A few things
Mar. 17th, 2007 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6So, happy St. Patrick's Day all. Of course, I'm not doing anything for it (aside from the icon), but hey, the forms must be observed and I must point it out.
Minor work related rant:
Okay, so, here's the thing. They recently had to throw out a bunch of stuff because people
weren't rotating out and so stuff past their expiry date without being used. Now, understand,
this is not in any way my fault - the stuff they're talking about comes on a different truck,
one I'm not responsible for. I don't even see the stuff, much less handle it. But because of
that, they've been on me to use these little stickers to identify the stuff that needs to be used first, and rotate the stock. Okay, no problem - really, I do that anyway. But I do it smart. See, I know what we have. I know what we use. All the stuff that I handle has expiry times in the range of months if not years. So, what I do is keep an eye on things. There are some things I
don't rotate every single delivery because a) they're really heavy and awkward to access) and b) I know that there's a day every week (or every two at most) where there's very few of them left. On this day I can rotate the old stock to the front with relatively little difficulty.
The other day I was informed (politely, mind you) this wasn't good enough, I had to rotate the stuff every delivery, because it's 'procedure'. So I mentally grumbled and said okay, whatever. More work for me without more pay, but I've dealt with that before.
But it lead me to recall The Principle of Employee Frustration (aka the 'Screwit Principle'). Any policy which frustrates employees for no real good reason is apt to be ignored or abused. Simply put, there were several times I was very close to saying 'Screw it' and putting the use first stickers on the newest stock to avoid rotating - in most cases, nobody would have known. I didn't, because I actually take some measure of pride in my work, but I thought about it. See, the ideal solution to this problem (in my case - I can completely understand the need to rotate every time for the less storable goods) is to simply adjust your orders to make sure that you don't _have_ so much extra stuff than you need to rotate a whole whack of stuff every time.
Meh, anyway, just wanted to rant a bit. Moving on.
Book Foo:
Finished: The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons (Reread)
Started: Endymion by Dan Simmons (reread)
Thoughts and selected quote (all not terribly spoilery) behind the cut.
So Rise of Hyperion was still pretty good on a second read, althouigh I still liked Hyperion itself better. By abandoning the stories-within-a-larger-story structure Rise _should_ have been more satisfying, but there was too much in the way of wonky plot devices and deus ex machinas (even if they didn't fix everything or were even explainable) to enjoy as much as the other. But it was still good.
Oh, and one quote that stuck out:
"Do you forget that your homeworld was founded on a solemn covenant of life?" said Coredwell Minmun.
The Consul turned toward the Ouster.
"Such a covenant governs our lives and actions," said Minmun. "Not merely to preserve a few species from old Earth, but to find unity in diversity. To spread the seed of humankind to all worlds, diverse environment, while treating as sacred the diversity of life we find elsewhere."
Freeman Ghenga's face was bright in the sun. "The Core offered unity in unwitting subservience," she said softly. "Safety in stagnation. Where are the revolutions in human thought and culture and action since the Hegira?"
"Terraformed into pale clones of Old Earth," answered Coredwell Minmun. "Our new age of human expansion will terraform nothing. We will revel in hardships and welcome strangeness. We will not make the universe adapt... we shall adapt."
Spokesman Hullcare Amnion gestured towards the stars. "If humankind survives this test, our future lies in the dark distances between as well as on the sunlit worlds."
Chosen because this is one of my idealistic goals for humanity. I don't just dream of space exploration and terraforming new worlds to colonize, although that's part of it and I personally wouldn't abandon terraforming entirely. But I'm also fascinated by the concept of bioforming, altering humanity to fill new niches, to explore not just space but the limits of being human itself... making aliens of ourselves so we get the benefit of new ways of alien perspectives even if we never meet anyone else out there. It's one of the ideas I enjoy exploring in fiction, anyway.
Let's see. St. Patrick's Day also marks one week until my birthday. Normally my birthday
approximately signals the end of my seasonal depressions. Now though it's becoming another source of one. I've wasted too much of my life, done too little, and see no sign of that changingg, so birthdays are a reminder that I'm getting farther away from any worthwhile goal. At least this year there's been some progress on one front - I'm actually writing more. Still haven't become a (gasp) Published Author, and most of what I write sucks, but at least I'm writing and, most importantly, finishing stories (although editing them is still a stumbling block). So that's one minor victory against my own personal brand of entropy.
Lately, over the last few weeks, I've felt pretty strong _yearnings_. Like not just wanting things to be one way or another but actually yearn for them. Yearning's really the only apt way to describe it. Most of these yearnings are for the impossible (some physically, some practically in the "you can't get there from here" sense). I haven't felt yearnings like that in a while though, even while I've always had the wants. I suspect it's an early sign my protective emotional numbness is thawing out for the spring. Which is good and all, but it would have been nice if it happened after this little bout of birthday induced depressiong. :)
Oh, and I've made a couple new friends in the past few days, so hi!
Minor work related rant:
Okay, so, here's the thing. They recently had to throw out a bunch of stuff because people
weren't rotating out and so stuff past their expiry date without being used. Now, understand,
this is not in any way my fault - the stuff they're talking about comes on a different truck,
one I'm not responsible for. I don't even see the stuff, much less handle it. But because of
that, they've been on me to use these little stickers to identify the stuff that needs to be used first, and rotate the stock. Okay, no problem - really, I do that anyway. But I do it smart. See, I know what we have. I know what we use. All the stuff that I handle has expiry times in the range of months if not years. So, what I do is keep an eye on things. There are some things I
don't rotate every single delivery because a) they're really heavy and awkward to access) and b) I know that there's a day every week (or every two at most) where there's very few of them left. On this day I can rotate the old stock to the front with relatively little difficulty.
The other day I was informed (politely, mind you) this wasn't good enough, I had to rotate the stuff every delivery, because it's 'procedure'. So I mentally grumbled and said okay, whatever. More work for me without more pay, but I've dealt with that before.
But it lead me to recall The Principle of Employee Frustration (aka the 'Screwit Principle'). Any policy which frustrates employees for no real good reason is apt to be ignored or abused. Simply put, there were several times I was very close to saying 'Screw it' and putting the use first stickers on the newest stock to avoid rotating - in most cases, nobody would have known. I didn't, because I actually take some measure of pride in my work, but I thought about it. See, the ideal solution to this problem (in my case - I can completely understand the need to rotate every time for the less storable goods) is to simply adjust your orders to make sure that you don't _have_ so much extra stuff than you need to rotate a whole whack of stuff every time.
Meh, anyway, just wanted to rant a bit. Moving on.
Book Foo:
Finished: The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons (Reread)
Started: Endymion by Dan Simmons (reread)
Thoughts and selected quote (all not terribly spoilery) behind the cut.
So Rise of Hyperion was still pretty good on a second read, althouigh I still liked Hyperion itself better. By abandoning the stories-within-a-larger-story structure Rise _should_ have been more satisfying, but there was too much in the way of wonky plot devices and deus ex machinas (even if they didn't fix everything or were even explainable) to enjoy as much as the other. But it was still good.
Oh, and one quote that stuck out:
"Do you forget that your homeworld was founded on a solemn covenant of life?" said Coredwell Minmun.
The Consul turned toward the Ouster.
"Such a covenant governs our lives and actions," said Minmun. "Not merely to preserve a few species from old Earth, but to find unity in diversity. To spread the seed of humankind to all worlds, diverse environment, while treating as sacred the diversity of life we find elsewhere."
Freeman Ghenga's face was bright in the sun. "The Core offered unity in unwitting subservience," she said softly. "Safety in stagnation. Where are the revolutions in human thought and culture and action since the Hegira?"
"Terraformed into pale clones of Old Earth," answered Coredwell Minmun. "Our new age of human expansion will terraform nothing. We will revel in hardships and welcome strangeness. We will not make the universe adapt... we shall adapt."
Spokesman Hullcare Amnion gestured towards the stars. "If humankind survives this test, our future lies in the dark distances between as well as on the sunlit worlds."
Chosen because this is one of my idealistic goals for humanity. I don't just dream of space exploration and terraforming new worlds to colonize, although that's part of it and I personally wouldn't abandon terraforming entirely. But I'm also fascinated by the concept of bioforming, altering humanity to fill new niches, to explore not just space but the limits of being human itself... making aliens of ourselves so we get the benefit of new ways of alien perspectives even if we never meet anyone else out there. It's one of the ideas I enjoy exploring in fiction, anyway.
Let's see. St. Patrick's Day also marks one week until my birthday. Normally my birthday
approximately signals the end of my seasonal depressions. Now though it's becoming another source of one. I've wasted too much of my life, done too little, and see no sign of that changingg, so birthdays are a reminder that I'm getting farther away from any worthwhile goal. At least this year there's been some progress on one front - I'm actually writing more. Still haven't become a (gasp) Published Author, and most of what I write sucks, but at least I'm writing and, most importantly, finishing stories (although editing them is still a stumbling block). So that's one minor victory against my own personal brand of entropy.
Lately, over the last few weeks, I've felt pretty strong _yearnings_. Like not just wanting things to be one way or another but actually yearn for them. Yearning's really the only apt way to describe it. Most of these yearnings are for the impossible (some physically, some practically in the "you can't get there from here" sense). I haven't felt yearnings like that in a while though, even while I've always had the wants. I suspect it's an early sign my protective emotional numbness is thawing out for the spring. Which is good and all, but it would have been nice if it happened after this little bout of birthday induced depressiong. :)
Oh, and I've made a couple new friends in the past few days, so hi!
