A few days before I left work for my surgery, I drew a skull and cross bones on the dry-erase board and wrote "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter, Sequestration Looms Large" around it. While I still don't know if I will experience any ill effect (such as furlough days) I have received word that several people I know and work with will be gone from my office very soon as a direct result of sequestration. Well, now I feel like an asshole for writing that one the board (although we knew it was a possibility). I actually have zero idea how this makes me feel about staying in that office versus transferring to another one. I definitely need to get back in the office to find out more information before I can make a decision, as well as not be on Percocet when I decide. I continue to be very torn between the desire to see my project succeed versus my comfort working in the organization. Who knows, maybe the decision to move to another project will be made for me before I even have a chance to come back.
This extends into what was going to be another blog post of it's own that I was going to title "Annual Performance Reviews or How I Learned to Hate Myself by Using Buzzwords." About 2 months ago I had to turn in my performance self-appraisal. This is the horrible several page document where I have to write "Hey, look at me, I'm awesome! Promote Me!" 5,000 times. That is very hard for me to do and I end up asking for input from several people. Since I turned that in, I am still sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear if management agrees with the document or if I am not good enough again this year. If they promote me, then I guess that means I was a good enough word-smith this year, because it honestly isn't about what I did because my management doesn't know/understand. It will be about how well I wrote about what I did.
I will also add in my "Tragedy and Gun Control Part II" thoughts to this blog post. First off, I was wrong. I predicted that there wouldn't be any changes to gun control laws after Sandy Hook. Well, I was wrong. Several states have started passing legislation about magazine/clip size, "assault" weapons, and gun registration and background check requirements. Some of these I think should have been done a long time ago (such as mentally ill people not being able to purchase firearms) but at the same time, what constitutes "mentally ill"? If someone takes a low dosage of medication for anxiety or slight depression does that mean they can't own a gun now? If that is the case, lots of people won't seek help for their minor issues so they can continue to purchase firearms, and maybe that minor issue will grow into something worse down the road. The information about what the guidelines are for that have to be very clear, as mental illness already has a stigma associated with it where people don't want to seek help, don't give them another reason to turn away from help. Regardless, overall, I support initiatives like that and the closing of loopholes for gun-show sales. I would even support a requirement of a safety class and shooting lesson for the purchase of your first weapon, but it would have to remain affordable.
The magazine size and assault weapons bans, I am more on the fence about those. I can support them overall as I described in my previous post, but I just don't see them having much effect in reality. In fact, there has actually been a run on those guns and clips/magazines. From this CBS article from December:
"I normally sell about 15-20 [AR-15s] a month. I've sold about 30 in the last three days," said Rick Friedman, who owns RTSP in Randolph, N.J.So, take from that what you will. Like I said in my previous post, you don't need an AR-15 to hunt a deer, I have no problem with them being banned, just don't see it helping that much.
...
Brownells, the world's largest firearms supplier, says it recently sold more than three-and-a-half years worth of AR-15 magazines in three days.
I think that is enough random stuff crammed into one blog post. I should try and get back to sleep.