I have this to say about H20

I started this week with the idea that I would drink at least 3 liters of water a day and 2 more at night, my thinking being that I used to chug back 2 liters of coke a day and then 2 more at night how bad could an extra liter of water be.
Well I have my 1.5 lt bottle in front of me for the morning and I just don't want to. I don't want to drink it, look at it or even talk to it, I just don't want to, it is flavorless, odorless liquid, it's like making out with a blow up doll all the functions are there to get it done but there is something missing.
I don't know if it's the sugar, taste, bubbles, caffeine or jus the idea that I crave, but I know I will have a hard time with today's 3 liters. I now understand the benefit of all this water is not the water it’s self, but more so the 90 times a day you have to run to a washroom.
"I am losing weight because I am drinking water", is a true statement, but more correctly I am losing weight because I getting rid of water.

Athletic Supporters

Ok I know it’s been a while, but I need to point out an injustice. For the last month I have been hearing all about the Olympics, from what athletes ate in the morning to the brand of gin they threw up the night after. We had 10 minutes of Canada’s medal counts on the radio ever hour and then it all stopped.

I am not as big a sports buff as some of my friends, but I always appreciate the effort, courage and determination that the Para-Olympians provide and the pride with which they represent the country.

I had to look on a web site of another country to find out that Canada’s Para-Olympians had won several medals and the current rank. Throughout the day while listening to our national radio station (you know who you are) I heard virtually nothing. Come on Canada, let’s get behind these people, give our support and show them we appreciate the efforts they are making.

An old time office remedy

Old time office healing

Holistic medicine has been getting much more attention in the last 5 years. These remedies for the most part have been around for many generations. I would like to bring back another practice from those days of old “apprenticeship.” For those of you not aware of this concept it would go like this.
Step 1, go to school. There is no other option,
Step 2, after graduation get associated to someone in the profession.
Step 3, learn the tricks of the trade from that person, but more importantly get graded as though you are good enough to be called a professional in whatever trade you have chosen.
Step 4, Once you are good enough to be called a professional, start your own business or work with someone else’s for at least 5 years.
Step 5, Once you have made a name for yourself and probably made most of the possible mistakes and had to correct them (or get sued). You get to be a team lead or supervisor.
Step 6, After 10 years in the industry if you want a change of pace, then you can teach or apprentice the next generation of professionals.
Step 7, Retirement

If at any point you decide to change professions (from programmer to plumber for example) you start from scratch. you might move through the apprentice period in a shorter time because you already have the professionalism and would only need to hone your technique.

When I went back to college for a refresher several years ago it absolutely sickened me that one of the instructors was a graduate of the program the previous semester and before taking this job he was in high school. I gave him an absolute hard time, with questions like “so how does this work in the real world” and “what happens when your customer wants…” I did it at the time to be a prick but really as I am working with the newest generation of programmer’s class of 2000 on up, no one had taught them some very basic computer professional skills. I had an Cobol programmer teach me the basics of software development and I am damm glad I did as I have been able to trouble shoot in languages I know nothing about because, of the basics Paul taught me.

Druidism #1

Ignorance must be a flower because it grows great with bullshit.

Internet, my new mentor

I needed to figure out a template for my current workplace. When I asked the person I reported to where this might be I was told to look it up on the intranet. In my last position I asked what would be the best courses to take for my professional development, it was suggested I surf the web.

I have stopped asking my “leaders”, “mentors”, and “bosses” for anything including direction. I have discovered the answer to everything at work can be found on the web so I am eliminating the middle manager and going right to the source. I know that much of the internet is garbage and the little that’s left, that is not porn, is hard to find. At that, it is still better than anything that I have heard out of a mangers mouth in about 10 years.

It’s also quite strange how everything I tell my manager is a bad idea from me, but 2 weeks later they repeat the same to their boss, selling it as their idea to save the day. My only hope is that that boss then turns to them and says that’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard and takes it up the chain where it comes into practice 3 months after I leave.

On occasion I have had the pleasure to be in the meeting when this comes up and instead of it being a stupid idea they ask for details on how to execute this ingenious plan. The problem is I am the only one in the room who read the details on the web the week before, and I don’t feel the urge to assist my “tor”mentor.

So for now I will continue to report to the internet…

Industrial Strength Idiots

I read in the news that the private citizens of Ontario need to cut the power consumption or there will be rolling blackouts.
So if I don’t shut down my computer or if I use my stove I can be blamed for causing a brownout.
When I drive by parliament at night, why are the lights on even though nobody’s home? How is it that the fountains run all day and night? Why does Government offices still have all of the lights in the ceilings and built into the prison walls they call cubes? Most of the offices running air conditioning are running a few degrees above freezing. Now as tax payers, I think we have a right to get electricity before the government does so if cuts are going to be made, they can start in the office.
How is it that “smart” business people can run air conditioners with the storefront doors open to the great outdoors, but I have to wait until midnight to run my washer? How is it that entrepreneurs can piss away energy while others are guilted into conserving?
I am sure that if in every government office the temperature is turned up 2 or 3 degrees and every 2nd light bulb is removed from the ceiling, that productivity wouldn’t change; power consumption would be reduced and hydro would not have to nag us about energy consumption during “peak periods”. Theoretically the Government can save us money.

Relating Einstein and Star Trek to work

I am well into my second career and am starting to see an ugly trend in managers. It seems that time is not what it used to be, for example meetings never start on time, lunch time is no longer anywhere near noon. Worst of all, starting at 7:00AM and working till 3:30PM with half an hour for lunch is some how less than 7.5 hours when you do the math is seems to equal 8.

But how can you complain when a manager starts at 9:30 and then departs for their first meeting at 9:45, even though it started at 9:30? The meetings continue right up until 6:00PM at which point they come looking for you to start working on all the stuff that they and the other members of the TKN (That Know Nothing) committee dreamt up throughout the day. Then the manager sends the e-mail you, even though you have already left, you know the one… I need this on my desk first thing in the morning. The fact that whatever “this” is will take at least 3 days is not relevant to them or you.

I have a couple of theories on this. (as I always do).
In my first theory of relevancy, E = MC² , E is energy sucked from my being by living through work where M is management providing twice as much C, Crap or Chaos, as a human should be able to withstand. Relevancy determines just how relevant you are to them, although it could also have to do with how many of their relatives work at the company; then it could be called the theory of relativity, but that one was taken.

My second Theory is the Star Ship Commander Theory. It’s great that managers have all of this free time to be at work (not actually working, just being there) because they are divorced / separated / never married or just don’t care about the other people in their personal lives, but do they have to take every person at work down with them? I blame Star Trek for this mind set. Everyone saw the adventures of Captain James T. and said “Hey look everyone on the starship is at his beck and call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week… that’s what I want when I grow up.” When all of the little children became adults, they never really grew up; they were greatly disappointed that there were no Starships. (Or Green skinned aliens to boink and then run off to the planet with the blue skinned aliens for seconds.) Today’s mangers, having been influenced by Star Trek, are still determined to have all “their” people at their beck and call 24 /7.

How do I know this to be true?
1.) If you start 5 minutes before your manager and finish 5 minutes after they leave they will never complain about you not being there.
2.) If you ask them about Star Trek they will get a very disappointed look in their eyes and not want to talk about it.

So when your shift is done, look them in the eye and say “The Enterprise is in dry dock, Commander. See you tomorrow.”

My last rant on government waste for at least…. a week…

Dear Liberal Party leader
Please understand that I don’t think you are stuffing your pockets with my tax dollars (anymore).

As I look around and watch you give our tax dollars to the rich (Bombardier), children who don’t pay taxes (subsidised daycare) and everyone else who is not Canadian (waiving of loans through the United Nations.)

You can’t be getting any money for yourself because we are shutting down health facilities in place of home care which is not getting any additional funding; our military is walking in old boots and flying old helicopters. All the military has are promises of help to come in the next 3 to 5 years. Sure hope the U.S. doesn’t figure out that we have oil, uranium and clean drinking water before that because we will be invaded next and Paul, just ask Sadam, about how hard they looked for those weapons of mass destruction. But I digress.

All I am asking is can you please prioritize, if your going to throw money away on something like the gun registry change it up and make it the homeless registry, so as soon as shelters come available we know where to find them.

Instead of waiving the loans to our sister countries, do what I do with my family members, I give them an interest free loan, but only if I get free food rights to their fridge, and in your case we get free mineral rights to the land. That way we can rape and pillage their land and still meet some of our Kyoto commitments, but only some.

Maybe if a country doesn’t have any real land value we call it a bad loan investment; but still demand that until they pay up, they have to make boots for our military and once we got all the boots we need start making some tents as we are still using the same crap from the 70’s. After all it was probably our peace keepers that defended their soil in the first place.

Instead of subsidised daycare, give those tax dollars back to the working public so they can afford their own daycare, and those of us who don’t have to pay for daycare luck out and get our taxes reduced from 48% to 47%. You would probably hear a cheer from Bay Street on that day. Better yet, flat tax us 20% no matter what a person earns. There are no exemptions as everyone would pay the same rate based on income, there would be fewer taxation workers, simpler audits, and happier tax payers. All I am asking is; Think about it?

Lastly, stop giving money to the big companies, if you really need to spend our money on stuff like that, to make yourself feel better, then start a program for entrepreneurs, and sink the same amount of cash into it. From this we might get fresh ideas, the little business person gets a chance to start “the next big thing” and who knows, watching all that Star Trek might spark an idea or two.

In closing, people hate paying taxes, but worse than that they hate seeing their hard earned tax dollars pissed away.

Sincerely
The Urban Druid

Money for nothing and your loans for free

Not too long ago there were students on Parliament Hill pan handling for $30,000, and $60,000 from the Canadian tax payers. Now I am hearing that the United Nations is helping countries that borrowed money from Canada, to get Canadians to forget the debt, and let them do the equivalent of going bankrupt.

When Commerce students don’t understand a concept like how loans work is one thing. A country giving away tax payers money, and then just ignoring the source in making the decision to turn loans into charity, is another.

To me it’s the equivalent of getting your friends money to offer a loan to someone else, and then say “oh forget about paying”. It’s only a loan if you can’t pay it back. Ask for charity. Don’t ask for a loan.

I see part of the problem being that people don’t want the stigma that goes with charity, just the money without the need to have to repay it.

Our government continues to give money to businesses, students, and other countries without asking us what we think because they know if we are asked we will tell them to give the money back to us, the people, who they mug with every pay check, and every purchase.

Urban Druid

Star mangled maple leaf

There are many things I don’t like about the American government. When I compare it to the Canadian government I wonder why we couldn’t have taken a few more hints from them.

As an example, this week on the CBC radio there was a piece about a California school where kids were sent back to the poor school districts.

At first I was thinking that sucks; people fought in the US in the 60’s and 70’s to ban school segregation. The president of the school board stated that during the school board elections residents who lived in the posh area wanted to reduce school taxes by limiting the students to only those who lived in that area. I still think that those people are being extremely selfish but the fact is their opinions mattered enough to make it a reality. We might think it is petty or selfish but we don’t live there and really shouldn’t get a say in how their affairs are run.

In the USA their judges are voted in, not appointed. If a soft judge lets a few career criminals off easy you can bet that after the next election they will be back working as a lawyer. Up here our judges screw up and we just look and say “hey what can you do?” We are right to do so because the buddies of the politicos, who get appointed to these positions, are in there for life.

School boards, judges, and various other important positions are voted upon. Not only positions people get to voice their opinion on important issues. During the last election a highway in Florida was voted down by the continuants a highway that both the government and industry advertised and lobbied hard for, but the people got their voice.

In Canada we get to choose from the left wing liberals, left wing conservatives or if you’re really in the mood for left wing NDP.

As far getting a voice together if someone even tries the media defines them as a capitalist crack pot.