Author Archives: jdtharp

The secret, little discussed 10th level of Hell…

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There’s a special level of hell reserved for the bureaucrats. Conveniently, you don’t have to die to get there. All you have to do is show up, day after day for 40 years and suddenly somewhere along the way you realize you’re already there. You find yourself sitting in meetings that have been held every Tuesday since before anyone in the room was even an employee. You’ll find yourself updating a PowerPoint slide that you updated two months before, and two months before that and backwards in time to the dawn of the electronic age and into the land of acetate view graphs and overhead projectors before that.

Maybe somewhere in the mists of time there was a legitimate need to do these things, but so many of the time killing tasks we face day to day seem like they’re on autopilot that it’s near impossible to tell the important from the other stuff. Want to free up millions of dollars in resources? Cancel every repeating meeting on everyone’s calendar and only schedule meetings that are actually needed. Meetings shouldn’t be a weekly excuse for coffeecake and social time. Poof. Suddenly you’ve saved yourself a million man hours a month. Want to save more money? Never prepare PowerPoint charts unless they are absolutely necessary to express a complex concept. Our caveman ancestors used their words to spread ideas. Surely we can manage to do the same.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be toiling on the next series of charts in the 10th level of hell… my half-walled cubicle. Now if I can just figure out where they’ve put my stapler.

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.

Management…

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I’ve got a problem with management. No, not the one that pays me, but the one that attempts to keep order in my photo collection. I love almost everything about my MacBook Pro… except that I can’t ever find the picture I’m looking for to save my life. I appreciate that the computer tries to be helpful by saving pictures taken on the same date as an “event,” but more often than not what I end up with when I download pictures from my phone are a dozen separate events full of pictures that in no way relate to each other. I take random snapshots, not full blown photo shoots. I’ve suffered in silence for years, but no longer. I need something other than iPhoto in my life.

The fact is I like to curate my own files. I like personal control over where they’re going and what ends up in them. I know that’s a very un-Mac thing to say. Steve wouldn’t like my inability to give up manual file management to the system. He’d probably yell. A lot. I’ve come to terms with that, so what I really need is a simple photo editor for Mac that lets me run the show when it comes to building file hierarchies, sorting, and naming images. It’s possible that iPhoto would let me do this if I found the right way to ask it, but so far it’s been a no go.

My research mission for the week is to find just such an app. First stop is the 30-day free trial of Aperture 3 to see if it’s file management system is more likable than it’s consumer-focused cousin. After that it’s possibly a side trip to Photoshop Elements for editing and good old fashioned manual file management to keep myself organized. I’ll let you know how it goes. If anyone has any other ideas, I’m all ears.

Putting the fried in Friday…

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This is one of those weeks where the best thing you can say about it is simply “it’s over.” Some weeks are bound to be like that. It’s unavoidable. That doesn’t make me any less happy to see them slide by under the stern. Not that the weekends are any less frantic, but they’re frantic in a different way… You know, full of doing things that I’m actually interested in. Not that churning out 100-page reports, briefing slides, and spreadsheets isn’t fun and all, but I’m more than ready to let my eyes uncross for a few days. A week or two would be better, but I’ll take what I can get. I’m going to try staying away from the monitor this weekend, so we’ll pick this up again Monday… Unless something really gets on my nerves between now and then, in which case you know I can’t resist the temptation to post right away.

Big Mac knew…

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This country use to know what to do with subversives, malcontents, and other undesirable elements who set up shop in our cities and made trouble for people just trying to do their jobs. One thing’s for sure, 80 years ago, we didn’t just turn off the electricity and hope they’d go away on their own.

On July 28th 1932, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, the 12th Infantry Regiment and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, supported by a column of Renault tanks commanded by Major George S. Patton, formed up on Pennsylvania Avenue. Thousands of people left work to line the street and watch. The protestors, who believed the troops were marching in support of their cause, cheered until Patton’s cavalry charged their position. After the cavalry charge, the infantry fixed bayonets and under cover of vomit-inducing gas, cleared the protestors from their makeshift camp on Anacostia Flats. Big Mac had plenty of faults, but he knew how to get a job done.

I’d give real money to see General Odierno and Colonel Allen go to work cleaning up the parks, town squares, and centers of commerce that have already been tied up for too long. If the Occupy Wall Street crowd that claims to be “peacefully” demonstrating continues breaking into public and private property, committing arson, vandalism, and violent acts, they need to be put down as the collection of common criminals that they seem bent on being. The 1st Amendment protection of free speech doesn’t mean we should allow a small subset of people to cause chaos on the streets of American cities.

We use to know the line between legitimate protest and creating a public nuisance. It’s a pity we’ve forgotten where that line is while we’ve been busy coddling everyone and telling them that they’re special and important.

And yes, in case you’re wondering, that’s what annoys Jeff this week.

They’re never here to help…

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No matter what they say, people from the Inspector General’s office are never here to help you. I’m not saying they’re necessarily the goon squad, but having them lurk around the office is a little like having a couple of buzzards circling over your house. Sure, maybe there isn’t a dead body buried in the back yard, but something sure smells rotten back there. Even if you’re not the one who caused it, life is going to get mighty uncomfortable for a while. My best advice is seek cover and make yourself unobtrusive as they shit all over everything.

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.

No man’s land…

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I’ve spent the last week feeling somewhere between sick and well. It’s not that I really feel bad in any way I can put my finger on, but then again it’s not that I’m feeling bad enough to want to stay on the couch all day trying to recover. It’s a madding no man’s land between the two. If there’s some fall crud lurking around, I wish it would just smack me around and be done with it. As it is, mustering the enthusiasm to do much of anything is getting to be a bit of a chore. Until I figure out what it is I’ve got and convinced it with high doses of chemicals that it needs to go away, I’ll keep treating the symptoms with ridiculous amounts of caffeine administered regularly throughout the day. That course of treatment might leave some people awake half the night, but the one perk of whatever it is picking at my system is I’m practically sound asleep before my head hits the pillow. Now if I would just start waking up rested, we might just be in business.

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Regardless of what you call it, when you creditors agree to write off 50% of your existing debt you are, by definition in default. Call it a haircut. Call it a Pontiac. It’s a default. Period. End of story. Fortunately, the world is polite enough to call it something different in the hopes that no one will notice and in the process they can prevent the European Union from flinging itself apart. When the rest of the world goes to all this trouble, the polite thing to do would be to say thank you and then go on about the business of trying to salvage your national economy. But that’s not your style is it, Greece. Oh no. You’re going to ask you voters, who have already demonstrated their inability to face reality, vote on the idea as a national referendum. Seriously? Are you trying to make a name for yourself as the go-to country for dysfunctional government? As a citizen of the United States, I thought we had a lock on that one, but you’re making a damned good run at it.

Look, it’s only a matter of time before the rest of us have to take our share of the bitter, bitter austerity medicine. Yes, it sucks being the one stuck going first but that was just the luck of the draw. Could have happened to any of a dozen debtor nations. We can kick and scream that it’s not fair until we’re all blue in the face, but guess what… the universe doesn’t care about fair. We can do the hard things now, while we still have some options, or we can wait a while and then spend the next two decades just reacting to things that could have been avoided if we’d have taken action sooner.

Freebies…

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Some offices give away swag. You know, coffee mugs and key chains, lanyards and stress balls. Not us. We give away free flu shots. Which is great and all since it’s saving me a $20 copay and visit to the doctor’s office. I also know that there’s an ulterior motive for employers giving free flu shots. A $20 shot is a hell of a lot cheaper than the lost productive time of an employee who goes down for a week with the flu. Plenty of those private sector types go with the “play hurt” philosophy, but government employees tend to have banked a lot of sick leave and aren’t at all shy about using it. That translates into an employee who could easily be out for a week or more if they get a good case of it.

Regardless of the reasons behind it (unless it’s actually a plot to sap and impurify my precious bodily fluid), it’s actually a perk or working around here that I appreciate. As much as I enjoy time off, I’ll take a pass when it involves spending most of it in bed or in the can. Now we’ll wait for a day or two and hope that the shot itself doesn’t make me sick as a dog.

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 holiday spirit…

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Let’s go ahead and get something out of the way right now. Trick-or-treating is really just an excuse to send your children out into the street begging for candy from strangers. It’s pretty much exactly what you teach them not to do the other 364 days of the year. If it’s a guy in a van offering you a Snickers bar, stay away… but feel free to go right up to his house and knock on the door. Nice job on sending mixed messages, mom and dad. That’s fine. They’re your kids, so it doesn’t make much difference to me either way. That’s not really my point, though.

Before you send little Johnny or Suzie to knock on my door tonight, I need you to take note of the “Beware of Dog” sign placed prominently displayed in the window. It’s not that my dogs are particular vicious. In fact they’ve never shown signs of it at all, but if I decide to open up the door when you knock, there’s a fair chance that they’re going to bound out of the house in a bit of frenzy. See, they’re not all that keen on visitors and they’ll have a tendency to jump on you and your little darlings until they’re satisfied that you’re not really that interesting.

Sure, I could lock them in the basement tonight, but you see, the thing is they live here and you don’t. More importantly, I like them more than I like you, random neighbor who’s showing up at my door expecting me to give candy to your children. So in order to save us all a lot of headache, here’s the deal: I’m going to set a large bowl of candy and a “help yourself” sign on the deck. Feel free to take something. When it’s gone, it’s gone. If you decide to knock on the door instead of following instructions, I’m going to let the dogs out to jump on you, bark at you, and hopefully knock you down.

Big round numbers…

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Even while I’m writing this, I find it a little hard to believe that somehow I’ve churned out 500 posts as we’ve hopped along from Blogger to WordPress and finally to our permanent home here at http://www.jeffreytharp.com. That total probably bumps up another hundred if you include the “lost posts” made on my original MySpace blog. I still have those saved somewhere and if I ever figure out how to post them as a group, I’ll republish them so the entire canon is here in one place. Still, 500 is a big number and worthy of a momentary pause.

It occurs to me that through the last seven years of changing jobs and changing geography the blog has been almost my only consistent touchstone. I’m sure a good quality head shrinker would say that says more about me than anything I’ve bothered to write down. Maybe that’s a fair point. Still, keeping this blog up and running and making almost no topics off limits has been a massive commitment of time and effort. It’s a labor of love.

Who knows, maybe I’ll give it up tomorrow to and go off looking for something else to keep my mind occupied. It seems more likely though that we’ll be back here 500 posts from now being suitably impressed by the next big round number.