Not Necessarily Interesting News

• Admirals Club saves me from missing another connection. The company really ought to pay for my membership. #
• I'm at AUS: Admirals Club in Austin, TX http://gowal.la/c/Ndzm #
• Sitting in 1st Class. The guy next to me keeps saying how much better Southwest is than AA. Last I checked SW doesn't have 1st Class. STFU. #
• If you feel the need to remove your shoes on a plane you have no right to get upset if I fart on you as I squeeze past you to go to the head #
• I'm at Admirals Club Dulles airport in Chantilly, VA http://gowal.la/c/Niuc #
• I'm at Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna, VA http://gowal.la/c/Nk7B #
• Forget NASCAR. The South is getting some real racing. F1 in Austin? Awsome! http://is.gd/cphwR #
• Into D.C. for dinner. http://yfrog.com/0sm0laj #
• A bloody nose? Really? I can't remember the last time I had one of these. It's a bit inconvenient in front of a classroom I must say. #
• Power outage at the hotel caused by thunderstorms. Neat. Guess I'll sit and play games on the phone. #
• Tony brings the pain on an examinee. Really, dude? Trying to cheat and talk to other examinees during a test? What are you, 10 years old? #
• Tried a Five Guys burger while waiting for my plane. It's no In-n-Out but it's as good as you'll find on the east coast. Would eat again. #
• Not much worse than boarding a plane and finding out someone on the inbound couldn't keep down their dinner. You can't hide from the smell. #
• It's odd getting back to Austin before dark on Friday night. #
• Boss asked if I'd be willing to go to Bogota and Rio in the near future. I told my son. His response: Rio is the slum level in MW2, right? #

• Buzzin' good after free booze. — at LGA LaGuardia Airport http://gowal.la/c/LkJG #
• Um. Wow. Taxi I'm in just got rear-ended at a stop light. #
• It's quite stunning how different New Yorkers are than Tokyo residents. Totally different big city experience. #
• I left B&H photo without spending a dime. I think I'm sick. #
• Obvious photo op. http://yfrog.com/5ey22fj #
• I'm at Mustang Harry's in New York, NY http://gowal.la/c/LqoZ #
• One block from where I'm working this week: http://yfrog.com/3vdfkaj #
• This one is for Shannon. Yes, a slice buffalo chicken and a slice of Grandma's. Oh, so good. http://yfrog.com/emp4wj #
• +1 for NYC. Sushi delivered to my hotel room. I don't have to go out in the cold and rain. #
• It's only taken 9 years for the new WTC to get to this point. It might be done before my kid has grandkids. http://yfrog.com/afwk8j #
• Giuliano's pizza in downtown Manhattan=greasy nasty. Avoid if you can. Only could make it through 1/2 a slice. #
• A New York cabbie and a woman. If I don't make it out alive tell my wife and son I love them. #
• Been on so many planes lately I think the cloth pattern of American Airlines is embedded in my ass. #
• Ok, summer is here. Saw my first firefly of the season while driving through my neighborhood tonite. They always make me smile. #

I think this is my favorite pic from tonite.

My flight into La Guardia took the pretty approach to landing so I yanked out the camera and took some quick pics. I’ll post some more later.

Click to embiggen

• Listening to them speak Japanese over the p.a. for boarding to Tokyo made me just wanna ditch work and hop that 777. #
• Awesome. They cancelled my Toronto flight. I can sit for 5 hours in DFW or connect through ORD and get into Toronto 3 hours sooner. #
• I'm gonna start an airline. If you fly less than twice a year go fly Southwest. You're not welcome here. No 45min board times here, n00bs. #
• I can tell summer travel season has started. The planes are filled with morons. #
• Whose stupid idea was it for companies to expect you to 'self assess' your job performance? You're my employer, you tell me how I did. #
• Guess where I am. http://yfrog.com/1qsuezj #
• Cold rainy day in Toronto. Time for soup. http://yfrog.com/j5rxvuj Yum. Cream of broccoli. #
• Canadian traffic jam. http://yfrog.com/0xb66yj #
• Looking at job postings. One place is looking for a 'Linus Systems Engineer' They want an RHCA but can't spell Linux right? #
• I came to my current company to get away from corporate BS. It found me. I played buzzword bingo on the 'self-assess' forms and won. *sigh* #
• I'll give a shiny new Canadian Loonie to the first person to invent a way to reach through the internet and slap someone. #
• 1.5 hours to get through Customs in Toronto? Are you kidding me? Gotta love US Govt efficiency. #
• 1hr20mins to get through Customs on the way back to the US. — at YYZ Toronto Pearson International http://gowal.la/c/KNB1 #
• Well, I'm in the right country and even the right state. Now to get to the right city. Might even happen tonite. #
• Made it home just before the big thunderstorms started. Only 13 hours after starting out in Toronto. #
• Had a student this week in Canada ask if I'd heard of Round Rock Donuts. Duh! Guess what it made me crave this morning. Mmm, orangy goodness #
• Kind of awake now after a Monster and donut. 13+ hours of travel yesterday wore me out. I fly to NYC in 18 hours. *sigh* #
• Finally bought a new roll aboard suitcase. Spent way too much on a Briggs & Riley. Up side is lifetime guarantee, even if airline kills it. #
• That's better. I got my Maudie's before flying out. — at Admirals Club http://gowal.la/c/LgDT #
• Renewed my Admirals Club membership. Best $300 I'll spend all year. Without it I'm pretty sure I'd hurt some tourists every week. #
• Don't know to be happy or pissed. Got bumped to 1st Class for DFW›LGA: happy. Paid for breakfast already: pissed. Free booze will fix mood. #

Got a chance to throw together a panorama photo of Niagara Falls from the Canadian side. I took the images yesterday when I visited. I spliced together 8 images to make this. Full resolution is about 10,000×2000.

I haven’t visited the US side but I think the Canadian side looks like it’s a much better view.

Click below to embiggen.

Got a chance to drive an hour from where I’m working outside Toronto down to Niagara Falls. I arrived around 6:30pm or so and the whole place was shut down. It was actually kind of nice. All the tourist traps were closed and the tourists gone home for the evening.

There was a stiff breeze out of the east and since I was on the Canadian side of the falls that meant all the mist was headed my way. It was almost like rain. I was able to snap a few pics but didn’t want my DSLR to get drenched so I hid it in my jacket mostly. There were only a handfull of people on the CA side. It was pretty cool being able to stand right at the edge of the falls which you can’t do on the US side. You’re literally 2 feet from the water watching it go over the edge. Neat!

After freezing in the spray for a half hour I headed back to the car to warm up and drive back to the hotel. I drove through hotel row and all the shops still seemed to be closed for the season. I guess they open around Memorial Day.

I’m sure this place is a mad house come summer time. I’m glad I got to see it with almost no one around.

Why do companies these days expect you to ‘assess your own performance’? What happened to ‘You did a good job, here’s a raise’? Or ‘you fucked up this year. Don’t do X or Y again or you’re out the door’?

Now it’s a multistep process starting with: “List what you did in the last year” Seriously? You’re my employer.  Shouldn’t you know what it is I do for you? Are you happy with the job I did? Great! Tell me that. Was there something you didn’t like? Tell me that then so I know where I need to focus in the future. I’m a grown adult. I can handle creative criticism.

Next: ‘Give a list of your goals for the next year and how you will go about achieving them.’

Ok, this is easy.

1. Retire wealthy before the age of 40. I gotta get on this one soon as that’s only 7 months away. I plan on doing this by hitting the lottery. I guess it’s time for me to start playing.
2. Attend a party at the Playboy Mansion. This will be possible because the Bunnies will hear about my sexual prowess and invite me. I will then disappoint them when I point out that I’m married.
3. Ride a rocket into orbit. I’ll sneak into the Shuttle’s cargo bay. I haven’t figured out the breathing in space part yet.
4. Eat my weight in marshmallow Peeps. This time without throwing up. Easy to do. Eat peeps and not barf.
5. Drive a supercar on the Nordschleife of the Nürburgring. Fly to Germany, steal a Ford GT, and race.
6. Pilot an A-10. This one might be tough. I really don’t have a plan on this one.

There, that’s my list for FY’11. What? That’s not right? Looks right to me.

Then your manager gets to sit down with you and tell you if you filled out all their forms right, kicking back anything that isn’t ‘right’. If you know what you want on the form why don’t _you_ fill it out?

Having an employee assess their own performance just seems like laziness to me. I got out of management because I didn’t want to deal with all that HR B.S. It’s taking what was traditionally the manager’s job and foisting it onto the employees.

Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. If you don’t like how I do it, fire me. If I don’t like doing it, I’ll quit. It’s that simple.

Yeah, I’ll do it but I really, really despise the whole process. Not enough to quit my job, mind you, but it’s damn close.

I haven’t written anything here in over a year. I’ve been doing that over on Facebook. Now I’m getting sick of Facebook’s ever increasing desire to make my private things public. I’ll be killing off my Facebook account in the next month and letting all my friends know where they can keep up with me if they care to. If they don’t, they don’t need to visit.

I’ve always kept my ‘friend’ list on Facebook small. My rule has been ‘if I haven’t talked to you in person in the last year then you really aren’t my friend and I’m not going to ‘friend’ you.’ I have under 50 friends over there and could probably pare that down even more.

Anyone I care to keep in contact with knows where this blog is. Yeah, I’ll miss out on the informative ‘Visit me in Farmville’ and ‘Join my mafia’ invites. I know I’ll miss things here in there I might really care about but if it means I have to give up control of my privacy to see them I don’t really think it’s worth it.

So in 2 weeks I’ll ask Facebook to nuke my account and 2 weeks after that they’ll actually do it. Like how that works? You ask to nuke your account and they hold onto it for 14 days ‘just-in-case’ you want to come back. A nuke means everything I’ve ever posted to Facebook will disappear. Images, comments, wall posts. Everything.

If you want to continue to keep up with me I’ll still use Twitter, username TriggerTX and this blog. Images will go into my galleries here like they always have.

For more info on what I’m talking about see this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook#Privacy_concerns