Eschew Obfuscation

First things, first:

• Yes, I voted.  I always do.
• No, I won’t tell you my vote if you don’t already know.
• No, I won’t ask you what you voted.  Ever.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen people get so involved in the legislative process.

Scores of new voters have turned out to vote for different issues and to truly put “The Process” to the test.

That is truly wonderful.

Unfortunately, in the press to win the day, both sides have managed to polarize people who would normally be quite happy to associate with each other.  Hurtful accusations fly across all of the various media channels as people in and out of the spotlight pontificate on the rights, abuses and motivations of “those people” depending on what side you’re on.  Both Yes and No on 8 sites have “fact” lists that  directly contradict each other.

Madness. 

If I vote Yes, my choice of labels are (aside from the normal idiot redneck labels):

• bigot
• hypocrite
• intolerant
• liar
• racist
• many others revolving around my desire to reinstate slavery

If I vote No, my choice of labels are (aside from the normal anti-homosexual labels):

• anti-family
• liar
• sinner
• and so forth (actually, I’ve not seen a good number of these, please comment)

How is it that people who would normally encourage debate on any topic suddenly become overwhelmingly
intolerant when these issues play out in the public space?

How can people claim to be enlightened and tolerant and then engage in name calling?

I’m truly disappointed at several self-claimed enlightened people for becoming the thing they condemn
claim to dislike most.  Demeaning someone or calling them names for voting their conscience in some hope
that they can intimidate them into changing their mind is a horrible thing to do.

Shame on you for becoming what you despise.
Shame on you for reducing yourself to useless name calling.
Shame on you for trading in your intellectual privilege.

Go pick a bar fight if you want to argue that way.

written by halfdime \\ tags: politics

At least some of you know that I’m LDS and am active in my church.

I am not perfect and am not what you would call a typical member.

That said, I had an experience two weeks ago that made me laugh so hard that I was light-headed by the time I could slow down my laughing enough to breathe right.

Church is broken down into three parts and in the last part, I meet with the young men that I work with every Wednesday evening (and camp with once a month, but that’s another story).

During the last meeting, we were talking about General Conference, the semi-annual world wide meeting of the church. The meetings are held the first weekend of April and October each year.

The question asked of the boys was, “When is the next General Conference?”

To this, the boys looked at each other for a couple of seconds. When nobody was able to answer, I provided a subtle hint, “It’s in a month that begins with an ‘O’.”

Let’s pause here to identify the calendar that I’m speaking about. I can imagine that you’re familiar with it but here we go:

1. January
2. February
3. March
4. April
5. May
6. June
7. July
8. August
9. September
10. Obedience
11. November
12. December

If you looked carefully, you’ll have picked out the boy’s answer.

Yes, Obedience it was.

Of course, this wasn’t funny enough, the other leader in the room had to pipe up with, “No. That would be Ramadan.”

If you’re wondering, this didn’t help me get any air.

All of the boys took turns noting how red I was turning.

It was awesome.

written by halfdime \\ tags: religion

As I’m wont to blog about a number of technical things, I find that I’m thinking about personalities in the IT landscape.

To that end, I wanted to jot down the broad categories of people as I see them in the IT world. As far as I’m concerned, there are only really four classes of people in IT.

The Closet Geek
We all know the stereotypical geek who has bad hair, acne a chronic clothing problem and lacks the social finesse necessary to successfully buy candy at a drug store for fear of interacting with a clerk of the opposite sex. The seemingly dominant personality traits in this type of person is hard to find due to the overwhelming lack of self confidence in a social setting. This is the person that they make movies about and that some people believe can shoot energy rays out of their noses [1].

The Casual Geek
These folks can be hard to spot by other casuals and are often targeted by Alpha’s without a moral backing. The most notable trait these folks have is an absolute passion for computer hardware (everything from PC hardware to gadgets). A common mistake that’s made on their resume is considering using the record function in Excel to be programming. There are scores of these folks working at retail computer establishments doing a great job helping folks determine the best of consumer grade electronics. My most recent encounters with this class of geek has been through IBM support but that’s another story entirely.

The Alpha Geek
These are the closet geek escapees. They’ve managed to become functional in a social setting and some may actually excel in social situations.[2] Frequently alpha’s come off as arrogant due to the, “I NEED TO BE RIGHT” setting in their brains. Patience with anything that isn’t interesting (like people) is often in short supply. The irony of this is that the social ability of alpha’s puts them in constant contact with people who are going to ask that the obvious be explained ONE MORE TIME! If you’re not the one asking for the explanation, it can be quite entertaining to prolong this process and watch the alpha’s head near bursting.

The Non Geek
You know who you are. If you’re reading my blog, we won’t be talking about you any more because we’re really only interested in flavors of geeks here, right? Ok, maybe not. The non-geek in an IT setting is really fun. This is the person that everyone looks at and asks, “You’re not offended by profanity, are you?” Regardless of the answer, this is quickly followed by a quick string of obscenities.

If you’ve kept with me to this point, you’re probably wanting to know what this has to do with the topic line at all.

It’s the interaction of the various groups in an IT environment. Mix in one of each class from above and sit each down with or without alcohol (preferably with for at least one) and wait for the topics to move. It’s a great to watch the verbal gymnastics to get to the topic that each excels at so that they can stick it to each other.

Some of the best humor I have ever been witness to has come from seeing someone go from the euphoria of a great quip to the low of being zapped themselves. The creative juices required to be flexible enough to laugh and still come off as a know-it-all prick is what I like to call, Creative Curmudgeonry.

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[1] Let’s be honest. That’s the biggest thing on their body and likely dispenses a multi-jigawatt bolt if they’ve put any effort into “enhancements.”
[2] I believe that some of the closet dwellers were actually dragged out by their parents and dropped in a vat of toxic sludge and that changed their personality.

written by halfdime

I’m getting around to reading my google reader.

Of course I’m behind. Shut up!

So I see this one Jonathan Schwartz’s Blog: Give it Back and quickly recognize it as an April fool’s joke. The best part of the read is the last paragraph and one of the reader comments (no, it’s not me).

The reader posts this horror from the past as his response to Schwartz.

written by halfdime