Month: November 2006

Categories
culture life

Becoming Comfortable

After a week at work I am becoming quite comfortable with my new position. The first half of the week was a bit empty since more than half the people at the office were gone for one reason or another. Over the last two days I have been able to meet the people who had been gone and get a better feel for the culture of the office and the personalities of all the people I will be working with. I have also had more interaction with customers and projects so my feel for the position is deepening. The more I know about the work and the people, the more I like where I am at now.

To top it all off, Laura came to visit the office with the kids so my co-workers got to meet my family and my family got to meet the people I work with. After the visit, Laura said to me that she was amazed at how comfortable she was with the people in the office. She really felt like it was the right place for me to be. I guess that up until then she was still not totally comfortable. That makes sense to me because she knows very little of the details of the work and she knew nothing about the company. At least in the case of BYU, where she knew no details concerning the work I was interviewing to do, she knew BYU and felt very confident in them as an institution.

It’s nice now that she feels more confident in Rapid Intake as a company and can tell, like me, that it is a really good fit.

Categories
meta technology

Making a Change

I have been thinking about getting rid of comment moderation. Over the last few months the number of comments has grown, as I had hoped, but thankfully there has been no comment spam. For that reason I am getting rid of comment moderation so that comments will be immediately available when they are posted. I can still delete spam comments if they come, but unless the get bad I will leave comment moderation off. No more waiting until I get time to approve and publish your comments.

Categories
life

Desk Job

When I was interviewing for this job they warned me that, being a small company, people have to wear a lot of hats. I liked the sound of that because monotony is not my bag. What they didn’t tell me was that this desk job included making my own desk. I spent a large portion of the day, between customer service calls, working on building my desk so that the person whose desk I have been borrowing can have his space back when he returns tomorrow.

Building the desk and a small utility stand was a fun project, but I would be very surprised if I ever had another job where I would be required to build my own workspace.

Categories
culture life

Reasons to Avoid War

Most people would think that reasons to avoid war would be obvious to anyone, but I think this reason is very damning to our current war efforts. The New York Times had an article about various murder cases related to the war in Iraq.

Later in the article it discusses a case where an Iraqi civilian was killed by American military personnel. This doesn’t sound strange considering it is a war, but this is what caught my eye:

As part of the plea agreement, Private Jodka testified that he participated in a plan formed by the squad leader, Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins, to kidnap and kill a known insurgent. In the dark, the squad kidnapped and killed the wrong man.

This is a perfect example of military personnel doing something wrong which they justify as being right in the name of war. I am not talking about the mistake of getting the wrong man in the dark. I am talking about the plot to abduct and kill a terrorist. If it had been a legitimate operation they would have been planning to capture and interrogate the terrorist. In that case, getting the wrong man would have meant that they could free him.

Why this is a good reason not to go to war is that anytime we go to war we set the stage for these kinds of “operations” orchestrated by men like Sgt. Hutchins (who appears to deserve the bulk of the blame here).

Categories
life

First Day

Well, today was much like most first days – filled with more administrative concerns than most days will be. I enjoyed working with my co-workers – those who were there. It was a hectic day as we had some technical hitches at the office this morning in addition to the natural chaos that comes with a new person starting at a company as small as this one.

I started walking home tonight so that Laura would not have to come all the way to Main Street, where the traffic is the worst, to pick me up. Just that short walk towards home in the crisp, chill November air was enough to assure me that I am going to enjoy being this close to home. Cutting out 7 to 10 hours of commuting each week (which I would have if I were working much farther from home) might give me that time so that I can settle down the way I would like to.

All in all, I am very optimistic about working outside my house for the first time.

Categories
life

Starting a New Day

The reality of tomorrow is starting to sink in for me. I will be starting to work after two months and for the first time ever I will be working a regular, full-time job outside the house. All my previous outside jobs were part-time or irregular hours for student positions and the like. While I expect to feel the transition myself, it is my family that is likely to feel this change the most.

Laura has never had a time when I did not set my own schedule based on our family situation. On top of that she is still getting used to having four kids, so this is a double burden for her.

Savannah and Alyssa will notice the difference, but I expect they will just roll with the change.

Isaac will not know the difference.

Mariah will probably take it the hardest. She was not around for my schooling so she has never known me to go away to any form of work. She was as old as Isaac is now the last time I returned from work-related travel. She is the ultimate daddy’s girl and she has become very clingy in the last day or so. I have no doubt that she will adjust to this new reality as well, but she is going to notice the change and probably hate it for the first few days or weeks.

It will be interesting to see how this change affects Mariah and the family as a whole. At least with the office just over a mile from home I will not have to deal with lengthy commutes and we will have the option to visit for lunch and have the girls come see the office some time.

Categories
culture politics

Partisan Playground

Three days after the elections I get an email calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. It sounded a lot like playground politics. “You impeached our president so now that we are in control of congress we will impeach yours.” I thought it was typical of staunch partisans that they would exaggerate their position from the outset. The email started with:

“On Election Day, the American people voted overwhelmingly for change.” (emphasis mine)

I wonder about the threshold they use for “overwhelming.” The fact is that if every race that remains undecided were to fall to the Democrats there would be 42 seats that changed hands in the House and the Senate combined. That is only 8% of the 535 seats in Congress. Only 6% of the Senate changed and 10% of the House. That sounds like a vote for change, but not an overwhelming vote for change. In fact, 25% of the seats that changed were still in doubt after 24 hours. (All the numbers I am using assume that every seat still in doubt goes blue.) To make this vote less overwhelming, the talk now is how the incoming Democrat representative are pragmatic and populist more than liberal. We really don’t know what to expect from this new Democrat controlled congress. See Update

I visited the forum where the email originated and found more level-headed thought being expressed. Things along the lines of, “President Bush deserves to be impeached, but it won’t accomplish anything positive in the country, so don’t bother.”

Nancy Pelosi, likely the next Speaker of the House, has indicated that she will not pursue impeachment. Level-headed people from across the political spectrum will agree with her that impeachment is not a good course of action for the country at this time. The partisan impeachment proceedings against President Clinton should serve as proof of why we should not go down that road right now. At least when the Republican congress impeached Clinton they could be forgiven for having no memory of the last time we had an impeachment. This Democratic congress has no such excuse.

I looked around the forum site and they had a poll for people to vote on what they would like to see happen in the first 100 days of the new congress. They categorized the various suggestions. I discovered an interesting trend as I read the options. I found that I agreed or disagreed with them on a category by category basis.

  • Constitution & Courts
    • I disagree heartily with almost every option
    • I especially disagree with the constitutional amendments they propose
  • Economy, Business, Labor
    • I agree with some of the options
    • I am undecided on some of the options
    • I disagree with a couple of the options
  • Elections
    • I agree with almost all the options
    • I disagree with one option and think a couple of options are redundant
  • Energy & Environment
    • I am undecided on the majority of the options
  • Foreign & Military Policy
    • Many of the options sound like vague ideals rather than solid plans
    • I agree with their positions on torture
  • Government & Congress
    • I agree with most of the options
  • Investigations
    • Lots of redundancy related to the Iraq war
    • Many of the options sound like they are living in the past
  • Media
    • Sounds like a bunch of ways to expand government
  • Social Policy
    • Sounds exactly like the Democratic party line

This got me wondering what kind of people were running the forum. The answer came in a different poll they had. This one asked who they would vote for in 2008 for president. The answer was overwhelmingly Al Gore. He got more than 1/3 of the votes with 13 candidates in the poll. Hilary Clinton (supposedly the front runner) was not even in second place on this poll, she got less than 1/8 of the votes. So these are Gore Democrats. This is nothing against Al Gore, he merely represents one faction of the Democratic party. The question is, what do the Pelosi Democrats think, or what do the Dean Democrats (the official party leadership) think? Lest anyone see this as bias, Republican factions include the McCain Republicans, Frist Republicans, and Mehlman Republicans.

UPDATE 11/14: I just found confirmation of what I had said about how overwhelming this vote for change was.

The scale of this loss was on par with the post-war average for such elections: close to 30 House seats versus the average of 32, and likely six Senate seats compared to the average of eight.

In elections during which the president’s popularity was low because of war, scandal or recession, however, the average is 47 House seats and eight Senate seats.

This “overwhelming vote for change” was about average, if not a little below average for the current situation.

Categories
politics

Getting Answers to Old Questions

I just remembered something I wrote back in September. Tuesday made it possible to answer some questions I asked clear back then. I had said that “between the presidency and the two houses of congress each of the major parties should be in control of at least one of the bodies – thus forcing the various governmental bodies to compromise in order to make things happen.” We now have Republicans in control of the White House and Democrats in control of the House and the Senate.

I had asked, “would this administration be better if their party did not control both houses of congress?” An early analysis of that question came in the New York Times today. From the article:

‘You’re seeing the George Bush who has always been adept at playing the hand he is dealt,’ said Charlie Black, a Republican strategist with close ties to the White House.

Vin Weber, a Republican former congressman and lobbyist, put it this way: ‘I’ve never thought that George Bush was a rigid ideologue; I’ve never thought that he was a hardened partisan. He is a businessman first, and in business you don’t spend a lot of time crying about changed circumstances. You figure out quickly how to adapt, and that’s what he’s doing.’

Certainly this does not answer whether this “M.B.A. president” can make things work with a Democratic congress, but we’ll find out.

I also said that “those in the House have some incentive to do something because they will face re-election in another two years.” The New York Times article adds another incentive for Democrats to work with Bush:

‘Their whole theme has been the do-nothing Congress,’ Mr. Black, the Republican strategist, said. ‘Now, if they get in there and make themselves vulnerable to that charge, it hurts them in ’08. He knows that they have an incentive to get things done, and he’s going to take advantage of that.’

If anything is to happen, the president must move toward the center. I still hope, as I said in September, that this will force the Republican Party to come back toward the center. Having lost the House and the Senate, I hope they will have the motivation to do so. They can hardly pretend that this was just some small setback.

Categories
meta politics technology

Code for Old Blog Tools

I thought I would add the html code from some blog elements that I am putting away but which I may want to use again.

Here is the html code for the election projections:

<a href=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/”><img alt=”Click for www.electoral-vote.com” src=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2006/Icons/ev-small.png” border=”0″ height=”72″ width=”72″ /> <img alt=”Click for www.electoral-vote.com” src=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2006/Icons/ev-small-house.png” border=”0″ height=”72″ width=”72″ /></a>

Categories
politics

Non-Sequiter

I stumbled on to another example of blind loyalty by our senior senator. In character for the man who said that the alternative to attacking Iraq was, “we could have attacked North Korea, Iran, or Syria instead,” Senator Hatch said that, “you’d have to tarnish every young American who served over there,” for Donald Rumsfeld’s legacy to be marred by mistakes in Iraq. This suggests that there is no difference of position between the soldiers on the ground and the men that give them their orders.

Just as it is possible for commanders to give good orders which are poorly executed by the men on the ground, so in this case we have had a series of mistakes from those at the top which have generally been well executed by the soldiers on the ground. Thus there is distinctly a difference between the soldiers on the ground and those that give them orders.

If Senator Hatch meant to suggest that making mistakes in Iraq does not prove that Donald Rumsfeld is evil, then I have to agree with him. What he does not acknowledge is that even a good leader may be tarnished by mistakes without becoming a bad leader. For example, the legacy of Robert E. Lee was tarnished by the actions at Gettysburg. Pickett’s charge was well executed by George Pickett and his men, but it was a colossal mistake by General Lee. None of this makes General Lee a poor general. Similarly, the mistakes made in Iraq will surely tarnish the legacy of Donald Rumsfeld without reflecting poorly on the soldiers who served there (not including Abu Ghraib participants). While this tarnish is in fresh view, it should be remembered that the perspective of history will determine whether Donald Rumsfeld was good or not. Either way, we can safely say that Secretary Rumsfeld is no General Lee.