This is exactly how you handle this kind of thing.

The last time it happened to me (I was leading a small team who was asked to do more and more--and then kept getting flak for things falling through the cracks), I had my folks document--conservatively--how much time was being spent on tasks. It was a simple case of the management just plain not knowing how many intermediary steps there were between "do this" and "it's done."

I brought this material to a private meeting with my boss, explained our situation earnestly, and provided documentation of what we were doing. I made it very clear that we actually agreed that much of this stuff needed to get done, but that there physically wasn't enough man power or time to do it. I told him that some of my best people were looking to leave, and explained how much we--the company--would suffer if we let that happen. I then just basically said "Something's got to give. We need to take one of these projects and re-assign it or we need to be pulled off something, or we need more hands." I didn't bring money up at all, because money doesn't even mean anything when you physically cannot complete the tasks in front of you.

Anyway, it went well. He very honestly didn't know what was going on, and appreciated that I approached it from a "we have a problem, and here are some ideas on fixing it" standpoint, not a "this is bullshit and you fucking suck" standpoint (although that was the standpoint we often had amongst ourselves.).

If that doesn't work, if the response is "Well, buddy, I'm sorry, but that's life in the big city with the big boys in the big company, and this stuff has to get done" then remember that "this stuff" is not "your stuff." You're an employee. The owners need this stuff done; you need money. That's all. You have no relationship with "this stuff."

I agree that you should never threaten your employer. These are people, and even when they're incompetent, they're just normal folks. You pull a dick move and they aren't going to like it. You're shooting yourself in the foot. You might get the raise, but it also might be the last one you ever get. Being liked/respected by your organizational superiors makes things a lot easier in life. Don't be a dick. Be a team player.

There are a lot of cities with it in the name, and it's not a very hard character.

Personally, I prefer kanji whenever there is one, because you know that is a word with semantic content, whereas usually hiragana is something I can skim over because it's just grammatical. Here's how I read:

1. Skim text for katakana, read that (it's usually English loanwords, so I can get my schema set)
2. Go back through and scan the kanji (even if I don't know the words, I often know the meanings of the characters and can use this information compared to the general schema acquired through the loanwords to work out the basic meaning of the document)
3. Finally go through and read it, complete with all the particles, etc. (But I only do this if I really, really need to understand this document--most of the time I quit after 1 or 2).

Even arcane kanji save me time, because they represent meaning, not sound, so I don't have to "read" them so much as just look at them.

My wife (Japanese) gets angry at me because my mails are always full of archaic kanji. People think this is because I'm really good at Japanese, but actually it's that I kinda suck and like them to break the document up and let me clearly see word boundaries, since no one over in this part of the world ever discovered the power of spaces between words. ;-)

--Which they had imported from India. Nice try.

I'm a member of the campus set (faculty--English department, even), and I find very little to quarrel with in your post.

I think a lot of the politically-correct stuff is drifting away as the Boomers retire and/or die. Those people were so sheltered as children, as their parents tried to make a perfect world for them so they could forget about the horrors of the decades before, that they just plain can't get it into their heads that, although no one is perfect, the generations before them were not evil. They were doing the best they could.

People in rich countries are so spoiled. They don't understand that none of this bounty was here before people made it. They don't realize how exceptional it is to have this many people working together to build something great for all of us. Our ancestors have done a fine job; they deserve our respect. Mistakes they made are just that: mistakes. They are something to learn from; that is all.

Finally, I just want to say that a prime example of their success is the entire Western US, which has become breadbasket to the world. Do you know what was there before the European settlers? Dry grass and tiny bands of people scratching out a living by picking berries and running entire herds of buffalo off of cliffs so they could eat one or two (oftentimes causing the stampede by burning the prairie.). What our ancestors brought was better. It was better. It was better. It was better. It helps more people. It is better.

There's nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade.

Yes, they just aren't as good. Period.

That being said, I will only use Keynote for presentations now, and for just dashing off a quick document, Pages is fast, typesets nicely, and handles styles properly (Word is a mess; OO.o is better, but I'd still prefer the style pane to show a preview of the style).

That was a pretty good comment, and I agree.

Yes, I think CP should not be produced. But I can't wrap my head around why its possession, at the very least, can constitute a crime. I mean, it's a picture of a crime, not a crime itself.

In fact, just get the lady who does the voice to play it. She's awesome, and I can't imagine the story any other way (my Shepard is a skinny black woman with a buzzed head--she looks Ethiopian or thereabouts).

Here's the conclusion I came to after believing the Slashdot line about printer ink: Yes, the manufacturer makes the best ink. The difference is astounding. It doesn't run; it doesn't clog. It's worth the money.

And here's a little tidbit from a different source:

I once interviewed with a company that made rubber. Yes, rubber. Any kind of rubber whatzit. I walked in thinking "what am I doing here?" and walked out thinking "rubber is fucking cool!" I didn't get the job, though.

But I digress.

One of this company's clients was HP. This company's materials scientists worked closely with HP on the R&D of the rubber bumpers and stoppers used in HP inkjet printers. They had to design a rubber that could be molded properly, etc., and not be corroded away by the ink. The guy interviewing me got quite excited when he was talking about this project. Evidently, all the parts--especially rubber--that will be in contact with the ink have to be developed alongside it because many inks ate through rubber, given enough use. So it was an added hurdle in the design process, and one the guy was very proud of getting over. And it was he who ended it with, "And that's why we don't refill our cartridges around here--we know that other stuff will slowly eat away the stoppers we designed."

So if you want to believe that everything is a lie and everyone is out to get you, fine. But it's not true. There's no question the ink is marked way up to cover the loss on the printers. But that doesn't mean that all inks were created equal.

Yes.

I started out on the Mac in high school. Then, in college, when I got into computers themselves, I switched to building my own and tweaking. I used them for 10 years and had a lot of fun breaking and fixing things.

Then my career really started going, and I didn't really want to fiddle with crap anymore. I just wanted to hit spacebar, do work, put the thing to sleep, and have no problems.

And here I am, back on the Mac, and enjoying it. All the PCs are gone from the house. My wife still, out of habit, asks me if it's okay to agree to a software update, since I had trained her to be suspicious of them for so long. Just yesterday, I said, "You know, you don't really need to ask me. Apple basically never breaks your computer with an update, and they don't install weird crap. Just run it." It's nice to feel like a customer and not an enemy, even though I only bought one copy of Snow Leopard for our machines.

Also, I most certainly can tinker on my Macs. This Mac Pro is highly customized. One of the things I really like about MacOS is that, even without getting on the command line, you can tailor so many behaviors to your liking--without breaking anything. Keyboard shortcuts, man. They're done right here.

Lately, people are conflating Apple's approach to their information appliances (iPods, iPhones, iPads) with their approach to the Mac platform, but it's totally different. Apple stays out of your hair on the Mac. If you want to fiddle with things, there are many other MP3 players, smartphones, and upcoming slate devices that you can buy--and you can use them with your Mac. As the Steve said, "if you want porn, get an Android." However, I actually really enjoy the user experience of my iPods and iPhone. I don't want to tinker with either of those. I understand that some people might, but those people can buy something else. Or hell, they can jailbreak. It's really a non-issue.

I know that many of the people here are Linux folks, and I really like the idea of Linux. I keep Ubuntu on a VM just because I like playing with it. But I don't want to have to depend on it. I don't have the time, and I don't have the desire to do upkeep. I need to focus on my job, and that job--although it requires a lot of computer use--is not related to the upkeep of computers.

(Thank you.)

Hear hear! Your coworkers are a part of your life. They are your family at work. Just like your family at home, you weren't allowed to pick them, but you're stuck with them, so you need to learn how to like them.

I've lived and worked in Japan for most of my working life, and I just have to say that most places here get that right. Westerners wonder why Japanese workers are so loyal to the company, and there are a lot of reasons, but one of the strongest emotional/psychological ones is that many places really try to foster a real kinship. You very well might think that Kinoshita-san from 2 desks over is a jackass, but when push comes to shove, he's your jackass. Also, thanks to the boozy parties the company throws (that everyone pays for equally), you've chatted with him over beers and know that he is a super-involved dad who takes his kids out on the skiff to go fishing every weekend. You can't see him as just a jackass anymore; now he's a neat dad who happens to be a jackass at work.

At first, I resisted this culture with all my BS American individualist might, but before long I came to get it. They aren't forcing you to go to the party because they want to see what kind of stupid thing you'll say when you're drunk; they want to hang out together, and if you don't go it'll be a bummer for everyone. It's not a trick. People actually want to get to know each other. They probably won't be BFFs or anything; and the relationship will probably disappear if you transfer to another department or office, but for the time that you work together, you're doing it with people you know, and that makes all the difference in the world. When Sayama-san is going through a tough time with her husband, you cover for her--not because she's having a hard time with her husband, but because she's Sayama-san. And Sayama-san is having a hard time with her husband.

Finally, though, so much of this is predicated on the assumption that you're not going to be fired at the drop of a hat with a simple "oops, we can't afford so many people; bye." But that's another post entirely (and again, not really a socialistic post--one about not handing so much goddamned money to the people at the top so you don't have to panic every time the market changes, because you have money in the bank and tons of wiggle room in the budget).

--Yes, you have your choice between the many Mom & Pop broadband ISPs down the street, or one of the many friendly faceless corporations that exist to serve you, not unlike the broad range of choices you have for electricity and water service!

Pragmatism, man, not ideology. Some things can really only be done well by giant organizations. There is no consumer power in such a system, however, so we need government--which we do control, as evidenced by this very issue, which was pushed by people calling and writing their representatives and the FCC--to speak on our behalf. Is it 100% customized to your particular needs? No. But it's never going to be, so you might as well stop talking out your ass and just work for the better.

Grownups aren't paid for their time; they're paid for their results. I'm sorry to hear that you still work at McDonald's.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes! The fear of the government is one predicated on the notion that it is separate from the people, which simply is not true. Libertarians and tea partiers create the disconnect between the government and the people, when they should be working through the system to effect the changes they want to see. They are actually the problem. By refusing to participate in a meaningful way, they force the disconnect!