What’s All This Then!

This is more of a note to myself than anything else. Sometimes I get lost in the daily grind and forget those vital little things that matter tremendously. Thanks to Kent Keith for this excellent set of observations on Leadership.
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10 Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership
by Kent Keith

1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love and trust them anyway.

2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

3. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

6. The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds.

Think big anyway.

7. People favor underdogs but follow top dogs.

Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

9. People really need help but may attack you if you help them.

Help people anyway.

10. Give the world the best you have, and you may get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world your best anyway.

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On one side of the political spectrum, you have an African American and a Catholic. On the other side, you have an advanced AARP member and an Alaskan American woman. It’s a battle of the minority groups, folks! So what is a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant man going to do? I don’t know. Not only am I not a W.A.S.P., none of this really applies to me. No matter how hard both parties make this election about looks, family history, genetic tans, and religious beliefs, this process is about deeds — what these people have and have not done as politicians. That’s what really matters and affects me … and you!

Actually your election choice could be quite simple. Maybe you enjoy having someone else pay for your mistakes. Maybe you enjoy having more and more of your hard earned income taken from you. Then don’t fear. You have the perfect party that is more than happy to accommodate your desires. Maybe you enjoy being told how to live your life. Maybe you prefer someone telling you what you can and cannot do with what’s left of your money. Again, there is a political party ready and willing help you very well.

But what about the rest of us citizens who want to live responsible lives? What about the rest of us who don’t want be a slave nor want to enslave our fellow citizens through the democratic process? We’re stuck in choosing the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, that is still a vote for evil. It’s kind of like having to choose between being stabbed and being shot. Either way you’re going to hurt. The mistake here is believing that you can’t complain if you don’t choose. Yet this is the myth used to guilt you into voting. It works whenever you ignore the fact that, anytime anyone threatens your life or takes from you what is not theirs, you have every right to complain!

This all applies to our upcoming election. The ones who CAN’T complain are those who DO vote. They give their implicit consent to whatever harm the political process brings about. They silently condone whatever thievery and loss of freedom the politicians enact. For the rest of us who believe in being paid for honest work, believe in the charity of helping others because we can and not because of coercion, believe in a healthy respect for differing beliefs that aren’t imposed on us or on others, our election decision is an easy one: to write in “None of the Above” or don’t vote at all. Either way, we have the right to complain and to do so loudly.

Of course, I know enough to realize that this act of defiance won’t change a thing. After all, we are the only real minority that matters — the responsible individual. It takes a majority of fed-up slaves to enact real change. Remember what happened to the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union? For now, it looks like we’ll have to put up with the same-old practices mouthed as “change” by this year’s bumper crop of candidates. I know our elected officials will make the right decisions but only after they’ve enacted all other possibilities. Heaven help us all …

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… is a plugin that I found to automate the upgrade process. Aside from this great plugin, WordPress 2.6 has misaligned my two columns (you can find the sideabar at the bottom of the page now) and made my categories disappear. Best of all, there are no solutions on the forums. ::: sigh ::: Technology is so much fun at times ….

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Sometimes I wonder about a few of my friends that I hang around with at work. Last week, I listened as several of them talked about why they would choose one candidate over the other. One reason that a few of my genetically tanned friends held as an important criteria surprised me. “Barack Obama is one of us!”, they said. “What? A guy?”, I asked. “No, one of US!”, my dark friend said as he extended his hand and pointed to the back of it. “Oh!”, I said, “You mean that he’s not an amputee. He has all of his fingers and hands.” I knew what they were referring to. I just wondered if someone would say it out loud. They did: “I mean he’s a brotha’. That gets my vote!”

In all the years that I’ve known my friends, I’ve never known them to be racist. And they probably consider their remark to be anything but racist. Yet, as I spoke with more of my melanin-enhanced friends, it seems that it was easier for them to pick someone with similar looks. I have no doubt that some people have chosen John McCain on the same irrational basis.

Personally, I have a feeling that, regardless of who wins the election, we’re all going to lose one way or another. So I was wondering what would happen if Mr. McCain chose someone like Colin Powell to be his running mate. What kind of dilemma would this bring about? What would happen with those people who were using skin color in their election selection process? Would their heads explode? Would everybody wise up and write in “none of the above”? Of course, the bigger question is whether the Republican party is hip enough to let this happen?

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I finally upgraded this blog from Wordpress 2.1.2 to 2.6.0. The process only took 3 hours and went well except for the database upgrade step. Now all my categories are blank. They are listed in the database as “-2″, “-2-2″, “-2-2-2″, etc, instead as text! And I noticed that my columns no longer fit into their previously assigned spaces. ::: sigh :::

If you experience any other problems with this blog, PLEASE let me know.

UPDATE: Column problem is due to browser rendering. On my laptop, the columns line up correctly. In Internet Explorer and Firefox 3 on my home system, the 2nd column starts after the bottom of the 1st column. Anyone know why?

UPDATE #2: Sometimes Wordpress will allow categories with spaces between words and other times it will blank out that category. I’m finding that this happens randomly as I save and exit out of my blog.

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Ah, the 2008 Olympics starts today! Their motto, “Swifter, Higher, Stronger”, describes what athletics must do to win the gold. This phrase also happens to be a strategy in escaping from China as well. Oh sorry, let me start again …

When you think of the Olympics, you think of men and women moving with such energy and vigor that it makes me almost ashamed for getting winded when I take out the trash. For over 100 years, the summer Olympics have given us images of muscular athletics competing under bright, blue skies while deeply breathing fresh, clean air. So what better choice for a host city than smoggy Beijing. It’s one thing to level the playing field. It’s another to have the competitors laying level on the field in the midst of a hacking fit.

But the Olympics is about sportsmanship (and sportswomanship for those of you who like to get your knickers in a twist over such terms). Let everyone train to their very best potential and then let the best man and woman win. Does home field advantage matter? Probably not unless you get your visa revoked by the host government just before travel .

Of course, with all the millions of foreign visitors attending, security is very important. In fact, China has done an excellent job by bugging taxis, installing 300,000 surveillance cameras, and monitoring / restricting Internet usage. No point in allowing evidence of political oppression out, especially when everyone in the world already knows about it.**

So here’s my version of the 2008 Olympic symbol. What do you think?

**Of course, to be fair, 750 people out of 100,000 people in the USA are in prison verses 119 out of 100,000 in China. I guess strong-armed conformity works well in China verses arresting people for victimless crimes here in America.

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Have you heard of the famous greenhouse scientist, Dr. David Evans? If you’re familiar with the environmental movement, you probably have. From 1999 to 2005, he was consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office. Recently, he joined a long list of skeptical scientists who question the global warming hysteria. Two weeks ago, he wrote a bombshell of an article called “No smoking hot spot“. Here’s a snippet:

We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed), but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world’s temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980).

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.

In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn’t noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.

What does this mean for the rest of us???

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On Friday, I listened as Michele Norris of NPR interviewed you, Mr. Obama. As you spoke of your noble plan to tax more money from those greedy oil companies, I couldn’t help but to be moved by your eloquent words. Actually, my car moved me. I was just enthralled by your ideas as I traveled along the road. I drive over a 100 miles a day to and from work. Naturally, I would love cheaper gas (and not just the kind you get from fast food). So, go get ‘em, Mr. Obama … I think … well, that was my mistake — to think about your ideas.

Your interview left the impression that oil companies aren’t taxed at all. Yet, I know that our thrifty governments already take almost 50% of the oil companies’ earnings. So record profits mean record revenues for you and your congressional cohorts, don’t they? Yet, the way you talked made me wonder if you guys have already squandered this year’s oil tax windfall. I realize that you made the list as one of the top pork spenders in Congress. But this isn’t one of those types of lists to be proud of or to remain on.

Let’s look at this little audacity of hope, shall we? According to the Tax Foundation, Exxon earned over $20 billion in the first quarter of this year. Out of that, government took over $9 billion. Then there is all the additional sales taxes, excise taxes, severance taxes, and property taxes that Exxon had to collect from motorists on behalf of our lawgivers — which worked out to $20 billion more in tax revenue. All-in-all, for $1 in after-tax oil profit, you politicians took almost $3. WOW!! And yet, Mr. Obama, you want to take more? Who’s being greedy? Kind of like the pot calling the kettle black. Or in this case, the candidate calling the oil … well, you know.

Have you forgotten that those evil oil companies take some of what’s left of their profits and pay investors — in other words, my lowly 401(k). Given Congresses’ wonderful management of the Social Security system, I’m going to need every penny of that 401(k) when (and if) I retire.

So, Sir, I’m not sure of your noble desires to relieve those ill gotten record profits from Exxon and the like. And when you put those billions of dollars into more bureaucratic programs, I’m not sure that the pennies that somehow trickle down will really benefit us poor folk of America.

Hmmmm, here’s a thought: do you think you and Mr. McCain can first put a stop to the wasteful spending that you boys and girls are doing in Congress before trying taxing the rest of us into poverty?

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Have you been touring the Internet lately and discovered several of your favorite sites won’t load? Is your Internet explorer 7 giving you “Operation Aborted” error messages? Well, don’t worry. The problem lies in Microsoft’s browser not being compatible with Internet standards … yet again. Apparently, the popular tracking site, SiteMeter, updated their scripts. So when you visit a page that contains the counter code from SiteMeter, a bug in IE7 rears its ugly head and kills the page as it loads.

If you’re a webmaster who is using SiteMeter, you can find solutions to this problem here. If you’re a web surfer that doesn’t know about the better browser alternatives such as Firefox, you’ll find work-arounds for your wonderful Internet Explorer at the same place.

Thanks, Microsoft!!!

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Friday! After all that went on this week, I am wonderfully surprised that I made it to this moment. When my boss quit last month, his projects were added to mine simply because there is no one else left who can do his work. Unfortunately, there is no one left in the company to pass my work to either.

Did I tell you that one of the owner/VPs stopped by earlier in the week to talk about my status in the company? Apparently, they had a difficult time placing me in the company’s organizational chart because I fill so many different positions. (I’m wondering if bent over, grasping my ankles is one of those key positions.) I mentioned hopes of my paycheck reflecting my increased work load. He said they were working on that and I should see something ’soon’. Like I’ve never heard that before. “Work hard, lots of unpaid overtime, and we’ll take care of you. Oh, sorry, you’re doing a great job but economic conditions / business sales / my parrot’s sex change operation have made funds a little tight. But hang on. We’ll take care of you. For now, we’ve enrolled you in the Jelly-of-the-month club. This month’s favor: KY.”

Today, a good friend in the know told me about a critical meeting that the VPs and the president had. They were determining who could hurt them the most if that person left. According to her, after considering every one in the company, my name is the only one left on that list. I don’t know what that means. Are they scared I’ll quit or die?

I haven’t moved on to a better company because of that magical piece of paper more dangerous than anything Harry Potter had to deal with. I’m referring, of course, to that all-powerful … “college degree.” I know of its influence because thirty years of experience, having taken almost all the classes needed for a degree, and creating a wake of profitable ventures doesn’t count for much with the businesses that I’ve interviewed with. All those job discussions ended with “No degree? We’ll be in touch.” Maybe it’s because I’m not cute enough or my cleavage isn’t deep enough. Anyway, as a result of those interviews, I feel stuck where I’m at. Just don’t tell my new bosses. Perhaps they will actually bump me up industry standards pay levels because I possess the secrets of keeping their production going. We’ll see how this all plays out, won’t we …

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