I’m talking about the overall ‘Ethical Oil’ movement as a whole. Look, I haven’t exactly been shy in the past about asking questions about oil sands development. And I certainly do believe that we need to start spending some time and money and energy on developing other sources of energy, but that’s for the future. It simply isn’t realistic on any major scale NOW. So NOW we have to deal with oil.

The oil sands are messy. There IS a lot of pollution involved. There IS a lot of ground torn up through what really is strip mining. Such a concentration of industry in one area DOES lead to problems with everything from crime to transient workers to housing and infrastructure. So protesting against that isn’t necessarily evil, BUT…

…by arguing against oil sands development, you are also essentially arguing for other sources of oil. It has to come from somewhere, so if it isn’t from the oil sands, it’s from somewhere else.

And if you genuinely think that replacing that with the alternatives is more ‘ethical’, you are a fucking moron.

There is nothing ethical about massive expansion of oil extraction through major increases in off shore derricks and pipelines and refineries. You wanna complain about oil sands pollution and ecological devastation? This option would dwarf that on a massive scale.

And there is certainly NOTHING ethical about pumping more money in to horrific regimes in the Middle East, Central Europe, Asia and North Africa so that they can turn up the speed on the pumps.  Yeah, let’s give the Saudis more money they can throw in to oppressing anyone who isn’t outright Wahhabist Sunni…that’s certainly ‘ethical’.

Where else you getting the oil? Are you going to start ripping up ground in Siberia? Give more money to Hugo fucking Chavez to start tearing in to the Venezuelan oil sands?

Wake the fuck up, you simplistic idiots : THERE ARE NO ETHICAL SOURCES OF OIL. Stop playing pretend and grow the fuck up. The ONLY ethical way for any of this to go down is to start figuring out where we go from here in a realistic fashion. And it would be nice if you used that time and energy that you to maybe promote something actually GOOD and, you know, ETHICAL.

The premise of this horrendous shitball of stupidity is that you put this in your house so that your children will feel they are being watched by Santa. Yes indeed, it’s encouraging better behaviour through fear and the threat of Santa deciding your kids are unworthy little mongrels, so he’d better give those gifts to the neighbour kid with the lazy eye and the ‘I’m a future serial killer’ facial expression. How DARLING. How MAGICAL. Who dreamed this thing up, an especially hard core member of Homeland Security?

“If we get them used to constantly being under observation during childhood, they’ll be used it it by the time they’re grown!”

And you are apparently supposed to continually move this thing around so that your children never know where to feel safe…ERRRR…where that rascal might be this time. When do you do this? When the kids are sleeping. Because stumbling around in the darkness of your own home and smashing your feet in to various unseen obstacles and discarded toys is a perfectly wonderful idea to help get you in to the spirit of the holidays.

And imagine it from the other side…you’re a kid. You go strolling in to the living room and are suddenly face to face with this little bastard, who has unexpectedly moved from a different room during the night. That isn’t a source for Christmas mirth…that is pure, unadulterated nightmare fuel of the purest octane.

And what do these parents do the rest of the year? I mean, if all that’s keeping their little hellions in line during the Christmas season is a tiny figure who looks like a child molester perched on various household objects for a month, what replaces that when we hit January? Is there an Easter Bunny on a Shelf? A Cupid on a Shelf? Perhaps am especially demonic looking Kool Aid Kool on a Shelf for those hot summer months, threatening to juice your precious little angels and force their brethren to drink the soup of their entrails?

Is ANYONE surprised that something this utterly fucked up originated in Georgia? I’d imagine it takes a significant quantity of bathtub corn whiskey to dream up something that positively fucked up. I notice that they also produce Light in the Night, a character designed to help kids deal with fear of the dark…a fear more than likely caused by a certain elven creep moving around the their homes at will and shattering any feelings of safety and normalcy they might have while their parents chuckle about the whole thing. Kudos for absolute business brilliance there for both creating AND exploiting a product market. Perhaps they also produce a series of highly absorbent sets of bed sheets and children’s footie pyjamas, all custom designed to soak up the most ‘AUGH! THE ELF FOLLOWS ME IN JUDGMENT!’ fear pee of any product on the market.

And man are there going to be some FUN conversations with mom and dad when the time comes to explain that there really isn’t a Santa at all.

“Wait, so that whole elf thing wasn’t real? It was the two of YOU moving it around the house in secret and terrifying me?! What the Hell is WRONG with you! You passed off your parental responsibilities to creepy, fake elf?! You either buy me a goddamn pony RIGHT NOW or I grab mom’s car keys, smash the station wagon in to the fire hydrant out front, then call Family Protective Services and explain that I was trying to escape a house of lies and cruelty!”

So yeah, sports. Good stuff. Entertaining. But there comes a limit when fandom ends and reality has to enter the equation, or you’re just a complete fucking loon.

There are a lot of complete fucking loons at Penn State University.

Turns out a long time assistant coach (Jerry Sandusky) has been indicted for sexually assaulting troubled kids. Where does a coach find victims? Why, by founding a charitable organization to help troubled boys! You know, the sorts of kids who don’t have anyone else in their life who they can go to for help.

In 2002, a Penn state graduate assistant with the football team walks in to a shower room when he hears a noise and finds this subhuman shit heap (who is by this time an ex-assistant coach, though still heavily involved on campus through his charity) raping a 10 year old. Now, I’m pretty sure that if I’m in his place, I’m probably currently serving a life sentence for crushing said shit heap’s head against the wall like a melon. I’d assume most people would likely not react much differently, and at the very least would call the cops.

What does this guy do? Goes to talk to Joe Paterno.

Quick little fill in here for people who don’t follow football. Joe Paterno is 84 years old. He has been the head coach at Penn state for approaching half a CENTURY. He’s pretty much a football God. This is a man who, when the Athletic Director and other school officials asked him to retire in 2005, basically told them to fuck themselves and kept coaching…and that was that. How many people could do that and keep their damn job?! He essentially IS Penn State.

What does Joe do? He goes and talks to the Athletic Director…and then goes back to work. You’ve just been told that someone was raping a kid in your shower room, and that’s the extent of what you do? Really? And what happened after that?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Well…okay, that isn’t entirely true. CNN is now reporting that Jerry Sandusky was advised that he should stop showering with kids. I find myself hoping that whoever decided that advice was a good enough response ate a shotgun blast. Oh, and after meeting with the graduate student, the AD and the Director of Finance decide to take away Sandusky’s shower keys. So that’ll take care of that, right? Oh, and that grad assistant? That would be Mike McQueary! He’s the Penn State Receivers coach! How nice for him.  Joe briefly talked about him a day or two ago.

"He’s a good kid and a tough kid. He did what he was supposed to do, and all of this has been very hard on him. Everything from this and about this (case) has been difficult for him, but he’s a strong person and will be OK."

Oh, is the poor lamb struggling? Good. I hope it haunts that little son of a bitch for the rest of his life. It is beyond my understanding how a human being can witness that and basically do jack shit. Not only do jack shit, but take on a coaching career where he would have contact with a person who he witnessed sodomizing a ten year old. Witness that person WITH OTHER KIDS. And continue to do nothing. I don’t even know what to say at this point, because I simply cannot compute that.

Then again, he fits right in because the entire University did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And this was no one time thing. Campus police actually listened on to a conversation the worried mother of one kid had with Sandusky where he admitted to repeatedly showering with children. They go to the DA, and he does…nothing. A Janitor sees Sandusky performing oral sex on an 11 year old. He, deja vu, just tells his supervisor. A few conversations get passed along the chain of indifference, resulting in nothing. The sheer level of disgust I have for these wastes of skin is indescribable. I often talk about really wanting people to, say, die screaming in a fire. This is the rare time that I am in no way joking.

Anyway, Joe announced he would retire after this season. THANKFULLY, the trustees decided that no, he’s gone. In fact, a clean sweep of everyone involved in the sickening cover up of all of this is being booted out the door, and it is my hope that many are charged with something that would result in prison time. Hey, rape apparently isn’t a big deal, so what’s there to fear, right? Oh, and did Joe have anything to say?

"I grieve for the children and their families, and I pray for their comfort and relief," Paterno said. "With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more."

Fuck you, you sanctimonious windbag. The only thing your withered ass wishes is that this had been kept under wraps until you’d died, thus protecting your fucking legacy. And a man who wields the kind of power on that campus that you’ve had for decades probably knew a fuck of a lot more about the other allegations as well. You’ve been protecting a child molester for who knows how many years. You are human shit.

Oh, but as we speak, thousands of Penn state students are PROTESTING THE FIRING. Alumni are filling the Internets with their screeds about how ‘Poor JoePa shouldn’t have been screwed over like this’.

I cannot even manage to wrap my head around being such an insane fanboy that you’re willing to just forget all about a COVER UP OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE because their precious football team’s season is ruined. Their pigskin deity’s reputation might be sullied! Christ, the support protest has become a riot now. What kind of a mental midget smashes up their campus in rage because their molester protecting head coach got fired for the cover up? Fuck, round these idiots up and expel them…pretty safe to say moronic fucktards like these people aren’t ever going to be doing much educationally, anyway. Oh, and the target of their rage? the media. Damn those bastards for DARING the bring this to light…

It is times like this when whatever scrap of faith I have left in humanity just curls up in a corner to fucking die.

Okay, not all of you deserve that. But some of you are complete and utter failures, and I hate the fact that you exist.

Let’s paint a little picture for everyone. I’m at Toys R Us, doing some Christmas shopping. Yes, I’ve started…I actually started a week ago. It beats the shit out of waiting until the last minute.

Okay, so I’m shopping for the nieces and nephew. Hey, Toys R Us is having a sale! PERFECT!

As I entered the doors, I didn’t yet realize the Hellish nightmare in to which I was striding.

Kids everywhere. Hey, I like kids, they tend to be fun. Lots of kids with the parents and grandparents as they do some shopping. Fine. Kids pointing out stuff they think looks cool. Fine. All good.

But it wasn’t all good. There was bad. Oh, was there bad…

There are no worse words to hear when in a toy store than a parent turning towards their children and saying “Okay guys, why don’t you go off and see what you can find?”

I get it. You’re wanting to buy the Christmas presents for the kids, and to do so the kids have to disappear. But here’s an idea…DON’T BRING THE KIDS TO THE FUCKING STORE! Your children have now been set loose in to a toy store, completely unsupervised. Do you have ANY IDEA the chaos they are unleashing? Of course not! You can’t be bothered, because you’re buying presents for your perfect little angels!

News flash : they aren’t perfect angels. They’re horrible little mongrels. Santa wouldn’t leave coal for these kids, he’d take a nice squat over their stockings and leave a steaming loaf of Christmas cheer for them to find in the morning.

YOU signed up to raise your kids…not me, not the other people in the store watching these beasts RIPPING OPEN PACKAGING and scattering toys around like corpses flying from an explosion, not the poor store employees making barely over minimum wage. PARENT YOUR FUCKING KIDS. This isn’t Lord of the Flies…if it were, I would deem these creatures to be Piggy and drop a rock upon them. I don’t care if you have to tether them to the cart with bungie cords, KEEP THEM IN YOUR VICINITY. Better yet, let’s just let someone else give it a try…the evidence of how your stewardship of them has gone is not exactly positive.

Also : If your kids are really getting upset because they want you to buy them stuff and you won’t, leave. Good for you for not giving in to their every whim, but don’t linger long enough for them to throw a complete tantrum. That isn’t better for anyone.

There I am, looking at some sort of toy (probably pirate related…there’s a lot of pirate stuff out there). A little ways down the aisle is a woman with her little daughter. Now, I’m already not fond of this woman, because she’s already released her older kids to be free range little bastards. The little girl she has with her is playing with some plush pig type thing. She is getting quite upset, because she wants it…she wants it NOW. Nope, they’re shopping for the cousins, so the mom tells her she isn’t getting it. And the change begins…

This kid went atomic. I actually stood there, watching from the corner of my eye with a sick fascination, because this was the sort of nuclear explosion that I had thought was nothing more than sitcom fodder. I didn’t know that this was an actual real thing. This kid is lying on the floor, screaming loudly enough to cause the heads of nearby dogs to explode. She’s kicking, she’s lashing out, tears are flowing like a river. She actually kicked hard enough to launch her boot like a projectile weapons…and these were laced boots! I’m certain that other people were fleeing in droves from what probably sounded like the shrieks of the victim of a ritual sacrifice to the dark gods of toydom.

What does the mom do? “Well, I’m going to keep going. You come find me when you decide you’ve had enough.” And now she leaves. I am now left alone in the aisle with this raging mass of humanity. Other people are now looking at me as though I’m some negligent parent…it ain’t my kid! Fuck you! And fuck her mom! Actually, don’t…that’s already led to enough complete and utter failures!

Finally, we come to Ninjago. My nephew is obsessed with it. He talks about it constantly. I don’t understand in the slightest what in the world any of it means. They practice Spinjitzu. There is a cast of many with bizarre names. There’s something about golden weapons. There are dinosaur-like creatures, but they also have vehicles. I now understand how my parents probably felt when I started rambling about how awesome GI Joe was.

Apparently this shit is huge, because EVERYONE under the age of 8 is crowded around the Lego Ninjago area of the store. I kept walking away to look at other stuff, before finally coming back and finding only one small cluster of people there. I am now stuck behind an Asian family as their kids keep demanding that their parents buy them more…and the parents keep giving in. Seriously, they finally said no and walked away once the kids had given them TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS worth of this crap that mom and dad were now going to buy for them.  Way to entitle these brats, folks! Win for you!

They were there for at least ten minutes, and there was no getting past these kids to figure out what was fewer than 550 pieces so that my 6 year old nephew would have a hope in Hell of building it. But no, this one little bastard keeps hopping around in front like he’s boxing me out from the net on the basketball court. Now I’m starting to get angry. And finally, like a ray of sunshine, they move away. HAHA! Finally! I move in…

…just in time for this little shit to come back with his sister in tow. They’re everywhere at once, perhaps practicing this Spinjitzu from the show (goddamn TV is ruining the childrens!). They’ve already got mom buying them three sets of this, but they won’t stop! No no, she just keeps loading up more in to the arms of the father, who at this point had the face of a man destined for a future court appearance to answer charges of domestic abuse.

And I have officially lost my patience. Fuck this kid. I’m reaching for stuff, and too damn bad if he’s in my way. He’s looking up at me like he’s finally realized that there is an adult there who is ruining his dreams, and I’m giving back the soulless gaze of a man who has seen too much and doesn’t care anymore. There is no humanity in my eyes. No, just two chasms staring straight in to the madness.

And then I elbowed him.

No, it wasn’t quite that extreme. It wasn’t even intentional…I swear! He went one way as my arm was going the other and BAM. Elbow joint meets side of face.

NOW this kid is looking up at me with fear. He’s got those shimmery eyes that only come about when someone has those first indications of tears to be shed. Everyone has stopped talking. Silence. I feel many sets of eyes on me. I quickly glance back at the dad…

…and see contentment. It was at this point that I grabbed some random character packs and a set that seemed to feature the most swords (Tip : Want to have/maintain favoured uncle status? Purchase the product with the most weapons in the box) and got the Hell out of dodge. I had seen too much. I didn’t want to know what came next. Perhaps I would reach a point of blackout and come too and find myself drenched in the blood of the wee I had spent the last ten minutes tearing limb from limb.

Actually, that isn’t right…I wouldn’t kill the kids. I’d slaughter their worthless parents like cattle, though.

Seriously, that look on that guy’s face did me in. I just smacked his kid upside the head, and he looked downright placid. He actually looked pleased. I don’t ever want to understand that.

And since I have no real way to close off a post that sees me slamming so many and committing abuse against someone else’s kid, I’m just going to put up some images of what REALLY happened to the Twin Towers. It’s just so inappropriately funny.

Or it’s the title of this blog post!

A tiny window in to what may be the slightest bit of promise : I actually received some emails this week from SAP tech support. I’d already solved all of the issues myself, but I noticed that the people sending each of them (and it was a different person each time) had ‘Tech Support Trainee’ as their title. Nice to see the company FINALLY seeming to realize that more support people is a good idea. Would have been a lot nicer for them to figure that shit out before this mess even started, but I’ll take what’s there.

Also this week, I’ve been slowly realizing that a lot of crap gets done locally that makes no sense. I was actually so focused on the absolute clusterfuck that was the SAP launch that I guess I’ve been looking past all of this stuff previously, but there are some really bad ways of doing things being followed at the local level. And it all seems to emanate from the production shop.

I have never in my life seen a facility that so consistently waits until the last possible second before setting things up for a job. Never.

Last week, a piece of steel plate was needed for a field job. One single piece was rush ordered from a company in Red Deer, rush shipped here, then sent via hot shot to the job site. Now, this was an emergency buy, but here’s a thought : we often use steel plate in the shop…why not order a few more sheets to cover the insane cost? Yet that NEVER happens here. Not just under these circumstances…NEVER.

Also last week, a treater build job came up. It isn’t like this was out of the blue…it was known about for some time. When were the parts ordered? The day before it was due to begin. Two skids worth of flanges, bolts, nuts, studs, pipe, I-beams, and so on. The day before. Had to stay late to get it received. Some of it was back ordered until the next day because CE Franklin had to get it from THEIR suppliers. Had it been ordered in advance, that wouldn’t have happened because they would have had lead time to get it in to their facility. It also would have cost less to get because it wouldn’t have been a rush.

We CONSTANTLY do things this way. Pieces are ordered for jobs RIGHTNOW on a rush basis, then shipped on a rush basis. It makes absolutely no financial sense. It makes absolutely no sense from a supply standpoint. It makes absolutely no sense from a shipping/receiving standpoint. It often leads to the welders sitting around for hours waiting for shit to show up. We frequently have to deal with paperwork screw ups from Franklin or other suppliers, screw ups that largely seem to happen due to everything being an emergency crush.

This makes no goddamn sense. This seems to be the old Natco way of doing shit, and I find myself hoping that someone at Cameron corporate looks at this nonsense and asks why it’s being done this way. Hello, project managers…perhaps try MANAGING your PROJECTS. I strongly want someone to be choked.

And then there’s the insane degree to which these people have to be chased down. News flash : to ship something somewhere, I NEED A FUCKING ADDRESS. That aforementioned piece of plate? Yeah, it had to be shipped…somewhere. There were 3 maps attached to the request email that were all of different locations, and with no context of where they actually were.

We asked for more.

And we got an LSD field address. With no mention of what town it was near. This means nothing.

We sent emails.

No replies.

We tried to call.

No answer. Left messages.

This was something that was supposedly a DIRE EMERGENCY THAT HAS TO GO OUT!?

Finally…FINALLY this guy replies. He finally mentions where this fucking site is (we didn’t even previously know that it was in SASKATCHEWAN) and how he wanted it shipped. It took half a damn day to get THAT.

For fuck’s sake.

Next time on ‘work chat’, I’ll talk about some of the weird shit we ship out to people for exorbitant amounts of money! Less ranting, more mockery!

-Today, we were each handed a 4 page booklet promising to ‘keep you informed with the latest information as Cameron deploys Optimus’. Unless this is the release of a heretofore secret plan to build and employ our own force of Transformers, I am unimpressed. Can’t hire extra support staff…but they can mass produce fancy bullshit like this in full color. What a fabulous use of resources.

And what bullshit it is!

Over 200 PRS Business and OPTIMUS team members worked diligently to insure a smooth transition from legacy systems to our new SAP system.

Really. Where did this happen? I’d like to work there. Better yet, I’d like to be employed in the division of ‘Total fucking bullshit’ that produced this copy. THAT would be a fun gig.

Rapid Response team members were available 24 hours a day to respond to end-user support requests.

I guess that the past tense in this statement explains why I have no fewer than 3 pending support requests, all of them at least a few days old, one of them dating back to the 9th.

I know the last few months have been challenging blah blah blah corporate talk. Your hard work and diligent efforts have not gone unnoticed.

Indeed not. After all, they have produced this fine document to talk about them. I truly feel blessed and rewarded for my efforts.

Now, the countdown to CS Go-Live is on!

Um…what? Wait, you mean there’s MORE to do with this transition? And it’s being run by the same worthless fucks who brought us this far?

The OPTIMUS team and Compression deployment team are busy putting the final touches on the preparations for Go-Live starting on October 1.

Let’s see : Nope, I have absolutely no idea what the fuck they’re talking about…seems par for the course with how things have gone so far. Oh fucking joy. And I just know these useless ass wipes are wearing t-shirts emblazoned with ‘Go-Live 2011!’ everywhere they go. I hope that those shirts are cheap and known for spontaneous combustion.

If you hear about a crazy man with a gun at a Leduc business in October, it’s probably me. Say nice things to the news crews.

The funniest part of this whole document is that it talks about the near future and how to access training…that will start in July. Now, I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that July comes before August. So yet again, it seems like someone either forgot to put this out when it was supposed to go, or it’s another example of someone covering their ass and taking care of this well after it would possibly be relevant just so they can say that they did so. Just fucking awesome.

Oh, but there’s more!

-There’s a BBQ at work Thursday. This was supposed to be something done within the branch as a reward for a good safety record. Cool. But now, some corporate big wig is coming in. Apparently he’s the #2 man in the entire company.

I made the suggestion that I’d like to ask him if he was responsible for “…the absolutely stunning debacle that this software transition clusterfuck has been.” People laughed. I wasn’t joking. We’ll see, I guess.

What makes this incredibly annoying is that the already batshit crazy safety woman is now out of control. So our lives get to be a safety-bureaucracy wrapped Hell for the next two days preparing for this shit. And all of that so that what was supposed to be a reward for US can now be turned in to a fete for some fucking twat who more than likely DID have a hand in this SAP mess. Forgive me if I don’t exactly feel like lining up to suck his worthless dick.

If you hear about a corporate executive being gored to death by a forklift, it was probably done by me. Say nice things to the news crews.

At the very least, it’s a fairly safe bet that more rantage will be coming forth in a couple of days.

Other Blog Challenge Participants

Liam – http://www.bisonweb.ca/blog/
Chad – http://grindingpixels.blogspot.com/
Tammy – http://tam–i–am.blogspot.com/
Vlad – http://www.analogcoast.com/
Kim – http://www.mynaturebaby.ca/blog/
Shaun – http://expeditionoftruths.com/
Peter – http://crazywookiecookies.blogspot.com/
Earl – http://earljwoods.blogspot.com/
Zita – http://ignitestrategicsolutions.com/
Brad – http://kickmeoutsoon.blogspot.com/
Natasha – http://blog.naturalurbanmamas.com/

Earlier this week, it was my turn once again. I was standing in line (I’ve found that, even if there is a line, it goes through a lot faster than the drive thru line-up does) with the other peons. Not much to do in the line-up at Tim Horton’s. So I’m looking around, bored, still trying to fully wake up…when a sign over by the kitchen entrance catches my eye. I’d never noticed it before.

As I got closer to the front, I could see that it wasn’t a sign, it was a framed certificate. It declared to the world that this Tim Horton’s establishment had passed some sort of bizarre ‘Always Fresh’ baking…test? Program? (Is this a written examination of some kind?)

Are you fucking kidding me?

Tim Horton’s bakes everything in a gigantic plant in Brantford? Donuts, muffins, bagels, croissants, EVERYTHING. All of it is then frozen and shipped to every single outlet you go to, where the staff warm the things up in an oven. That soup and chili? Yeah, that’s of the ’add water, mix, heat up’ variety.

HOW IN THE FUCK DOES THAT EQUAL FRESH?! While we’re at it, how the FUCK does that qualify as BAKING?!

Their entire way of doing business is an affront to the mere concept of fresh, yet ALWAYS FRESH is their goddamn slogan.

Eaten anything they ‘bake’ recently? I’ve consumed tastier bits of plastic.

And yet we all keep flocking there. Why? Truth is, the coffee isn’t even very good! It’s either flavourless gruel or a cup of fluid more bitter than I am! And yet we consume their shit in such massive quantities that there is seemingly one per block across the entire goddamn country. I honestly wonder if Tim Horton’s or the Canadian Armed Forces employ more people!

What does it say about us as a people that we don’t just popularize it, but we CELEBRATE this shit and treat it like it’s a piece of our national heritage? Canada = bland doughnuts and bland coffee! YEAH! Don’t that make ya proud, eh? How the Hell did it become some sort of pathetic fucking statement of patriotism that you go down and buy some shitty ass re-heated bullshit and some average-at-best coffee and go on your merry way?

The fact that we even let these people get away with this one hundred percent BULLSHIT advertising is bad enough. To then reward them for lying to us is simply pathetic. And I’ve been just as guilty of this as anyone else. I’ve listened to that lie of a slogan as much as anyone else, yet there I am twice a week buying in to it. I don’t know why that certificate woke me up, but it did. OH, it did.

Well, I’m done. No more of that shit. Next time it’s my morning, I’m going to McDonald’s. News flash, folks : their coffee is A LOT better. A heretic am I…but at least I’ll be enjoying my cup of joe.

-Turns out that the rare time we do get parts in and receive them, they are ‘locked inventory’ until Quality Assurance clears them. QA has nothing to do with these parts…most of them have no use in our shop and simply go out to customers. And it seems very random which items need this qualification. One type of repair kit doesn’t need to be cleared, but another one does. So it’s yet another pointless roadblock, and one that will grow more and more annoying for all involved as things start to pick up (assuming that they ever do).

-I put in a support request for a goods issuing problem with a specific order last Tuesday. I have received no further reply, so I sent a new request…and was bitched out in an email for it. I get that tech support are drowning in support problems right now, but they also seemed pretty quick on the trigger to realize I’d complained about this once already. And maybe they should be directing their ire at the asshole executives who pretty much set them up for failure. That’s who left them woefully undermanned before flipping the switch to end the entire corporation lurching down the SAP line.

-The woman who does our purchasing actually broke down in tears earlier this week. Right now, her desk is loaded down with folders of PO’s with various problems. She fixes them, brings them to us, they don’t work, we take them back. And she gets to field daily calls from people bitching her out because she can’t get their stuff entered properly…like it’s her fault. What does Cameron do? They flew her down to Wyoming for training last week. That training doesn’t explain the systemic problems that are cropping up with PO creation (and a lot of other things. It’s clear to anyone who uses it regularly that there are some problems with the program itself). It also just meant that her desk saw 5 days worth of paperwork pile up. Fucking awesome stuff, guys. Let’s just break down and destroy an actually decent employee…brilliant. She is far from the only person likely to walk if something doesn’t give in the near future. And who exactly is going to replace them? Someone not only new to the company, but who will also immediately be hurled head first in to the same Hell hole. Good luck with that.

-The purchaser from Grande Prairie was down in Leduc today to help sort through as much as possible. Things are so bad that she can’t get anything entered for the branch there. And I mean ANYTHING. Their garbage bins haven’t been emptied for over a month because she can’t get the system to accept a PO. They can’t order so much as a roll of toilet paper. Oh, but the system’s working…sure.

The only hope left now for any improvement on the horizon is for shame to crop up to such a degree that the corporation has to act to fucking save face. Because really, if a branch can’t get their goddamn garbage cleared away, it probably isn’t out of the realm of possibility that branches won’t be able to pay their phone bill, or their gas bill, or their water bill. Of course, we are so far beyond the point where anything can actually be done to rectify this situation that it probably wouldn’t amount to anything. And the backlog builds. And when it finally hits the system, we’ll all be so busy dealing with that that a whole new backlog will start piling up behind it. And people will leave, meaning another slowdown as replacements try to get up to speed.

I really don’t see a light at the end of this tunnel. It’s all tunnel. I have no idea how long it is going to take for this entire situation to become un-fucked, but I’d put the lower end of an over/under at around a year. Every time it hits what I think is the lowest point possible, it turns out there’s further to go.

The same thing happens with every other available network application. People are constantly updating their Facebook status, checking Twitter, blah blah blah. And not just people on the bus or whatever…people who are ostensibly at ‘work’ are pulling their phone out every ten minutes for Twitter updates like they’ll die if they don’t. Have to type in more stuff! Have to update shit every 3 minutes!

I have news for ya, folks.

YOU ARE NOT THAT INTERESTING.

NONE OF US ARE.

Nobody needs that much information about everything they’re doing, or anyone else is doing. Nobody needs constant updates on the situations of hundreds of people, perhaps two dozen of whom they actually know. Nobody of any relevance cares how many Facebook ‘friends’ you have…you win nothing but pity for pulling ahead in such a race. Nobody needs to be constantly up to date with the mundane events of your day via photo tweets.

I simply don’t get it. Obviously, being the guy who doesn’t even own any sort of mobile communication device, I am hardly the target market…but I don’t get it. Fuck, I have a blog, I’m on Twitter, I’m on Google +, plus this ridiculous over-fixation on needing to be connected all the time just angers and saddens me.

Are you really so pathetic that you have nothing better to do? Hell, read a book…I’m pretty sure PrettyKitty1985 won’t up and fucking die because you waited an hour to respond to her ‘hilarious’ photo of that guy and the shirt he had on. And if she does die as a result, you really are better off…and I’m sure that the virtual funeral will be tasteful.

And get the fuck off my lawn! Goddamn teenagers and their devices…

Oh hey, what’s this news video from the UK?

Oh really?

Um. Okay then.

Rage…growing…

Yeeessssss….that’s the ticket. Suddenly I feel…inspired.

Are you fucking kidding me?

“It’s the rich people.”

“It’s good fun.”

Here’s to hoping that perhaps the police are delayed a bit when you happen to be having your face caved in by karmic retribution and a hammer, you entitled cunts. Not that any sort of blow to the head could possibly have any sort of affect on your non-existent brain function. Fuck you, and fuck your right to anything. Bring in the fucking royal marines and start laying down some automatic weapons fire.

I knew that we were a ridiculously selfish society, but this truly takes the fucking cake. And apparently having everything RIGHTNOW wasn’t enough, so you decided to just take some more…because…why exactly? No no, ASIDE from the part about you being worthless little wastes of meat with heads filled to the brim with shit.

Hey, I want more stuff now! And that unbelievably wealthy store owner can obviously afford to give it away, but he DOESN’T because he’s MEAN. So I’ll just burn his shit to the ground, right?

Is this actually the point that we’ve reached? We feel so entitled to getting everything we want and shoving it in to our collective societal cakehole that we’ll take it to this ‘logical’ conclusion? If so, time to bring the dinosaurs back to life and hand them the goddamn planet back, because clearly we shouldn’t be allowed to play with it any longer.

I fucking LOATHE insipid fucking rejects like the two idiot twats in this video, and sincerely hope that the lot of them are rendered barren/impotent by the fumes of smoke and their own fucking entitled superiority).

Man is inherently selfish. But this…this is something special.

And let’s not get feeling all that smug and superior! We fucking riot over HOCKEY GAMES. Truly drink in the sheer stupidity required to flip over police cars and light things on fire due to A HOCKEY GAME. Fuck, we’d probably riot over everything were we not such a corpulent society, too massively fat to get off the couch, much less light cars on fire. You do not develop obesity rates over 30% as a nation and massive credit/debt problems on an international level by thinking about anyone but yourself.

Hell, I’m prime Example A of selfishly thinking only of the current day. What, I’m stuck living at home to this day because of my fine future planning and forethought? Not too fucking likely. No no, I spent far too many years focusing on the right now and what I want right now, and not giving thought one to ‘Huh…maybe I should think a bit down the road, eh?’

But you know what, at least I had the decency to hurt nothing but my own development in the process. And that lets me feel selfishly superior. So here’s to hoping that the British deploy a yob destroying biological weapon that slowly, painfully dissolves it’s victims in to screaming pools of fucking agony.

I’ll be on the couch, watching it on TV while I eat a pizza.

Other Blog Challenge Participants

(Many of whom are likely starting to regret linking back here…)

Liam – http://www.bisonweb.ca/blog/

Kyle – http://drkyle.wordpress.com/

Chad – http://grindingpixels.blogspot.com/

Tammy – http://tam–i–am.blogspot.com/

Erron – http://erron.wordpress.com/

Vlad – http://www.analogcoast.com/

Kim – http://www.mynaturebaby.ca/blog/

Shaun – http://expeditionoftruths.com/

Peter – http://crazywookiecookies.blogspot.com/

Earl – http://earljwoods.blogspot.com/

Zita – http://ignitestrategicsolutions.com/

Brad – http://kickmeoutsoon.blogspot.com/

Natasha – http://blog.naturalurbanmamas.com/