The Meetings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Dear Coworkers:
After a brief survey of my calendar, it has come to my attention that we, as a group, have two days of the week without meetings. This is not in keeping with the mission of Sid's Widgets, a company founded on the principle of producing absolutely nothing useful through doing absolutely nothing useful.

Our first step on the Road to Nothing is to identify the hard workers and producers. These are the heart of any great organization. Unfortunately we're not a great organization, so we must identify these corporate successes and wear them down to nothing. When we find someone blazing a trail, we assume they're actually accomplishing something, so we do the only thing we can: we put them in meetings. Meetings, especially repeating meetings, can suck the soul out of anything with a heartbeat, which is why we have so many of them.

Let's take the case of Bob. Bob Phlegma was a real up and comer in Accounting. Bob realized if we amortize the deductibles and treble the bottom end, we could save millions and get the job done in half the time. This is the sort of genius with which we're occasionally plagued. Rather than firing Mr. Phlegma and exposing the corporation to a series of lawsuits for discriminating against older balding white males, we put Bob in meetings. Nothing slows down any attempt at progress like meetings. Especially Accounting meetings. You've no doubt met accountants. They're about as exciting as watching blood paint dry, on their best days. Put together an entire room of them, plus veteran meeters who know how to run, prolong, and schedule new meetings, and you have an affair where staff has been known to occasionally die at work. We keep a mortician on staff for just these times. The interesting thing is that the mortician said he can't drain any bodily fluids because the meetings have already sucked the life out of his ex-coworkers. Thus the mortician also produces nothing, in line with company values and goals.

The meeting always starts out with a rehash of the last meeting, which rehashed the previous meeting. If that doesn't take up the entire meeting and fuel the identical animosities, we allow someone to carefully propose a new topic, such as pens. Embossed pens. Exactly how many pens is left for later meetings, should the process get that far.

For the seriously out-there employee, the one who thrives on meetings, making at least the mandatory eight of them per day and still getting actual work done, there is nothing left but the saddest method: no, not firing - promotion!  We call this "Firing UP" because as soon as you promote someone, they get less done because of increased responsibilities (mostly meetings) and because managers never get anything done anyway, aside from annoying their managees. This way there will be the required 8 meetings per day, PLUS team meetings, strategy meetings, lunch meetings, and Congrats Meetings (at Tillie's Topless Tiphouse and Chinese Laundry). With a manager who couldn't get anything done even if they were in the mood to, the staff can get back to doing whatever they were doing before Manglement, only less.

So, dear coworkers, this explains my shock at finding our calendar short of meetings. If I get any further ahead, I risk promotion.

• Fascinating: someone is restoring the Apollo Guidance Computer. It works, except for the memory that doesn't. It was put together with integrated circuits, some with Write Once capability, like some recordable CDs. 52 years later... remember this when you throw your old, slow computer away. Your phone is magnitudes of order ahead of this computer. Your phone's memory is a physical tiny speck and has an incredible amount of storage, compared to the core memory in the computer. The computer couldn't even access the internet....

States have had mottos as long as they've had license plates (1863). Governors of all 43 states (and New Jersey) got together and decided to update their license plates. Aside from changing the colors, they are soliciting new slogans, perfectly setting up this next item - NEW STATE MOTTOS

PA: Hell with Humidity

PA: Park Here - $50

CA: Come for the Weather, Stay for the Weirdos

CA: Everything East of the San Andreas Fault Will Fall Into the Atlantic

NJ: My Balls Itch

NJ: New York Without the Positive Attitude

MI: One Step from Canada, Eh?

KY: Home of DUI Lawn Tractor Races

VA: We're Not DC - We're a Separate State

MD: We've Got Crabs

MA: Pock Yuh Cah Heeya

FL: Dinner's At Four

FL: We're Just Renting from Disney

FL: We Have Your Parents

FL: Habla Ingles?

AR: We're Sure There's Something Good Here

SC: We Have Tobacco

NC: Just North of South Carolina

DC: Screw You

DC: Not Really A State

NY: You Can't Park Here

NY: Keeping You Safe from Soda

DE: Still Bigger Than Rhode Island

RI: Small but Impotent

NV: Gambling AND Hookers!

AZ: Satan Vacations Here

MT: Cold and Flat, Like Mom

MS: It's Easier to Spell Mesothelioma

SD: Because North Dakota Was Taken

MO: We Have A Kansas City Too

KS: Fuck Toto

OH: Make a Left at PA

MN: The US North Pole

TX: Not Everything's Bigger Here

TX: Open Carry - Think Before You Insult

AK: Sorry About Canada

UT: Take Home a Few Mormons

UT: Sidewalks Close at 5

ID: You Da Ho

PR: Send More Money




Firefox version 62 and up, will soon let you know if a website has been breached. They will check via the online service 'Have I Been Pwned (HIBP)' and will deliver the results in your address bar, via an icon. When you click, you'll get the full information. This is a good thing, provided HIBP is not purchased by Google, Faceyspaces, or other information gatherers.

• I just read an article on mental health and cybersecurity.  heh heh heh....

In case you were wondering where your tax dollars are going, both the DEA and ICE are putting hidden cameras in streetlights. The better to spy on you, my sweet!

• Dear lefty:  Mr Shlomo Ick asks why flies make honey.
• Yes.

It's always great to be in the news, but it's never good. Ten years after passage of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, mandating coverage for behavioral health, Pennsylvania is dead last. How did the rest fare? 43 states received either a "D" or an "F".

When the state made seatbelts mandatory, there were fines for ignoring the law. Guess what will happen to health insurers. No, guess.

P.S. Like all laws, this is misnamed. It does not grant parity: it mandates coverage. There is no maximum coverage for broken limbs, but there is for behavioral health.

• I come to you today on a matter of great urgency.

Japan Airlines pilots failed breathalyzer tests 19 times.

Ok, it's funny on the surface, sorta, but this is horrible. Plane trips are among the safest modes of transportation. Every problem presented an opportunity to make it safer and the airlines/manufacturers have done a great job. In IT, the weakest link is the people: this is not something we need in the air.

Speaking of air disasters, a man sued British Airways for sitting him next to a fat passenger. In response, the fat passenger sued the man for not referring to him as a Person of Size plus Egregious Hurting of Feelings.  The airline will fight this tooth and nail, using every legal resource available to them, because if this guy (5'3") wins, everyone forced into any of their seats can sue.

• Police: "Stop trying to kill yourself with that knife or we'll shoot you"

Whenever you see a car creating a drive-through in a convenience store, the first thing to say to yourself is "That's an old person, who confused the brake with the accelerator." Because it always is.

• More suicides are caused by the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook than financial disasters.

Like everything else, this topic will show up late. It's International Men's Day.
Men (and women) - take this day to stop suffering in silence. Get yourself some help for any mental/emotional issues. The most important thing for you to understand is that you don't have to feel this way. The stigma around mental health is slowly going away. You might be surprised to discover that people are right up front about their issues and diagnosis. They're getting help - why shouldn't you? If you're confused, leave me a comment (which will not be published) and maybe I can point you in a helpful direction.

• You don't see a lot of girls (or boys) named Penelope lately.

As we all know, Faceyspaces is a large, moving target, especially for this blog. Today it's Instagram (oddly enough, owned by Faceyspaces). Instagram warned people who used the download your data tool that their password was visible in plain old unencrypted English. Of course they "take the privacy of their customers seriously," etc etc. I'd be really tired of hearing this, if I were a user of these systems. 

• Because you read ThermionicEmissions, we know you're already brilliant. If you want to take a shot at getting brilliant-er, you can take this Harvard Introduction to computer science course, free, online. This course is very popular, attracting 700 students per class, and is very well known outside Harvard. After the class, you'll not only have valuable knowledge, you will be able to speak with a Harvard accent and tell people you went to Harvard. Not bad for a little effort on your part.

As we get to know our new dog, Penny, we find out all sorts of things. Since she was a stray, we have no history or information. I can say confidently that she was some sort of hunting dog. As we go outside, she drags me down the steps because there's a goddamn bird flying over her yard. The unmitigated audacity of this bird. This is unfortunate because the neighbor's yard is something of a bird hotel and sanctuary.  The dog, who had to go outside rather than pee inside, froze, raised a paw, and monitored the rest of the birds. After I reminded her we were outside, she took care of business. Then it's time to patrol the yard. She vigorously patrols her yard, looking for whatever dogs look for, like the Vatican patrols pews for new altar boys. Yes, the Vatican is in trouble for yet another scandal involving coverups of child molestation. Did you like that segue?

Speaking of segues, I saw that the dog was shredding candy wrappers. This is not surprising, nor alarming. I figured if she couldn't have candy, she could shred the wrappers. Today she brought me an M&M wrapper, which was cute. Unfortunately when I took it, it was full of M&Ms. Yes, she somehow figured out how to provide herself with candy. Chocolate candy, which is fatal to dogs, but only in the right quantity. We had a bit of a chat and it won't happen again (until she figures out how to get it at on top of the fridge).

Some more loveliness from the SJW crowd. This particular warrior wants straight white males to delete their twitter accounts, to make it a safe space for.. ummm.... people who aren't straight white males, I guess.

How is this different from Famous Bigot TV Character, Archie Bunker, wanting Eyetalians and Eyerish out of his neighborhood? Or 'the blacks'? These people have become a parody of themselves.

Let's send her a present: