Respect?

Anyone know what happened to respect?  Is there anything left that people respect?  Clearly, a whole bunch of people have no respect for themselves, or for others, or for elders, or for rules, or for laws, or for government, or for fairness or for privacy.  So tell me, is there anything still out there that people DO respect?  This might sound like a rant, but it's really just curiosity.  I just see so many people who have no respect for any of the things I do respect, that I am really wondering if the concept is just outdated and fading away.

Thoughts?

Posted by trupundit @ 11:18 pm EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

2008 observations

Here's some things I wondered about, accepted, or realized in 2008:

• Why is the wattage of my microwave not printed on the front of it? Directions always seem to be for 1100 watts. Why do I have to look at the small print on the back of my machine to see how watts it is?
• There is no such thing as sharing your chocolate with your wife. Just give it to her, man.
• I’m never going to spontaneously develop super powers. Man, that one is depressing.
• Funerals put things in perspective like nothing else can.
• It really sucks to have problems with your feet.
• The less I read, the dumberer I get.
• Gauis really does know his whiskey. Seriously.
• MP shooters aren't holding my attention the way they used to.
• The BCS still sucks.
• I'm placing some hope in "yes we can," because the alternative is too doggone depressing to think about.
• The long delay from the writers' strike really took away the mystique "Heroes" once had.
• I will never care about audio as much as Castle does.
• I bought a Ford Fusion and whether or not the US auto industry "should" die, I sure like my new car!

2008 had it's highs, with my long-overdue promotion, and it's lows, with the loss of my Mother-in-law. it was a year that taught me a lot about family, friends, and what is really important in life. While I don't really want another year like this one, I am glad to have had such a year. I look forward to 2009 and all the potential it holds.

 

Posted by trupundit @ 12:01 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

It'll drive you crazy

Why are there so many horrible drivers on the roads?  I used to think that I was just catching a bunch of people on a bad day, because Lord knows I occasionally do something stupid behind the wheel and then count my blessings for the next 5 minutes, but, the number of examples I see these days leads me to believe that a lot of people just don't follow ANY of the rules or courtesies of the road.

Yes yes, I know I sound naive.  I know it's crazy to expect everyone to follow the rules while doing an activity that can kill large numbers of people.  But, it's just getting worse and worse.  We'll see if we can somehow blame our politicians before we're done here.

Some examples first though.  Yesterday I am driving in a 45 MPH zone.  It is very hilly there, so some people go flying through the "downs."  That was the case here, but, there's more to this story.  I had moved over to the left lane, as had everyone else, because a cop had someone pulled over in the right lane.  Not this idiot driving a Mustang though.  He not only stays in the right lane, but is flying down the hill and swerves into the left lane a few cars ahead of me maybe 15 feet before he would have hit the cop car.  I'm sure the officer would have loved to chase him were he not already in the ticket-writing process.  Then there was this great example.  We have a few short one-way streets near my house.  I was going the correct way when a car started coming towards me going the wrong way.  Due to all the snow and cars in the street, there is no way to pass each other.  We both keep coming.  I look at this idiot and motion to him to back up or pull into a driveway.  He makes the same motion to me.  I open my door and mention that he is going the wrong way down a one-way street and he needs to turn around.  He indicates he is in a hurry.  I indicate that I don't care and that he's going to get wherever he needs to get a lot faster once he turns around because I'm not getting out of his way.  He seems to believe the make of his car (Mercedes) and perhaps his size will somehow intimidate me.  Neither do.  He finally understand that I have much more time to waste on this then he does and so he turns around after calling me quite a few names that made me tempted to spend some insurance dollars by ramming his car.

Then there is the Yield sign.  I am thoroughly convinced that no one in the greater Cleveland area understands the meaning of a Yield sign.  I think they believe it means speed up and honk your horn at the car you almost hit (me) by not yielding.  Oh, and there's also the guy on an on-ramp who is far too important to merge at the bottom of the ramp as everyone else is doing and who instead drives along the berm for awhile until he can force his way into the flow further up.

I know we have licensing for driving, but, for what I pay every year for plates, it seems like we could do better testing for existing drivers, or at least SOME testing of existing drivers.  Or perhaps, just maybe, people could take some personal responsibility and make driving safer for everyone?  Nah, it must be the politician's fault.

Posted by trupundit @ 11:38 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

No one wants my business

It's astonishing to me how many different ways companies have driven me away from them in just the past few weeks.

At my local McDonalds, the manager took over a register, looked at all the people in line and said  "I'm open, Come on people, get over here."  My reply just before I left was, "you do realize I am a customer and not an employee, right?"

I bought a game at Gamestop, got home and realized there  was no disc in the box.  They were closed by then, so I called the next morning and got the manager.  When I told her the situation, she asked if I had been helped by a young man with brown hair.  I said yes.  She said, "He's been doing that a lot lately.  I'll talk to him."  I asked how she could tolerate that sort of mistake "a lot."  She said she would talk to him.  I asked if I could just pick the disc up at my local GS, since that one was pretty far from my house and I'd just happened to be there.  Nope - their inventory system doesn't allow that.  I asked if she could ship the disc to my local store so I could pick it up there.  Nope.

On the highway and need to get over to make my exit.  I speed up to change lanes and the van next to me speeds up to block me.  It was a van for a local HVAC company which I had used before.  Won't use them again though.

There are other examples, but you get the idea.  I keep hearing how bad the economy is.  I don't doubt it, but I have to wonder how much of that is due to companies basically driving sales away with the way they handle themselves.  And, at least two of the people I was dealing with were middle-aged managers, so not like I can blame it on "those darn kids."

I  hear at my company all the time how hard it is to gain a customer and how easy it is to lose one.  I can't believe we're the only company pointing that out.  The good news is that I am now fiercely loyal to any place that actually seems to value me as a customer.  The bad news is that that list of companies seems to shrink by the day. 

I may sound like a grouchy old man, but COME ON world, do your work like it matters.  Treat customers like their entire opinion of your company will be based on that single interaction.  Think about what helps your customer, not what is easiest for you.

[/grouchyOldManRant]

Posted by trupundit @ 12:55 pm EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

My brain is filling up

I never, ever thought I would say this, but there's too damn much for me to learn right now.

Let's see, we upgraded all of the following software titles at work over the past month:

• Captivate 2 to Captivate 3 (I am a SME for this and must become an expert)
• ACT v7 to ACT v8 (This is a training delivery platform, and I am both a SME and an admin for this and must become an expert)
• Swishmax to Swishmax 2
• Photoshop CS2 to Photoshop CS3
• Ditto for Illustrator CS2 to 3
• We also added Adobe Presenter and Connect.  These ones are fortunately not hard to learn, but I still have to learn them.

OK, so all that would keep me pretty busy.  Bear in mind that learning all of these upgrades is in addition to my regular workload, which recently increased tremendously when 37% of my peers were "right-sized" 6 weeks ago.

In addition, I bought a new pocket PC wireless phone that I have had almost no time to play with or figure out, although I have figured out how to have a Halo ring tone and play the two games that came on it.

On top of that, going back and forth between COD4 and Halo3 is making me throw grenades when I want to reload in COD4, and making me throw a bubble shield when I want to reload in H3.

I must be getting old.  I used to soak up stuff like a total sponge and have it all nailed on pretty much the first try.  Not anymore.  I was actually in Illustrator today trying to figure out where one of my panels was when I realized that the panel I was looking for was only in Photoshop, not Illustrator.  I went to call my wife's cell phone today, and had to use the contacts list because I couldn't remember her number.

Did I mention I'm helping my wife out by creating all new forms for her to use in the Doctor's office she works in? 

Oh, we also got a bunch of new software at work, or did I say that?

Anyway, I wonder if this is how my parents felt when we got our first VCR and I had it programmed in 5 minutes and they were still trying to grasp the concept of recording TV?  Will I soon reach the point where my nephew will have to come over to make my holovision unit stop blinking 'Enter dilithium code,"  while I keep pressing buttons on the fridge remote and saying "I AM entering the damn code?"

Speaking of codes, at work we have something called a Universal Passcode.  Only, we have three of them.  Yes, I have three different Universal passcodes, each of which gets me into maybe 2 or 3 systems.  I'm pretty sure my company doesn't really grasp the concept of "universal.".  Luckily, each one must be changed every 90 days or it might get really complicated.  I have found myself asking on many occasions "which universal do I use for this system?"  Then there are the systems which have not yet been converted to a "universal" standard.  Those ones I tend to neglect until I get an e-mail with lots of bolded words from my boss about it.

Fortunately, my new Pocket PC can keep track of all of those passcodes for me, if I ever figure out how to make it do that. 

At least I still remember the square root of 7 to 7 decimals: 2.6457513  Man, I'm a freak.....

Posted by trupundit @ 10:58 pm EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments