Patrick’s Rants

A week before #3 started, she came to “scope out” her new “office”. She poked through the drawers of one of the desks, looked at how much hanging space there was for her plants, etc. She even looked at other offices for something bigger. Did I mention that our workspaces are shared?

She started bringing in her crap to pile on the table and to take up shelf space. She brought in plants to put in the window. We have an 18″~24″ window ledge. She asked, “do you like my plants?”

“I don’t like where they are,” was my response, “they’ll be in the way when it gets hot in here and we open the window.”

Thinking I meant sometime next summer, she replied that she would move them at that time. A few days later it was hot enough to open the window. There was a stuffed parrot that looked like it was flying against the wind right in the window opening. A chinese evergreen strained against the outward rush before finally succumbing to the torrent of wind and leaped out the window to the parking lot a full story below. Alas, I did not see it, but was close enough to hear the, “oh, no!” as she attempted to save the plant – fingers only grasping the rushing wind.

Before I tell you this story, allow me a little leeway. In my little semi-cubicle called dispatch, there are currently three workers. The existing dispatcher and two new dispatchers, myself and an “admin transplant”. Someday I will tell glorious tales of this time. Today sadly, it is not glorious. Today I will simply tell you that there are three “distinct” workspaces; three PCs; three chairs.

Friday, in the course of performing work requirements, the first dispatcher must have closed out some programs on the “second dispatcher’s” computer. I put that in quotes because we share workspaces depending upon who’s “on the radio”, or who might be out of the office at the time.

Dispatcher #2 (or #3 depending upon how you count) interrogated me upon her return from lunch – or something else where she was out of the building – about who might have closed the programs she was “working on”. After no response from myself, she asks the rhetorical question, “would I come over to that desk and close programs that you’re working on?”

The obvious, “if I’m not sitting here, I’m not working on the program,” doesn’t assuage her.

“You don’t understand my question,” she retorts. But of course I do understand the question far better than she knows. My mental response (because it doesn’t matter what I would have said, she would not be satisfied) hearkens to the lessons of Kevin Mitnick. First and foremost, do not leave programs open on your computer that give others access to things that they don’t belong in; #3 leaves district accounting software open. Whether that’s a huge gaping security hole or not is not the question. She’s the only one of the three of us given that kind of access. If her login is active and I wanted to change something I could (I wouldn’t), and so can anyone else who happens to wander into the dispatch office. A couple of clicks, even accidentally, can disrupt our portion of the school district budget and she would be the one responsible. Apparently she doesn’t get the importance of logging out of her computer. She did ask why I “locked” my computer – whether I was worried about people messing with it. You better believe it. The district can track activity by login. And if I’m not at the machine, no one else needs to be working on it – unless they have their own login.

I’ve been a little slow at blogging lately, but here’s what’s been going on:

• I’ve been working on the next release of FreeRealty
• I’ve (*gasp*, *cough*) been learning about our Access database… but don’t get me started on its shortcomings
• I’m dealing with my new cow-worker
• We’ve become foster parents in the foster kitten program

Each of these things has potential posting material… I’ve just been busy. The other day I realized that I had not played games on my computer in so long that I’ve forgotten how long it’s been.

Will Ferrell fans, rejoice. Blades of Glory is a well written comedy that brings back the air of Old School. In this ice skating movie – full of cameos from real ice skating stars – Will Ferrel and Jon Heder play banned ice skaters who find a loophole in the ice skating rules that allow them to skate as pairs. Seeing two men skate pairs together should be funny enough. Add a thin, but cohesive, story line and this becomes a movie to watch and stick into your Will Ferrell library.

Mid life crisis leads to some pretty interesting and funny story lines. Wild Hogs is the story of four guys whose biggest adventure is to ride their motorcycles to the local diner for Sunday breakfast. What happens when they decide to hit the open road and ride to the West coast is hilarious. It all starts when Woody Stevens, played by John Travolta, tries to run away from his imploding life and drags his bumbling friends with him.

On the way the raise the ire of a real biker gang, and catch the attention of highway patrolman, John C. McGinley’s lustful eye. McGinley’s skin tight uniform in his first scene portrays his leanings as he ends up being as queer as the entire Village People line up. He ends up tailing the guys (no pun intended) through the movie, but is mysteriously missing when they could use his help in the show down with the Del Fuego biker gang.

Some of the story line might strike you as cliché and slightly predictable but that shouldn’t keep you from popping it in and laughing for most of the 100 minute playing time.

It’s been a while since I wrote about blocking cars with my bus but yesterday, I got a little fired up. One of our drivers was picking up students from an after school program and the bus zone was loaded with cars. The driver proceeded to block the line of cars in with his bus. He had a confrontation with a mom who took his photo and then called me to complain about the driver.

I calmly told the lady that she was in an area marked as a bus loading zone. She argued with me that since it was outside school hours she could park there. The sign does not designate hours. She also said that the driver was not bothering anyone else. According to the driver, and I have no reason to disbelieve him, she’s the only one who confronted him. The other drivers backed out over the curb. While on the phone she proceeded to collect my name – apparently to report me to our administration. When I asked her what her name was she replied, “I’m not playing this game with you.” (I’ll tell you why she didn’t want me to know later on)

In the course of our conversation, I asked her a simple question, “if you see a handicapped parking space, but no one’s in it, is it OK to park there?” – just like she did with the bus loading zone. She replied that it was different because it was after school hours. Huh. That’s a great argument – because we only drive kids to and from school while school is in session. Ahem. I mean, we mostly drive kids to school before it starts and drive them home after school is out. She was there to pick up her child and we were there to pick up other children. But since she doesn’t know the law, here is the link to:Stopping, standing or parking prohibitions; exceptions; definition, Arizona Revised Statutes.

Except if necessary to avoid conflict with other traffic or if in compliance with law or the directions of a police officer or traffic control device, a person shall not stop, stand or park a vehicle in any of the following places:
… 14. At any place where official signs prohibit standing or stopping.

So, since Concha refused to tell me her name, I guess I just have to post the link to her directory listing. You see, Concha Padilla is a staff member at Mount Elden Middle School. In addition, as a school employee, Concha is required by law to:

10. During loading or unloading of passengers at a designated school bus loading area at a school, the school shall restrict the loading area to school buses, passengers, and school employees assisting in the loading or unloading of passengers. (Title 17, Chapter 9 Arizona Administrative Code)

I recently returned from a trip to the Phoenix area. Along the side of the highway, I could see the skeletons of unfinished apartment complexes. There were no workers at that time of day; they may have just gone home for the day, or they might not be working that hard on them at the moment. The scene reminded me of one described in, “Inside Job”.

The camera panned slowly from side to side, catching in sickening detail the carrion of dead savings and loan deals…
The condominiums stretched as far as the camera could see, in two- and three- floor clusters, maybe 15 units per building. They were separated by stretches of arid, flat land. Many were only half-finished shells.

It goes on to describe rotting materials – a $300 million gutting of Empire Savings and Loan. Land was flipped between several people to inflate the value and then mortgage it, and then to walk away from it, leaving the S&L and eventually the American people holding the bag.

President Ronald Reagan stepped through the tall French doors of the White Hours Oval Office in to the bright sunlight of a lovely fall morning…

…Reagan told the audience of savings and loan executives, bankers, members of Congress, and journalists that they were there to take a major step toward the deregulation of America’s financial institutions…

…The result was the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression and the biggest heist in history.

Reagan took his pen, deftly jabbing it into the heart of the Savings & Loan industry. Even though the hemorrhage pooled around his feet making his shoes sticky with each step, the writhing death rattle was ignored until after daddy Bush was elected president. Daddy removed the saber from the chest of the gasping FSLIC (Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation) and lopped off its head, pausing only long enough to call in the grim reaper known as the Resolution Trust Corporation.

While Reagan moved too slowly to save the S&Ls, daddy and RTC moved quickly to finish them. Instead of admitting them to the ER, they were rushed off to the undertaker as they gasped their last breaths; institutions were taken over and their assets sold for ten cents on the dollar.

We may be heading to something similar – a perfect storm of credit – under Dubya. There have been tons of laws, court rulings, and a lase faire attitude toward what companies are doing to individuals.¹
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I was happily working away on my spreadsheets at work when I ran into a printing problem. There was nothing in the print range. I used print preview and the whole spreadsheet came up on the screen, but when I hit Ctrl+P nothing again. I tried selecting the sheets, tried selecting all in the print options. Again, nothing.

I didn’t have enough time to trouble shoot the danged thing at the time, so I checked it out when I got home (I had recently upgraded both to the 2.3.0 install). It too, failed to print the entire spreadsheet or even the pages that I selected in the print menu. It was time for Google. A quick search using the error “The selected print range or sheet is empty” returned the changes development notes: http://development.openoffice.org/releases/2.3.0.html, which tells me that there are new default settings for Calc. “Print only selected sheets” was my problem. So, it’s off to the Tools->Options->OpenOffice.org Calc->Print dialog box. I unchecked the “Print only selected sheets” box and it’s all good now. The question that I have now is were too many people printing pages that they didn’t want to?