished by cancelling my one actual productive meeting this week.

As a rule, 120 slides constitute just a few too many in any presentation. That’s doubly true when 31 of those slides fall into the “org chart/wire diagram” category. 1) Nobody in the room can read the eight point font used to squeeze that graphic onto the slide and 2) After ten or twelve wire diagrams, they all look exactly the same. That’s just an observation from a guy sitting in the back rows, so take it for what it’s worth.

When I’m proclaimed King of the Bureaucrats, my first edict from on high will be a proclamation that no briefing will use more than five slides. Ever. If you can’t distill the essence of what you’re trying to convey into five or fewer slides or (gasp) talk about your idea without the visual aids, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll think you don’t know what you’re talking about and will be sorely tempted to send you to sleep with the fishes. Since I’m somewhere just above the janitorial staff on one of those 31 org charts we saw, I suppose everyone is safe for the time being.

But you’ve all been warned. Oh yes, you’ve all been warned.

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.

Stock out…

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I’ve been reading alot of articles in the last 12 hours about how strange it is that the new iPad hasn’t appeared to sell out on launch day like the previous two models have. If the lines I saw yesterday were any indication, I don’t think it says anything at all about demand for the new device. I suspect, and it’s purely my conjecture without any actual supporting evidence, that it has less to do with demand and more to do with who’s at the helm of Apple, Inc.

Steve Jobs, hallowed be his name, was a master showman. He excelled at sales and building drama surrounding every new product. Constrained supply at launch was every bit as much a marketing tool as print and television ads. Tim Cook, by contrast, is a master logistician. His specialty is filling the supply chain so that the products get to the right place, in the right quantities, at the right time. He’s spent his career doing his best to avoid stock outs, as they tend to show a point of failure in the supply chain. I’m not saying that one approach is better or worse, because either way Apple, Inc is walking away with a giant bag of cash.

As a half-assed one time logistician myself, I can certainly understand and appreciate Cook’s approach. In the long run, I suspect having the product on shelves and available to customers on demand is a superior approach to sales than cranking up the hype machine to full tilt. You’re selling an iPad, a device that almost sells itself. You might have needed the hype for v1, but now that you’re miles ahead of the competition and gaining ground, it’s all about meeting demand.

Forgive me my blasphemy, Saint Steve.