So my new supervisor has been here a few days, and so far I’m thinking he won’t be too much of a problem. He knows enough to stay out of our way, and he’s already carved out an cubicle igloo for himself, leaving me to keep what is now formerly the supervisor’s desk, so I’m happy.

But there are little ripples here and there that might indicate the new guy could be, well… insane.

You know how when you meet some people things just click, and the conversation easily flows and ebbs? This wouldn’t be one of those times.

Not that he doesn’t mean well, it’s just that our conversations are so awkward they end up becoming something akin to watching a train wreck in slow motion. Weird. When he’s more mellow it’s a bit easier to engage in dialogue, yet the way his face involuntarily twitches makes me think I won’t be trading cooking recipes with him anytime soon.

His 3-4 hours of absence a day where the man is positively nowhere to be found makes me wonder about things though. Like maybe he’s running a drug operation, or hitting the local brothel for a few hours of hoochie coochies, or maybe at the OTB putting a few Gs down on Who’s-Your-Daddy to win it down the stretch.

His work ethic would also seem a bit… lacking. Just yesterday, as he walked out of his cubicle igloo he dropped his coffee. He picked up his cup and threw it not in our trash bin mind you, but in our shredding bin (what we use to dump “sensitive” documents that need to be shredded). After studying the pool of coffee that was now on the floor for a few seconds, he then pulled the shredding bin over it to hide the spill.

Self employment is starting to look better and better to me every day.

Tags: boss, conversations, crazy, dialogue, insane, job, new guy, self employment, supervisor, work ethic
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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Oh man, I’m in for it now. Without getting into too much detail here, suffice it to say that things have suddenly come to a head at my job.

One of the supervisors here is, to put it charitably, an evil spawn of Satan from hell. A few months ago she put my family through some tremendous grief because of her outrageous behavior, until the department finally found enough of their stones to transfer her out. Let’s not fire her though, the same woman who would follow men into the bathrooms just so she could continue wailing on them, the same woman who would throw herself on the ground and scream at the top of her lungs because somebody didn’t sign in on time, the same woman with a file so thick it’s got it’s own set of wheels. Nah, let’s transfer her out and then put her on a promotion list. That’ll fix her.

And now she’s back, all because of some spat my dumbass boss had with one of my coworkers, who then whined to the chief of the department, who then in a moment of what he probably thought was sheer brilliance, reshuffled our section so that Devil Woman ends up sitting at the desk RIGHT next to mine. But technically she’s not our boss, it’s just that the desk is the only place she can sit to oversee the “special project” the department head now assigned her, while our esteemed supervisor and bold leader continues to hide out in some corner of the building the way he always does. But she’s not going to bother us, right? After all, she’s still not our boss or anything, so she couldn’t possibly have the gall to start micro-managing us, turn off our radios, or scream in our ears whenever we make the mistake of looking her way, right?

Oh wait, yes she could.

This latest move was so scandalous that I was getting calls from coworkers warning me about what happened before I came in. So I called my union president and demanded that this be dealt with immediately. They’re trying to put off the inevitable by just moving her around as much as they can, but everywhere she goes she leaves a path of destruction, and eventually, there just isn’t going to be any place left to put her.

I drew my line in the sand though, and made it known that this crap was going to end one way or another, right here, right now. I took a personal day today, but as it stands, I won’t be returning back to work until she’s gone, or until they transfer me into a division where I’ll finally be able to get to work with real human beings who aren’t mentally psycho out of their arse fricking minds.

If nothing is done by this week’s end, I stand to lose about a week’s pay, but fortunately I’ll be off next week, so the sting won’t be too bad. But… if nothing is done by Thanksgiving, ho’ boy. I’ll also be speaking with the director of our agency (the head honcho), and from what I hear he seems to be a standup guy, but we’ll see.

What a mess. But really, enough is enough, and I just about @#% had enough of the corruption and depravity of this department.

Tags: bathrooms, boss, corruption, coworkers, depravity, desk, devil woman, ears, fight, grief, job, justice, lawlessness, lungs, mistake, outrageous behavior, psycho, radios, scream, supervisor, union, union president, workplace
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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Here’s a scene you probably never want to see at your job:

When we got our computers upgraded, they opened up the ceiling and yep, down came the mouse crap, cradle and all. Then they just left the ceiling open like that. Are they nuckin’ futs???

When I went to see about contacting OSHA to clean up this mess, it turns out we’re not even within their jurisdiction. Instead, I had to contact an agency that belongs to the same local government I was employed by, you know, the very one that refused to do anything about these health code violations in the first place? Well that’s just… perfect.

In the end, I flipped off my useless supervisor and quarantined the area, then set up a nice, clean new desk for the coworker who usually sat in that spot. I may have to close up the ceiling myself, but since it’s directly above the next section as well, maybe I can get the supe there to bring maintenance down and clean it up instead before sealing it again.

Then I called up ISD and suggested in a polite tone what their mothers really did for a living, and if they wanted to restore the family honor perhaps they could come down and pick up our now useless 30 year old terminals and printers?

Turns out it wasn’t really their equipment to begin with (so they say). So I asked around and found out as long as I inventoried the terminals, I could gather it all up and dump them in the basement to be scrapped. So I filled out the inventory forms and asked my supe to sign it.

Sure enough, he refused to sign it. Evidently he doesn’t like his name being associated with anything other than his paycheck, so I shrugged my shoulders… and went over his head. I got the bureau head to sign off on it instead, grabbed a cart, and cleared our section out of all the old equipment we weren’t using anymore, then had maintenance come down and vacuum up everything that was left over. There must have been three inches of dust everywhere, and we were breathing this crap too. BUT, finally, after over a year of this nonsense, our section was cleaned and almost looked like an office again.

I was dirty and sweaty by the time everything was finished, but in the end I had accomplished more in one day than my supervisor ever did in the 12 months that he’s been here. I could already feel the morale lifting in my section. If my coworkers were happy now, then I was happy.

Just to spice up our section a little bit more though, I put up my lava lamp and pretty party lights again. I think I’ll also get one of those fog machines from Party City and install it under my supervisor’s desk. Our section might be clean now, but it does need some… atmosphere, ya know?

Tags: boss, cart, corruption, coworkers, crap, desk, equipment, incompetence, inventory, job, jurisdiction, leadership, local government, mouse droppings, osha, paycheck, printers, shoulders, supervisor, vacuum
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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Lately I’ve been trying to understand the nuances of office politics, and man, I’m telling you this is some messed up jojo that can seriously mess with your mojo. I have a supervisor that I’ve talked about before under different names, but for today I’ll refer to him as Sergeant Assfart. Sgt. Assfart has proven himself to be one of, no, scratch that, THE worst supervisor I have ever had. Our section is in shambles now because of his incompetence and laziness, and as a result it got me thinking about what course of action we should all take to at least minimize the damage he’s been causing.

One option would be to simply do nothing, and maybe even scale back on our job performance so our section REALLY implodes. The idea here is that the worse things get, the more likely the powers that be would notice and boot Assfart outta here. In fact this was more or less the approach we adopted, but as our section gradually continued to deteriorate over the months, nobody so much as batted an eye. I shouldn’t have been surprised though, I mean this is the same department that let a man die under their watch while they were all too busy scratching their balls.

But anyway, the second option would be to take the initiative and clean up the section on our own, or more accurately, MY own. The problem with this approach though is that the more work you do, the more they seem to expect of you. It also basically entailed doing the supervisor’s work for him, and worst yet, if things started to improve, guess who’s gonna take credit for it? I have to admit I understood how my coworkers felt. They didn’t want to go that extra mile because they didn’t want to do ANYTHING if it wound up making our supervisor look good. But our current approach wasn’t doing much either, and now our morale has sunk to the lowest it’s ever been since I started working here.

So for today, I finally thought, “Screw this,” and decided to clean up a few things. First up, one of our computer desks had been plagued with mouse droppings that were falling from the ceiling for months now. We kept waiting for FEMA to show up and quarantine the area, but I think our expectations turned out to be a little too high. We kept pleading, asking, begging Assfart and anyone else who’d listen to do something, ANYTHING to clean out the area. Nothing.

I took a look at the desk, went “hmmmm,” then went out and bought some extension cables. Came back and ripped out the phone, PC and monitor, then cleaned up a new desk and placed them all there. Then I hooked up the extended cables and wrapped it around the floor and under the cubicles so they remained out of sight. It took a couple of hours, but in the end I managed to set up a fresh new desk nice and far enough away from where the mouse poo were coming from. Then I printed up a big sign that said “WARNING: MOUSE DROPPINGS ZONE” and taped it on the wall next to the old desk. That might cheese off the Assfartster, but too bad.

I stepped back to inspect my work and sighed happily. This was the first time in a long time that I ever felt a sense of real accomplishment, but there was still plenty more left to be done. Next up, there are literally stacks of old computers taking up space in our section because our esteemed boss can’t be bothered to keep calling ISD (Information Systems Division) so they can pick up this crap. Our area looks like a junkyard for IBM for crying out loud, but incredibly, these old computers have been lying around here for a YEAR now. ????? So, I plan to call ISD, and call, and call, and call, then call them at home and on weekends, and if that doesn’t work, then I show up in person, in my underwear, where I will proceed to stalk them until they get the message.

And once that’s over with, then I’m gonna have a little fun. I’m planning to hit the local gag shop and buy up some seriously nasty items I’ll be using on our beloved supervisor. If he’s gonna stick around, then I might as well have some fun tormenting him till the cows come home.

Tags: balls, boss, computers, corruption, extra mile, incompetence, initiative, job, jojo, laziness, lazy, mojo, mouse droppings, nuances, office politics, scratch, sergeant, shambles, supervisor
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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I’ve been using the Torrify Browser at my job for a few weeks now, and man did I fall completely in love with it. Ever since I got into it with my boss over his refusal to accommodate my disabilities (among other things), and watching him piss all over my efforts to go back to school, I no longer felt safe using my work PC to surf the net and blog when things at work got slow, at least not with him lurking around. So I started exploring my options. When I somehow stumbled onto Torrify, I found something that not only enabled me to keep my browsing contents off the servers, it also enabled me to install the StumbleUpon and ScribeFire plugins as well (something I couldn’t do on my work PC). I now had a completely portable browser on my USB thumbdrive with all the goodies I needed for secure blogging (and *ahem* a little bit of stumbling too). It even bypassed the server filters so I could once again access Pandora and other streaming radio sites, something I USED to enjoy until the party crashing snotballs in ISD (Information Systems Department) decided to block it all.

Only problem was Torrify’s ability to access the Tor network (for anonymous web surfing). Initially it was slow (which was to be expected), but then it suddenly stopped working altogether. I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t too concerned about it since I rarely used it anyway. My main concern was keeping my content, cookies and whatnot off ISD’s servers, and Torrify was able to accomplish that for me quite nicely.

Now it looks like Torrify has become XeroBank, which will eventually offer anonymous email and a completely portable virtual machine (??????). It also offers hi-speed access for anonymous Internet surfing (the cheapest package being ten dollars a month), and I had to admit its touted features looked impressive. Offering a true broadband solution for secure and anonymous surfing had been an elusive quest for many privacy minded users, so if XeroBank is able to deliver here, this could be the start of something big.

I, of course, already signed up for a 3 day demo.

Sign up for your own XeroBank Account

Important Update and Review:

After receiving email instructions on how to download Xerobank, I went to the site to choose the 3 day demo, but then it it forwarded me to a signup page for an account even though I had one already. Oh well, a minor hiccup that didn’t affect my account status, since I was able to download the browser from my Profile page without any further issues.

When I went to extract the files into my thumbdrive though, my antivirus software AVG suddenly started to throw a FIT, insisting that one of the XeroBank files was a trojan (Generic4.XXX). The name of the offending file was called KillProc.dll, and after a quick Google search I learned some antivirus products like to make a false hit on this particular file, even though it did have legitimate uses (which is to kill processes, duh). Still, this is probably gonna freak some people out if their AV also starts going bat crazy because of this particular file. AVG was still trying to grab and quarantine the file in my case, so I couldn’t get it to extract properly when I ran Xerobank the first few times, and sure it enough when I closed the browser, the processes were still running in Task Manager. I finally disabled the AVG shield and extracted it successfully, but then had to flush and recopy the files on to the thumbdrive a few times because the Firefox add-ons seemed to lock up on me for some reason.

When I finally got it running smoothly, I noticed the start page gave some some IPSpy statistics on the network I was currently using to surf anonymously. I was being rerouted through a server in Germany, but there was definitely a clear difference in speed compared to the Tor network. Wheeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!! At long last, anonymous BROADBAND!!

From what I could tell, I wasn’t actually using the Tor network anymore (even though oddly enough, the add-on to access the network still came pre-installed as it did in Torpark). My guess is that it’s being relegated as a backup option now, while your real connection is granted via an assigned static IP address as regulated by XeroBank. I’m assuming if I signed up for a Plus account that I would probably still be maintaining the same static IP, though this could really just be a unique characteristic of the demo version.

The important thing was that my connection was now effectively proxied, AND it was operating at broadband level speeds. If XeroBank can maintain this level of service, then man it’s definitely worth the 10 dollars a month it costs to use the Plus version at least. I can finally entertain my delusions of grandeur of being the faceless superhero who hacks his way through the Internet in an endless pursuit of truth and justice.

Update 2:

After being contacted by one of the administrators of XeroBank, I learned that if you wish to downgrade to the free “Torpark” version of the browser after installation, simply delete the two files in Data/XeroBank and you’re good to go. It was also confirmed the the static IP I was initially assigned would eventually be followed up with a broader range of IP addresses as they continue to expand their network and work out the remaining kinks.

Tags: anonymous internet, anonymous surfing, anonymous web, antivirus, boss, broadband, browser, disabilities, firefox, goodies, hi speed, job, little bit, mobile, pandora, portable, scribefire, streaming radio, stumbleupon, thumbdrive, tor, tor network, torrify, trojan, usb drive, virtual machine, whatnot, xerobank
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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My boss had been playing games with me for the better part of a month now, from denying my proposed work schedule so I couldn’t attend law school, to threatening me over my request for accommodations because of my hearing disability. Naturally there have been days when I wished a meteor would land on his head (and those were the times when I was actually in a good mood too.)

For the past week he’s been AWOL as a result of training in another section for “overtime,” perfectly understandable to me given his 6 figure salary and his evidently pressing need to pay off his yacht and summer home. Poor guy. One particular night he left in a hurry without signing off his computer, and being the fine, upstanding person that I was, I did the only thing I could think of.

I fired up his inbox and quickly started rummaging through his emails and folders.

I could practically hear the digital clock from 24 thunderously ticking away in the background as I furiously performed a search query of all his emails, hoping to find something, ANYTHING, to give me an idea of what he might have been planning against me. I kept one eye on the doorway the whole time too, half scared to death that he would walk in on me at any moment, but I bravely (or maybe recklessly) pressed on.

Nothing.

I didn’t even show up on this guy’s radar. There were no emails about me, not even anything juicy about our division, even though everything in our section was falling to crap ever since he took over. Great, only in the movies can a guy pull a stunt like I did and be rewarded with some juicy intel, like finding out who REALLY killed JFK. @#$%!

I did find out that he was having an affair though. I guess that’s something.

Tags: 24, affair, boss, digital clock, disability, doorway, email, folders, harassment, hurry, inbox, intel, jack bauer, job, law school, meteor, overtime, playing games, radar, snooping, spying, supervisor, yacht
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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