HELP WANTED: Good Deed Doers who Fly Delta

All right all you bleeding hearts out there ... we have an urgent situation and we need your help.

We have a colleague and good friend in the PhD program here at the Portland State University Hatfield School who recently found out his visa status has been revoked effective immediately. The details at this point are unimportant - there was a simple paperwork error made by someone else - but at this time the only way to resolve it is for him to return to South America with his family and re-apply for his visa. They must depart the US by December 2.

We are on a campaign right now to collect as many Delta frequent flyer miles as possible. This needs to be done immediately because of the time it takes to book a flight. If you or someone you know has a mileage plan account with Delta, and would like to share your miles, it is simple to transfer them, though there is a cost involved. There is a transaction fee of $25, plus a penny per mile.

If you can help in this way, or know someone who can, please contact me immediately so I can get you the correct account information for a transfer.

Do you really want to help, but can't give miles? The Dean's office is collecting checks on the student's behalf to help pay for the many unexpected costs associated with this. Checks can be written to the PSU Foundation, and directed to:

College of Urban and Public Affairs, Dean's Office
Attention: Victoria Gilbert
Portland State University
P.O. Box 751 - UPA
Portland, OR 97207-0751

Checks must be received by Monday morning, November 28.

In addition, having an employer lined up will significantly increase the chances that his visa will be re-approved. So if any of you know of an organization that would be interested in sponsoring and employing a fourth year doctoral student in public administration and policy whose field area is Latin American economics, we want to hear from you!

If you cannot help with miles or money, hopeful thoughts and prayers would go a long way right now.

Thank you so much for helping out with this very important issue.

On a roll today

A co-worker was saying this would be a timely cartoon and I feel compelled to share it:

A man comes upon another man wrestling with a tangled rope.

Man1: What'cha doin?
Man2: Tying a noose.
Man1: How come?
Man2: Someone's getting hanged.
Man1: Oh yeah? Who?
Man2: [shrugs]

The first man turns to another man who is watching.

Man2: Do you know who's gonna be hanged?
Man3: [points and Man1] He is.


(Image courtesy of Google Images and is merely as a visual aid .. I have no clue who this guy really is or why he is tying a noose.)

Yeah, that's about how we all feel. "Here, work on this project that will, at its successful completion, include you being laid off."

... and there's more!

This is completely typifies the attitude that pisses me off about this whole consolidation project.

One of the things that came up in the all-staff meeting today was that they were not going to be recruiting all of the positions in the data center at the same time - they're going to hire the network and security folks first, then the other groups like the mainframe and server people in some yet-undetermined order next. Several of us were all standing around talking after the meeting about the predicament that puts many of us in - do we go ahead and take a less-than-perfect network job to make sure we actually get one? Or hold out for a server job sight unseen, with no clue what they are since the position descriptions won't be available yet. No choice there, take the network job and then apply for the server job when it comes available. Not great, but I get to keep working. But that also means that I just screwed over the person that would have gotten the network job had I took - they're out of a job instead of filling the now-vacant-again position that I held for all of six or eight months while waiting to see what the server jobs turn out to be.

While we were talking, one of the admin communications folks walks up. I know her pretty well because she's who I work with quite often on managing the agency web pages. Very nice person. Doesn't make decisions herself but does have a LOT of control over what info the decision-makers do get. We explains the above situation to her and asks why they don't just release all the position descriptions to us all at once and as soon as possible so that we can make an informed decision when it comes time to apply. She nods sympathetically and makes a noncommittal response about having never thought about that and would mention it to the decision-makers.

So we get back to the office. One of the guys that was standing there calls me up. The communications had just called him. Apparently she ran into the data center manager and passed the info on. His response was brutally telling: He was completely astounded that any of us would care enough about our current and future co-workers to be concerned about screwing them out of a job. And then he went on to say, "thank you for your admirable concern but we're not going to consider changing how the positions are announced."

He was stunned that we care about our co-workers and peers? The thought never occurred to him? Gee ... could this be an indication of just how much he cares about us?

Overheard today

"I'm so motivated I could piss my pants." - Spoken by a State IT worker after yet another all-staff meeting about how we're all going to be laid off and have to apply for jobs that: 1) haven't been all approved by the Legislature, 2) Have not yet even had an org chart or position descriptions written yet, and 3) Hiring is happening "real soon now."

Yeah. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Is it someting in the water?

*ring*

"Good afternoon, [agency name], GrigorPDX speaking. How may I help you?"

"Yes, is Ted available?"

"Err, there's no Ted here. What are you calling regardng?"

"No Ted Ku ... Kulong ... Kulongoski?"

My god, people. Did you check your brain at the door? We get at least three of these calls a week!

Armistice Day <-> Veteran's Day

I find myself pondering the difference between the concept of "Armistice Day" and "Veteran's Day" and how the observance of a holiday on November 11th has changed in the past 97 years.

Armistice Day, as the commemoration of the end of the most horrific war the world had yet seen, was a celebration of peace and the end of warfare. Veteran's Day, on the other hand, is a celebration honoring the living veterans who risked their lives to serve their country in war. Two quite different concepts. Both eminently worthy of a national holiday, but I wonder if there was not some subtle shift in our national consciousness with the latter supplanting the former in 1954. Had the visceral revulsion against the then-new concept of war on a massive scale so prevalent in the years following World War I faded in the minds of the public? Had the development of the Cold War in the years following World War II shifted the public's attitude toward war on a global scale?

Veterans of all wars are worthy of far more than a mere day off that so many of us in the civilian world take for granted, but why deliberately overwrite a celebration of peace? Why not celebrate both separately? Neither is more or less worthy than the other. What prompted President Eisenhower and Congress change the holiday celebration November 11th? What purpose did it serve supplanting a celebration of peace with a celebration of soldiers?

No answers here today, just some admittedly-uninformed musing. Anyone out there with a stronger background in history care to enlighten me?

"ScAlito"

Oh. Shit.

A judge who thinks women should be legally required to get permission from their husbands before having an abortion (What? Are women still property in your book, your honor?), believes machine guns are perfectly all right for private ownership, and is known "affectionately" as "Saclito" for his resemblence to Justice Antonin Scalia.

What's that ticking sound I hear? Oh, it's just the geiger counter over there by the Rotunda clicking away like mad. Frist probably can't wait to pop his little nuke in the Senate.

Free Software

OK, this was on the front page of Slashdot, so it's not like many of you out there haven't seen it already, but I just have to boggle a bit.

Gerald Ilukwe, the general manager of Microsoft Nigeria:

"It's easy to focus on cost and say how much is a product, but at the end of the day it's the total impact that's important. You can give people free software or computers, but they won't have the expertise to use it,"

...

Umm. So you propose selling them a bunch of software that they, by your own logic, don't have the expertise to use? Why not use free software and use the money they saved on software licensing to pay for some training?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for using commercial/proprietary software when and where it is appropriate, but this seems like a ridiculous no-brainer.

10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage is Wrong

Seen on Craigslist this morning:

10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage is Wrong


01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.


Re-post this if you believe love makes a marriage.

this is in or around Salem, OR

Yay Craigslist!

Gaea sez, "Stop that!"

As usual I was laying in bed this morning listening to Morning Addiction and a story came on about the latest energy bill in Congress and how it's been called the "No Oilman Left Behind" by its detractors. Suddenly it hit me:

1. Burning petroleum products adds to global warming.
2. Global warming warms the ocean that fuels larger and larger hurricanes.
3. Huge global warming-fueled storm wipes out oil refineries.
4. Congress passes bill providing huge bags of cash to oil companies to build more refineries so we can have more petroleum to burn.
5. Goto 1

One really does need to wonder if, in order to be elected to national office, one must first give up any knowledge of the scientific method or the principles of cause and effect.

I know, it's not exactly a profound insight, but it's before 9am on a friggin' Saturday morning and I haven't had any coffee yet, so gimme a break!