3/23/2011
Spring notes
The snow squalls of yesterday didn't stick to the pavement but left a fugacious blanket of white on the lawns. Today, even that pale remnant of winter has all but disappeared under partly sunny skies of spring.
3/17/2011
Reprise of my Favorite St Paddy's Day Poem
St. Patrick’s Day
Fake Irishmen wearing silly green ties
Calling with bad brogues
for a wee dram of green beer
In bars festooned with shamrocks
Pipes and cartoon leprechauns.
They sing a slurred verse of Danny Boy
Like tone deaf drunken goats,
Set the dogs to barking.
Amateurs: they end-up
puking on their Italian loafers
waking-up late for work
the next day in a hangover fog
Grandsons of the famines
Endure this minstrel show
With a mirthless grin.
We stay to ourselves
At our regular bar stools
Chasing shots of Jameson's
Down with dark beer,
Glad not to be thinking
About the days
When Irish need not apply.
Fake Irishmen wearing silly green ties
Calling with bad brogues
for a wee dram of green beer
In bars festooned with shamrocks
Pipes and cartoon leprechauns.
They sing a slurred verse of Danny Boy
Like tone deaf drunken goats,
Set the dogs to barking.
Amateurs: they end-up
puking on their Italian loafers
waking-up late for work
the next day in a hangover fog
Grandsons of the famines
Endure this minstrel show
With a mirthless grin.
We stay to ourselves
At our regular bar stools
Chasing shots of Jameson's
Down with dark beer,
Glad not to be thinking
About the days
When Irish need not apply.
3/14/2011
The Retirement Conundrum
As a non scientist, I can get away with saying just about anything and not have to defend my views with research data. (Hey! This is how I roll. Deal with it.)
One of the conclusions I’ve come to after 3 years of semi-retirement is this: humans do not do well doing nothing. Anyone who has been around the over-55 clubhouse, has seen that many retirees are prone to become depressed and unhappy - even sick - when they do not have something to do that requires them to get out of bed in the morning, take a shower and get dressed.
For a lot of folks who never had problems with alcohol, the boredom of retirement gets one to thinking that cocktail hour doesn’t really need to wait past 4pm - even earlier. Men who spent decades yearning for a life of daily golf or fishing eventually become bored with the same routine – (just like a work life, you say! )
I think I am typical of men of my generation who grew up in the 50’s and who worked for forty plus years, raised a family and owned a house. We spent our working years waking-up every day and smelling the coffee. Now we are grandparents and ready to kick back and smell the roses. Maybe take that road trip we always talked about.
But something is missing. We miss the Income. We miss the socialization. We miss being part of something.
Those Social Security deposits to the bank account are not to be sniffed at, but it is not a level of income that will allow retirees to enjoy the amenities of life that they were accustomed to when they were working and drawing a decent salary.
As bad as your coworkers were, they were better than having no one to complain about.
And there were some good times: Successful projects, ideas that worked, friendships, occasional recognition.
My attitude toward the work was not negative but my feelings about organizations were distinctly anti-authority. This attitude was not helpful to my career advancement. I couldn't help it. It was mainly due to my conviction that the power in organizations is generally misplaced. Instead of finding the best leaders, most organizations promote the most productive and ambitious do-ers.
I guess the theory is that they will show others how to be productive. Most of us know that isn’t what happens. What happens is elegantly explained by the Peter Principle: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence".
Most managers I worked for were incompetent and didn’t know it. They call themselves eagles. But there is no eagle in team – and it is only through team effort that anything worthwhile is accomplished in a bureaucracy.
So the paradox is that organizations promote people with ego-centric skills and put them in charge of teams of people. It s no wonder that the newly minted manager is unable to understand the motivations and personalities of his assigned team. He only knows one way to succeed and that is by outperforming the others. How can someone lead a team when he/she knows nothing about cooperation?
Thus the eagle tends to manage by dint of his power, that is to say, by generating fear in subordinates. This is how bureaucracy migrates into autocracy. Astute underlings rapidly adjust to the environment of command and control; nattering nay bobs are harassed until they either shut-up or go away.
Yeah, I still miss it. Much as it sucks, it beats watching The View or surfing the net for funny pet videos.
One of the conclusions I’ve come to after 3 years of semi-retirement is this: humans do not do well doing nothing. Anyone who has been around the over-55 clubhouse, has seen that many retirees are prone to become depressed and unhappy - even sick - when they do not have something to do that requires them to get out of bed in the morning, take a shower and get dressed.
For a lot of folks who never had problems with alcohol, the boredom of retirement gets one to thinking that cocktail hour doesn’t really need to wait past 4pm - even earlier. Men who spent decades yearning for a life of daily golf or fishing eventually become bored with the same routine – (just like a work life, you say! )
I think I am typical of men of my generation who grew up in the 50’s and who worked for forty plus years, raised a family and owned a house. We spent our working years waking-up every day and smelling the coffee. Now we are grandparents and ready to kick back and smell the roses. Maybe take that road trip we always talked about.
But something is missing. We miss the Income. We miss the socialization. We miss being part of something.
Those Social Security deposits to the bank account are not to be sniffed at, but it is not a level of income that will allow retirees to enjoy the amenities of life that they were accustomed to when they were working and drawing a decent salary.
As bad as your coworkers were, they were better than having no one to complain about.
And there were some good times: Successful projects, ideas that worked, friendships, occasional recognition.
My attitude toward the work was not negative but my feelings about organizations were distinctly anti-authority. This attitude was not helpful to my career advancement. I couldn't help it. It was mainly due to my conviction that the power in organizations is generally misplaced. Instead of finding the best leaders, most organizations promote the most productive and ambitious do-ers.
I guess the theory is that they will show others how to be productive. Most of us know that isn’t what happens. What happens is elegantly explained by the Peter Principle: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence".
Most managers I worked for were incompetent and didn’t know it. They call themselves eagles. But there is no eagle in team – and it is only through team effort that anything worthwhile is accomplished in a bureaucracy.
So the paradox is that organizations promote people with ego-centric skills and put them in charge of teams of people. It s no wonder that the newly minted manager is unable to understand the motivations and personalities of his assigned team. He only knows one way to succeed and that is by outperforming the others. How can someone lead a team when he/she knows nothing about cooperation?
Thus the eagle tends to manage by dint of his power, that is to say, by generating fear in subordinates. This is how bureaucracy migrates into autocracy. Astute underlings rapidly adjust to the environment of command and control; nattering nay bobs are harassed until they either shut-up or go away.
Yeah, I still miss it. Much as it sucks, it beats watching The View or surfing the net for funny pet videos.
3/09/2011
Smudgeheads
Today is Ash Wednesday. If you see people walking around with a smudge on their forehead, acting like there is nothing unusual, do not be alarmed. It is probably not contagious.
3/02/2011
Welcome to “Meteorological Spring.”
 |
| It just keeps falling. |
Like you, I am pretty tired of hearing complaints about the weather, so it is with great pleasure that I declare a hearty welcome to “meteorological spring.” Funny, I always thought Spring started when the sun achieves equinox, usually around March 21st. That is when the sun is directly above the equator at noon, which marks the traditional demarcation of seasons. Equal night and equal day.
But for some reason, it never rose to my attention that weather people prefer to think of seasons in terms of three complete months. So here we are in Spring.
Let the melting begin.
I liked the good old days when the weather dude would come on TV at the same time every night and tell you what to wear tomorrow. Nowadays, the weather has become headline news. If you are looking for advice on what to wear tomorrow you are held hostage through numerous “teases” and stories about extreme weather. You cannot get a useful local forecast unless you listen to the entire half hour "news" broadcast. The weather channel is even worse, with elevator music, technical information and the information you want is briefly flashed in the moving textual crawl at the bottom. Who reads that fast? It’s frustrating so you need to go to the computer to get useful information on demand.
==========
Speaking of reasons to avoid watching TV,
If you have been watching lately, you probably have noticed the similarity between the interviews with Moammar Khadafy and Charlie Sheen. In both cases you see a person denying the reality that everyone around them sees. Both of them think they are full of tiger blood and Amazon DNA. We think they are full of crap.
Watching Sheen ranting, I was appalled to learn that he still had custody of his two year old sons. What child welfare authorities could see this nutjob ranting and not fear for the children's safety? No problem, bro, the Godessess (the hooker and the porn star) take care of the kids. I was releived to hear the news today that police had taken the kids to their mother.
========
I heard a good one yesterday:
A CEO, a Tea-Party Supporter and a Wisconsin Teacher's union guy were sitting at a table. There is a plate with a dozen cookies in front of them. The CEO grabs 11 of the cookies, turns to the Tea-Party supporter and says, "Watch out, The Union guy wants a bite out of your cookie."
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