My (one and hopefully only) ramble about school

It's been a long three years. And when I say long, I mean looooooooooooooooooooooooong. So far, my kids have been nice enough to keep me around, but I do need to watch how much of the Apprentice my five year old watches because he keeps telling me "You're fired!" My question is: How come he can remember to fire me, but can't remember what I told him five seconds ago?

Anyhow, this last University of Phoenix class is a killer! Five weeks of solid reading and writing about ethics. Being in Houston, I have to wonder how many good examples of bad ethics one person can take. Enron, Anderson Consulting, and several others are here for my choosing, but I am rather tired of hearing about all of them. Long story short, they were guilty and probably won't get half the punishment that they deserve. I guess money can by you almost anything these days, including shorter prison sentances. For us regular folk that live paycheck to paycheck, we probably won't find that out. My advice on doing the crime: don't. If you can't afford to purchase a lawyer, you really shouldn't be looking to do a crime.

Looking over my assignments, I see that I have to do a workplace dilemma paper. 700 - 1500 words of doublespaced, APA formatted paper bliss. What gets me is that you are to draw from an experience that you have had since you have been in the UoP program. Thankfully, I have worked with a moron that has saved my butt more than once by providing good writing material. Said moron had a habit of placing the blame on everyone but himself. Before he left the job that we worked at together, I became the scape goat.

It was rather humorous when I look back at it now, but I can admit that I was fuming at the time. Moron tries placing blame on two other people before he reaches me. Why he started on the other two, I can only guess. But one of them was a female that knew more than he did about computers and networking. Not bad considering he had a degree and she didn't. Throw in that she had only worked in this one place for a few years and he had (supposed) years of experience behind him. She could do cartwheels around him when it came to fixing a problem. His idea of a solution to fix a video card? He reinstalled the email and network clients after replacing the video card. He never did install the drivers for the card and couldn't figure out why he could only get 640 x 480 @ 16 colors. This was a typical solution for everything for him. If the PC was broken, reinstall email and network clients. Even if the printer was broken, this was the fix. I've got a million examples here from this guy.

So before he leaves, read: gets canned, he decides to bring me in on his list of excuses to do things. Although I wasn't ever told what all I was blamed for, my former boss told me that the charges were absolutely ridiculous and to not worry about them. The thing that got my hackles up though was that he accused me, on the day that he left via his home email address, of stealing a laptop from a company that I had worked for 2 years prior. How did he come to this conclusion? Let's see:

I worked as a sub contractor for a company and they had me go to various sites to aid in a companies consolodation. When all was said and done, there were a few break ins that occured at the new site. The crooks were caught on video, but could not be identified completely. Some networking equipment, PCs, and laptops were taken, if memory serves me. How did he tie me to one of these laptops? Simple. His wife worked for the company that I was contracted to during the same time the stuff was stolen.

Problem #1: She worked where I never went.
Problem #2: The only equipment stolen from her place of employment were laptops.
Problem #3: I had a laptop and never argued that I didn't.
Problem #4: My laptop was not a Dell (which was her company's standard issue).

So moron man heard that I worked for the same company as his wife, but ignored the differences in where I worked in comparison to where she worked, heard that I had a laptop, but didn't hear that I had a different brand, and finally, didn't take the time to put all of these things together. Brilliant! So now, I have that much more that I can write about and graduate with a BS in IT. Thanks Moron Man! You have completed yet another assignment for me!

So with four more weeks to go, as long as we stay on this topic of idiocy, I'm set for material to write my next 80 or so papers required.

Lone Star Rally and Ivan

Well, after about a month of anxiously awaiting the bike rally in Galveston, Ivan the Terrible ruins it for me. I had been waiting patiently for this, my first rally in some years, to happen. It was going to be a great ride down and I had a few people lined up to go with me for support.

Houston and Galveston had dodged all the storms and the weather was supposed to be wonderful. A few weeks before the rally, hurricane Ivan starts heading this way. Houston gets a break from it because of some high pressure that forces Ivan to turn up into Louisianna. No worries, right? I'm partying and anticipating the rally even more now! Ivan is now heading inland and back to the NE. Instead of tracking all the way up to New York though, it heads back out to sea near Florida (like they needed the rain). It then strengthens back into a tropical storm and starts heading back towards Houston. Guesstimated time of arrival? You got it! Thursday through Saturday.

So now I'm thinking that I am going to have to watch the radar starting Thursday. I checked it a few times Thursday and saw where Ivan had stalled out South of Louisianna. Life is good for me. So now Friday is upon me. I call the guy I work with Friday about 11 AM that is already at the rally (because he has vacation time and I don't, the bugger!) and on his 3rd Miller Lite! Even though I do not drink any longer, I'm still peeved. The storm is still south of Louisianna and sitting there. So I check the forecast and see that now they have this storm making landfall in LA and heading this way instead of having it land in LA and move back to the east. That's fine though, because my coworker says that the weather is absolutely wonderful. What a bum. OK. Friday is now over and I head home.

Saturday morning. The day is finally here! I jump out of bed and head to the TV to see what the weather is like. After waiting 30 minutes, the station finally shows the radar. Yuck. Galveston is now covered in reds and yellows indicating that there is 2 - 4 inches of rain per hour falling. Bloody cripes! OK, quick check on the route down shows.......the same bleedin thing..... Crap. Forget it. I guess that I'll stay home until noon and then check out the weather then. 5 hours later, the weather hasn't changed much. Forget the whole thing. So much for my first rally in years. This sucks. Hardcore.

So now Monday is here and I am hearing that the rain stopped about 2 PM in Galveston. I told my coworker that went that he should be quiet before I come over there and get my butt kicked and bruise up his knuckles in the process.....There's always next year.

Youth today

Please! Someone that is in college tell me that you have gained some semblance of an education!

Today, for example, I talked to someone that is in college over the phone trying to decypher what version of Outlook Express they had. After several minutes of total silence on the phone, and several steps of coaching to get the person to open OE, I was told what version. All of this to try to alleviate the problems of a trojan horse virus. All on company time. One of my coworkers kids no less. Sheesh. I'm gonna start charging for my advice....by the minute.

What's with these people?

Ok, I started this whole blog to record some thoughts that I have had when reading the news and message boards on the web.

1st thing I would like to address: Beheadings.

They have become front page nowadays with the whole war in Iraq going on. Depending on who you listen to, the blame is wide spread. I have heard that the Muslims are to blame. I have also heard that the people that have been kidnapped are the ones to blame. Blame Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice....Forget playing the blame game and let's get down to what's what.

To all the terrorists that happen to come across my postings: Doom on You. Pray to what ever god you think will save your sorry butts. Pray that the Marines aren't loosed on your sorry carcuses. If my brothers and sisters are let loose, you better find a whole different world to hide in, because we will find you.

You want to behead innocents? Tell me where in Islam it says that it's OK to do so. Even your clerics have denounced you.

So now who do you fight for? I'm going to venture a guess and say that pride is a sin in Islam. So if you are fighting for pride, you screwed yourself out of an eternity of virgins.

So you are fighting for the people. In doing so, do you not realize that you are placing the ones you fight for in immediate danger? So after they are all gone, who will you fight for?

So far, you have fought for religion and been shunned, you have fought for yourselves and been prideful in your fight barring you from paradise, and you have fought for the people and by doing so, have gotten their innocent blood spilled upon you. In baseball, that's three strikes against you. You're out. If you believe what the other Islamic people believe, then how is it that you can continue on doing what you are doing? That's the equivalent of me saying that I only believe bits and pieces of the Bible. All or nothing for both Christianity and Islam, last I heard.

Would you behead your friend that is sitting beside you during the fight? I didn't think so. So then, why would you behead those that are trying to rebuild your country? The very people that are helping to make your life, and your families lives, better?

Don't like running water?
Can't stand to be able to go where and when you want?

It makes no sense to me.....But then again, I'm only radical in my faith as well. The main difference is that I will kill you with kindness and offer to you anything that you have need of. I could show you the way to heaven, but you won't believe me when I tell you just how easy it is. The sad part is, you have more than enough qualifications to get you there, but because you follow a dead man, and I follow a risen one, we will most likely never see eye to eye.

Now, for those of you that are wondering about how the people that have been beheaded can be blamed, I present to you something that I had read on a message board. They can be blamed because they are going into places that the military dare not go. They are going in unarmed. They present themselves as targets.

With that being said, I left the board. And now that I have thought more about it, there is a bit of truth to it. These people go into places under the premise that they are there to do good things for a suffering people. When they enter in, they are unarmed because they are there to work, not fight. They are required to go into places that the military knows that they would be killed immediately in to rebuild. They present themselves as targets out of love. Either they love the money they are getting while doing their job, or they love the people that they are so desparately trying to help. Either way, they are being killed for helping out. So until the war is over, hell freezes over, or there is peace and harmony for all, this will continue. There are no other ways around it.

Let's get out of the politics for a few minutes and figure out a way to put an end to killing innocent workers.

Intro

Just to let you all know a bit about me:

1st: I am not a 18 year old Female living near the Delta. The name that I have chosen is the type of aircraft I used to work on. Specifically, I worked on the F/A 18 Delta's NACES Ejection Seat. The plane itself is awesome. But I was able to work on these great aircraft with VMFA (aw) 533 while in the USMC, and therefore, I feel a bit qualified when it comes to opinions and what the world has become. I've been around the block a few times (so to speak) so I know a little about the world we live in. I will be done with my Bachelors degree in Information Technology after the Spring of '05 semester is completed, so I have an education to back some of my real world experinces. I can see where I went wrong, and most times, I don't have a problem admitting when I am wrong. Now, on with the show......