Brent’s Thoughts

Today let us talk about Kingdoms and Fiefs, of barons and serfs, political battles and power struggles. This is a story of epic battles between rulers who fight for power and recognition from their King. Rulers who use their peons and serfs to perform tasks which send them dangerously close to the other baron’s lands. So close in fact that they sometimes find themselves wandering into the other baron’s lands. When they are attacked by the other baron’s peons or even the Baron himself, they call to their lord and find little but yelling and punishment from him. Often the peon’s baron would refuse to acknowledge that he himself sent them on that mission. Sometimes while in the other baron’s land the peon might find a items or bauble that he likes. When the peons and baron of the other land hear about this, they demand that he gives it back. No matter if it is a nugget of gold or a pretty pebble. It is only worse if the thing will help the kingdom, for then each baron wants to be the one to present it to the king in hopes of a pat on the head or a new title with more land and peons to rule. Often, the barons care little about making life better for their peons or helping the kingdom to become better and stronger. Instead they care about increasing their land holdings, the number of people that they command, and their titles. Sometimes the nobles would get together and decide edicts for the kingdom without ever consulting the serfs and peasants. Nobles live well with lots of finery and trinkets to play and pass the time, while the peasants toil away for little to no gain.

Thats right folks today we are talking about Corporations and the Corporate Business Model.

In today’s corporate structure there is little more than a feudal system at work. There is no democracy, there is no equality among the people. America as a country believes in a few things, one is democracy and another is capitalism. So then why in so many companies are the two exclusive of each other? Why in America do we have school books that talk about how bad the feudal system was, about how it brought on the dark ages, about how so little was created while it was in effect, and the company that creates those books most likely follows a feudal style in its structure?

It is amazing to me that Americans have built this system and support it. Not all companies work this way. Some companies allow for input from their employees and give them a say in what the company is doing. Most of the companies that do this are small companies where everyone knows everyone and it is important to the “Kings” to let people know that they have a say. Unfortunately, as companies grow bigger and bigger managers are brought in and corporate policies are created. This is because the head “King” can no longer watch out for each person and thinks that the people he is bringing in will. This causes friction. People that in normal life are perfectly fine people, become two-faced and deceitful, as they attempt to gain favor and power. When politics become more important than the actual work that you are doing there is something wrong. Then there are companies like google.com where employees are free to mill around and discuss things with each other. The Leaders of the company play games of pool in the lounge with everyone and they talk about things the company is doing. These companies have developed more of a democratic society. Not because they vote on things, but because the people that are running things know they are accountable for the companies actions to the employees, because they know they will see the employees everyday.

Now unlike other stuff I write, I think I have a few ideas that might correct these problems.

1. Give the lower employees some say in the matter. Ask them what they think they should do. Often times they get to see things at a finer grained level than you do and this will influence what they tell you.
2. Manager reviews, the lower personel in the company are always suffering under the threat of bad reviews and no pay raises, but the managers that are making these threats are never worried about the people that they are over giving them a bad review. Perhaps they would be more inclined to worry about their workers and to do right by them if they knew that once a year they were going to get reviewed as well.
3. Don’t let your employees get shut off from you. You may think you have an open policy regarding employees being able to talk to you, but more than likely you don’t. This isn’t your fault, but is instead the managers underneith of you cutting people off before they can get to you, or that the people that work one or two layers below you don’t even know who you are.
4. Politics are for people that aren’t trying to get work done, like congressmen. Do your job. If your job is to manage people then manage them. If your job is to build web pages, build them. If someone steps into your area don’t go psycho. More than likely they are not trying to take your job, they are just trying to do theirs. Maybe you should try to work with them instead of shutting them down. If they know more than you about something then you should be happy to get to talk with them and learn what they know. Ignorance is not a bad thing, but stupidity is. If you don’t know something, that is ok as long as you are willing to learn, but if you are too bull headed to take the time or to allow someone to teach you something then that is stupid and you should be punished for that.
5. When it comes time to get rid of people due to layoffs or budget cuts, get rid of the managers first. Think about it and you will see that this is logical from several points of view. First, they often make more than the workers at the bottom. Second, they are often the problem with workers that are underneith them. I am not saying that all employees are perfect, but there are a lot of times that people seem like the problem, but if you were to see it from the other side the manager in-between you and them you would see what the real issue is. Often, managers are a not needed intermediary that cost money and wastes time. Studies have shown that as a company slides toward the end of its existance the ratio of managers to workers increases dramatically.

Recently, I have found out that some of the higher ups in AFNI read my site. I know that at least my boss’s boss and his boss (meaning my boss’s boss’s boss) have looked at it. They told me that they had viewed it in a meeting that I had with them a few days ago. They said that is was understandable to want to “vent” and that I was entitled to my opinion about things here at AFNI. They were just wanting to try and find the best way to make me feel better about working at AFNI.

So that brought some thoughts up in my mind. Previously I knew that there were other people at AFNI that read my site, but I just assumed that it was some other people that I know. Now I know that it is them. So this poses the question that has caused me to classify this as an Ask the Crew kinda thing.

Since I have started working this site and posting what is going on, there are more and more people that have a better insight into how I feel about things. Imagine going into a meeting with the people I have mentioned before and having them know everything you dislike about the position and almost every time you have gotten pissed at the company. That is a up hill kinda situation to say the least. If you had such a forum, would you post everything that happens in your life no matter who it might piss off? I mean I can (and will) keep posting the things that I think AFNI is doing wrong, but now I know that there is a pretty good possibility that higher up people are going to read it. If I were to get pissed at maxx and posting in here that I was, chances are that he would know anyway, but if I were to decide that he was a fucknut and post that in here, chances are that I wouldn’t say that to his face. As soon as he loads up this site though it would be in here in plain text.

Do you think that you could write what you feel and to hell with the other people, or would you find yourself curbing what you write so that you might leave things out of your journal (an as such lessening its value) so that you wouldn’t make anyone mad. Is there a third possibility that you would instead curb your life such that there would be less controversial things to write about in the journal?

Well since there is little chance that AFNI is going to ask for my services with Linux anytime soon, I headed out to my Mom’s school a few weeks ago and pitched a LTSP idea to them for one of their labs. After 2 weeks of working to get the terminal hardware configured correctly and running I pitched it last night.

In short the idea flew like a rock wrapped in lead foil. The stuff came up and worked, but because my server was low power and due to some glitches, I had no hope that they would go for it. So great was my suprise when they said that they were going to purchase one server and that I had roughly 1000$ to spend to get another one and any hardware that I want to get it up and running.

WHOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!. The linux admin rides again.

Now all I need are 30 100mb ISA network cards. Anyone got those laying around?

Today I took the first step toward being able to shoot lightning out of my hands.

BTW why is it that all the evil people have all the cool powers. Why is it that the “Dark” Side of the force is the one that lets you shoot lightning out of your hands? What do the good guys get for being so pure and great? To me it seems that they get the shit beat out of them and their arm cut off. No wonder skywalker switched over.

But anyway, I digress. Yep today I became a Microsoft Certified Professional. Ohh see when I typed that little sparks shot out of my fingers. Wonder how many it takes to be able to start your car if you have a dead battery

Is there a line between the two? I guess it depends on who you ask. In my opinion there needs to be a line there, but sometimes it really seems that there isn’t. At a recent speech given by President George W. Bush crowd members were told that if they caused any disruption or didn’t provide thunderous applause they would be promptly arrested. Everyone read that again without a couple words.

…crowd members were told that if they caused any disruption or didn’t provide thunderous applause they would be promptly arrested.

OK now that you have read that and really digested it. What if we changed the name so that it said something like this…

“At a recent speech given by Adolph Hitler crowd members were told that if they caused any disruption or didn’t provide thunderous applause they would be promptly arrested.”

Does that change the way the statement reads? Or does that alter your perception of the statement in any way? Because trust me they both say the same thing. If they mean something different to you based upon which name you see then perhaps you should stop for a second and wonder if you have crossed the line.

I am a patriot. I love this country and I love that I am able to live is this country, but I cannot accept that we should willing allow things like this to happen in the name of patriotism. No matter what happens in this country, no matter (god forbid) how many Americans are killed, someone should still have the right to stand up and say that what the country is doing (or what the country’s Leader) is doing is wrong. That is what this country is here for and that is why we have laws to protect our freedom of speech.

Hitler started his reign not with guns, but with patriotism. He convinced the German people that they were being slighted as a country and that it was time that they fought back. Only then, once he had a larger degree of power, did he resort to guns and weapons.

Now I am not saying that is what President Bush is doing and I am also not saying that I think he is a bad president. What I am saying is that you have to watch out for certain types of mindsets. There are zealots for any idea or belief, but it is society’s job to make sure that they do not become the norm for society and I am not sure that is happening right now. Around half of America thought that Bush was a joke at his election. Jokes abounded, but then a tragedy hit. Arguably the worst tragedy to America, ever. Now it is frowned upon to make jokes about Bush. Why? Because now we are supposed to be a united group of people. I would say on the most part we are, but being united about a cause doesn’t require that we stop being critical of other or even that cause or activities.

In the name of security there have been attempts on lots of personal liberties. Encryption has been challenged, the FBI wished to have all encryption with back doors in them that would allow law enforcement to decrypt them. Does that mean a lot to most people? Probably not, most people don’t care or know that the FBI could read their files, but to some people it does. Do Americans have the right to have things that the FBI can’t read? I think so. We have a right to personal privacy. Another is an increased demand for laws allowing wire taps and harvesting if email. The proposed laws will make it easier for law enforcement to get permission to use these means to gather data.

Now obviously no other well-known (to me) regime has had the option to use methods like this, so I cannot say, “Look this is exactly like what happened when _blank_ came into power.”, but it is alarming to me that things like this are getting pushed through congress and such on the tail end of a national disaster and that they are being billed like this as patriotic acts of legislation.

Now I am not saying that we should revolt or become anti-establishment-national-monument-picketing people, but I would like to bring some of this up to show you that you have to be conscious of what is going on, because there is a fine line between acts of patriotism and acts of zealotry or totalitarianism.