What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Headsets. Due to some obscure security regulations that are probably being misinterpreted anyway, one of the most dysfunctional parts of spending my day in cubicle hell is being tethered to my computer with some kind of low-budget call center headset that only covers one ear and features a snazzy swing down boom mic. It’s exactly the kind of thing I wore for the three days I was a telemarketer in 1999. It’s bad enough with the fluorescent lighting and no windows, but being required to listen to your music or podcasts in one ear and the random conversations, phone calls, and background office noise of all your colleagues in the other really just adds insult to injury.

2. Meetings. The rise of Teams and other “collaboration tools” during the Great Plague era has made it entirely too easy for people to call a meeting when, in fact, no meeting needs to take place. Instead of a three- or four-line email, though, what we end up with is a calendar populated with 30 minute blocks of mostly wasted time. I earnestly implore you, if you are considering sending out a meeting request, to stop and really consider whether a simple email would convey the same message without carving big chunks out of everyone’s day.

3. Options. Donald Trump is sitting through the first of what will likely be many criminal trials he faces as a cast out one term president. Joe Biden dodders his way through every TV appearance and barely gives the impression of being awake. In a spectacular “hold my beer” moment, Robert Kennedy Jr. enters the chat with a worm eating his brain. These are the major contenders in 2024 for the highest office under the United States Constitution. In this country of approaching 300 million people, these are the best we could find to serve as our elected leader. If this is honestly the best we can do, maybe we really should just call it a day, because the republic has already failed and we’re just going through the motions.

On my distinct lack of give-a-shit…

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There are a million things going on in the world, and if I’m brutally honest with you (and with myself), there’s not a single one of them I feel interested enough in to write about today. Sure, my privilege is showing or whatever, but I just don’t have it in me at the moment to be morally outraged, vaguely interested, heartbroken, or whatever appropriate response is dictated by the events of the day. 

All I really want to do – and therefore what I will spend my evening doing – is sitting here comfortably with a book. Jorah will inevitable be napping next to me. One of the cats (Anya for sure) will be curled up between my knees. Monday is bad enough on its own without trying to dwell too much on all the ills of the world. 

This is a thought I keep coming back to. I know it’s made an appearance here more than once. There are probably lots of valid questions – How engaged should we be in what’s happening outside our bubble? What do I owe the world if I’m keeping shit together inside my own fence line? Should I even be bothered by what’s happening out there beyond my immediate span of control? 

The last year has, somewhat of necessity, been focused internally – on what I’ve needed to do in an attempt to follow doctor’s orders and the various episodes of fuckery that resulted from that. While it hasn’t been a full-on shitstorm, it has been the better part of a year of the number of things I’ve had the bandwidth to care about being reduced pretty dramatically. Maybe that was self-preservation, but the downstream consequence seems to be that my naturally low give-a-shit level is almost nonexistent these days. Believe me when I tell you that any time you think you see me giving a shit (and it doesn’t directly involve animal welfare or mocking the feckless or stupid among us) I’m 100% faking it… and probably doing a piss poor job of that in the moment. I’m honestly not sure if I’ll ever adjust this attitude or if I even want to. Like so much else, that is apparently yet to be determined.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Right wing absurdity. According to some subset of American religio-conservatives, Taylor Swift is the devil… or if not the actual devil, certainly in league with him as her songs are full of Christian imagery that “supports demonic lifestyles.” The Bible is the most published book in history. Christian imagery is literally everywhere – fiction, nonfiction, film, music. It’s impossible to escape. I’m not sure it’s so much about not liking Tay or her music as it is some people being uncomfortable that a strong, beautiful woman could buy and sell them 1000 times over and refuses to “stick to the script.” In my estimation we could use more of that rather than less. But then again, maybe I’m in league with the devil too, so buyer beware or whatever.

2. Ghosted again. Look, no one knows I’m hard to live with better than I do. I’m opinionated and set in my ways. I don’t know what the cool new restaurant is, and I don’t care. On any given day I’d much rather be home than wherever it is that people go these days. Living that life isn’t for everyone, I get it. But seriously, the ghosting is getting absurd. I should probably just stick with books and animals, because people are increasingly insufferable.

3. Maryland EZ Pass. Oh, hey, My Maryland EZ Pass billing is all screwed up again. This month, it decided that 2 of 5 trips across the Susquehanna should be billed against my tag instead of my EZ Pass. It’s only $16, but month in and month out there’s consistently a problem with the system. Instead of being seamless, EZ Pass takes constant time and effort to make sure I’m not getting swindled out of a couple of hundred dollars by the end of the year. I’m not entirely sure where the problem lies but it feels like a combination of raw incompetence and a blatant cash grab at the behest of the state of Maryland. In either case it’s just one of those problems that ought not to exist… but that’s assuming anyone with the ability to fix the problems actually gives a damn. That feels unlikely given how long the billing errors have persisted.

The President of the United States meets the King of All Media…

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Howard Stern made his bones as a “shock jock” a million years ago. For the last 20 years, though, I’ve been following him because for my money he does the best celebrity interviews of any broadcaster of his generation. 

I usually only listen to Howard on the days he’s scheduled to be live – which is why I wasn’t tuned in last Friday when he broke into his own channel on SiriusXM to conduct an interview with President Biden. I did, however, take the time over the weekend to give it a proper listen. The King of All Media did his expected a yeoman’s job of preparing for and conducting an interview and drew out.

Look, even though he sat through a strong interview, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m suddenly enamored with Joe Biden. We still have significant policy differences, but since the guy still believes in the basics like fidelity to the Constitution and rule of law, it was good to see him trying an approach to outreach that that his predecessors studiously avoided.  

If you haven’t listened to the interview, I highly recommend checking it out. If you’re not a fan of Howard (or Joe), maybe this is the chance to take a look at one or both of them in a new context. Everything I learned about American politics when I was taking my degree seems to be hopelessly out of date, so I have no idea of this is the kind of thing that might move the needle seven months out from a general election. In any case, I’d say it’s still worth doing. If you’ve got some free time, give the King of All Media and the president a listen. You might find it as interesting as I did. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Morale building activities. Our office seems determined that it’s going to lick the morale problem by doubling down on potluck lunches and after-hours team building events. I invite you to piss directly off with that nonsense. If you want me to be part of a team activity, schedule that mess while you’re paying me for it. And damned well don’t expect me to cook (or inflict my colleagues cooking on me) in order to participate. Why the hell we can’t just take an hour or two, get out of the office, and patronize a local restaurant like normal people is completely beyond me. It’s all a hard pass for me. If that reinforces my rep as a non-joiner or problematic player of team ball, so be it.

2. Late night interruptions. The number of times each week I wake up at two in the morning to take a piss, spend an hour flopping around not sleeping, and then drifting off for an hour or so of absolutely ridiculous dreams before waking up to start the day bleary eyed and disgruntled is something of a too regular occurrence. It’s not every night, which would drive me batshit crazy, but it’s easily once every week or two and that makes it more than regular enough to be obnoxious. There’s a whole level of frustration knowing you can’t hold your water or fall back asleep on command the way you used to. Most other nights I still manage to sleep like a baby, but not knowing whether the night will be restful or ridiculous is just short of infuriating.

3. Protests. I’ve always looked slightly askance at protestors as a group. Clogging up sidewalks, roadways, or parks and making a spectacle / nuisance of yourself never seemed like a good way to make any kind of point. Once I started working in DC, I developed an even lower opinion of the average “protestor.” Inconveniencing me as I’m just trying to go about my daily activities is, I promise you, no way to ever convince me of the virtue of your cause. In any case, any time I see news of protestors getting all froggy – whether it’s on city streets or on college campuses – I just get preemptively annoyed and assume they’re chanting and occupying whatever for some cause I’ll inevitably think is foolish. 

It was the end of a decade…

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For the last ten years, approximately a third of my work year has been dedicated to party and event planning. This week is the first time since 2014 that the annual big show is set to start and my fingerprints aren’t all over it. My feelings are unexpectedly mixed.

I’m absolutely thrilled that I haven’t needed to convince dozens of presenters that they need to do things my way. I’m ecstatic that I haven’t had to deal with months of schedule changes and wanna be primadonnas making absurd demands over every detail. I’m incredibly grateful that I haven’t had to spend time discussing the best way to lay out tens of thousands of square feet of circus tents, how best to remove light poles from the parking lot, what live bands we can get for three consecutive nights of social extravaganzas, or whether it’s strictly legal for the US Government to host a whiskey tasting and cigar bar as part of an industry engagement event. 

I won’t need to figure out the inevitable chaos of registration and check in. The moment something goes wonky with the live stream won’t be my problem. I won’t be fielding complaints from people in the audience who have an outsized sense of their own importance because they’re an Executive Vice President of Who Cares. 

I’m not going to get a panicked Teams message that the bathroom is flooding. I won’t spend the night dreading the possibility that the whole tent complex could blow down if a reasonably strong thunderstorm happens to pass through the area. 

There’s nothing about that that doesn’t feel good. 

There is, however, a small part of me that will miss being a minor shot caller this week (Mostly because number of bosses who wanted their name associated with this mess was always very limited). I’ll miss working closely with some of the key players without whom the whole effort would collapse. I might even miss the sense of barely hidden mayhem and chaos that could break out at any second during a live event.

It’s just as well that this experience has passed to others this year. I’m not at all sure I’d have been in the mental or physical headspace to give it the level of attention it needs way back when planning kicked off in the fall.

I wish the team leading this ongoing, multi-year hot mess the very best of successes. I hope they knock it out of the park… if only so people will stop thinking my name is somehow inextricably linked with this particular Big Show. This week is going to feel just a little bit weird, but then I guarantee I’ll be 100% pleased as punch to have the thing be someone else’s problem. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. A deferred milestone. I thought I was on track to hit the next weight milestone – 200 pounds even, or down 130 – on or about my birthday. Although I’ve started slowly creeping down again, the previous three weeks where I held all things equal has pretty much guaranteed I can’t get there from here unless I develop a pretty nasty stomach bug. It’s disappointing, of course. I was hoping to sit down to my traditional birthday lunch of crabcakes and hushpuppies and proceed to getting back to a “maintenance” level of eating. That feels out of reach. But I’m still damned well planning to have the crab cakes and hushpuppies.

    2. Foreign aid debate. You know what one of the most successful bits of foreign policy of the post World War II era? Yeah, that would be when the United States poured out absolute shiploads of cash, material, and expertise on Europe and rebuilt a shattered continent. It turns out prosperous liberal democracies bound together by deep ties of trade tend not to try to kill each other nearly so often as they did when international diplomacy was a zero-sum game. The weight of American troops and weapons arguably won the war, but it was the Marshall Plan that won the peace. It’s a pity that Americans consistently refuse to remember their own history when we’re talking about relatively paltry sums in the contemporary foreign aid budget. Every scrap of progress we can make by throwing money at the problem is far less expensive than anything that happens when we need to get involved kinetically. 

    3. Walking. Gods, even with the latest in listening technology, walking is just a deadly dull way to spend 30 or 40 minutes every day. Yes, the scenery in the neighborhood is nice. Sometimes I get to see neighbors doing something stupid in full view of the sidewalk. Aside from occasionally getting to interface with the local wildlife, I’m sorry, but there just isn’t much to recommend it. Living at the far end of the dead end street, there are only so many ways to make the path different… and after six months, I’ve trod all those down multiple times each week already. Look, I’ll keep doing it… under protest and purely because the doc says I must… but you’ll never convince me that there isn’t a more interesting or entertaining use to those 30 or 40 minutes of every day that isn’t called off on account of weather. 

    Of Spotify and audiobooks…

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    I’ve finally given in and started using Spotify on a regular basis. In a perfect world, I’d still keep up my playlists in iTunes like in the old days, but I’ve grudgingly come to accept that letting the app play a larger role in what I listen to is more convenient… even if it still doesn’t quite grasp the peculiarities of my musical taste. 

    In any case, one of the unexpected perks I’ve found with Spotify is having audio books available. More particularly, I should say that audio books are available sometimes, because listening to those is limited to 15 hours a month. That’s fine for some books, but diving into anything in the Game of Thrones family is a bit challenging. 

    Like Spotify itself, I was absolutely prepared to hold out against audio books. That said, I’ve honestly come to enjoy them and spend as much time with a book humming along in the background as I do music or podcasts. That’s all well and good, except I keep finding myself running into Spotify’s somewhat inexplicable 15-hour cap… which is just a touch frustrating when you’re in the middle of a book. 

    This all leads to an obvious decision point. I could simply wait and finish next month, using the time already included in my plan, I could ante up another or $12 for Spotify to give me an additional ten hours of book time, or I could just subscribe to yet another app to handle my audio book needs. None of those options feels great, so I expect it’s just a decision about what will feel like less of a pain in the ass.

    Yes, I know there are free options through the local library. What I’ve found while looking into that is that most of the books I have teed up are waitlisted. So far, I’ve mostly been using audiobooks to revisit some old favorites that I don’t necessarily want to take the time to re-read in paper form. As parts of a series, I need them to be available in the proper order and when I’m ready for them. What I’ve seen so far from the library doesn’t fill me with great confidence their service will fill that bill. Maybe that would be less of an issue if my interests and use case shifts over time.

    In any case, it feels increasingly likely that I’ll just throw more money at Spotify for the same reason I keep throwing money at Comcast. I like the idea of having my music, podcasts, and books bundled in one app the same way I appreciate the old-fashioned single point of entry for television that cable provides. I’m sure there’s a cheaper way t get there from here, but unless it’s also more convenient, I’m not sure it’s the real winner. 

    What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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    1. Every year around September I opine that there isn’t anything more useless that a formal performance evaluation. Every spring, though, I’m reminded that I’m wrong, because truly it’s impossible to imagine a more pointless “management tool” than the yearly midpoint assessment. It’s all the aggravation of spending time putting paperwork together and none of the remunitative reward of getting a performance bonus. Midpoints are a 100% paperwork drill out of which there’s no significant accomplishment. If I’ve been a turd for the last six months and management hasn’t said anything, they obviously don’t care. If I’ve been an all star for six months and don’t know it, than that’s 100% my own problem. All the midpoint process does is ensure my copy, paste, and update skills are just as sharp as they were a year ago.

    2. Last week included new computer day at work. This week has involved a pretty extensive amount of trying to figure out how my own personal workflows will function in a Windows 11 environment. After two days of hunting and hoping and yelling at this computer, I’m absolutely not loving it. In fact nothing is currently working as seamlessly with this new system as it did with the old one. I’m not saying new tech is necessarily bad, just that when the powers at echelons higher than reality decide it’s time to roll it out, they very rarely consider much beyond “ohhh, new and shiny.” I’m sure this will all be functional at some point in the future, but currently it’s causing no end to aggravation. Truly it’s a death by a thousand cuts.

    3. Breakfast. This morning breakfast was a “lower carb” everything bagel and precisely two tablespoons of reduced fat cream cheese. Breakfast used to be a proper bagel, slathered on regular cream cheese, a couple of eggs, cheese, and maybe a bowl of cereal. Sure, that’s the diet that has probably killed me, but for starting the day satiated and relatively happy. Look, I know I can’t go back to eating that way, but it doesn’t mean I’m ever going to be fully satisfied with this “reasonably healthful” approach to food.

    Eclipse…

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    Well, if you’re reading this, someone must have survived the “great American eclipse” this afternoon… or the internet is being read by alien archeologists 1000s of years in the future after they have figured out how to recover old network drives. Either way.

    Yes, it’s eclipse day in America, which means some non-zero percentage of the population is absolutely losing their shit. It’s totally understandable who the ancients were deeply suspect of sudden darkness in the middle of the day. Why, deeply into the 21st century, it’s more than an interesting aside and fascinating bit of astro-physical trivia. I mean we know what’s happening, we know when it’s happening, and we can project how often and where these events will occur indefinitely into the future. 

    We the people have once again made the predictable mistake of thinking that we’re somehow unique and that this is a world-changing once off event. I suppose it makes for good ratings. It must do, given how much ink and airtime have been spent delivering minute by minute coverage to Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.

    Look, it’s great. It’s a fascinating experience. I went outside and looked around during “peak darkness.” Unlike a certain ex-president during the eclipse in 2017, I managed to avoid looking directly at the sun today, so I’ve got that going for me if nothing else. But now that the next big local eclipse is 20-something years in the future, I’m forced to wonder what perfectly normal and explicable event will be next to have itself turned into a media circus. I’ll never quite understand how we pick the things we want to blow out of proportion or carry to entirely illogical extremes.