Tag: bureaucracy
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Ire in Cairo
A description of a vacation I took to Egypt in 1991/1992, by way of a letter of complaint. Read more
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Antisocial Insecurity
I know people claiming social security are sometimes seen as jobless spongers who are just too lazy to get a job, but based on my recent experience, getting the Social Security Administration to actually give you money is more work than an actual job. Allow me to explain. For reasons we don’t need to get into, my three kids became eligible for social security payments (in lieu of Child Support) in January this year. Although they automatically became eligible, I still had to apply (on their behalf) for said social security payments, which necessitated filling in a shit-ton of forms… Read more
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Democracy: Too important to be left to the people
There was a report in the newspaper recently on a bridge in Slovakia being named after Chuck Norris. Apparently local officials had put it to a popular vote, and (at the time of writing) 74% of people had voted to call it the Chuck Norris Bridge, outvoting a local historical figure by a huge margin. On the face of it, this is all highly amusing, but it does emphasize my point that people should not be allowed to vote – on anything – because they’ll just take the piss, or screw it up. Seriously, it happens every time you let… Read more
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They should rename it the Hindrance-Desk
As Training Lead, one of my responsibilities is to provide User Procedures for the system we’re implementing. Because users have a nasty habit of taking my official global User Procedures and changing them to match what they want to do, I publish them in Adobe PDF format. And because I generate all of the User Procedures out of OnDemand, I just get OnDemand to publish directly to PDF, which it will happily do if you have the full version of Adobe Suite installed. In order to meet licensing requirements, here at my current client if you need a piece of… Read more
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Stimulate, my arse!
Over here in God’s Chosen Countryâ„¢, the economy is going down the pan. You can see it on the news, sense it on the streets, and feel it in in your wallet. Everything is more expensive, from gas to a gallon of milk (or from petrol to a pint of milk, if you prefer) so everyone has less money. Thankfully, God’s Own Governmentâ„¢ is in control and taking measures to rectify the situation. In a bid to ‘kick-start’ the economy, earlier this year Dubya announced a series of economic measures that included a one-off payment to every tax-paying American (or legal… Read more