Cheap posts. Got a problem with that?

Yeah, I'm posting kitty pictures just to get some posts up. After my abysmal performance in March, post-wise and traffic-wise, I have to make amends. Anyway, people love kitty photos, right?

Haunches at the bridge

OK, now this is what I call standing watch. These kitties are focused on protecting the homestead. Well, maybe no Mischief. Not clear what she's focused on:

But Murder and Mayhem definitely look like Horatius at the bridge.

I feel confident that they will pounce upon any intruder:

I hope they're not our only line of defense.

Not so vigilant

So there they are, Murder and Mayhem, standing watch in the window. Wait, what? This is standing watch?

Shouldn't they be looking outside?

Jeez Louise, are they standing watch or making a kitty porno?

Yeah, not standing watch:

Bring me that baby!

Minnesota Wolves, my youngest, is coming to visit soon for his birthday. He recently sent along a picture of my granddaughter, who is clearly the cutest child on the face of the planet:

Wish he could bring her and her mother with him, but I am looking forward to seeing him.

Kitties eat spaghetti?

Apparently:

Who knew?

Working on my tan

Every day, my team lead gets at least one email asking what people in the room are working on. The answer is usually, "nothing." I always reply, "My tan."

Not sure how much they appreciate that, but for nearly two weeks, most of our time has been idle. With nicer weather, I would be working on my tan. After all, Murder and Mayhem are:

And so is Tim Curry:

Who am I to buck a trend?

Musta been the Chinese Food of Significant Imposition

Yeah, no Doom. But we did lose four days of work, pretty much all at overtime, which adds up to serious money. Not Doom, I guess, but not great. What happened was, they never got their shit together, they went ahead and fed us Chinese, then told us "See you Monday." Four day weekend, with no word on how long past Monday we'll be working, or how many hours a week. Naturally, I am looking for a new gig like a junkie looks for heroin.

Clearly, the Apocalypse has arrived

Here they are, on my bed, Mayhem and Jeb the Wonder Dog, chilling out together:

I think we all know what this means:

Yeah, that's right -- Armageddon.

Chinese Food of Doom?

Normally, you know a project is ending because the law firm or the temp agency brings in pizza for lunch -- the famed Pizza of Doom. Well, work has been spotty the last week or so -- lots of sitting around -- and as I post this from behind enemy lines, we are idle, awaiting some work on the database to be completed. We have been asked to stay late to work on what the firms apparently want finished today, and we're going to be fed dinner.

So, is it the Chinese Food of Doom? Stay tuned.

10 posts? Seriously?

Between working 70 hours a week and computer problems that apparently are going to lead to replacement, I haven't done much posting this month. Naturally, that means that traffic is in the shitter -- let's face it, if you don't build it, they won't come.

I ain't been building it this month, so they didn't come. But 10 posts so far this month? Fuck me.

The smell of spring is in the air

Actually, that would be the smell of nitrogen, as area farmers are putting down nitrogen fertilizer to get ready to plant. For the uninitiated, nitrogen has quite the pungent smell. It smells a lot like cow shit, but not exactly. You should try it sometime. It really is the smell of spring, though -- when you smell nitrogen, you know that, in the field of opportunity, it's plowing time again:

Yeah, feeling this one

We had practically no winter, with February temperatures frequently in the 70s, and then a week ago we had about 8 inches of snow. How do I feel about this? Like this:

And I fucking HATE California. But the late winter blast made me briefly reconsider. It started a week ago Monday night (the night of March 13):

Yeah, coming down good:

No, seriously:

This, after a winter with almost no snow at all, and only a couple cold snaps. Then in mid-March, we got about 6-8 inches. If not for the late sleet and freezing rain, it would have been a much higher snow total:

Trust me, what we got was enough:

Anyway, that cost me a day of work last week. The project is still going, for reasons unknown to me, and is still at high hours, much to my mystification. Anyway, that's my excuse for not posting. I'm sticking with it.

Careful what you ask for

All the Social Justice Warriors insisting that women can do everything that men can, including physically, should pause to contemplate this particular consequence of their demands:

Female infantry Marines will be sleeping in makeshift shelters next to their male counterparts when out in the field and no special accommodation will be offered to them, a Marine Corps official said Thursday.
Marines in the field stay in everything from a large, single room shelter filled with dozens of cots to sleeping under tarps or nothing at all, said Maj. Charles Anklam III, executive officer for 1st Battalion, 8th Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina — the first gender-integrated Marine infantry battalion.
Female Marines have private rooms and bathrooms in their living quarters, and female bathrooms have been added to buildings where Marines work. But female Marines will be expected to share any living spaces with male squad members in the field to keep unit cohesion and replicate battlefield conditions, he said.

First, women cannot do all the things that men can do physically. That is a simple fact of nature, not up for debate. That is not the problem here. Men and women sleeping in the same place generally leads to men and women fucking like bunnies. Not all of them, all the time, but if you put men and women together, some of them will pair up. That's just biology. It's what people (and all other species) do instinctively.

That's fine, in a social sense. Does anyone think that will lead to a good combat unit? Yeah, me neither. I don't think the SJWs view that as a bad outcome. The U.S. military is evil in their world view, and we have no enemies that might require us to have an effective military, right? Can't we just all get along?

This is why you can't believe "data-based" findings

It would appear that  a recent story on Polygraph purports to list the most "timeless" songs of all time, based on how much they continue to be played. Fortunately, a story on Real Clear Life makes it clear that Polygraph's list draws data from a fairly limited source:

There’s an obvious caveat here: The publication’s definition of “timeless” is based solely on the number of Spotify plays, and it’s entirely possible that incredibly timeless songs have been left off the list for reasons of under-playing or -discovering. (For example, Big Star‘s entire catalog.) Also, there are some major artists—including pop superstar Taylor Swift — who have not yet uploaded their catalogs to the service, so they’re altogether missing from the data set.
. . .
Looking at the Top 51 of the list, it’s hard not to wonder how two Linkin Park songs broke into the Top 10 (“Numb,” No. 3; “In the End,” No. 6); or how Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” (No. 1) beats out everything including Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Oasis’ “Wonderwall,” and Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing.”

Looking at the list, there are many obvious questions. The first being, how the fuck did Linkin Park, with their dumbass "rap, sing, scream, repeat" formula make anyone's timeless list? They haven't had a career worth noticing in at least 15 years, and their career worth noticing before that lasted only a couple years. Timeless? Please. And Oasis? Really? Two albums and a cloud of dust? Yet Spotify deems them timeless, while the Rolling Stones can't break the top 50. Whatever.

Further, radio still provides far more people with music than Spotify. Talk about cherry-picking. Spotify as your arbiter of timeless? A bunch of primarily millenials picking music from their lifetimes is hardly a good basis for determining what music is timeless. If this is what passes for "data-based" findings, count me out.

Bathroom etiquette? Really?

This project is so close to over that I figure I'm going to be fired any day now, so why worry about accelerating things? Early in this project, I was posting emails from management that reflected badly on both management and the kindergarteners they are trying to manage. I stopped because I learned from several sources that someone on the project was trying to get me fired because of what I was posting on the blog.

As it turns out, the person who was trying to get me fired has decided I'm OK. The darkhorse candidate for the person trying to get me fired has been fired, so I figure I have nothing to fear there. Given all that, laissez les bon temps roulez.

Earlier in the project, we got an email that is all too typical for TempTown. We have inadequate bathroom space on this project, with a five-holer for the guys -- two urinals, three toilets -- and based on my knowledge of plumbing, three stalls for the women's room. We also have a one-seat "handicapped" bathroom. This is a de facto second chance for women. With more than 200 people on the project, yeah, the facilities are inadequate.

It apparently is a bone of contention, based on an email sent to the entire project. Of course, management neglected to mention that we simply don't have enough seats to accommodate the number of people who need to let it go. And they left out that apparently folks are willing to go to war over the handicapped bathroom. Plus they left out the part about this becoming a full-on screamfest in the main women's bathroom when two combatants came face-to-face. Actual email from management:

We would like to remind everyone that if you approach the single-person restroom and find that it is locked, you should assume that it is occupied. You should not repeatedly try the door, or bang on it. Instead, please wait until the restroom is free, or find another restroom to use. Everyone is working long hours in rather close quarters, so it is important to do whatever we can to respect each other’s privacy whenever possible.

You know what else they left out? Someone smeared poo on the wall of the women's restroom a few weeks ago. Poo? Really? Even among temps, this surprises me. Someone going full Poo-casso, doing abstract fingerpainting on the bathroom wall in poo? Really? Yeah, really.

I think the swordfish is dead

We got sent home early a couple times recently, and today we sat idle for eight hours before a little work finally appeared. It was gone by the time I left. Just a little clean-up stuff. I think this swordfish is done.

Some folks will be kept, but it looks like any day now, about three-fourths of the 200 or so people on this project will be looking for work. The company driving this merger usually keeps a fire brigade for months after most folks are let go, and I've been kept both times I have previously worked for this company on mergers, but past performance is no guarantee of future results. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think we're looking at this:

I could be wrong. It might not be tomorrow. But it will be soon.

And we won't even always have Paris. We'll just be looking for work again.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

I recently issued challenges here and here for readers to submit in the comments section haikus about document review or pretty much anything else, and promised to elevate any haikus submitted to a post. Well, we have our first entrant.

This one if from a document review temp, obviously. Hell, I think I was on this project:

Placed in basement
with leaden walls and Flourine
life is pretty good

I feel you, man. Keep 'em coming, people. And remember, we're not limited to document review haikus. Any workplace haiku is fine.

Sometimes stuff just happens -- so write a haiku about it

So, the other day, in what has become an increasingly rare event, I put up a post about document review haikus, challenging readers to post their own document review haiku in the comments. Obviously, such a post would only appeal to temps, and while temps are a part of the audience, they likely are far outnumbered by spambots searching for porn. But I digress.

The haiku post led to a discussion in my room at work that yielded a sentence that, in about 30 seconds -- a new land speed record -- led to this document review haiku:

Can't believe this shit
Some fuckers priv everything
It boggles the mind.

Obviously, this project involves determining whether documents are protected under attorney-client or some other privilege. Most people have no basis upon which to write a haiku about this process, or any other aspect of document review, for that matter. Accordingly, I am inviting the readership of Eff You to write a haiku about whatever. Just put it in the comments, and all haikus will be promoted to post status. Especially the dirty ones. Write it.

Environmentalists love nature so much they leave dogs to starve and/or freeze to death

I think it's easy to see that the professional lefty protests against the North Dakota Access Pipeline was never about anything other than promoting chaos. After all, the protests continued even after the Sioux tribe protesters were supporting were told by the tribe to go home. The tribe and the protesters have been dishonest from the start about their motives and the facts underlying their "protest." This has nothing to do with tribal rights -- the pipeline never crosses tribal territory -- and everything with green hatred for fossil fuels.

Of course, this green desire to rid the world of fossil fuels would force us to freeze to death in the dark since they oppose the only viable energy source with no carbon emissions, nuclear power. So we can only conclude that these people don't hate progress that makes peoples' lives better, they just love nature so much they are willing to take on for the team, right?

Yeah, well, maybe no so much. Last time I checked, dogs are part of nature, and these nasty ass professional protesters left a bunch of dogs to freeze to death. Or starve to death, whichever came first:

Dakota Access Pipeline protesters who caused an environmental catastrophe at the Oceti Sakowin protest site left more than heaps of human waste, garbage, and petroleum-leaking vehicles. They also abandoned poor, defenseless puppies.
A total of two dogs and six puppies were found abandoned at the site and rescued by local nonprofit Furry Friends Rockin’ Rescue, local news reported on Saturday.

Yeah, the animal rescue group said the animals found were in bad shape, with frostbite and mange, and had been left with no food. Thank God these protesters love nature so much. Otherwise, they might have left things in much worse shape:

The reports of the cast-aside canines follow news of the grave environmental threat to the Missouri River posed by the almost unfathomable amount of waste left at the site by protesters, a threat so grave it compelled North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to sign an emergency evacuation order.
Authorities estimated that protesters left enough garbage and human waste to fill 2,500 pickup trucks.

Can you imagine how bad things would have been if the protesters didn't love nature so much? Fuck, they'd have left an entire zoo behind to freeze to death.

 

A document review haiku challenge

A recently overheard conversation in Temp Town gave me a truly bizarre audience-participation idea. I heard a person commenting on the inanity of some of the remarks included in the "reviewer comments" sections of the documents we review in later review stages. One temp noted that a pretty fair number of them make no sense. Another suggested that the word "poo" should be included at random just to see if anyone was paying any attention, and finally someone suggested that all further reviewer comment box entries should be done in haiku.

It took me about 45 seconds, but I was able to quickly whip up a sample of just such a haiku reviewer comment:

Isn't privileged.
Some stupid turd said it was.
Don't redact, shithead.

I invite anyone in Temp Town to provide their own haiku in the comments, although I suggest using an anonymous email address to do so.