Category Archives: What Annoys Jeff this Week?

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Denali. Humans have been changing the names of places basically forever. In parts of the world that have been continuously populated for thousands of years it’s happened a lot. That’s why there isn’t currently a Sumerian city-state called Ur in southern Mesopotamia. That place is now called Tell el-Muqayyar and is located in southern Iraq. Five thousand years from now it seems pretty unlikely that it’s going to matter whether in 2015 there was a mountain in Alaska called Denali or Mt. McKinley. It seems to me that both sides are wasting a good deal of breath on something that just doesn’t really matter all that much.

2. Annual Training. Every new fiscal year starts the clock on the approximately 47,632 annual mandatory training requirements I’m supposed to take. Every year, I’m determined not to procrastinate in taking them. Every year I somehow find myself well into September and realizing that I’ve done none of them. Yes, it’s my fault that I procrastinated on checking those boxes… but perhaps if there weren’t quite so many that need checked I wouldn’t feel the need to avoid them for as long as humanly possible.

3. Do your damned job. If you’re hired to do a job and find that the requirements of the position demand something that that violates your moral or ethical code, honor demands that you resign from that position. Honor doesn’t demand that you make a spectacle of yourself by simply not doing the job (while continuing to draw salary). If your moral sensibilities aren’t troubled enough that you need to resign in protest, then they aren’t really troubled and all you’re trying to do is get your face on television. At that point you’re not a martyr to the cause, you’re a self-aggrandizing douchecanoe.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. National Whatever Day. Yesterday was allegedly “National Dog Day.” Are you serious? There are somewhere between 70-80 million dogs in America. In 2015 the American pet industry as a whole is estimated to take in about $60 billion. Do you think we’ve somehow collectively forgotten about dogs? As if the 1/3 of American households who have them came home suddenly and wondered what this 4-legged furry thing was that greeted them at the door? Look, I’m fine seeing everyone’s dog plastered all over Facebook. If I can be frank, it’s a nice change of pace from the usually endless parade of baby pictures, first day of school snaps, and instas of what’s for dinner. Still, I think we can give National “Whatever” Day a rest.

2. The Wackadoodle Right. I read an article a few days ago wagging the specter of another government shutdown. Except this one isn’t because we’ve actually run out of (pretend) money or haven’t been able to pass a budget (or at least a continuing resolution). This impending shutdown will come because a couple of right wing wackjobs have decided that no government at all is better than a government that might accidentally fund an abortion. If I’m going to be thrown out of work, I’d appreciate it be for a reason other than a handful of politicians who think they have a “special relationship” with the Almighty. I’m not going to get sucked into a discussion on the virtues of Planned Parenthood versus the right wing of my own party, but there are enough actual real world dangers we can worry about to knock this one way down the priority list.

3. “Ten Years Later” Coverage of Katrina. Without grinding through the details, let’s just accept that Hurricane Katrina is a topic I know a little something about. I lived 1000+ miles from landfall and the bitch still consumed just about every part of my life for months. She’s also the reason I know the media are well and truly idiots when it comes to reporting the facts of a complicated story. Unless it boils down to a three second sound bite (like “Being stuck on stupid”) or lets them take a few jabs at a favored punching bag, they just miss the big picture. The moment that small portion of the story goes over the air it’s accepted as received truth, but it’s only ever just a very small slice of the real story.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Atrophy. I’ll admit it, I’m not as good a driver as I use to be. I spent five years mastering the art of running nose-to-tail at 90 miles an hour on I-95 between DC and Baltimore. There’s not an every day call for that kind of driving in most other places. There wasn’t in West Tennessee and there certainly isn’t here in Ceciltucky. Every now and then, though, the situation presents itself where those long unused skills would prove useful. It’s only when you reach in to that old bag of tricks that you find out you’re not quite as quick at the wheel as you use to be. That’s disheartening… particularly when it leads to the inevitable question of whether it’s just a lack of practice time or if it’s a truly diminishing skill set.

2. Just Don’t Do It. Years ago I worked (indirectly) for a boss who’s philosophy was summed up by a Just Do It card that he passed around to employees at every opportunity. It read something like “If it’s ethical, legal, and you’re willing to be held accountable for it, don’t wait for permission, just do it.” It’s a pretty good rule to live by if you’re the kind of person who has any kind of reasonable judgement. I’m never going to argue that all decisions should be made at the lowest level, but I known damned well that all of them don’t need to be deferred to the highest levels, either. There’s a middle ground. More people should find it instead of deferring every decision for days and weeks in hopes that someone else will take responsibility for it.

3. The Cycle of Mediocrity. A wise old Warrant Officer once told me that “nobody does what the boss don’t check.” He was mostly right about that. In most offices the boss down’t check much – and the results are predictable. We all claim to want excellence – but in reality the objectives are usually targeted at achieving mediocrity. The rules are set up to achieve a minimum acceptable standard and performance tends towards achieving that standard. It’s what the bosses check so it’s what the people produce… and the cycle of mediocrity rolls on and on and on.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Waking up angry. There’s something about going to bed an hour earlier than usual. It’s a hope that the extra hour of down time might drive away some of the serious exhaustion that’s got to be showing in your eyes as the end of the week draws in. But then you wake up feeling even more strung out than you did when you went to bed – still exhausted, still mad at the world, where every little obstacle is a potential tripwire. Then it’s drag out of bed, shave, hope you can paint a convincing image of not loathing everyone and everything you come in contact with, and muddle through the day until it’s time for bed again. Even then you know the next morning won’t feel rested, that extra hour won’t matter, and you’ll be right back in the shit before the day even gets started. Yeah. That’s the kind of week it’s been.

2. Do “X” then “Y”. It’s a simple formula. Do one thing and then the next. It’s the logical progression of things. Problem is, no one seems to understand that there are potentially hundreds of discrete sub-steps between X and Y. All of them need doing before you can make progress. All of them need attention… and in many cases they are all actions that someone else needs to take. So you end up waiting for someone to do X-1, X-7, X-32, and X-1,245,334 before you can get to Y. That’s good enough when everyone knows what they supposed to be doing, wants to do it, and actually does it in a timely manner. Reality, being the thankless bitch that she is, of course, means that those small steps are rarely taken when they should be – so you end up sitting, waiting, cajoling, pestering, ranting, raving, and losing whatever slight grip you still have on sanity while other people get around to placing their one small piece of the puzzle.

3. My “privilege.” The next person who wanders by and recommends that I “check my privilege” might just get a well-worn size 12 Doc Marten planted directly in their crotch. There’s not a lot of generational privilege when your grandfathers worked the deep mines and heavy manufacturing in Appalachia and your parents took the next step, becoming a teacher and a cop, but only wearing the badge after serving some quality enlisted time in Uncle Sam’s green suit. So then there’s me. The grandson of a coal miner and a factory worker. Son of a public school teacher and a state trooper. I worked my ass off to make the grade in school, earned some scholarships, then worked my ass off in college to graduate magna. Then I went to work, didn’t like what I was doing and changed jobs, changed geographic locations, shoehorned myself into a program that would pay for grad school, and generally made myself available for whatever crap assignment would look good on my resume. I moved six times in ten years to improve myself and chase better opportunities instead of staying put and expecting the opportunities to come to me – or worse, expecting someone to deliver them because I have “privilege.” So when you tell me to check myself, it’s very clear you don’t know me or mine and I’m sure I don’t have a clue what the hell you’re talking about.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. National contrition. I had the great fortune to meet Brigadier General Paul Tibbets (retired) not many years before his death in 2007. He was speaking at the aviation museum in Richmond, Virginia that ended with a question and answer session. The first, inevitable, question – one that was probably posed to him every day since 1945 – was if he had any regrets about commanding the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. His response, a single word, “No.” That’s sort of how I feel when I read articles telling me that we should apologize for dropping the bomb on Japan. America didn’t start the damned war, got sucker punched to bring us into it, and then the apologists want us to feel bad that to end it the full force and power of the American military came crashing down on the country that was then our enemy. Our job in August 1945 was to win the war with as few additional American casualties as possible. That’s what we did. So, no, I won’t apologize for that. Not now. Not ever.

2. Ten candidates. Later this evening the “top ten” Republican presidential candidates will engaged in what passes for a contemporary debate in this country. They’ll each have 3-5 minutes to pull off a sound bite they can use in their campaign material, but there won’t be time for a discussion of substance. There are lots of familiar faces from elections past going on stage tonight, but there is damned little sign of new blood in the arena. Most of the contenders couldn’t make it to the big game the last 2 or 3 times they tried. I’m not sure I see where much has changed. I don’t expect any of these ten to speak to my peculiar combination of important issues. Then again, I don’t expect anyone from either party to do that. Before this debate even gets started I’m already thinking that the best outcome from it would be for me to go to bed on time and at least try to get a good night’s sleep. That would be far more beneficial than anything we’re likely to hear on television tonight.

3. Cooking. I was away last weekend. I haven’t had a chance to get to the market this week to pick up more than the requisite salad for my tortoise and creamer for me. Being away also meant that I wasn’t able to do most of the week’s heavy cooking on Sunday afternoon. Which is how you end up needing to fiddle around the kitchen making a passable meal and not sitting down to eat until Wednesday night until after 7PM. That might be fine for you continental types who keep late hours, but for me on an average weeknight seven o’clock is closing in on the middle of the damned night. Maybe it’s just an artifact from childhood, but at my house 5PM is dinner time. Most weeknights I don’t quite make it, but I’m not usually far off – but then again I’m usually not coming up with something from scratch. So yes, currently as much as I usually enjoy it, I’m sick to death of cooking and the butterfly effect it’s having on the rest of the evening. I guess I should have grown up to have a job with a personal staff. More poor decision making on my part.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Priorities. I never expect to be anyone’s top priority – except my own of course. All I’ve ever wanted is to know, definitively where I fall on the spectrum of importance. My projects don’t tend to be flashy, they’re not always the high visibility ones, they’re the ones that tend to go along unnoticed and unremarked (unless something goes horribly wrong). They’re the workhorse projects that just need to get done with a minimum of trouble. They’re sort of a personal specialty of mine. While most of them motor along without much intervention, that doesn’t mean they always will. Occasionally I’m going to fire off a red star cluster. I like to think my track record shows that I’m not just doing it to get attention – but because there’s an honest to God problem somewhere in the works. But if I’m going to be dumped into the “yeah, yeah, we’ll get to you later” pile, I will plan and execute accordingly.

2. I am not the decider. Call as often as you want. Try to drop names to intimidate or influence me. Have your boss “follow-up.” See, the thing is I’m not the decider. In fact you’d be alarmed if you knew how little authority I had to do anything at all. My job is to provide analysis, advice, and recommendations. What people do with those once I provide them, I can’t and won’t answer for. I’ve gotten very adept at standing like a stone wall in the face of bitching and complaints. I can do it all day every day and not so much as raise my voice. If you need to talk to someone who’s going to “feel your pain,” you called the wrong number… but feel free to have your boss call and I’ll tell him the same thing.

3. Working lunch. No, I’m not going to consider a pack of crackers and a Coke scarfed down at my desk at 2:00 in the afternoon while trying to catch up on email “taking my lunch.” I’ll take lunch during socially agreed time of day for the mid-day meal or I’ll take it off the end of the day. It’s not optional and not a topic open to debate. In neither case will it be a “working” lunch. If people can’t figure out not to schedule meetings back to back or let them run 45 minutes over in the middle of the day, other, eminently practical provisions will be made, as rest assured I value nothing so highly as my own time.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Driver’s Ed. Was I seriously the only person why learned anything from Driver’s Education when I took it way back in caveman days? The way I understand it, when you come to a controlled intersection in which the traffic light is out (not functioning at all), that intersection is treated as a 4-way stop. Given the car behind me that was doing a good job of trying to crawl into the engine through my tailpipe and the guy in the next lane who fishtailed two feet into my lane, apparently I’m the only one who remembers that little tidbit. I’m assuming the rules are the same on a road two lanes in each direction divided by a median as they are for any “normal” four lane intersection. If I’m wrong and the vehicles on said divided highway in fact have uncontested right-of-way, then consider this my apology for being so badly informed. Still, I’m pretty sure I’m right and other people are morons.

2. Sensing sessions. Yeah, look, I’ve sat through at least of dozen of these in a career that’s lasted as many years. The thing about “sensing sessions” is that you bitch and complain to someone who can’t do anything about your problems, they write it up in a nice report and then nothing happens. They might give the barest of illusions that someone is trying to do something but the reality is they’re about as useful as the portholes on a ’77 Continental.

3. The telephone. This month we’re apparently cracking down on unauthorized, unofficial phone calls. There’s a stiffly worded group chastisement email and a spreadsheet and everything to damn our collective useless hides. As usual, instead of singling out the perpetrators, which would be easy enough to do, we prefer the passive aggressive approach of making sweeping general announcements and indicting everyone across the board. Damn me, but doesn’t it feel good to be a trusted professional.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Bikers. Not the ones on motorcycles. The ones who put on brightly colored spandex and take their peddle bikes for a ride at 6:30 AM. On a narrow, winding country road. When the rest of us are trying to get to work and do something productive with our day. Yeah. Those guys are a real pain in the ass. Sure, technically they’re legally entitled to use the road, but really if your vehicle of choice can’t manage to make at least the posted speed limit I think your decision to do so is suspect at best. Someone driving their car uphill at six miles an hour would be considered a hazard to traffic, I don’t have any earthly idea why peddle pushers doing exactly that aren’t lumped into the same category.

2. The week. I can’t remember the last week that has left me so utterly tired as it draws towards its conclusion. Suddenly everything is busy. Quitting time sneaks up on me at work, catching me unaware – that almost never happens. The nights at home stream away like we were dealing with minutes instead of hours. Despite all the motion, there isn’t feel like there’s all that much to show for it. Maybe that’s the real source of frustration. I don’t mind being bone tired when I know what I’m getting for the trouble, but when there’s no apparent reason, well, that’s just obnoxious.

3. Presidential politics. Here it is, more than a year before the next president is elected and the two hardest charging candidates are an avowed socialist and Donald Trump. Do I even need to explain why this might be considered annoying in some circles? It’s also why I try not to pay much attention to what’s going on this early in primary season… But Sanders and Trump. Sweet lord, this can’t be real life can it?

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Wasting my goddamned time. Sometimes things happen that are unavoidable. Life can’t always be expected to run like clockwork. I get it. That said, when standard procedure ends often as not in a week’s worth of work ending up in the trash bin, I’m not sure that’s really the best possible use of resources. Look, I get paid whether I split the atom or fling spit balls, but on average I’d rather spend my days doing have some semblance of value. I mean I’m going to keep taking your money either way, but it seems like everyone would be better off if there was something more to show for the time other than half finished powerpoint.

2. Websites with ads that automatically play music or video clips. Stop it. Just stop. I will immediately close the offending screen. You will never get my business because your marketing is obnoxious and distracting. Be subtle. Build a great product. I’ll happily buy your stuff then – maybe even pay a bit of a premium for a premium product. I don’t care how good a widget you make is, though, if you insist on assaulting my senses just to get me to look at it.

3. The Office of Personnel Management. I like to think if I were as ragingly incompetent at my job as whoever is responsible for network security at OPM is, I’d be on the street looking for a job right now. Seriously, though, losing 25 million (and at this rate probably more) individual social security numbers and other identifying information about employees, their friends, families, college roommates, childhood neighbors, and former employers is really an extraordinarily impressive accomplishment. I’m sure I appreciate the free “credit monitoring” and all, but if we could make some heads roll I’d at least feel a little better that someone, somewhere was being held accountable. I’d ask for the immediate initiation of hostilities of the nation or group responsible for the theft, but it already feels like that’s just a bridge too far for the asshats running the show in the District.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. LED lights. Apparently the previous owner of my house had a stash of incandescent bulbs. I wish I’d have known that before we closed so I could have asked him to throw them in with the sale. Now those “leftover” bulbs are failing at the rate of about one a week and I’m trying to replace them with LED bulbs as much as possible. The projected energy savings is a nice perk, but I’m really a fan of the idea that it could be 10 years or more before I need to replace the bulb again. It should be an easy enough process; go to store, buy appropriate wattage replacement, install as needed. It should be, but it’s not. There’s apparently no such thing as a “60-watt bulb” anymore. Now you’ve got bizarrely small wattages, concerns about the right “color temperature,” lights that change color all together, bulbs with built in speakers, and remote controls. Great. That’s lovely, but honest to God all I want to do is go out and buy a basic light that will sit there and look like the old GE 60-watt incandescent that we’ve used since humanity got around to “capturing” electricity… and I’d like to not pay $14.97 for the privilege.

2. “Banning” the Dukes of Hazzard. Look gang, I don’t like the fact that some pansy executive decided to take a 40 year old televisions show out of rotation because the way a car was decorated might offend some viewer’s sensibilities. That being said, it was a business decision. No one “banned” the Duke boys. You can’t blame this one on POTUS, the government, or anything other than a TV network trying to avoid having people send them a raft full of letters and calling them damned dirty racists. Not a decision I’d have made if I were the TV Land Vice President for Commercial Programming, but you’ve got to stop running around saying something was “banned” when it wasn’t. It makes you sound like a moron.

3. Shark attacks. It may come as a surprise to many people, but sharks (for the most part) live in the ocean. They can often be found feeding in the same shallow areas along the surf line where people tend to congregate in the summer months. If you decide to jump in to the shark’s natural environment understand that you are assuming a risk wherein you are no longer the apex predator. The natural advantages we humans have on land don’t lend themselves to the water. Life is all about assuming (and trying to mitigate) risk in everything that you do. It’s a game of chance and percentages. Even in North Carolina the chance that you the individual swimmer are going to become the main course are awfully slim when you consider just how many people are in the water with you. I haven’t run the numbers, but I’d bet that the drive to get to the beach is far more likely to end in a fatality. Just something to think about as the media get themselves up in arms about sharks just doing what they do.