Wednesday, September 29, 2010

"It's Obama's fault people want to believe he's Muslim"

So sayeth the Washington Post.

The Post ought to be careful: if you say anything is Obama's fault, the Obamatards call you a racist. When they do, just use the same retort I do:

I'm not a racist; I hate Obama's White Half, too!

I have an issue with that word "want": it is impregnated with accusation. It implies that people have a psychological disorder that compels them to think in a way that is contrary to reality. Get rid of the word "want". Secondly, I don't think Obama has any religious convictions whatsoever. I think he uses religion (or has used it) in the same way he's used a teleprompter; it's a tool that he trots out as needed.

The idea that a guy spent 17 years in a pew with Reverend Wright and never heard the "Kill Whitey" rhetoric, the "Bloodsucking Jew" routine, or the Black Separatist nonsense? That's a load of crap, and the idea that we're supposed to take him at his word when he says he didn't know, defies logic. Either he went in there and fell asleep every Sunday for 17 years, or he knows damned well what was being said in that church. He either agrees with it, or it went in one ear and out the other.

But Reverend Wright and his church, I think, were never more than camouflage. Barack Obama, the Community Organizer, could never become Barack Obama, The Politician, without that church. It gave him"street cred". It gave him a political base. Sitting in that pew every Sunday or 17 years was just the price Obama had to pay to get where he was going. Did he believe in anything Wright had to say? Your guess is as good as mine, and mine is something along the lines of "yeah, yeah, yeah, get to the Amen, Rev! I wanna get out of this suit! I wouldn't even be here if my wife didn't make me come!".

Which brings us to my second thought on Obama and religion: I think he only attended Wright's church because Michelle initially made him, but only afterwards found it politically convenient to stay there.

This explains why Obama was so casual about tossing Reverend Wright overboard when he needed to do it: the need for that mantle of religion was gone. Barack Obama was now able to stand or fall on his own. His 17 years as cuckoo in the nest had now come to an end. He no longer needed the Black Church -- he was already at the threshold of the White House.

If you doubt that Barack Obama uses religion as a smokescreen, to bamboozle you into thinking he's this-that-or-the-other, consider this: after nearly two years in office, the once-highly-publicized Obama search fora "new church" mysteriously came to an end. No church was ever found. The Obama's are never seen entering or leaving a place of worship (probably because they're too busy taking separate, weekly vacations), they don't even use it in one of those Potemkin parenting displays where they drool about the moral virtues and how they're important to the raising of the Obama Girls.

Or, maybe this is closer to the truth: The Real Reason Why Obama Supports Reverend Wright.

Next thought:

Who gives a fuck what he is? (Besides incompetent, corrupt, unprepared, and wrong on just about everything).It is my considered opinion that people who give a crap about such things are laboring under a severe disability. And yeah, I know the argument; someone will undoubtedly e-mail me and say (paraphrased in best Goober voice) "If'n a man ain't got no faith, how'd yer s'pect him ta be trustworthy?". To which I respond: "I don't, Jethro; he's a fucking human being and a politician, which means he's a douchebag, and lying every time his lips move -- including during the Lord's Prayer."

I can list all the "men of faith" who had neither morals or scruples, but then I would be sitting here for the next 52 years. I rest my case. If this is a subject which consumes your every waking thought, start drinking, please. The real point is to say "He's not one of Us", the "us" being the mouth-breathing Evangelical retards who walk about praying for the end of the world so that they can cash in the Brownie Points they think they're entitled to.

I'm sorry to say that you'll probably be very sadly disappointed when Armageddon arrives.

The argument about Christian/Muslim is ultimately besides the point: Obama is a douche who needs to be voted out of office in 2012, and have the worst of his policies stopped by a republican takeover of Congress in the mid-terms, and that should be all anyone really needs to know or think about.

Thomas Friedman: Peckerhead...

The New York Times pays this douche a lot, for writing with the insight --and vocabulary --of a fourth grader, and for pretending to be smarter than you average Irish Setter...and not me?

Tea Parties Are More like "Tea Kettle" Parties.

Friedman makes two mistakes here; the first is that he's writing about something he so obviously knows nothing about. The second is to believe that anyone who isn't already a retard takes him seriously.

I'm sure the premise behind your "opinion piece" was received with a great deal of giggling from your panty-bunched-stick-up-their-asses-libtard-metrosexual-asshole-butt-buddies at the Times water cooler, Tom, but you shouldn't have taken that as a tacit encouragement to write something this incredibly vapid. You should know by now that when the nancy-boys at the Times snicker so, it isn't because they've found your little diatribe oh-so-clever; it's because they've just wet themselves. They like the feeling of wet shorts against their skin, and they also derive a sick pleasure from their own urine...

So do you -- don't deny it.

Unfortunately, one has to reach the very, very end of Mr. Friedman's Tour-de-Force of ignorance to reach the only sentence which makes sense, or which allows the reader to momentarily feel as if the effort required to get through Friedman's nonsense wasn't a total waste of time;

"Maureen Dowd is off Today".

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Why IT Managers are the Dumbest People On Earth...

Okay, so just why was it that I had to go into Manhattan yesterday? Well, there was the prospect of some work, is why!

There is a certain software company, which shall remain nameless, which produces an entire line of (very expensive) products which it promises that it's customers will be able to make the optimum use of information to make themselves more profitable. If you've ever worked in the IT industry, this is a standard sales ploy: our software will enable your sales force to do X, your employees to do Y, and your management to do Z, all of which will increase "productivity" and sales, cut down on miscommunication and human error, and save you scads of cash.

Which will then be given to people who do no useful work, and already make scads of cash. But that's besides the point...

The truth is that very often these claims are hard to justify. Yes, there are instances where automation can save you money, but more often than not you spend more than you save between implementation costs, maintenance, upgrades, and the disruption to the normal "routine" that each new technological gee-gaw introduces to your work flow. Programmers must devote hours to implementation and customization. Workflow Experts must decide how these tools can best be used and introduced. People need to be trained on how to use the thing. There's often new equipment to buy to make use of it. You have to hire consultants to put the thing into operation and integrate it with your existing infrastructure, or spend a lot of man-hours taking your staff from their regular duties to work with the new crap.

Technology evolves every few years, and today's bargain or productivity tool is tomorrow's White Elephant. As an IT manager, you have to be aware of this, and you need to realize that when you make a purchasing decision, that you make it for the long term. Nowadays, the trend is to buy the latest-and-greatest...and then replace it six or 12 months later when something latest-er-and-greatest-er comes along. IT budgets balloon, cash gets tight, and then you have to fire a lot of people just to keep your job.

And a year later, you make the same mistakes and the cycle continues. Because once most IT managers reach a certain level in the corporate pecking order they become more politician-than-line-worker, you eventually wind up with a multiplicity of tools of dubious value (the quickest way up the ladder is to convince your superiors that you've got the latest money-saving idea, rather than the most efficient or intelligent idea). You can't get rid of these White Elephants because you're locked into multi-year contracts, and you simply can't go back to your bosses and ask for yet-another $2 million for a new-and-improved version of what you've just fucked up.

Eventually, you wind up having to write memos exhorting the troops to use a piece of software that they a) hate using, b) often find useless and c) can't really take full advantage of, just to justify the original expense...and you desperately hope no one above you notices (don't worry, they usually don't, because they're even further removed from reality than you are).

The next step in saving your job is to implement a regime of more rigorous Information Management technologies, which is a fancy term for "can someone make sense of this shitpile for me"? If it's your shitpile and you can't make heads or tails from it, you have a problem. What makes you think I can fix it for you in a short period of time? The solution involves tying together various platforms, a multitude of different data types, and is the electronic version of trying to herd cats, into a simpler, more efficient system that promises to deliver information to those who need it, as they need it, in a way that doesn't require a PhD in Attic Greek to understand what you're looking at, and of course, cheaply.

Except that consultants ain't cheap, and neither is starting from scratch.

IT managers get into this hole because they have been raised in a climate where"Information is Power", and because it is believed (wrongly) that an employee who has access to information that otherwise has no bearing on how they do their job is a more efficient, and therefore more valuable, employee. This is wrong because the same IT managers almost always make the same secondary mistake:

Having spent millions on new technology and the means to diffuse it (iPads, Blackberries, cell phones, desktops, servers, e-mail, and so forth), they do not make any effort on training employees on how to actually use and evaluate this information properly. After all, Training People is an Expense, you see. Eventually, the typical IT worker reaches a curious state; he's supposed to be an expert in the technology you're using, but he hasn't necessarily been trained on it, and he now has information being blasted at him from all quarters, most of which he doesn't need, and he's overloaded. He's not expected to actually think (thinking leads people to make mistakes), but he is expected to always have the answers to every douchebag who calls the help line, or every visiting VIP who asks him a question about what he does and how he does it.

This is your first line of defense against problems which interfere with your, supposedly, most valuable asset: information.

And so, you find yourself on the lookout for the next best technological answer to a relatively simple manpower problem. You're not making effective use of an employee's brainpower, in fact, you're discounting the possibility of them having any brainpower at all, and become reliant on technology rather than people, and you're invested up to the neck in it. People have an advantage over technology in that they are able to think in the abstract, and are capable of showing initiative when properly motivated. If more IT managers realized this, there wouldn't be a multi-hundred-billion dollar "Information Management Software" industry, fewer IT workers would die of heart attacks before their 45th birthday, and American business would not be beholden to machines that most cannot comprehend.

And I wouldn't have to take an interview to work for an Information Management Software Company that hardly makes use of it's own products because it knows they're unequal to the Herculean task of delivering what they promise to deliver: efficiency, flexibility and cost-savings at an affordable price. You think I want to work here? Guess again!

Who wants to design NEW software to do what the last batch promised to do, but doesn't? Why didn't they just keep those programmers and designers and tell them to fix the piece of shit when they discovered it was a total kludge? Oh, right, that would have entailed expense: keeping employees with institutional knowledge, not to mention recreating something that already cost you more than you expected.

Total waste of time, this interview, except for all the ladies that I saw on the way in (see last post). You can only reinvent the wheel so many times before it's no longer a wheel. Besides, most of the kludge comes from all the bells-and-whistles (they're typically so-called "Flexible management features", which is a metaphor for "bullshit" ) you've added to your software, which usually originated by a request from ONE customer to do something differently -- usually because his bosses prefer multi-color pie-charts to monochromatic bar graphs. .

It seems to me that if you really wanted to make money in information management these days, you'd do better to recommend that managers actually make an honest evaluation of their mistakes, and then pour resources into bringing staff up to speed on what they have available to them, and them how to properly use it instead of constantly having to buy something else. I'm going to talk to some folks I know, because there's obviously a dollar or two to made here without having to write code.

Girls, Girls, Girls!

I had occasion to go into Manhattan yesterday (see next post for details). It was raining to beat the band here in New York, and a wet commute into the city is pretty much always something extremely unpleasant. Most people would rather have their wisdom teeth yanked out -- via their rectum -- than have to deal with a commute from Staten Island to Manhattan: standing on the train platform in the rain, the soggy ferry ride, the having to dodge the spray from cabbies who don't see (or just don't care about) the rain-filled potholes.

It's even worse to have to do it in a suit which you're to used to wearing, and, horror of horrors, dress shoes that you've just spent two hours the night before shining within an inch of their lives (I have a fetish for always having my shoes properly shined. It's compulsive, I think), which will now be ruined because of all this water. Don't get me started on what the wet does to my carefully-creased pants (I like sharp creases and stiff cuffs). And besides; I so rarely wear dress shoes these days that it often hurts to do so for any length of time, especially when your feet get wet.

On a day like that, you have to find any reason you can to justify the trip (besides the prospect of money, of course), to find some way to positively occupy your mind, because otherwise the combination of miserably wet platform, miserably crowded train, miserably cramped ferry, the dreaded trip from West Side to East Side through flooded streets, just might be enough to turn you back. I didn't really need to make this trip, you know. You need to find something positive to think about, something inspiring to push you forward.

Thank you, Ladies, for giving me a reason to continue my arduous journey!

I must have awoken in one of THOSE moods yesterday, because I don't think I missed a thing.

The "Snooki" look is alive-and-well here on the Island. Velour track suits, with the shirt/top just short enough to show everyone your muffin top are all the rage amongst the young girls. When I say "young" I mean, ohhh, probably the 16-30 year olds. This is how the Goombahs (blue-collar Italian men) used to dress; it wasn't attractive on them, and it's even less-attractive on a woman. And a lot of you seem to be busting the zippers up top, too.

When they aren't rocking Snooki, they're going for a more sophisticated-upper-crust look, and wearing what appear to be riding clothes. I think they used to be called jodhpurs, a sort of ultra-tight-fitting pants with velvet or suede lining the inside of the thighs. This is very sexy, for two reasons: first, who doesn't like tight pants on a woman who has the proper assets? Second, that suede is sort of like a visual cue, which cannot help but draw the eye in a line from knee to crotch -- right this way, boys! I wonder if they realize...?

Then you notice that they're wearing 'em so tight that cameltoes begin to abound. I'm sorry, but there's something about cameltoes that just turn me off; you might as well just break it out and show it to everyone after that. Really, we won't be shocked: we've already pretty much seen it all already, thanks. Once you notice the cameltoe, the vision is ruined. You manage to shrug off the bitter taste of disappointment, to make yourself a brand-spankin'-new discovery:

Geeky chicks are looking pretty damned good these days! Whatever libtard political pundits have to say about her womb and political beliefs, Sarah Palin seems to have had a most-unusual affect upon the fashions of the day; glasses are in. The "Natural Look", with little makeup, is back. So are pony tails and up-doos, and...glasses. Dorothy Parker was wrong: this man definitely makes passes at girls who wear glasses! Always did, probably always will, Especially when they wear tight jeans and now-clingy t-shirts made even moreso by the humidity and rain.

I just might make the trip again tomorrow specifically to try and get me one!

Arriving in Manhattan, you become aware of another trend: the artsy-fartsy city types are dressing like 1960's go-go dancers. Tight leotards, elastic-sided knee boots. They're going braless. It's fun to watch on a bouncing bus that lurches to a screeching halt at every red light, or every traffic bottleneck. Sorry to all of you who caught me staring, but I'm male, and can't help it. I'm just wondering if I was drooling at some point.

My trip took me from South Ferry to the East Side, which meant a trip through the outskirts of Chinatown. What I saw was amazing, and I found myself wondering; when did Asian chicks get nice, rounded behinds? Hell, when did they get hips, and wonder-of-wonders, C-cups? It seems as if the American diet, heavy on hormone-injected meat and poultry, has finally had an effect on the latest generations of Asian women that is sure to please every red-blooded American male.They're even wearing make-up now, too! I need to get out more! There were hundreds of them!

The ride home was just as...umm...entertaining.

We Men used to mark the arrival of June in New York by one obvious change in the prevailing fashions, because that's when the short skirts-and-barelegged-look marked the official beginning of Summer. When I worked downtown, from June to mid-September was a time of little work, and numerous cigarette breaks to go out and take a look at the women on the street. Now, it seems women are going all out to look sexy all-year round. I think they always were, but it appears as if nowadays it has all been elevated to a fine art. It made an otherwise dreadful journey a rather delightful experience.

If the City government made an effort to let Men all over the world know just what beauties we have roaming the streets on a rainy fall day, tourism would increase tenfold!

I have to get out more.