Category: social media

Great Sayings – How To Deal With Change (Covid 19 edition)

For the timid, change is frightening; for the comfortable, change is threatening; but for the confident, change is opportunity. –

Nido Qubein

What goes with this saying is that change is the only thing that stays the same.  It’s going to happen so how you deal with it is how it’s going to affect you.

Being frightened isn’t bad.  It heightens your awareness (fight or flight) to notice it’s happening and allows you to deal with it.  Those who embrace it and see the upside will be better off.  Running away from it isn’t going to stop it.  Life goes on and so must you.

As we get older, we get more used to it or get more used to running from it.  It’s your choice.

Look around you right now.  It’s happening with Covid 19, the riots and political back biting.  Stay above it and don’t believe what is being written (actually don’t read the news or social media, neither of which are likely to tell the truth).  Decide for yourself.

Great Sayings – Einstein On Being A Genius

Don’t let others get you down.  Don’t live your life by others version of what you should be.  It’s hard to buck social peer pressure and be yourself, but that’s what it can take sometimes to find the real you.

Stop wasting your life on social media to define yourself by others.  In fact it looks like staying off of social media except for family and a few actual friends looks like it makes your life better anyway.

It’s hard to seek your dreams.  You have to pay the bills and raise the kids, so sometimes your dreams or reaching your capabilities doesn’t come in your 20’s like it did for Albert.

That doesn’t give anyone a free pass for not trying their hardest to do their best.

Great Sayings – Shakespeare

We know what we are, but know not what we may be. – Shakespeare

 

Another version of this goes – You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.  That was either Gretzky or Jordan.

Some don’t try for fear of failure, some don’t try because they lack courage.  Both lose because there is a reward for winning and a reward for learning if you fail.  I heard Michael Jordan say that he took over 30 shots to win games and missed, but it didn’t stop him the next time.  He said when asked if he was worried he might miss and he answered that why would worry about something that hasn’t happened yet?

Don’t let your inhibitions keep you from excelling.  You never know what is inside you until you try.  Many times I haven’t felt well for an activity that I needed to be well conditioned for, yet wound up killing it because all I needed was a warmup.

Go after it today, then go after it tomorrow.  Keep going after it until you can go.  The reward is not a trophy, it is the sense of accomplishment that will help you try again the next time.

Finally, let it be the judge of who you are, not social media.  That is turning into a cesspool of being a time suck and dragging you down because you think something is different than it is.  Don’t be a sheeple.

Great Sayings – What Your Enemy Fears

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

Eric Hoffer

Sun Zhu said something similar about noticing your opponents weakness and you will win the fight because they can no longer hurt you.Much of the strife we go through is fear based recently.  It caused us to leave life and self-quarantine, until it was ok to go out and riot.  It’s been going on for a week now an there will be plenty of data shortly as to whether we really need to social distance anymore, because they sure aren’t doing it in the riot cities.

Remember Greta Thunberg?  She’s not even a blip on the map, nor is global warming.  The scare mongers have moved on to the next issue. I haven’t been afraid of these things because the truth is that we live in the greatest times of mankind ever.  Yes we have problems, but that is life.

There is no need to be afraid and have unnecessary fears.  The glass is really half full.  These can be the greatest years of our lives if we stop buying into the crap that the media and social media tries to feed us.

If you put your faith in something that is a rock and then you won’t be afraid.  Think for yourself and look at the facts to decide if what is going on is real or someone’s agenda.I think we are going to become more numb to these repetitive scare tactics being thrown at us and we will stand up to scare tactics by those who are trying it.

Great Sayings – Daniel Patrick Moynihan on Opinion vs. Facts

Everyone has both.  Some choose one over the other.  Most mesh the two together.

The difficulty in this day of being barraged by social media and a 24/7/365 news hype cycle is that you can choose to go with your bias and only see one side of any story.  This is dangerous regardless of which side you view it from.

Don’t believe the scare tactics of the money hustlers who rush people into a position like sheep herders trying to corral the flock into group think.  The tactic is shame for not subjugating yourself to the PC position of the day.

It takes courage to step out and stand for what is right, especially in the start of a crisis or an event in time. This requires critical thinking as to discovery of the real facts and applying the necessary logic to come to the right conclusion.  It also can take time.  The media and politicians will try to rush us into judgement based on opinion.

As they said in Watergate, follow the money and you’ll usually see through those who are self-serving.

Most of all, don’t be a sheep.  Think for yourselves and don’t take anything you read online as gospel, except for the Gospel.

Sooner or later, time exposes the truth.  Whether you want to believe it or not is now up to you.

Great Sayings – William Penn on Right vs. Wrong

No doubt about it, we know this deep down despite what the media and the power hungry part of the Government tries to cram down our throats.

It’s tough to be on an island when everyone is shooting at you because of what you believe.  In the long run, staying the course with what is right is better.  You’ll also have fewer regrets, and probably fewer people in your life that you may have thought were friends.  Be grateful that they revealed their nature to you.

These are difficult times, but deep down we all know right vs. wrong.  Pick right and life may not be easier, but you’ll have fewer regrets.

Great Sayings – Political Correctness

“Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rapidly promoted by mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end.”

 

Here’s where someone is going to get offended.  I’m going to go ahead with it anyway even if there are a few people who always try to spoil the party for the rest of us.  Most people really don’t care.  Call things by whatever you want if it makes you happy.  Heck, I’ll be happy for you especially if the PC police would shut up.  I just can’t remember all the names you want me to call things I grew up calling something else.

There are so many important things than this in my life that come before being PC like cleaning my nails, sweeping out dust bunnies, contemplating my naval and much more because well, I have a life.

I already have posted that the media is biased from the point of view of the audience they want to reach, all of them.  They have their lapdogs the celebtards who gladly will tell us what we should think because of their self-inflated opinion of themselves.

The funny thing to me is that some of this PC crap is made up like in the circle game.  Reddit made up a story about the OK sign being offensive or white power or something to see if they could get the offended to bite.  Just like Pavlov’s dogs, they salivated when the bell rung.

Great Sayings – Fearlessness and Readiness by Friedrich Neitzsche

“The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

 

This is not a rating system based on grief, rather how one acts in the face of things not going their way.  Everyone has ups and downs despite what they post on social media.  We all have the choice to give up, or pulling up our trousers and moving ahead.  Note: it doesn’t say we won’t grieve or suffer, rather how we persevere.

Journalist Jokes, Because well….They Are Journalists

I worked with the press for decades.  The ones I worked with were nice people, but they had to write something that people will read, until now.  Journalists are supposed to (try to) and learn about the subject they are covering. Now they write ridiculous stories and then write the opposite.  They don’t even bother to fact check anymore.  No one reads corrections so they don’t care, and it shows.  I can’t even say this current lot are nice.  If you see below, they aren’t well liked either.

Lately, they have been circling the wagons to cover one side of the political scene or the other together.  They are exposing themselves to the public as to how little they know or how little they want to hide their bias.  A bunch of them just want to jam on the president out of spite, but they are either self-owning or he is swatting them like flies, especially Jim Acosta.

Twitter/Twitchy caught on and now instead of lawyer jokes, it is journalist jokes.  For the most part, this lot deserves what they are getting.  They are now as useless to regular people as celebtards and sports stars trying to give their opinion on something other than their sport.

The hashtag is #JournalistJokes, go see for yourselves.  Here is a list of some as a starter.  Others are more creative than me.

“Three journalists walk into a building. You’d think one of them would’ve seen it.”
“What’s 5 miles long and has an IQ of 30?” “A JOURNALIST PARADE!”
“Three journalists walk into bar and say ‘ouch’ – then write stories about how the bar is racist and phobic.”
“How does a journalist change a light bulb? He holds while the whole world revolves around him.”
And Twitchy’s pick for the winner: “What are the best four years of a journalist’s life? Third grade.”
“Why are there only 2 pallbearers at a ‘journalist’s funeral?” “Garbage cans only have two handles.”
“How do you make a journalist’s eyes light up?” “Shine a flashlight in his ear.”
“What do you call 25 skydiving journalists?” “Skeet.”
“How do you get a one-armed journalist out of a tree?” “Wave to them.”
“What’s the difference between a smart journalist and Bigfoot?” “Bigfoot has been spotted.”
“Why can’t a ‘journalist’ dial 911?” “She can’t find the eleven.”
“What do you do if a journalist throws a grenade at you?” “Pick it up, pull the pin out, and throw it back.”
“What’s the different between God and a journalist?” “God doesn’t think he’s a journalist.”

 

Hat tip WND

How Racism and White Supremacy Are The New Godwin’s Law

Authors Note: I have a tendency to notice patterns in both a macro and micro universes. I’ve been watching this one brew for a while now.

FIRST, WHAT IS GODWIN’S LAW?

Reformulated in the Net.Legends FAQs “Usenet Rule #4”:

“Any off-topic mention of Hitler or Nazis will cause the thread it is mentioned in to come to an irrelevant and off-topic end very soon; every thread on Usenet has a constantly-increasing probability to contain such a mention.”

It is generally accepted that whoever is the first to play the “Hitler card” has lost the argument as well as any trace of respect, as having to resort to comparing your adversary to the most infamous mass-murdering dictator in history generally means you’ve run out of better arguments. Thus, once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress. This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin’s law.

Disclaimer: This blog post does not take a position on racism, it’s prevalence, who is or isn’t or might be racist and my position on this subject. Aristotle noted that the mark of an educated mind is to entertain a thought without accepting it.  Therefore I am observing a speech and behavioral pattern of the public.  In other words it’s on them, not me.

It is also noted that a trait of people with a higher IQ is that you can argue from multiple perspectives (unfortunately so can lawyers and politicians who may or may not be of higher intelligence – especially politicians and especially millennial politicians).

The original Godwin’s Law has lost its’ sting since everyone is now Hitler, so the new talking point is racism or white supremacy. Rather than argue on the merits of the position of the person (political candidates mostly since they dominate the news) the go to is now calling the other person one of these two pejorative names.  This constant overuse has devalued the meaning of the words and rendered them ineffective at worst and boring at best.

Here is a quick search that shows views from multiple points doing just this:

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=IXpRXZrPHOqH_Qa9hbr4AQ&q=examples+of+politicians+being+called+racist&oq=examples+of+politicians+being+called+racist&gs_l=psy-ab.3…2240.2240..3652…0.0..0.186.324.0j2……0….2j1..gws-wiz.aEnMfNpKcHc&ved=0ahUKEwja48Tux_3jAhXqQ98KHb2CDh8Q4dUDCAc&uact=5

This is in direct conflict with Martin Luther King’s evocative phrase: “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”  Now, it is common to hear you are a racist or white supremacist because you don’t agree with me.  It greatly devalues MLK’s position.

A General Definition of racism

1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race, racial prejudice or discrimination.

While I could list any or all of the comments that have been made in public themselves could be racist in tone, one could make the case for or against whether the accused are really racist. Calling someone a racist is easy but proving most of these ad hominem attacks is harder.

One would need to know what is inside the person making the statements to know if it were really true or just talking points. I won’t and am not even sure if I can make that value judgement. These attacks are easy enough to find (see the media below).

This is not the point of this post. I am not here to call someone a racist or White supremacist (or Hitler), rather to point out a trend.

In the department of redundancy department, this discussion is that the replacement for Godwin’s Law is that you are not Hitler, instead you are racist for whatever reason or whatever you say.

Why is this the case? The overuse of Godwin’s Law has made it impotent in political circles, the media and on social media platforms. Hitler stands with few others in history, perhaps Mao, Stalin or Pol Pot as true villains. Nobody really believes that the other person is like Hitler, they are just trying to make the worst case as they flush their argument down the toilet due to lack of substance.

HOW TO WIN YOUR POLITICAL RACE OR PUT YOUR OPPONENT ON THE DEFENSIVE WITHOUT TAKING A POSITION

What most of the accusers are doing is described in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals numbers 7-13 as follows:

  • “Keep the pressure on.”
  • “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
  • “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”
  • “If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.”
  • “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”

Rather than argue on a platform, beliefs and issues, it is far easier to make your opponent defend themselves, and put them off their talking points.

Example: Candidate 1) If elected, I’ll lower taxes if elected (insert any issue here because it’s about to be destroyed).

Candidate 2) my opponent is Hitler and molests collies.

Press coverage: Candidate 1 is a well known collie molester. How long has this person been molesting Collies? The first question in the next debate; Candidate 1, are you still molesting Collies?

Now insert the word racist or white supremacist for molesting collies and you get the point of why this is effective.

  • “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

HOW THE PRESS BECOMES AN ENABLER

A common adage is that sex sells, as do murders, rapes, political embarrassments and anything not good news. Guess what they will print (hint: collie molester)?

A not so recent trend is that there is a common thread where a preponderance of reporters has similar talking points concurrently. There is a groupthink that causes the media to focus on a particular phrase, word or subject. Like piranha on carcass, they hammer it home. https://www.google.com/search?q=why+do+news+anchors+say+the+same+thing&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwim9dyQxv3jAhWFB80KHeyQAE0Q1QIoAHoECAsQAQ&biw=1440&bih=825

Since the new go to in Godwin’s Law is you are a racist and/or white supremacist, it makes for headlines that sell advertising. I can also be taken as ideological.  This is the de-facto statement now to the point that it has lost effectiveness.

Having spent decades working with (and against) all forms of media, they have a tendency to take the position of them being right, even if proven wrong. A correction is meaningless as once a statement is printed, it is still in the minds of the reader. Almost no one reads the corrections.

Most are journalists who write about a topic because it is assigned to them.  In the case of social media everyone thinks they have the moral high ground.

SOCIAL MEDIA

I’m not going to spend much time here, because most people have gotten into an Internet argument. Nobody wins unless the motive of one of the combatants is to piss off the other. It won’t matter how factual your argument is because it is just Internet road rage.

If you go to the above link, you see the outcome and great advice on how to handle this.

So the net result of overusing this theme is the same thing that happens with all overuse. Godwin’s Law is becoming meaningless. The definition of what racism really is and when the word should be used to protect the oppressed has been damaged. Even Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals suffers from overuse and tediousness.

The political landscape is a train wreck of who can sling the most mud. Watch the ratings nosedive for upcoming debates.

Stay out of it on Social Media except to observe who isn’t smart enough to stay out of this pool. With each use of the attack, the meaning becomes less valid and meaningful.

I thought about calling someone a racist instead of Hitler the Simonds Law, since I haven’t found this discussion fully hashed out, but I’d rather be associated with something more positive.

Everyone is a loser who engages in this behavior. My advice is grow up or be better educated to discuss your position better than: you are Hitler/racist/white supremacist and whatever the next insult is.

It used to be that to call someone Hitler was the ultimate insult, albeit the indication that the argument is lost.  Has calling them a racist and/or a white supremacist suffered the same fate?

How Facebook Causes Depression

Scroll down a few posts and you’ll see other articles I’ve posted that talk about Social Media ruining people’s lives.  It’s their outside daring you to compare, unfortunately to your inside.

Spending too much time on “social media” sites like Facebook is making people more than just miserable. It may also be making them depressed.

A new study conducted by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania has shown — for the first time — a causal link between time spent on social media and depression and loneliness, the researchers said.

It concluded that those who drastically cut back their use of sites like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat often saw a marked improvement in their mood and in how they felt about their lives.

Many of those who began the study with moderate clinical depression finished just a few weeks later with very mild symptoms, she says.

The study, “No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression,” was conducted by Melissa Hunt, Rachel Marx, Courtney Lipson and Jordyn Young, is being published by the peer-reviewed Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

For the study, Hunt and her team studied 143 undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania over a number of weeks. They tested their mood and sense of well-being using seven different established scales. Half of the participants carried on using social media sites as normal. (Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat did not respond to request for comment.)

The other half were restricted to ten minutes per day for each of the three sites studied: Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, the most popular sites for the age group. (Use was tracked through regular screen shots from the participants’ phones showing battery data.)

Net result: Those who cut back on social media use saw “clinically significant” falls in depression and in loneliness over the course of the study. Their rates of both measures fell sharply, while those among the so-called “control” group, who did not change their behavior, saw no improvement.

This isn’t the first study to find a link between social media use, on the one hand, and depression and loneliness on the other. But previous studies have mainly just shown there is a correlation, and the researchers allege that this shows a “causal connection.”

So I ask, why do you do it to yourselves?  Facebook has a model to make you feel worse while they steal your privacy and track you to sell your profile to everyone and anyone.

Social Media, Making Your Life Worse Just By Using It, And it Proves Sturgeon’s Law

I tend to notice trends early.  I quit Twitter 4 years ago as soon as work didn’t (unofficially) require it.  Almost every time I used it, the conversation degraded by the 3rd or 4th tweet into something political, followed by unsubstantiated name calling.  You have to have a thick skin and a terse personality to want to survive out there.

A few years later I tried helping a friend get on Facebook and we both decided that it was like a high school reunion, or being in high school where you make up stuff to seem like your life is better than others.  He finally told me to stop and to not put him on.  At that point it dawned on me that most of social media falls under Sturgeon’s Law:

Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap.

 

There might be a corollary that 99% of social media is crap.

The trend I noticed besides people acting false was that I never felt better after being on twitter and I loathe Facebook for the same reason.  This was 5-8 years ago and now the studies are coming out proving what I noticed.

A recent article in the USA today talked about another high schoolish trend, mob mentality.

Social media also has polluted our more general life, with the ability to form online mobs increasing, as Prof. Glenn Reynolds aka Instapundit recently wrote in USA Today:

People enjoy forming mobs. Mobs allow people to do things they’d be afraid to do on their own, to steal, to hurt and kill, to burn and destroy — and also to feel set free from the bonds of civil society, to experience a kind of atavistic catharsis, a feeling of power and a solidarity with their fellow rioters, in a way that’s otherwise difficult to achieve, especially without suffering serious consequences….

But now there’s a new kind of mob, an online mob. And judging by the events of the past week, this new mob is becoming a more frequent problem. Part of that is because it’s easier (and safer) to be part of an online mob than one in the real world.

Joining a real mob requires you to leave your house, go somewhere else, and experience risks and discomforts. Joining an online mob can be done from an easy chair at home.

There are times that I post something and bizarre comments come it, so much so that I have to moderate them according to the policy on the sidebar.  Some just violate the policy too much.  It’s like twitter, if it can get political it usually does.  Since I’ve posted a lot about the military and patriotism, I caught a lot of crap.

I read a blog post by Legal Insurrection that noted the increase in suicides and the link that may exist between the two.

A New, More Rigorous Study Confirms: The More You Use Facebook, the Worse You Feel

Social Media and Teen Depression: The Two Go Hand-In-Hand

Rise in teen suicide connected to social media popularity: study

Suicide rate’s increase can be tied to social media, technology: Dr. Marc Siegel

Using Many Social Media Platforms Linked With Depression, Anxiety Risk

Why don’t people just put it down?  It looks to be like the new next cigarette, just as addictive and equally as bad for you.

As for me, I can go about my day enjoying not getting into useless tweet storms and having my head glued to my phone.  Hell, I won’t even put Facebook on because I don’t want them in my life.

I’d like to say the higher IQ people would be immune to this, but it’s not true.  They are just as susceptible to this and it goes under things they shouldn’t do.

WHAT FACEBOOK KNOWS AND IT ISN’T TELLING YOU

It preys on Women’s emotions and other mind altering and interfering techniques and the company KNOWS THAT IT IS DOING IT.

Even former Facebook President Sean Parker realizes the pitfalls of Facebook:

The former Facebook President discussed the company’s initial aim, which was mainly centered around drawing in and building their audience:

The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.

Parker described Facebook’s appeal as a “social-validation feedback loop” which exploits human psychology to keep users coming back to the app:

It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.

Comments such as this from Facebook former President, combined with Facebook’s mishandling of user data, has led to a greater level of distrust around the company. What was previously seen as just a website by many users was becoming better known as a data collection company.

It turns out that platforms like Facebook are the “Junk Food For the Soul”.  In other words crap that isn’t good for you.

When the name of the article is Facebook was designed to exploit human vulnerability, there is a big problem.

THE CESSPOOL OF HATE AND DISCRIMINATION BY TWITTER

Just say something, anything and pretty soon it can turn into a hate storm if you offend someone or anyone.  I saw someone post here’s a picture of a rock, let the arguing begin just to prove it and it did.

Now, it looks like Twitter the company is shadow banning users and groups of users just because someone complained that they don’t like the person’s views, even if they aren’t a follower.

When I check I often find that a user who has blocked me is someone I have never interacted with. So why the block? Often, it’s due to being on a block list created by a liberal activist group. Twitter supports block lists and makes it easy for users to mass-block entire universes of people they don’t even know.

But Twitter now uses factors such as the number of people who have blocked an account to determine whether to classify it as “low quality” content. The company also uses the number of complaints or reports on the account. If the number of these exceeds certain thresholds, an account can be deemed low quality and access to tweets from that user are severely diminished.

I couldn’t wait to leave that platform of time-wasting and hate and my life is better because of it.

I Am The Planner for The Analyst Connect Event

I lost this post in the switch from Blogger to WordPress. I’m re-posting it with corrections to accurately represent the facts. I’m retired now and can tell the real story.

Intro:

It’s no secret that Software Group is doing well for IBM.  Analysts should be particularly interested in how and what we are doing, now more than ever. (This part is true, they actually cared back then)

We hold a yearly analyst conference in November to discuss our issues and give the analysts who follow our business the chance to listen to our leaders and ask what they may.

Running the Event:

Each year, one (un)lucky soul gets to be the A/R liaison for this event for logistics with the strategy team.  This year it is yours truly.   I did it once before and it is time consuming and the details are overwhelming.  It’s a job to add to your job.  For the record, I’m honored to do it.

Annotation here. I wasn’t honored to do it because it sucked. They stick this lousy job on someone that they don’t think is busy enough. I’d pulled it off once in 2006 and that was a rousing success. They used this event to fire a colleague (Tom B.). When my manager Amy Loomis told me I was doing it, I said nothing in response for almost half a minute of awkward silence until she said she thought I’d be honored, why I wrote the above. I knew she had it out for me as I made more money for less responsibility than her. I knew it got to her like it did Ray Gorman, two of my worst managers at IBM.

They call it a stretch assignment, but it is a bullshit term for work that they dump on the back of some unlucky person that needs an employee screwing. There were more than 40 A/R reps to take turns at running this and I got stuck with it twice in three years.

It’s a time suck and a thankless job that I didn’t want to do. I did the best job I could to not get fired, but was stymied at many crossroads.

The first one I ran was under Dave Liddell, the best Director of Analyst Relations we ever had. He was reasonable and expected results. This one was under Sarita Torres and Amy, which made the job twice as hard. They couldn’t make decisions and were constantly interfering in the progress in the guise of helping out and giving guidance. Many times I had to not tell them what I was doing to be able to make progress to get the job done. At times it seemed they got in my way or didn’t let me do the job when appearance was at stake.

They clearly were favoring female employees as they put incompetent mangers in place who were a spanner in the works. I missed Dave and Mike Bizovi tremendously during this time suck.

At the end of the conference, it was a party for the retirement of Jerrilyn Glanville, a co-worker. I liked her and she was one of the more competent reps we had. They went on for half an hour at the end of the conference with one brief mention of me running it. It may sound like sour grapes, but that actually worked for me as I hated attention. I was glad they had the girl fest so I could catch a plane to get out of there as quickly as I could. I knew it was thankless if I pulled it off. The only real attention I would have gotten would have been if it screwed up.

I pulled it off flawlessly with maximum social media coverage never seen before at the time. None of them understood it and that got ignored. I was playing the game by a different set of rules. The analysts knew as I was the leading A/R blogger and social media expert in the group. The rest of the A/R team barely understood Twitter at that point.

I had to work around Christy Pappas also. She was a control freak who thought she helped run it when she mostly processed PO’s and got office supplies. She was more of a speed bump I had to avoid to get the job done.

So I made sure that it was run right, regardless of the managerial interference and attempted back stabbing that came with it from management.

After this, my desire to over perform, as I’d done for decades was sucked out of me. I saw how the sausage was made and it stunk. I was glad to get it over with and asked never to do it again. I retired early only 4 years later, something they couldn’t understand.

I’d been saving and paying off every debt so that I could call the shots on when I want to go. When most of them got canned a few years later, they all said they wished they could go out on their own terms like I did. They all were neck deep in debt and mortgages and couldn’t understand how I did it.

Back to the original post.

I’ve decided to blog about it as part of the Social Media outreach.  There will be a second blog residing on My developerWorks (I”ll post the link in an additional blog) so that you can follow our progress and what tools we are going to use.

I’ve been working on it now for a few weeks, but we meet with the powers that be today which really kicks off the event in terms of work to do.

Request for Advice:

Since two way interaction is actual communication, I’m open for (reasonable) suggestions from the analysts who want to find out more and interact prior to the event.  It will only make for a better conference.

We’ll have a closed portal only to those who are registered, so sorry competition, there are some issues off limits.   We’ll provide tons of data and make the conference easier to attend and navigate than ever.

Wish us luck and don’t be afraid to send me suggestions.  Jsimonds@us.ibm.com

More annotation: I put the request for advice to be able to show the girls in charge that I was working with the analysts. That way I could do what I wanted under the guise of Analyst input. It was the only way I could get things done when the girls started meddling in my work. I set the agenda and made the rules to get it done so they couldn’t screw me like they did Tom.

They don’t hold it anymore because it turned into a gabfest. The analysts cared less and less because it was a show rather than an information exchange. I think Covid finally killed it along with firing all the employees who didn’t work at the home office.

At the end of the day, I was smart enough to not let them screw me. I gave them a highly successful and well organized conference. All the time I knew I had to go through the motions, but also knew it was bullshit from start to finish.

The faces of humanity

Update: I posted this in 2005.  My daughters then bf got bent out of shape because I spoke the truth.  He was going to write a rebuttal, but didn’t.  This was before the Kardashian sex tape or their awful show that I never have watched.  It turns out that this was right all along and he’s done a 180 now that he is in the working world.  My sister has lost everything now, but due to financial mismanagement and the inability of her husband to keep a job, not due to natural disasters That is a different story.

I was going to call it the 2 faces of humanity, just thinking of what the folks in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are going through bringing out the good and bad in some, but it occurred to me that there are many flavors of this subject. But for this post, I’ll concentrate on the simple good and bad.

What is happening in those states is devastating. I can only mildly relate as we’ve had some bad hurricanes here (Fran comes to mind in NC where some are still recovering) and a recent ice storm where we were out of power for a week, but it is bad there. My sister lives near Lake Pontchartrain and has likely lost her house. Her family got out in time and are living with my parents right now, lucky them. It’s not the same for those who have lost lives, jobs, family and other things like heirlooms and photo’s which are forever gone.

These catastrophe’s bring out the good in some folks. Already there are local fisherman driving around in bass boats rescuing people from their houses. There are organizations which are gathering supplies, people lining up to donate time and money to help. I read this morning where you can donate like the Red Cross , Samaritans Purse, and other good groups who are sincere in helping out. FEMA is organizing for the biggest relief effort ever. For those that get my feed via RSS, I’ll be visiting del.ico.us today to add them to my list.

Then there is the other side. I’ve seen reports of looters, the construction scammers, insurance fraud and many others. This is also unfortunately something that raises it’s ugly head during these times. I hope that this is kept in check.

Then the way we can act hit me. Through the power of DVR (i was scanning and deleting shows), I happened to watch back to back the hurricane coverage then the reality show, “filthy rich cattle drive” where the spoiled brat kids of celebrity’s are “roughing” it on a cattle drive. This is like going to a zoo to watch animals. These kids are the most narcissistic people I’ve ever seen, worried about how they look, trying to get make up, dry cleaning and Fed Ex in the middle of nowhere and me, me, me. This was supposed to be about helping a charity.  One of them of course was Kim Kardashian.

It’s just to ironic that these two faces of humanity are happening at the same time.

Natural disasters have been happening since the creation of the earth. There was the tsunami last year for example. Fortunately, people have stepped up and helped others through the course of history and I hope and pray it happens here.

A lesson that strikes me (besides the obvious of striving to be good) is to be prepared and to be able to take care of yourself in the many situations life will present to you. Acts of God like this (even for skeptics, this is the clause in your homeowners insurance) will continue, so dealing with it is inevitable. Being ready in anything is half the battle sometimes. Appreciate your family, friends and experiences in life. It’s times like this that remind you how important and fleeting they can be.

So it’s off to my now seemingly trivial day when compared to those now trying to put their lives back together.

Update on Sis: just heard from her and the house made it, but she won’t be able to go back for months. Thanks to those folks who sent regards.