Well, Crap.

Apparently I've gone the entire month of August without updating this site once. I also have only written only about a page and a half on my current story project. I could attempt to post ridiculous excuses as to why this is, but it really all just boils down to the fact that I'm a Bad Person. You all already knew that, however, so let's just move on to a few things that have been going on while I've been slacking.

Troll has recently torn apart and reconstituted my entire computer, putting in some new guts, some old guts and essentially producing something stronger, faster, better. Part of this involved transferring data from my old and near-failing harddrive to a new and far-larger-than-I-have-time-to-fill harddrive. Despite taking all the precautions I could think of to avoid losing important information, MS Outlook absolutely refuses to recognize my old addressbook and the hundreds of saved emails I previously had, once again. This happens every time I do any sort of upgrade, be it hardware or operating system, even though I saved every Outlook-related file I could find on my old machine. I'm no longer surprised by this ass-jackery, and fully expect to lose all my mail again the next time I install a new video card. For you, dear reader, this means that anyone who's emailed me more than say, a week ago, may wish to do it again.

Speaking of email, I've managed to procrastinate long enough on posting my backdated India mass-mailings that the hotmail account I was using in Bangalore is now long-gone. So I don't even have all the text I'd wanted to post, anymore. This, I think I can still recover, because I'm sure one of my friends or family members probably still has the original mail. So while I am still incredibly lazy, there will be more india-stories posted at some point.

My workplace has devolved into a gibbering mass of paranoia and righteous indignation. This because the center director, a few managers, and a supervisor have been fired for their involvement or lack of action to correct some grossly unethical happenings of which corporate management refuses to tell us the details. It seems to involve conflicts of interest and probably sexual harassment. Our VP was in the center, talking in very broad strokes about how we shouldn't behave and at one point referring to the Incident by saying "I don't think I need to spell it out for anyone here." Now, I'm not always in the good gossip circles, so it was all I could do to keep from raising my hand and saying "Could you, though? Honestly, what the hell have you been talking about for the last half hour?" Apparently my entire center is going to go through an ethics class and sensitivity training. This is something of a downer. I don't know if you've ever seen the entry-level customer service workforce in Iowa City, but if you had you'd know why I was hoping to get my sexual harassment on.
(Note to the obtuse and overly sensitive: I'm just kidding. Errr, mostly.)

An interesting sidenote to the previous point. When we had the all management meeting we noticed the VP and Regional Director in the building as we were walking in and so of course everyone concluded it was not good news. (Not that all-hands meetings on short notice ever are.) The VP started his speech to us by pointing out "Usually when I'm at a center unannounced like this, the news I'm delivering is that we're closing the center. [pause] That isn't what's happening today.) Several other supervisors have told me that they were panicking when he said that, during the pause part, thinking the center was closed. I was stunned by this revelation. I had thought that a possibility when we'd noticed the execs in the building, but as soon as he said that first sentence I ruled that out and wondered what else could be so serious. It's just basic storytelling, or presentation, really. Nobody starts a speech to their employees with "Usually when I'm at a center unannounced like this, the news I'm delivering is that we're closing the center... and that's exactly what we're doing."

The national news media seems to finally be noticing that even though the "war" in Iraq is "over" we still have plenty of US troops over their "getting killed" for our greedy scumfuck oil interests. Also, Bush is still an idiot.
More on these two items later.