No, what this title refers to is merely the fact that, for whatever reason, I don't blog nearly as much as I used to. I can't even tell you why that is. It's not like I can't think of anything to say. Society is as stupid as ever, with the government right behind them. So what gives? Why don't I blog anymore?
Well, there may actually be some reasons for it. One is laziness. Yeah, OK. I admit it. But beyond that, the internet has trapped me over the last few years with much more interesting things. Twitter is one. What a website. I honestly can't fathom why or how in the hell Twitter has such an impact on our lives. In reality, when you look at what the website is, there is NO REASON Twitter should be so successful. Here is the list of what you can do on Twitter, and to keep it simple I'll alphabetize the list:
1) Follow
2) Tweet
Now I know this is a lot to take in at once so let me explain those items in further detail. To "Follow" means you find or already know the Twitter name of the person you wish to follow, go to their page and hit the green button marked "Follow". You are now following that person, which means anytime they perform #2, it will show up on YOUR page. And yes, I realize now you're imagining getting images of fecal matter from your favorite celebrities, but that's not what I meant by #2. #2 is to Tweet, which is the official Twitter name for when someone posts a message on their page. You can do this on your page and say whatever you want in something like 140 characters or less, and all of your followers will see your statement, question, comment or random observation on their page. If you Tweet yet have no followers, then you're basically talking to yourself in ways that many psychiatrists have yet to fully be able to diagnose.
Ideally, you stay on Twitter for awhile and eventually gather up a list of several hundred people that you are following, and entertain yourselves while your favorite celebrities and a handful of your actual real-life friends Tweet away with what they're having for lunch, who they're suing and where they just bought their last DVD. You can reply to these Tweets and as it turns out, many of the celebrities and even less than a handful of your actual real-life friends will read your replies. This reply will yield two possible results. The most likely result is absolutely nothing. The less likely result, which does happen now and then, is you get a reply to your reply. This can and does happen at times from a celebrity that you've replied to, and when you see what is basically today's version of interpersonal communication between yourself and a famous person come up on your computer screen, you immediately "retweet" that reply to your followers, then snap a screenshot to copy and paste into an email to all of your non-Twittering friends to show them that YOU ACTUALLY HAD A CONVERSATION WITH "THE SITUATION"!!
This, my friends, is sad. What's even sadder is that I'm part of Twitteropolis. Thank goodness I've never gone as far as the snapping-and-copying-and-pasting-and-emailing-a-screenshot. If and when I hear back from Shirley Manson though, I may have to concede defeat on that one.
Anyway, I think I went off on a major tangent somewhere...yeah. I've had quite a number of things over the last few years occupy my time. For one thing, I'm getting married soon and we're really getting close to that date. I've also been working from home at the job I had for years already. However, now instead of spending that non-blogging time working, I'm spending that non-blogging time looking for work. Last month, after 8-1/2 years with Emcon Associates, I called it quits. I found the direction of the business questionable and frankly, I was tired of seeing the stupidity and ignorance in upper management that I was seeing. The final straw began last November when at the end of the month, the entire database we used for pretty much everything was replaced with the new creation of FMX, which had been in the works for many, MANY years. In fact, I think it was supposed to roll out literally 3 years PRIOR to when it actually did. Even so, when it finally DID roll out, it was full of programming errors and user-unfriendliness. It all but crippled the accounting department. Naturally, the CEO thought that was accounting's fault. He didn't and doesn't care that his IT genius rolled out a system that was ten times slower, clunkier and clusterfuckier than the old one.
Without getting too specific, I would price on average about 100 jobs a day on the old system. When the new system started, I was now producing less than half that. I also would be in the office for a few days a month doing a monthly reconciliation report. With the old system, I would get it done normally in less than 2 days. With the new system, it was now taking me over a week. Part of the reason for that was because what would normally take 2 or 3 steps to price a job, or to look up a job, now consisted of over a DOZEN steps, because you'd have to open up a screen, then click a tab to open another screen, then save what you did on that screen, close that screen, open up yet another screen, save what you did on that yet another screen, etc etc etc. Through all of this, you would often have to sit and see this for anywhere from 5-30 seconds at a time, every single time you opened a new screen or opened a new tab or saved something or whatever:
"Please Wait" became the most used phrase at Emcon on a daily basis, and it was never even spoken by anyone. And I'm not sure how easily you'll be able to tell but take a look at a wider shot of this and try to count how many windows and tabs are open behind it:
There are at least four of them. So yes, you have to deal with that "Please Wait" every time you would open one of those windows/tabs, every time you modified one of those windows/tabs and every time you closed one of those windows/tabs. Plus, God forbid if you forgot to save your modifications, because then you're screwed. You have to open, modify, save and close them all over again. And "Please Wait". Again.
I gave this new system several months to get the kinks worked out and some of them were, but many were not. More importantly, the productivity was not improving, and it was and is never going to. FMX is a complete failure. I was not able to do my job, so I walked away rather than hear anymore bitching from the clueless upper management about my numbers and the department's performance as a whole. Frankly, if they're still using FMX and are still around in a year, I'll be surprised. On top of that, they've got a lot of potential lawsuits brewing from vendors, clients and ex-employees that they've dicked over, so FMX may be the least of their problems.
So that's really it for today. Ultimately, I'm promising to blog more. I have lots of pop culture to lampoon, lots of government bullshit to call out and lots of general blabbing to blab. I know you can't wait.
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