If you’re gonna do it, you might as well do it right.

Went and saw the IMAX 3-D version of Avatar on Saturday. It had been a long time since I’d seen anything filmed in IMAX, much less anything in 3-D. But I have to say it was well worth it. There wasn’t a moment when I wasn’t completely enthralled with what was taking place on screen. The depth of expression on the Navi’s faces, the seamless integration between animation and live action, the cool symbiotic bonding thing, all the impossible jumps, the decadent proliferation of colors on the screen—all were mesmerizing.

As far as story-line goes, though: meh. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Dances with Wolves. It was almost the same exact plot-line:

• White man reaches deep into the frontier of a natural, savage territory.

• Natives dislike white man.

• Gradually white man wins trust and respect of locals.

• White man starts stroking inner Gaia, goes native, and decides to switch sides.

• Other white folks find out white man went native, and look at him with derision.

• War ensues.

• We get close ups of the devastation and pain wrought upon the natives by the now "other" evil, greedy white folks.

• And everyone in the audience gets to feel guilty.

• OK, movie is over, we’ve had our cathartic moment of collective guilt, but we don’t have to feel bad anymore, so let’s hop into the SUV and go get some ice cream.

The only real difference in this case is that in place of "white man," it should read, "lanky blue weird-looking alien dude mentally controlled by crippled white man in special bio-link tube."

As one of the inevitable extensions of the virtual reality craze from way back in the nineties, I'm surprised this concept hadn't been tried before in a major motion picture. There's a sci-fi series of books I read which took the idea to a severe extreme: Otherland by Tad Williams. The last three of the tetralogy are pretty much devoted to what's going on with the major characters while they're "in the tube." And, like Avatar, one of the main characters lives much more completely in his virtual life than in his real one because of a physical defect. Whereas Jake in Avatar doesn't have the use of his legs, the Otherland dude has progeria, the weird aging disease where a seven-year-old has the body of an eighty or ninety-year-old. Man, those books were intense! If James Cameron made a series of movies based on those using the same budget and technology used in Avatar- now that would be awesome!!

Maybe what I do really ain’t so bad.

My last entry, posted so many eons ago, was written for the purpose of justifying to myself what I do now. My conscience made me write it really—that blubbery little wuss! As I had just been reeled into the debate by agreeing to work in the industry, I was trying to discern whose side I was really on. Was I a tool benefitting the evil mega-corporations? Was I making it easier for the insurance corporations, HMOs, and pharmaceutical companies to enslave us all into monetary submission? Was I in some small, cog-like way making it harder for the impoverished to receive health care? Was I in effect, indirectly killing people, in fact? Or was I doing something noble? Was I promoting the saving of lives?

It’s an important question to ask, I think. Some people will go their whole lives and never even bother to attempt to justify what they do. A paycheck is a paycheck is a paycheck to them is the refrain. But as I have this overactive hyper-sensitive wussy conscience, it was necessary to go through this dilemma, and I think I’ve finally found something that will quiet that silly, annoying little voice. Here’s a breakdown of how the conversation went:

“Certainly,” I told it, “we can at least agree on one thing: that I could be doing something far, far worse. It’s not like I’m making tobacco or junk food or heroin. I’m not polluting the atmosphere with choking smoke. I’m not making little remote control death machines or evil robots, or sharks with frickin’ laser beams, or any of that crap. I mean, really, Erin Brockovich doesn’t have shit on me!"

The reply from that snotty little crybaby was, “Maybe so, but “don’t get all smug and sermonize to people that you’re doing the right thing. You didn’t take this job because you thought it would give you the chance to become some kind of martyr. You did it for the money and the security it provided, and that’s it!”

“And judging by the latest quarterly earnings report you just read, don’t try and fool yourself that you’re working for some charity organization!

“So what?” I replied to that obnoxious little turd. “Just because something is profitable doesn’t mean that somehow it’s inherently evil. Can’t a company make money AND help people at the same time? I mean really, what the hell is so wrong with that?”

And before that little punk could open its mouth again, I showed it this:

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The Caduceus and the Rod of Asclepius


In going over the user guide documentation for the Computer-Aided Dispatch software which is the cornerstone of the company for which I now work, I came across an image which represents a symbolic metaphor for the dissonance of current medical practice in the United States-- two symbols, in fact, embedded with all the potent intrigue of a Dan Brown novel. In studying the software's map module, which can be used to locate an organization’s vehicle posts, medical facilities, and patient pick-up and drop-off locations I was presented with an idea that made me pause and reflect.

When an emergency call taker gets a call from an injured, wounded, or sick individual, she must find out, among other things, where the incident is taking place—the ambulance’s pick-up location—and enter that information into the application’s user interface. If the call taker maps the location, and sends it to a dispatcher, the dispatcher will see the pick-up location marked on a map in the symbol of a "Caduceus." I noticed that the symbol looked slightly different than what I had seen on the sides of ambulances when doing general research about Emergency Medical Services—the six pointed "Star of Life." In the center of the Star of Life exists the Rod of Asclepius—what I had thought to be the ancient Greek symbol for medicine. I came to ask myself the question: what’s the difference-- other than the presence of an extra snake and pair of wings in the Caduceus and their absence in the Rod of Asclepius—between the two symbols? Naturally, I looked them up in Wikipedia and came to find a symbolic inconsistency representative of perhaps the greatest controversy in the medical profession today:

The rod of Asclepius (sometimes also spelled Asklepios or Aesculapius), also known as the asklepian, is an ancient symbol associated with astrology, the Greek god Asclepius and with healing. It consists of a serpent entwined around a staff. The name of the symbol derives from its early and widespread association with Asclepius, the son of Apollo, who was a practitioner of medicine in ancient Greek mythology. His attributes, the snake and the staff, sometimes depicted separately in antiquity, are combined in this symbol.

That was pretty much what I had expected. Why then was a Caduceus used instead of the Rod of Asclepius in the map module of the software I now support? I did some more research on Wikipedia and came across the following:

The caduceus is sometimes used as a symbol for medicine or doctors (instead of the rod of Asclepius) even though the symbol has no connection with Hippocrates and any association with healing arts is something of a stretch; as the symbol of the god Hermes, its singularly inappropriate connotations of theft, deception, and death, as well as the confusion of commerce and medicine in a single symbol, have provided fodder for academic humor.

“The confusion of commerce and medicine:” how very appropriate to the ongoing war between patients, insurance companies, HMOs and government. All of the connotations embedded by the two symbols were evoked in my thoughts in a sudden flash: The insistence of putting a monetary value on medical care to the detriment of the patient; the alarming number of bankruptcies in this country as a result of the inability of individuals to pay their medical bills; the election campaign discussions about the government’s role in health care and health care as an economic industry; Michael Moore’s Sicko; the ambivalence in the role I provide at this new job: am I promoting the saving of lives by helping to ensure that dispatchers are able to use the software efficiently in getting ambulances out on scene to help patients, or am I making life worse for the sick by providing an arsenal of data which can be used by the organizations to justify billing the sick into oblivion—all of these thoughts represented themselves in those two symbols.

Even though I’m now far removed from the analysis of literary symbolism during my days as an English major, the weight of the connotations carried by those two symbols just makes me say "WOW!”

I saw the original of this a while back.  I almost peed my pants it was so damn funny.  The sequel is equally as hilarious:

And just in case you haven't seen the original:

Thirty-Four Days and counting. . .

. . . of being unemployed.  I will say I have been doing what I can about getting re-emplyed within all these free moments.  I’ve had six interviews so far, three of which have been over the phone, with none yet yielding any fruit.  A temporary position seems to be on the horizon, but then again the staffing agencies have a penchant for sugar coating situations in which they know the position is already filled because the client has decided to choose someone internally for the job or the agency have another candidate in mind for the position and are only considering you as an alternate should said candidate become unavailable. 

I went through the process of looking up staffing agencies in the yellow pages, and making an exhaustive list.  I called each of them asking what type of industries they specialized in and put my resume forth for any that were related to IT or clerical/administrative work.  I’ve been pretty good about checking Monster, Career Builder, Hotjobs, the local newspaper, Dice, and yes, Craigslist on a daily basis for any new positions that may have become available.  Two of the positions for which I was interviewed were straight off of Craigslist, whereas the other job search sites just got me calls from some of the same staffing agencies I had already been soliciting directly.  I have another interview tomorrow.  Wish me luck.

As frustrating as the job search always seems to be, I’ve come away a huge realization that I should just accept regardless of the economic situation we happen to be in at the time.  I guess I've always had a kind of naivete in thinking it still possible to get into a business on the ground floor and reap the benefits of company loyalty and hard work as you gradually climb your way up.  This notion is well dispelled by Martin Yate in Knock 'em Dead: The Ultimate Job Search Guide:

The job security and professional growth our parents were raised to expect as the norm is a thing of the past.  [O]ver the course of a fifty-year work life, you can typically expect to change jobs about every four years, and you may well have three or more distinct and different careers in what will probably be a half-century work life.  

Gone are the days in which you could get your foot in the door of a company and simply work your way up within, not even thinking for a moment that you can be kicked out at any time because of mergers, recessions, restructuring, or obsolescence.  The reality of our great new age is that company loyalty is important to maintain your position only insomuch as your position is maintainable.  The bottom right-hand corner of the quarterly balance sheet has far more sway as to whether or not you become promoted or redundant than anything you can possibly do within your time at the company.  I don’t write this to sound bitter or resentful.  I merely mention it as an unquestionable fact.  For a business to stay in business it has to create a profit.  The less directly you are tied to bringing in that profit, the thinner the sheet of ice on which you tread. 

You have to constantly ask yourself “How important is what I do here to the life of the company?”  If it’s anything less than absolutely critical, you could very well find yourself on the chopping block the next time that figure on the balance sheet takes a hit.  In a decision to downsize, a higher-up may tell all the department heads that each of them has to choose two people in their department to get rid of.  That some of these may be heart-wrenching choices, which I don’t doubt was the case at my last job, is irrelevant.  The necessary number are going to be gone at the end of the day either way.

Unpleasant Surprise

So I go to work a couple of weeks ago, doing my regular routine.  Answering calls and following up on e-mails-- resolving issues, and trying to make our clients happy.  It's a Friday, so the volume is relatively light.  I spend the majority of the morning with someone trying to install the web application on his "server."  For some reason, the installer keeps quitting midway through, but no errors are written to the Event Viewer.  

I look to make sure that he has IIS installed.  Check.  

I find out if he's an administrator on his machine.  Check.  

I download a fresh installer to his desktop to make sure the one he got wasn't corrupted, and try to run the installer again.  Same result.  The blue installation bar rolls back and you get a message saying the install failed.

I then copy the files created by a successful run of the installation on my computer to his desktop via our FTP site.  I go to set up the web site manually, first attempting to put the necessary file permissions on the folders in question, and I notice something odd.  There's no security tab.  I check what operating system he's running.  It's XP Pro.  Had it been something stupid like XP Home edition, where there are no security tabs, the system wouldn't know how to apply the Network Service account access to the web application files.  Why he isn't installing this to a computer with an actual Server operating system (installing IIS web services on XP limits you to only 10 concurrent connections) I don't ask. 

I go to the folder options to make sure that simple file sharing has not been turned on.  It has not.  What gives?  All the bases are covered, so why doesn't the security tab show up?  For the hell of it, I open up the disk management console and I look at his partitions.  I put the phone on mute, shake my head and chuckle to see that he installed the partitions in the FAT32 file system.  You're not able to apply directory security to folders on a FAT32 partition.  No wonder the installer quit.  Why he wasn't using NTFS like everyone else has been (since like 1995) I will never know.  

I give the user the bad news, telling him he'll either have to find another machine to put the web application on or re-install the operating system with the NTFS file system.  He agrees to re-image the machine using his Norton Ghost application.  

I handle several more issues the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon.  Around 1pm or so, we get an announcement that there's going to be an impromptu meeting in the auditorium in the lower level of the building.  We're told by our manager not to answer any more calls after 1:45pm.  At around 1:30 one of our techs is called to the desk of a consultant to take a look at a computer issue.  A few minutes later the rest of us get up to go to the meeting.  A colleague and I are told to go ahead and head down-- everybody else will be following shortly.  I get to a half-empty room noticing there's a few people from each department.  Then I look down to the first row to see the Vice President looking despondent-- past us and through us, with his head in his hands.  There's a moment of tension and confusion, a few more people trickle in, and then he begins "As you all know the recent economic downturn has had a dramatic effect on our sales over the last few months . . ."

I just stare in shock as he eliminates everything I'd been working for the last twenty months, cancels my health insurance, halts my 401K, suspends my paycheck, destroys any potential for growth in the company, obliterates a well-worn comfortable routine, and injects deep uncertainty into my life.  The revelation engenders feelings of frustration, concern, anger, and even a kind of humility within the twelve other souls who had the misfortune of being told to head down early along with me.  "The rest of us will be down there shortly."  

One of the women in sales angrily demands that she be given commission for a big deal she's been working on, that looked to be in the final stages of completion.  The VP nods yes slowly.  Another breaks down completely, and starts whimpering.  A consultant demands to know how it was that they made their decisions.  "It was a mathematical formula," he states, but doesn't go into any details.  After the HR director goes through our packets, explaining the severance process, what to do to file for unemployment, our options for COBRA, etc., we depart, and go back upstairs, supervised, to an empty office where we're allowed to grab only the essentials-- the rest of our stuff is to be couriered to us the next day.  I feel like I've just been shot, or stabbed, or hit over the head with a blunt object.

I've never been laid off before.  It's a strange mixture of feelings.  On the one hand, there's the expected anger, disbelief, and real concern.  At the same time, however, there's a feeling of release.  Major liberation.  I can do pretty much whatever the hell I want now.  Pursue the same type of career, take a different track, seek more responsibility, less responsibility, just take out some loans and go back to school, go abroad again, or see how long I'll be able to stay on unemployment.  I've filed, and have already had an interview at a staffing agency.  I've got my resume on Monster, Careerbuilder, Dice, and I do searches every morning.  Severance check should be here soon, and that will get me through until the UI checks start coming in, so I won't starve or have to sell my car anytime soon. 

The fact that I'm just one out of about 700,000 in the last two months is both frightening and consoling. There's a lot more competition out there for the same jobs now, but I guess it's good to know I'm not the only one feeling the pinch.  Hey, at least now I've got some time to write some blogs . . . 

Book Review: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Just finished reading this gigantic ode to suffering last week and have been letting my thoughts percolate. My first impression is that it was morally and emotionally exhausting to the extreme. The plot consists mainly of the tumult between three (possibly four) brothers and their father, each representing within themselves and amongst each other the great moral quandaries of the day. There’s Dmitri, the oldest brother who is ruled by his passions to the brink of fatal violence; then Ivan who espouses the nihilism and atheism typical of the intellectual trend of the day, juxtaposed by Alyosha,

who for the majority of the novel, appears as a monk, filled with the virtues of religious humanism—the yin to brother Ivan’s yang. Then there’s Smerdyakov who may or may not be the fourth son, born of a crazy street lady, prone to epileptic fits, (incidentally referred to as “the falling sickness”) who becomes employed by the father, Fyodor Karamazov, as a servant.

The beginning of the novel doesn’t jump right in, but painstakingly sets the scene, guiding us into the life of Fyodor, the father, who establishes himself as a selfish, noisy, licentious old booze hound. He takes no part in his children's upbringing, instead throwing them all in the yard for the servants to sort out. The distinct character of each of the boys is described, and already the seeds of a terrible impending tragedy take root.

Anger and enmity arise within all of the children, except Alyosha, who attempts to act as the family's moral anchor. Not altogether in vain, he's charged with quieting the familial strife and lack of faith. The tension emerges most prevalently in Dmitri, (and for brevity's sake we'll just follow his plot thread). Angered by his father’s refusal to pay the rest of his rightful inheritance Dmitri lashes out at him, beating the crap out of old Fyodor on one occasion and also publicly humiliating poor Snigeryov by grabbing him by the beard and throwing him into the street. He attempts to hire this Captain Snigeryov to strong-arm the money out of his father, but ultimately Snigeryov’s failure just raises Dmitri’s ire and desperation.

A key witness to this public display of humiliation is none other than Snigeryov’s son, Ilyusha, who upon seeing his father brought so low, starts having the epileptic fits that later cause his death at the end of the novel. A very sad, drawn out, and heart-rending death it is—one which I found later on was undoubtedly inspired by the death of Dostoyevsky’s own son via the same “falling sickness.” Apparently, little Alyosha (that’s right, the same name as the priestly son in the book) inherited these seizures from his father, and for that Dostoyevsky felt perhaps a tremendous misplaced amount of guilt. The father-son relationships and dilemmas throughout the novel are no doubt manifestations of the real life torment the author went through in his relations with both father and son. It’s been reported that Dostoyevsky started having his epileptic seizures when he witnessed the death of his own father. Are we cheery enough yet? Good. Now back to the plot.

If the anger within Dmitri was not quite stimulated enough by his father’s refusal to pay him his rightful dues, we find out that both father and son have the hots for the same woman, Agrefena Alexandrovena, affectionately known to them both as Grushenka. This playgirl tart of a woman toys with the Karamazovs' emotions for her own amusement, planning the whole time to get back with her old flame, a Polish dignitary from whom she’s been removed for five years. Dmitri, ballooning with concern about the possibility of his father absconding with his money to marry Grushenka, feverishly tries to raise enough cash to whisk her away himself. We discover as well, that he not only needs the money for Grushenka and his fantasies of removal with her to some far away place, but that he has a debt to a former betrothed, the vindictive Katerina Ivanovna. Katya places 3000 roubles in his charge to send to a relative, but out of his lust to impress Grushenka, he takes her to a nearby town, and instead squanders half the money cavorting with the gypsies, minstrels, and drunks.

In a mad dash for cash he hits up Grushenka’s benefactor with a an ill-proposed business deal, and failing that attempts to negotiate with a contractor charged with one of his father’s properties in another nearby village. Both attempts wash out, and he makes one last gambit to get money out of the talkative Mrs. Khokhlakova (minor character- not important). At a fever pitch of rage and jealousy, he unconsciously grabs a pestle and heads over to his father’s house where he learns from Smyerdakov about a secret knock employed to let father know she’s arrived. He uses the knock in hopes to find out whether his beloved is with father, but convinced she’s not there and making his escape, is nonetheless assailed by one of the servants, Grigory, whom he pulverizes in the skull with the pestle. Not knowing whether he’s killed Grigory or not he goes back to the servants of Grushenka’s benefactor where he initially grabbed the pestle and finds out, through forced interrogation of the servernts, about Grushenka’s deception and current whereabouts. There’s kind of a hazy disconnect just before his return to the servants, as though Dmitri hasn’t been conscious of what he’s been doing the last hours. He’s even unaware of the blood all over his face and the matted, bloody handkerchief in his pocket that he had used on Grigory, trying to determine if he was still alive.

Totally defeated, and convinced that he has in fact killed the servant, Grigory, Dmitri Karamazov plots his own suicide, but intent on making one last hoorah before the end, uses the other half of the 3000 he got from Katerina to once again shoot the moon with the locals of the town where he and Grushenka had such a good time previously; the same place, not coincidentally, where Grushenka and her old flame are now rekindling their old sparks. A bizarre scene unfolds with Dmitri befriending rather than confronting his rival and his entourage, and hearing the most glorious tidings from Grushenka that she in fact does love him and wants to be whisked away—her Polish past love had lost his charm—Dmitri indulges in the excesses of a debauched party…

… Only to discover the following morning a detective in his midst charging him with the murder of his own father. What follows is the trial and epilogue, and I won’t go into any more details at this point should you be enticed to brave this 1000 page monster of gut-wrenching moral horror. I will, however, give you my own personal insights:

I found Brothers Karamzov a bit like nicotine or even crack for that matter. You start it, and it tastes like shit. It’s tedious, loquacious, probably missing much in translation, steeped in all the class division and stuffy etiquette of a Jane Austin novel. You know it’s bad for you and you shouldn’t do it, yet as you continue you just can’t seem to turn away. I found myself inspired to drink vodka as I read this book. I’m not normally a big vodka drinker, but I acquainted myself with the likes of Smirnoff, Stolichnaya, Ketel One (even though it’s Dutch, not Russian), and Sobieski (once the Poles were introduced) as I scanned through page after page detailing the universal pathos of the human condition. The narrative tone felt kind of like being cornored by a drunken, mutton-chopped old Victorian pontificating on the nature of mankind, pocket watch in hand. Once I finished I was exhausted. I was spent. I wanted to become catatonic.

I mean, I had read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina a while back, thinking that was pretty damn tragic, but that looks like a comic book compared to this! I may sometime in the distant future, out of a since of sheer masochism have another go at it, or even pick up House of the Dead or worse yet Crime and Punishment. Why in the hell would I want to do that you may ask? Well, it’s because there are some writers who have the ability to cast a hook in your heart and drag you into the zenith of their hopse and then suddenly down to the very nadir of their despair, and Dostoyevsky is definitely one of them.

Nas Drovye, kids. That’s Russian for “Cheers!”