I'm sure you're not one for music videos... But when they sing about Pourin' salt in my sugar won't make yours any sweeter Pissin' in my yard ain't gonna make yours any greener
I think its a hit!
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Mind your own biscuits...
Then your eyes start to wander...
I worked for a company called Stac Electronics, andI was (for a while) managing the customer service team. This was a team of several dozen people, some technical, some not-so-technical, dedicated to answering questions from people using the company's software products. One day a rather unusual complaint bubbled up to me, through a couple layers of management. It seems that one of the young women working for us was causing some friction, and the managers working for me weren't quite sure what to do about it. They wanted me to help; really, they wanted me to deal with it.
So I first went off to talk with the two employees who had actually filed a formal complaint. One of them was a middle-aged woman, the other a young man. After some discussion with the woman, I figured out what her problem was: she was offended by the attention the young woman she was complaining about drew from the men on the team, and she though it was entirely inappropriate at work. Her complaint wasn't about the younger woman's behavior – it was about how she dressed. Specifically, it was about the ample cleavage she routinely displayed at work. Then when I talked with the young man, I discovered that his complaint was virtually identical. It turns out he was a devoutly religious and socially extremely conservative fellow, and he was quite disturbed by the cleavage that bobbled enticingly all day long, directly in his vision.
Then I met with the young lady who was the subject of all these complaints. She was indeed displaying quite a lot of cleavage, and she was quite well-constructed to do so. When I told her why we were having the conversation, she was absolutely shocked and quite embarrassed; from all I could tell, honestly so. I asked her why she dressed the way she did – and her answer is why I'm relating the story. She said, “To get people to look at me, of course. Guys, I mean.” When I asked her where she thought the guys would be looking, she just smiled and said “It’s advertising!” No delusional thinking there, that's for sure.
So how did I resolve this? I had two real choices, our HR people informed me. I could either institute a formal, well-defined dress code and require her to comply (and then fire her if she wouldn't comply), or I could find a way to work around the problem. After five minutes of brainstorming (with HR) what such a dress code might look like, I gave up on that whole plan. Specifying the inches of allowable cleavage didn't really seem like a practicable solution, though I'm sure I'd have had plenty of volunteers for enforcement :) So what we ended up doing was creating a couple of spaces, just by rearranging cubicles, and putting people in with the young lady who weren't likely to be offended. Since that meant mostly single young men, our young lady quite liked the solution. So did the young men. And then I had a lunch with the young lady and suggested that she might want to cover up just a tad more while at work. She did, too. All was well on that front, in the end...
Bibi has the best summary...
Personally, I'm thinking that we've totally squandered the largely-succeeding sanctions. From everything I've read, the sanctions were actually starting to threaten the long-term survival of the hardliners in Tehran. The mad mullahs were on the verge of being forced to make major concessions – one of which, certainly, would have been to stop supporting al Assad in Syria, the rebels in Libya, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the other external terrorist operations it's running. With this deal, or the parts of it that have been so far disclosed, we get an unverifiable (and therefore useless) commitment for a short-term hiatus in their nuclear development program. We don't get to inspect nuclear facilities on military bases at all – a hole in the fabric of the agreement that makes it obvious what Iran will do. In return, Iran gets ... essentially everything they wanted, including the end of all sanctions (including arms).
Why did we do this? The easy answer is “To burnish Obama’s presidential legacy.” The progressives are crowing, but their reasons all seem to be about appearances and a victory over conservatives. I have yet to see a straightforward presentation of the reasons for this deal, other than the Chamberlain-esque “peace in our time” platitudes, which anyone with even three or four functioning neurons ought to know by now is indefensible.
I think the chances are very small that Congress will be able to muster the two-thirds majority to override Obama's already-promised veto. Mad Mullahs: 1. Us: 0.
Dang...
Progress in Paradise...
Progress in Paradise... We started off the morning yesterday with a brisk walk to the east, along our usual route. We had one moment of excitement of the skunk kind, when a baby skunk (roughly 12" nose-to-tip-of-tail) burst out of the tall grass along the road about 15' in front of us. Immediately Miki and Race were bouncing at the end of the leash, wanting to go introduce the skunk to their teeth. The skunk completely ignored them, and instead calmly tracked down the night crawlers that the nearby sprinkler had raised. Suddenly Miki ran behind me, and backed out of his leash. I had no idea he knew how to do that! Next thing I know, Miki is scampering at warp 12 toward the skunk, which is still ignoring him. Not good.
Things happened very fast at that point. I'm hollering at Miki to get his sorry field spaniel butt back with me. As Miki nears the skunk, it whips around (those baby skunks can move fast!) and starts doing the stampy-foot thing that immediately precedes a spray. Miki, jaws snapping, a look of happiness on his face, lunges toward the skunk. The skunk sprays – I could see it – but misses. His stink stream passes Miki about a foot away, and the light breeze blows it further. Miki is still moving in. The skunk hisses and jumps toward Miki, who pulls about 400 Gs to go into a complete reversal, nearly tumbling over backwards. I'm yelling at Miki to stay away (thinking he's gotten some skunk-stink on him). Miki runs back toward me and hides behind me, begging me to save him from the nasty skunk. The skunk, meanwhile, goes back to munching on his night crawler.
After some careful inspection, I figured out that Miki had been only very lightly “painted” with skunk stink. We continued on our walk, and then I left Miki outside all day to “air out” in the bright sunshine. Amazingly, that worked – by evening he smelled like his usual self, unless you stuck your nose right in his fur.
When we got back, I used the cool morning to finish pruning the spray-damaged new growth on several blue spruce (see photo at right) around our yard. That was a very pleasant way to spend a few hours: easy work, beautiful environment, instant gratification as the trees looked great when I got done.
I spotted my neighbor Tim D. moving pipes out of his field, and I managed to get over to help just in time to get the last one out :) Then the two of us quite literally leaned on our fence, talking, and playing with the dogs. Race kept Tim very busy throwing a stick, and it was a lot of fun for me to see the delight on Tim's face as Race kept bringing that stick back. Tim also wanted to see my new air compressor, as he'd never seen a screw air compressor before. On the way in, he stopped by the brush mower, which he also hadn't seen before. I think he lusts after my brush mower :)
Next up: mowing. On a small scale, I finished mowing our yard. On a somewhat larger scale, Rob L. (who lives a couple miles north of us) drove his swather over to mow the alfalfa on our neighbor's field (where the first two photos are from) and both of our fields. The last photo is our south field, seen early this morning, when the cut hay smelled especially good in the cool, moist morning air. That's 20 acres in total, and it only took him two hours – with another 15 acre field in between! He stopped to chat for a minute, and showed off his machine. It's quite a beast! It doesn't work like the reel or sickle-bar machines I'm used to. Instead, this one has 17 rotary blades, each hydraulically powered. These cut the alfalfa at about 3" high, and they move up-and-down independently to conform to ground contours. To keep the hay from being mulched by the rotary blades, a huge vacuum lifts the cut hay up and away from the blades, and drops it into a 5' wide windrow in the middle. The most impressive thing of all to me: that thing zips along at 6 to 8 MPH while cutting, and independently swiveling rear tires let it turn (quite literally) on a dime. Very impressive machine!
Some flowers from around the place:
Later in the afternoon, Steve M. showed up to start taking down one of the little outbuildings on our property. Last fall, he was part of a Questar Gas crew that was rerouting a gas main that went under (illegally) this building. In the course of them doing this work, I mentioned that I was planning to tear it down (because we don't use the building, and want to use the pad for a backup generator, propane tank, and gas tank). I was thinking of this as a demolition project, but he looked at it as an opportunity – for him to get a “free” boathouse. After a little conversation, we agreed for him to tear it apart and haul it away. Well, last night was his first attack on the problem, and he made great progress. All the metal roof was successfully removed, no damage to the parts. I gave him a hand taking all the junk out of the building, loading stuff onto his trailer, and making some measurements.
His wife (Janelle) stopped by to help a little later, and the two of them will be back every night this week until they've got it all down. I'm guessing that will take all week, and maybe a bit more – there's quite a bit of work to do there!
It was a very busy day in Paradise!
Things happened very fast at that point. I'm hollering at Miki to get his sorry field spaniel butt back with me. As Miki nears the skunk, it whips around (those baby skunks can move fast!) and starts doing the stampy-foot thing that immediately precedes a spray. Miki, jaws snapping, a look of happiness on his face, lunges toward the skunk. The skunk sprays – I could see it – but misses. His stink stream passes Miki about a foot away, and the light breeze blows it further. Miki is still moving in. The skunk hisses and jumps toward Miki, who pulls about 400 Gs to go into a complete reversal, nearly tumbling over backwards. I'm yelling at Miki to stay away (thinking he's gotten some skunk-stink on him). Miki runs back toward me and hides behind me, begging me to save him from the nasty skunk. The skunk, meanwhile, goes back to munching on his night crawler.
After some careful inspection, I figured out that Miki had been only very lightly “painted” with skunk stink. We continued on our walk, and then I left Miki outside all day to “air out” in the bright sunshine. Amazingly, that worked – by evening he smelled like his usual self, unless you stuck your nose right in his fur.
I spotted my neighbor Tim D. moving pipes out of his field, and I managed to get over to help just in time to get the last one out :) Then the two of us quite literally leaned on our fence, talking, and playing with the dogs. Race kept Tim very busy throwing a stick, and it was a lot of fun for me to see the delight on Tim's face as Race kept bringing that stick back. Tim also wanted to see my new air compressor, as he'd never seen a screw air compressor before. On the way in, he stopped by the brush mower, which he also hadn't seen before. I think he lusts after my brush mower :)
Next up: mowing. On a small scale, I finished mowing our yard. On a somewhat larger scale, Rob L. (who lives a couple miles north of us) drove his swather over to mow the alfalfa on our neighbor's field (where the first two photos are from) and both of our fields. The last photo is our south field, seen early this morning, when the cut hay smelled especially good in the cool, moist morning air. That's 20 acres in total, and it only took him two hours – with another 15 acre field in between! He stopped to chat for a minute, and showed off his machine. It's quite a beast! It doesn't work like the reel or sickle-bar machines I'm used to. Instead, this one has 17 rotary blades, each hydraulically powered. These cut the alfalfa at about 3" high, and they move up-and-down independently to conform to ground contours. To keep the hay from being mulched by the rotary blades, a huge vacuum lifts the cut hay up and away from the blades, and drops it into a 5' wide windrow in the middle. The most impressive thing of all to me: that thing zips along at 6 to 8 MPH while cutting, and independently swiveling rear tires let it turn (quite literally) on a dime. Very impressive machine!
Some flowers from around the place:
His wife (Janelle) stopped by to help a little later, and the two of them will be back every night this week until they've got it all down. I'm guessing that will take all week, and maybe a bit more – there's quite a bit of work to do there!
It was a very busy day in Paradise!
Curiosity looks back...
A good summary of the Ukrainian situation...
A good summary of the Ukrainian situation... If that's something you're not well-informed about, this will give you a quick course. There are three general conflicts that I'm worried about these days. If I arbitrarily pick 10 as the magnitude of my concern, I'd rate these as:
10. Russia's play for territory in Eastern Europe (including Ukraine and the Baltics).I can't help but note that my ratings are almost exactly the inverse of press coverage (and the closely correlated general American awareness) in the U.S...
4. Iran's play for power in the Middle East, and in particular its threats against Israel and the U.S.
2. Militant Islamic fundamentalists.
A few of these...
New Horizons made the Pluto flyby...
Iran deal quick take...
Iran deal quick take... Iran: celebrating. Obama: putting lipstick on the pig. Congress: WTF? Arabia: fearful. Israel: “An historic mistake.”
Doesn't sound too good to me. In particular, when Obama says “every path to a nuclear weapon has been cut off”, all my natural skepticism cuts in. My brain translates that to “Iran’s gonna get a nuke, we just don’t know whether its next month, or next year.”
Will our Congress approve it? I'd like to think there will be a substantive debate, and if the deal is as I fear it is, then they'd reject it. Given the political context, though, I don't think that's too likely. Approval isn't quite a certainty, but it's darned close to it. The only thing I can think of that might derail approval is a mighty roar from the American public – and what is far more likely is a mighty yawn...
Doesn't sound too good to me. In particular, when Obama says “every path to a nuclear weapon has been cut off”, all my natural skepticism cuts in. My brain translates that to “Iran’s gonna get a nuke, we just don’t know whether its next month, or next year.”
Will our Congress approve it? I'd like to think there will be a substantive debate, and if the deal is as I fear it is, then they'd reject it. Given the political context, though, I don't think that's too likely. Approval isn't quite a certainty, but it's darned close to it. The only thing I can think of that might derail approval is a mighty roar from the American public – and what is far more likely is a mighty yawn...