HELP BUILD THE GODDAMN TESLA MUSEUM!

There is a campaign going on to raise money to purchase Tesla's old lab to then turn it into a museum.  The campaign has been going on for a while and only has six more days to go.  If you haven't already, you should consider donating a few bucks to this cause.  Why?  Because it is Nikola Goddamn Tesla, that's why.  There is a pledge to match up to $33,333 of donations that occur between now and the end of the campaign, so get to.  For those who missed out on the beginning, they were attempting to raise $850,000 to go with a pledged $850,000 from NY State to put in a bid on Tesla's lab, Wardenclyffe.  The idea is to turn the lab into a Tesla museum.  They are now sitting at over $1.2 million in donated funds with any of the excess above the cost of the land purchase going towards turning it into an actual museum.

Home of the Stupid Round 2 - Fight

The same person who posted the wall post I mentioned in my last Home of the Stupid post made another wonderful gaff today.

So now the pictures from Egypt come out of those animals dragging the ambassador through the streets.... Not carrying him to the fing hospital. This administration is a God damn disgrace. Someone needs to drag them through the streets!

*sigh*  I wish people would be informed of these things called facts.  Nothing happened to the American ambassador in Egypt.  My reply was as follows:

Please get your facts straight...The ambassador that was killed was in Libya, not Egypt. And second, the Libyans in photos such as the one here in the linked article are attempting to get him to help and there weren't any ambulances around.

I then linked to an article I found online that showed one of the photos of Libyans trying to get him to safety.

Stormed Out of my Performance Review

Today, I did something I have NEVER done in my career.  I stormed out of my performance review.  The thing is, it's not exactly what you think.  First, a little back story.

Let's make an imaginary rating system where you can get anywhere from a 1-5.  A 3 means you did your job, nothing more, nothing less.  A 5 means you did awesome things, and a 1 means you failed horribly.  In theory, the distribution of employees, if objectives are written properly, should be somewhat like a bell-curve, possibly skewed to the higher-end a bit (with the center around 3.2 maybe).  Ok, that's all fine and dandy.  But wait....we don't want to hurt people's feelings, so we need some rules.  If you want to give someone a one, you have to tell them months in advance, to give them a chance to do their job.  You have to repeatedly tell them "You suck" and do that over and over again until they fail or finally get motivated.  Even then, they can fight the rating and cause you headaches.  To give someone a 2, you at least have to warn them months in advance.  This all means more work for your boss, so it is easier to give people a 3 and just be done with it.

Alright, so now we have a 3-5 scale realistically....but wait....we can't give out 5s.  No one deserves a 5.  You have to walk on water to get a 5 and no one can do that, so we are down to a 3-4 scale, with 3 being everything to sucked ass->did your job and the rest of the scale (with one decimal point precision) is exceeded your expectations.  But Managers won't want to rate someone who succeeded with the same score as someone who failed, so it really becomes a micro-chasm of the overall scale from 3.0-4.0 being similar to 1-5.  Now stick a roughly bell-curve in that, and ~3.5 will become an "average" employee.  This is how the system ACTUALLY works, but not how it is supposed to work, so imagine all scores skewed to this reality.

Next, in steps a manager that is going to use the 3-4 for what they are supposed to be AND FOR THE EXTREMES.  So, if you really should get a 1-3, you get a 3.  If you should really get a 4-5, you get a 4.  Now you are lumping the employees who do their job with the worst of the worse.  This is where it gets complicated for me with my impostor syndrome, but if everyone keeps telling you that you do great things, you come to expect a score that is good (on the 3-4 with 3.5 being average scale) and you get a score that is good on the 1-5 w/ 3 being average scale, you will be disappointed and at a strategic disadvantage to those who were scored on the idea that 3.5 is the average.  So, that brings us to the first problem, wherein I found myself in this situation and my boss seemed to shrug off my concerns.

Rub # 2 was me stating that I was feeling that management didn't appreciate the work I have done (specifically the boss I was talking to, the deputy actually shows appreciation).  My boss reacted as though I was a head case that needed constant reassuring that I was doing good work.  That wasn't the point of my statement, I just want you to acknowledge I do good work, considering how much the customers say that.  If all I ever here from you is negative stuff, that will shape my opinion of you.

At this point, I was very frustrated, so I said that I was getting to the point where I was ready to head out the door (of the organization).  There are lots of people who will attest that I have done good->excellent work, and my project is where it is largely because of my hard work.  If I were to leave, there would be a significant impact on the project.  My boss reacted, not by saying "Let's talk through this" or "what can we do" but instead saying "do what you have to do."  WOW!  Feeling the love again there.  Apparently you care so little for me or my project that you don't care if I leave?  Wow.

Slight interjection - I don't handle anger and frustration well unless I have an outlet.  That outlet can be the ability to flog my car around a race track, yell at the top of my lungs, or punch something inanimate.  None of these are possible at work.  When I don't have an outlet, I tend to start shaking, my voice trembles, and my eyes tear up out of frustration as I try to hold in the massive yell I want to let out.  This is the point I was at.

With my trembling voice I said "This conversation is not going to be constructive, I need to go." and got up and started walking away.  My boss tried to stop me and I said "I have learned that when I am this happy, I need to walk away."

This was in the afternoon after I had been at work about 8 1/2 hours.  Two hours later I had a meeting that my boss was also planning on attending.  My boss showed up a bit late, and left early, but fortunately was there for the part of the meeting that was largely praise of my project, my efforts and my team.  It felt like a bit of vindication, and after one of the compliments, I am sure I had the biggest grin on my face when I said thank you as my boss looked pissed off in the back of the room.  That said, I still need to "do what [I] have to do" and am weighing my options.  It is obvious that my boss either doesn't have my project's best interest, my best interests or both in mind and it is becoming a toxic situation.  I don't want to leave my user base, but this is the last straw.  I am exploring my outs, and will be talking to the boss one level up to see if there are any tenable options that involve me staying there, but that is unlikely.

Politics Post of a Different Kind

Lots of people will write political posts about their beliefs but they are choosing the topic of their post.  I am going to do something a little different.  I will open the floor for questions from my readers.  Ask here, on twitter, on Facebook or via email and I will compile a group of them to write a post about.

UPDATE: The questions can only be about issues, not about candidates, who I plan to vote for or who I would endorse.  Example: You can ask me my opinion on public programs, legal rights, etc...

SHHHHHH!.....Can you smell that?

"SHHH!  Can you smell that?" I knew I had heard that line in a movie, but had to look it up.  That is from Ghostbusters,  Your first reaction is to laugh and think "WTF?" but in a way it makes sense.  Sometimes, humans just can't handle much multitasking.  By getting the other person to quite down, it is easier to focus on your sense of smell.  I am pretty sure I have done pretty much the exact same thing (had someone shut up so I could focus on locating a burning smell).

Another question I have heard asked before is "Why do we turn down the radio when we get near our destination?"  I have two answers for this.

1. Speed sensitive volume is still not a feature found across that many cars.  When you are near your destination you are probably going slower and thus there is less wind/road noise, so you don't need the radio as loud
2. If you are going somewhere you have never been before, you may not want the movie distracting you while you are looking for your final destination.  

So, next time you think you smell something and want to be sure...make sure to say "Shh! Can you smell that?" It might just help.  And this is the kind of crap that goes through my head at 5am while driving to work.

Facebook - Land of the Free, Home of the Stupid

Someone I went to high school with who I am friends with on Facebook, said something that made me cringe on many levels.  It was so bad, I even uploaded it to Failbook.  I am sure I will get some backlash for making this into a blog post, but I am at least leaving the name of the person out of it.  Here are the words he originally posted:

Its time someone flex's some good old USA power and bomb Tiananmen Square to show the Muslim Brotherhood why you don't attack the US embassy. Doubt Obama will sack up and go against his own to stand up for the USA.....typical.

I made a smart ass comment that I think said "Egyptians storm the US Embassy so let's bomb China???" but since he has deleted the original post to fix the "Tiananmen Square" double error (if you include spelling), I can't see what my exact wording was.  Anyway, I made that comment as that was the EASIEST thing to poke at in that post without having to go down the political argument black hole because that is just a geography fail.  The rest of the post still makes me angry though.  Here are the reasons why:

1. "Doubt Obama will sack up and go against his own" appears to be a reference to the commonly spread rumor that Obama is a Muslim.  This horse is ALMOST as dead as the birth certificate crap.  
2. Unless the attack on the embassy was orchestrated, condoned or supported in some way by the Egyptian government, why would we have any recourse against the country as a whole?  That is like saying a group of Americans attack a foreign embassy in the US and so that country can bomb Time's Square.  REALLY?  Even if it was supported by the government, how does that justify us dropping a bomb on a square that will be full of innocent civilians.  (Keep in mind that until earlier this year, my sister LIVED in Cairo).
3. "flex's" - enough said

These types of posts, that I frequently see on Facebook, make me ashamed to say I am Republican. Granted,  "True Republicans" (whatever that means) would probably call me a RINO since I am not saying that we should run our country according to the Bible, and hold some "non-Republican" views.  

The joy and curse of the US, is people are free to write whatever they want (with a few exceptions, such as death threats, etc...).  A curse, because I see stuff like this pop up all the time.  A joy, because I can then tear it to pieces.  But posts like the one above also give extremists ammo in their "hate America" rhetoric, showing how we have no respect for the lives of people living anywhere but the US and only care about ourselves.  So, while I am grateful for freedom of speech, I wish some people would have a filter installed for their own well being.

The Imperial March - aka the drive to work

I have a long commute. In fact some people say insanely long. The 68 miles each way still only takes 75-90 minutes which many people who live closer to where they work spend just as much time on the road. It used to be that the commute was my opportunity to get the cobwebs cleared out of my brain in the morning and let the days events sink in at the end of the day. That is not so much the case anymore.

My mornings are now usually spent dreading the day ahead and the afternoons a time to stress over what didn't get done and what messes I would have to cleanup the next day. What changed? My management, their expectations and my amount of responsibility all changed. What hasn't changed in a couple years? My pay.

I used to work in relative autonomy without management interference because I got things done. The things I got done were also the technical things I was hired to do. This lead to a Mike that looked forward to going into work and solving problems. Contrast that with management expecting me to do management type work taking away from the time doing the work I am good at. At the same time they now need to approve every schedule change, so they are micromanaging me while expecting me to manage.  The most frustrating part of the micromanagement is they don't fully understand what I do. It's like I jumped from an awesome job into a Dilbert comic strip. This is also adding onto my imposter syndrome to boot (since it makes it feel more like there is a problem with my work since they are putting me under the microscope).

A combination of imposter syndrome and dedication to my users makes it unlikely I will actually go anywhere soon, but the scales are getting close to tipping in the other direction. Instead I will just sit here and bitch about it when I know nothing will come of it (other than maybe a few more quasi job offers on top of the two I have received).