Get your damn Jesus out of my inbox

My company recently "resource actioned" a large number of people. Note that they weren't referred to as layoffs, because layoffs draw negative press attention. The key difference here from the corporation's perspective is that the affected employees have 30 days to find new jobs within the company before they're actually tossed out. I've actually been through this process twice before and ended up with better jobs both times, so it can work. Of course, I didn't get "actioned" during a time when the entire company was under a hiring freeze, as it is now (comments about how my employer is using nebulous fears of "the economy" to justify the layoffs, despite the fact that we beat all earning expectations last year, will be left for another post). Anyway, to make a long story short (which I could've done from the start, but I have a rep for verbosity to maintain), a lot of people I work with are being let go right now.

Part two of my story begins with another coworker creating a publicly-available distribution list for over two thousand people in our organization, despite my best attempts to talk him out of it. Those things are usually kept under lock and key, and for damn good reason. Anyway, it came as no surprise to anyone with half a brain that the "resource actioned" people would use that distribution list on their way out the door. In the past few days, I haven't gotten any hostile denunciations of management (sadly), but I have recieved a wide variety of farewells and resumes. Using the list to say goodbye is one thing; I understand that, even if I personally wouldn't do it since the list is so bloody huge. Using it to find a new job makes me vaguely uncomfortable; I realize the job market is difficult, but blasting your resume to thousands of strangers doesn't seem like a good tactic.

None of this would be overly interesting, except that every single one of these emails has mentioned God or Jesus in some form, without fail. I guess pending unemployment could drive some people to religion, but it's weird that everyone took time out of their goodbyes to assert that Jesus exists and loves us and will guide us if we put our faith in him. If I were more of a conspiracy theorist, I might suggest that my company took this opportunity to purge the religious nuts. The whole trend is actually weirdly helpful; I always feel bad for people who lose their jobs, but I feel less bad knowing that they're people who want to use my time and company resources to tell me about all about Christ's love.

Other random notes:

• My web hosting company let me know that my domain name was about to expire, so I sent them an email saying, in its entirety, "Please renew my domain for three years at the cost of $24 per year." And they wrote back, "We would be happy to renew your domain, but first we need to know how long you'd like to renew it for." I could have replied, but I figured there was no possible way that the respondent could be so dumb and that I must be missing something. So I called customer service, and after the guy who answered read my service ticket and cleaned up the coffee that shot out of his nose, we shared a good laugh over how inept his colleagues can be.


• I'm making a remarkably half-assed attempt at legitimate software ownership. I've had my eye on Adobe's Web CS4 for some time, but something (guilt? paranoia? lack of a decent torrent file?) has kept me from pirating it, and something else (the $1700 price tag) has kept me from buying it. I had an epiphany last week, however, when I remembered that I have friends who are students. One trip to the local university bookstore later, and I've got CS4 for the considerably more reasonable price of $350. Has anyone ever paid full price for this thing, or is part of the fun getting a discount or getting someone else to buy it for you?


• Lest anyone think the previous item indicates any thriftiness on my part, I'm seriously considering buying Street Fighter IV, despite the fact that I suck at fighting games, don't have the patience to get better, and would actually have to buy a specialized controller to adequately play the damn thing. I have issues.

Look upon my keyboard, ye Mighty, and despair!

Necessity is supposed to be the mother of invention. For me, it's the absentee father of trips to Best Buy (along with its friends Irritation, Boredom, Malaise, and Wednesday).

Today's necessity? A new keyboard. I've had a wireless keyboard/mouse combo for about six years now. The rechargeable battery in the mouse tops out at about 20 minutes of use per three hours of charging time, but I have mice spilling out my desk drawers. The bigger issue is the keyboard, which is noisier than D-Day and therefore no good for insomnia-fueled late-night browsing, as the office is next to the bedroom (insert surfing-for-porn joke here). Also, the keys have to descend what seems like six inches into the keyboard to register anything, so typing for half an hour is more strenuous than giving someone a deep-tissue massage.

I've been wanting a new keyboard for a while, but I woke up this morning and realized that A) keyboards are not that expensive, B) I'm a fully-employed adult with disposable income, and C) it'd been at least three days since I'd been to Best Buy, and the employees there were probably starting to worry about me.

So off I went. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the buzz I get from being in a whole store full of New Electronics Smell to be replaced by growing annoyance at the general keyboard-buying population. Apparently consumers are clamoring for bizarrely-shaped ergonomic "wave" keyboards with... really noisy keys that travel a great distance before registering. They're shiny, pretty, futuristic-looking, and 100% not what I want. I was close to yanking the keyboard off one of their floor model HP computers, stuffing it in my pants, and charging out the door, but I ended up with a "gaming keyboard" instead.

I've written about video games in this space before, but I'm almost exclusively referring to console games. I lack the money and patience necessary to upgrade my computer hardware every six months, which takes me out of the PC gaming market. However, I've clearly been missing out on the "game-themed computer peripherals" phenomenon. My new keyboard (in addition to its tacky rubber finish and ninja-esque quietness) features "slim keycap structure with Hyperesponse technology" and "1000Hz Ultrapolling / 1ms response time" and "Gaming cluster with anti-ghosting capability."

Motherfucker is also backlit with blue LEDs. So there's that. Also, the opening panel on the (fashionably all-black) box is labeled "Nexus of Dominion." Inside, there's a message from something called RazerGuy claiming that "You now have the tactical advantage on every terrain, and your enemies' fates are in your hands. Let the hunting begin."

It may surprise you that there's a photo of RazerGuy on the box as well. It will not surprise you that he is pale, skinny, and has a bitchin' wafro.

Finally, the box also boasts a Certificate of Authenticity that says, "There's no turning back... You're now officially part of the Cult of Razer (tm) and you own a page in the history of gaming."

So if this blog post seemed a little more menacing, a bit more intimidating than normal, well, now you know why. After re-reading it, the only difference I can see is that I've shattered my personal record for hyphen usage, but I might be immune to petty intimidation now. I guess today's lesson is that you should always be wary... you might walk into Best Buy looking for a regular old keyboard, and walk out a certified, bad-ass member of the Cult of Razer (tm).

Basic math

Here's a little equation I've been working on today:
Illiterate minion + overworked boss + slightly complex issue = total clusterfuck

I'll elaborate.

We've got a bunch of people with various specialties and roles in our organization. We need to track these people in a database so we can send them the information they need to sell our products. Creating this database has been one of the more agonizing projects I've ever been a part of, but I'm not going to tell the full story because I don't think my keyboard would survive the pounding.

Anyway, part of the project is deciding which roles and specialties we need to track, and which we can safely lump with others and ignore. I have delegated this to my minion, partly because she's the one who will work with the database, but mostly because I just got sick of dealing with it. My boss wants to go one direction, which happens to be completely wrong. The minion can't formulate a coherent argument to change her mind, and the boss is too busy to think it through any further or get together with both of us on a conference call. As of about 30 minutes ago, I've thrown up my hands and resolved to accept whatever comes out of this unholy union of inattention and stupidity, since I no longer have to use the damn thing.

My only regret here is that we've got a fantastic database guy working with us on the technical side. But now, after the third time we've completely changed directions, he probably thinks we're a bunch of meth addicts. So it goes.

One more random note of frustration: I've had no fewer than five different people this month explain away a missed deadline, failure to follow basic directions, or refusal to learn new things by saying, "I'm not technical." Which might be a reasonable excuse if they didn't work at one of the largest tech companies in the world. I understand that not everybody is as big a nerd as me, or gets the same buzz that I do when they install and run new software for the first time. Which is why I wrote step-by-step instructions with fucking pictures and sent them to everyone, with a giant flashing due date in bold at the top and a gracious offer to answer any questions. If you can't succeed given all that, it's not because you're "not technical," it's because you're either lazy or stupid.