Calling All Browncoats!

NASA is running a contest to name the third Node of the International Space Station.

You can vote here.

Fans of Firefly and will be happy to know that as of this post, "Serenity" is leading the vote count.

Shiny!

Functionally Unemployed

I've been trying to decide for the past couple of days whether or not I should post this, or even write it. I'm still not sure whether I should or not, to be honest. But I'm going to anyway.

Along with our paychecks on Friday, we all got a memo from the owner of the company concerning the state of the business in the troubled economic climate we're in. The main point of the memo was that our wage cap was being reduced by a full dollar per hour. Anyone making more than the new wage cap would see a wage cut on their next paycheck.

The natives were restless, to say the least. I suppose the good news was that we didn't have a shift on Friday night or over the weekend, so we have a couple of days to prepare before we start having to deal with the inevitable backlash.

I understand that changes need to be made. But this particular change makes no sense at all. Follow my reasoning here. The way our pay structure works, employees get a 50¢ hourly pay raise when they complete their probationary period. They are then eligible for quarterly pay raises of between 5¢ and 30¢ per hour, based on performance, attendance, and behavior. Do the math, and it turns out that any employee making more than the new wage cap would have to have been with the company for at least a year, and most likely for 15-18 months.

So who does the pay cut really affect? Only those employees who have been with the company the longest—those who have been the most productive, the most loyal, and the most successful. The long timers, the veterans, and the best and the brightest. They're the ones who get the pay cut. The newbies and the screw-ups continue to make what were making before.

Successful companies don't punish their best employees with a pay cut, no matter how hard the economic times are.

I asked the Field Director (i.e., my boss) if this new wage cap applied to supervisors and managers as well. The short answer was no, we would remain at our current hourly wages. The more complicated, answer, however, was that the owner was going to start tightening up on how many supervisors could be present at any given shift based on the number of interviewers present (the "ratio"), as well as setting a minimum workload for there even to be a shift at all. On smaller shifts, supervisors or managers would generally still be welcome to come in and work—as interviewers. And as interviewers, we would be subject to the new wage cap for those hours.

In such circumstances, that works out to more than a 25% hourly pay reduction for me. And that's assuming there will even be the same number of hours available for work. I don't count on that to be the case.

There is some comfort to be had, I suppose, in that fact that it's not just the call center that's feeling the pinch. All the company's salaried employees, the vast majority of which work at the main office downtown, are also being affected. They're all being asked to take one day off each week without pay.

Of course, that's still only a 20% pay reduction for them.

I've taken a few business classes in my academic career. One of the axioms of business that I've learned is that there are two ways to get a company out of fiscal hardship: increase revenue, or reduce expenses. When a company turns its primary focus toward reducing expenses, it is admitting that it cannot reliably generate revenue any more. And a company that can't generate revenue isn't viable.

I've worked for this company for six and a half years now. I enjoy (most of) the people I work with. The flexibility the job offers has been extremely helpful with school. Despite the occasional slow times, overall it's been a pretty good job.

But given the direction things are heading now, I can't help but think that my employer is circling the drain.

V-Day Funny

Complements of Jeff Dunham and Walter:



Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

PS: Nancy has a pretty funny one up on her blog, too!

Interludes and Observations

Part I: Farewell, Mighty Dreadnought
Yes, that’s right. The 1989 Suburban I’ve had for the last four years, the Dreadnought, is gone. We sold it yesterday.

My mother-in-law’s Suburban—which is a lot newer than the Dreadnought, by the way—wasn’t working, so we let her borrow ours. She drove it for about three weeks until she could get hers fixed. She was impressed by the ride and by the power of the engine. My sister-in-law J also lives there with her two kids, one of whom (our nephew P) turned sixteen this week. Nancy’s been jokingly telling P to buy the Dreadnought for a while now, and he’s never really taken the idea seriously—until he got to drive it. He liked it. So inspections were conducted, offers and counter-offers were made, and in the end, P ended up buying the Dreadnought. They got it registered on his birthday.

We’ll miss the Dreadnought. It’s been a good car. We have a lot of memories with it. But at least we know it’s going to a good home.


Part II: Utah Drivers Just Suck
Yes, I’ve ranted about Utah drivers before. I will undoubtedly rant about them again. I’ll stop ranting when they stop doing stupid things on the road—an event that I anticipate will take place about the same time that our sun explodes, something like five billion years in the future. Unless we’ve colonized other worlds by that time, in which case there’ll be Utah drivers spread across the cosmos, and we’ll have to wait for the eventual heat death of the universe. But I digress.

On my way to Ogden last night, I found myself traveling north on Beck Street toward I-15. I was approaching the on-ramp, one of the few left exits in the area. So I looked over into the left lane and saw two cars: one a couple of car lengths ahead of me, and another three or four car lengths behind me. I watched them both for about fifteen seconds, and they both maintained a constant speed and spacing relative to me. So I signaled to merge left. And like a Pavlovian response, the j@ck@ss idiot behind me started to speed up.

By this time, I didn’t think I had time to let the j@ck@ss moron get ahead of me before moving over, or I’d miss my exit. And since I was already merging anyway, I continued to merge. And he continued to accelerate. By the time I’d changed lanes, he was right up on my tail. I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw him giving me the Utah Highway Peace Sign. Classy.

We merged onto the freeway, and he immediately passed me. And once he was in front of me, the j@ck@ss dipstick swerved halfway into my lane and back, like he was going to cut me off—probably feeling that since I hadn’t let him pass me and risk missing my exit, I’d cut him off. I tapped the horn quickly, feeling that if I didn’t at least do something to acknowledge his efforts, I might damage his self-esteem, and watched him drive off down the highway. There’s a part of me that wishes I’d seen him pulled over to the side of the road by UHP later on, but it’s probably best that I didn’t.

Because if I had, I would’ve had no choice but to honk and yell out the window, “Learn to drive, you j@ck@ss jerk!”

I was cut off by another driver about 20 minutes later, a blue sedan that came out of nowhere in the fast lane and cut across three lanes of traffic so that he didn’t miss his off-ramp. (I’ve said it before. Between 24 and 33 seconds. Do the math.) And then on the way home, I saw somebody driving one of those fancy upscale crossovers with his lights off. Oh, he used his turn signals, which put him at least one standard deviation ahead of the mean in that respect, but no headlights, taillights, or running lights. On a car that probably costs $35,000 or more. Who drives an expensive car down the freeway at night with no lights?!

I really hope that by the time we have kids that are of driving age, we’re not in this state any more. I don’t want my offspring thinking that the way Utards drive is the right way—or the normal way.

Part III: No Fava Beans or Chianti, Please
Yesterday I had a skills test with the U.S. Census Bureau. I’d heard about how many people they’re hiring for the 2010 census, and I scheduled the test to see if they thought they could use my skills. It’s temporary work, and most likely part time, but I’ve already got two jobs like that. Why not a third? Besides, the application I filled out asked what kind of management experience I have, the answer to which is, “Six years as a supervisor and a manager in data gathering, verification, and processing.” There are possibilities.

I arrived about 15 minutes early as instructed, signed in, and started filling out paperwork. As I was doing so, I saw a familiar face enter the room: one of our employees from the call center. And not one of the ones of which I’m particularly fond, either (not that there are an awful lot of those anyway). In fact, if I had to rate all the employees at the call center in order of their capacity to be annoying to me and to pretty much anyone working around them, she’d be in the Top Three, no question. She looked all excited to see me and waved. I waved back and then got back to what I was doing, which was pretty much anything but having any further interaction with her. I already have to deal with her at one job. That’s enough.

I hasten to point out, however, that I have no particular ill will against this woman. So when I say that I was not gratified by the fact that she couldn’t seem to figure out how to fill out the paperwork or that she ended up having to do it twice because she messed up the first time, that’s the truth. On the other hand, when I say I wasn’t surprised at all that she couldn’t seem to figure out how to fill out the paperwork and that she ended up having to do it twice because she messed up the first time, that’s also the truth.

People kept filtering in for almost an hour—seriously, who shows up for a job-related 10 o’clock appointment at 10:45? But just before 11:00, we started the test. The test had 28 multiple-choice questions in five sections: Clerical Skills, Reading, Number Skills, Interpreting Information and Evaluating Alternatives, and Organizational Skills. The test is designed to determine how well you’re able to handle certain tasks, I suppose, as well as how qualified you might be for different positions. The proctor told us that a passing score was 10. Seriously, 10 out of 28? Statistically speaking, just picking answers at random should get you score of 7 on average. Who can’t get 10? Some people who want government jobs, I guess.

Anyway, we started the test and had thirty minutes to take it. I made it a point to read everything slowly and carefully, to check my answers, and to fill in the little circles on the answer sheet as neatly as I could. In the end, I had time to go back over all but the last five or six questions and confirm my answers. I figured I’d done well, and if I came out of it with anything less than 25/28, I’d be very disappointed.

I was not very disappointed. I got 28/28.

The proctor told us that the people who scored higher than 20 would be the first to get a call when the jobs started opening up. She also said that they were looking to start hiring for some positions next month. I’m encouraged. I’d like to think that with my test score and my work experience, they’d find something for me to do other than walking streets, knocking on doors and conducting interviews. I walked streets and knocked on doors for two years, and that was for a much better cause.

Naturally, as soon as I hear anything, I’ll post it here.

The Economist's Secret Weapon

Maybe Uncle Red has the right idea....

Top 5 On Friday - Week 210

From The Music Memoirs

Top 5 music videos from the 80s.
(Click the links to see the respective videos. Some of them are blocked from embedding. Sorry.)

» "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel
The stop-motion animation on this video is just amazing. The chalkboard roller coaster segment is my favorite.

» "Brothers In Arms" by Dire Straits
Grainy black and white film footage combines with penciled animation to create a visual experience as haunting as the lyrics.

» "Stranger In Town" by Toto
Another black and white video, this one a film noir-style crime story. "How can a man who's a criminal be a her to the kids?"

» "It's Tricky" by RUN-DMC
Yes, that's Penn & Teller running the Three-card Monte scam.

» "Thriller" by Michael Jackson
Perhaps the most influential music video of all time. No list of great videos, from the 80s or otherwise, is complete without this one.

Tuesday Tunes: Week 67

From The Music Memoirs.

Word Association again! Remember give us an artist, song, band, etc. that you think of when you see these words.

TV: "It's Only a Paper Moon" by James Darren
Darren is perhaps better known to fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine a holodeck crooner Vic Fontaine. This song lends its title to one of that show's seventh-season episodes.

Entertainment: "Superconductor" by Rush
"Hoping you'll believe / Designing to deceive / That's entertainment"

Drive: "Drive" by Singularity
"Drifting towards the horizon / As daylight fades / The world on either side / Rushes by in a haze"

Dark: "Dark Water, Parts 1-4" by Rocket Scientists
I'd include some lyrics here, but these are all instrumentals.

Job: "Take This Job and Shove It" by Johnny Paycheck
"I'd give the shirt right off my back / If I had the guts to say / Take this job and shove it / I ain't working here no more"

Cat: "Stray Cat Strut" by Stray Cats (Brian Setzer)
"I wish I could be as carefree and wild / But I got cat class and I got cat style."

Silence: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper
Fifty years ago today, a plane crash in Iowa silenced these three promising musicians. February 3rd, 1959: The Day the Music Died.
(See the post below for more of my thoughts on the significance of this day.)

Noise: "Quietly Making Noise" by Jimmy Buffett
"Quietly making noise / Starts with kindergarten toys / Not too soft, not too loud / Just enough to draw a crowd / Quietly, quietly, quietly making noise"

Creep: "The City Sleeps" by MC 900 Foot Jesus
"I move through the town like a ghost in the rain / A dim reflection in a dark windowpane / Blackness beckons from every side / Creeping all around like an incoming tide"

Rose: "Kiss From A Rose" by Seal
I'd include some lyrics here, but it seems nobody can agree on exactly what the lyrics actually are. And Seal didn't include them in the liner notes.

The Day the Music Died

Today, February 3rd, 2009, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. 'The Big Bopper' Richardson. The crash also killed the pilot, Roger Peterson. Not killed in the crash was Holly's bass player—a young musician named Waylon Jennings, who gave up his seat to The Big Bopper. Jennings would live another 43 years and enjoy a long and productive career in country music.

The event and its aftermath are chronicled in popular song form by Don McLean in the song "American Pie". This annotated version, hosted by FiftiesWeb.com, does a pretty good job of explaining (or trying to explain, anyway) McLean's eight and a half minute musical tribute. McLean, as best I can determine, has never explained the song himself.

I was reminded of all this by a recent article on Yahoo! Music, Chart Watch Extra: 22 Days The Music Died. It chronicles briefly the lives (and deaths) of twenty-two musicians who won Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards and who died before the age of 50. The article makes this interesting commentary:

Drug and/or alcohol abuse played a role in many of these deaths. Given how much performers travel, it's not surprising that four of the 22 artists (Holly, Otis Redding, Patsy Cline and Glenn Miller) died in plane crashes. But it is sobering to realize that three (Sam Cooke, John Lennon and Marvin Gaye) were shot to death.

There's a theory that there exist an infinite number of universes very similar to our own, differing only in historical details that either did or did not happen—universes where Lincoln was never assassinated, where Germany developed the atomic bomb first, or where Tesla's direct current won out over Edison's alternating current. I wonder if there's a universe where Buddy Holly and his cohorts decided to take the bus that night and ended up having long, productive careers. If such a universe existed, I think I'd like to visit it some time. I would like to hear where Holly went with his music in the turbulent, mind-altering Sixties. It would be interesting to see how he would have held up against the likes of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones.

On the other hand, if Buddy Holly hadn't died young, how much would we really care about him? Or Ritchie Valens? Or the Big Bopper? Would they all have faded into obscurity like so many other artists of the day? Would we even still remember their names or their music, fifty years later?

As it is now, do you suppose anyone will still remember them in another fifty years? Will there be a centennial remembrance of their deaths? Something tells me there just may be.

Overheard

While substituting last week, I overheard a conversation between two girls before (and during) one of my classes. One girl, a short redhead, was saying she'd just found out she was pregnant. The other girl, a slightly taller brunette with blonde streaks, was asking her what she was going to do. She said she was going to keep the baby, but she didn't really like the father very much, so she'd probably just leave the baby with her parents while she finished school. Or maybe she'd give it up for adoption. She hadn't decided yet.

A few minutes later the same two girls started talking about their experiences in DT (juvenile detention). The brunette said she'd been in DT for two nights because she ran away from home. She'd been living with her grandmother, but her grandmother had started to 'act crazy', so she left. She was away for something like three months before she was found. She spent two nights in DT before being returned home.

The redhead then talked about her experiences in DT. She'd been detained several times, and been sent to a couple of different facilities, for assault. Against her parents. She was also saying that all of her sisters had been sent to DT for the same thing.

The brunette was saying that her two nights of detention had scared her. As freaky as her home situation might be, she never wanted to go back to detention. The redhead didn't like DT much either, but she wasn't nearly as upset by it. She was used to it; it had become routine for her.

I sat and listened to these conversations mostly because I had no idea what to say. These sorts of things are way outside my experience. I didn't know how to relate. And yet I know that I'm going to have kids with similar situations when I get my own classroom. I wonder what I'll do. I hope I'll be better prepared then than I am now.

But mostly I hope that if I end up with daughters, they won't be having conversations like this when they're sixteen.

What Was Old Is New Again

It all started about three and a half years ago. I was sitting in Sunday School waiting for the lesson to begin. I was sitting next to one of the Ward's Sunday school teachers, somebody I knew from priesthood class. We were talking about various things, one of them being that the person he thought was supposed to be teaching that day wasn't there. The class president, who also happened to be my Home Teaching companion, was also waiting for the teacher to show up. I leaned over to the man I was sitting next to and said something like, "I'll bet he's going to have us teach the lesson today." He agreed, and we both got out our class member study guides and began thinking about what we might say.

Sure enough, when the regularly scheduled teacher didn't show, we were asked to fill in. What followed was an impromptu, tag-team Sunday school lesson that actually went off pretty well. We got good comments afterward, and the teacher said he'd keep me in mind if he ever needed a substitute.

That was my first experience teaching in my current Ward.

Shortly thereafter that teacher had hip replacement surgery and asked me to teach in his stead while he recovered. So I prepared and delivered the necessary lessons for the next several weeks. I found that I really enjoyed it. That wasn't a big surprise; I'd served as a Gospel Doctrine instructor and a priesthood instructor on more than one occasion before, and I'd always enjoyed it. And the classes responded well, which is always a bonus.

After his surgery and recuperative period, that teacher decided not to come back. He began attending Church with one of his children and their family, and to my knowledge still does so. So after a while, he was released and I was called to fill his position.

After serving in the class for a few months, I happened to be talking to Brother Horton, a member of the Bishopric, one day. He said they were needing to call a new Sunday school president and suggested that I'd be just the man for the job. I, in turn, suggested that maybe somebody else would be the right man for the job—anybody else, really. I was busy, I told him, what with work and school and an upcoming wedding the like. But those were all excuses. The real reason for the suggestion: I just didn't want the position. I was happy being a teacher, being a valued(?) part of the organization. But I really didn't want to be in charge of it.

So the Bishopric went ahead and called someone else to be the new Sunday school president. And when they called him, they also called a counselor for him: me. So, I wasn't totally off the hook.

I served as the first (and only) counselor in the Sunday school presidency for something like a year. Then, bad news: the president and his wife were buying a home in another part of Salt Lake and were moving out of the Ward. I knew at once that I was going to be called as the next Sunday school president. This time, I didn't fight it. I wasn't thrilled about it, but I figured that if the Bishop was inspired that I was the person the Lord wanted for the job, I'd best do it.

Accordingly, I accepted the call when it came and was sustained and set apart as the new Sunday school president. Somewhere along the way I was apparently also released as a Gospel Doctrine instructor, though I honestly don't remember that happening. But I still continued to teach. Hey, as Sunday school president, staffing was my call (with the Bishopric's approval, of course). I could have anybody teach that I wanted to. So why not me?

So for the past 21 months, I've been serving double duty as Sunday school president and Gospel Doctrine instructor. I've had a couple of really good counselors to help make the burden easier. Alas, I lost them along the way. One of them moved back to the Avenues to be closer to work, and the other was called as a youth instructor. For the past few months, including the Ward's second move of the year, it's been a Presidency of one.

That changed today. Today I was released as the Sunday school president with the appropriate vote of thanks and appreciation for service rendered. They called a new Presidency—including two new counselors—today. It was a funny coincidence; I was scheduled to teach one of the classes today, and Dave, the new President, was substituting for the other one. So I didn't really get to talk to him until the commencement of Priesthood. We chatted for a while, and he expressed some trepidation about the new calling. He'd never been the president of anything before now, not even a Deacon's quorum. So we talked during opening exercises. I gave him all the appropriate manuals, as well as my keys to the building. Then, rather than attend our respective Priesthood meetings, the two of us found an empty classroom upstairs and held a transitional Presidential summit—his Barack to my George W. I told him how I'd been running things and opined on what I thought had worked well and what I wished I'd done better and/or differently. He asked a lot of questions and took almost half a page of notes. We talked right through the Priesthood hour. By the time we finished, I think he felt a lot more calm and a lot more confident that things were running okay and that he wasn't going to screw them up.

And he won't. He's a sharp guy with a strong testimony of the Gospel. He knows when to talk and when to listen. He's going to be fine.

And what's next for me? Often, the release from a calling, especially a leadership calling, is followed by a couple of weeks 'off'. Then you get a new calling, most often completely unrelated to the one from which you were just released, and you start the process anew.

That's not the case for me. The Bishopric decided to keep me on as a Gospel Doctrine instructor. I was sustained and set apart today.

So I'm out of the presidency, but I still get to teach? That's what I call a best case scenario.