Scoreboard III
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Another 3 hours. This time I started strong by successfully installing the wireless card. Unfortunately, I then had to uninstall the wireless card, re-install the wired card and re-configure the router. After re-configuring the router with correct security settings, I uninstalled the wired card and re-installed the wireless card. I make that an evening's score of Equipment 1, Cziltang 3, for an overall score of Equipment 8, Cziltang 8. I guess the tie-breaker would be that the Equipment was unable to satisfy the victory conditions (preventing me from using an active wireless network) so I am hereby declaring victory. It's good to be king.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Saturday, April 30 2005 11:30:03 PM

CFC
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Chelsea Football Club won their first English Championship since 1955 today. (For those of you who don't follow soccer, that is pretty much the equivalent of the Red Sox winning the World Series.) I am quite pleased that it was someone other than Arsenal or Manchester United, although I can't help wishing that Gianfranco Zola was still around to reap the rewards after years of service to Chelsea.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Saturday, April 30 2005 07:42:32 PM

Scoreboard II
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Another two and a half hours futzing around with the new broadband hardware. The Scoreboard now reads Equipment 7, Cziltang 5. The equipment scored first tonight by defeating my repeat attempt to uninstall the hardware, wipe the registry and then re-install the hardware. Then I discovered (after re-connecting the USB connection to the modem and a half an hour of tech support surfing) that my PC only has one (of 2) PCI slots that can be used to recognize a network adapter automatically. After removing the dial-up modem and re-installing the PCI card in the right slot, I got the computer to recognize and install the adapter. Then, to my unmitigated delight, I got the drivers to install. And, in a final blaze of glory, after restarting my machine, I got the broadband connection to work. On top of all that, after deliberately pushing the system with multiple pages with lots of graphics, this appears to have fixed the crash problem (although a review by the video replay official may disallow this score at a later time).

Unfortunately, the equipment scored a final point tonight when I was unable to configure my email to access my dial-up ISP's account (the place where all my bills get sent).

by Cziltang 
Posted: Friday, April 29 2005 11:24:11 PM

Stop me before I post again...
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As long as I'm at it, you may as well see this about a device invented to assist in the elimination of cane toads in Australia. I think the usefulness of the machine may be marginal for its original purpose, but the secondary applications could be significant.

Northern Territory inventor Andrew Arthur recently tested his "toad-blaster" audio Pied Piper - which broadcasts the cane toad breeding call, thereby luring the little blighters to their deaths - outside the Territory's parliament. Asked the reason for this unusual field trial, Arthur noted: "Oh, I see a lot of similarities in behaviour between toads and politicians, and the idea was, would it actually attract politicians, and it did."

I wonder if it can be configured for lawyers?

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, April 28 2005 10:03:48 PM

Because I can't resist
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Since I've killed most of the evening trying to figure out how to fix the broken permalink problem, I don't think I'm going to get to any (marginally) meaningful writing. So, I thought I would clean out my mailbox and get rid of all those "interesting" links I've collected but haven't found a way to work into anything useful. Truthfully, I could think a long time and never come up with a way to use this, so I'm just going to post it.

If the idea of Viking Kittens strikes your fancy, try this.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, April 28 2005 09:57:35 PM

More Toads
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After my post on toad-bashing in Australia the other day, I find I now am unable to resist bringing this story about German Exploding Toads to your attention.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, April 28 2005 09:49:56 PM

Thanks
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This is just a quick note of thanks to Howard at the The Smedley Log for letting me know my permalinks were broken. He also took the time to find the correct address for the links and used those addresses on his site rather than my faulty links. It appears to have been a missing "/" in a path name. I think it is fixed now. Anyway, thanks Howard.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, April 28 2005 09:18:03 PM

Benefits
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I have rarely been accused of being excessively coherent, and this post will certainly not change that. I'm kind of out of my league here, and I know it, but bear with me, if you will. I'm not a student of the labor movement and I'm only dealing in generalities here. (As near as I can tell, all of my direct ancestors were farmers, at least after they got to America.) So, if there are errors of fact here, feel free to let me know.

As I understand it, early union concerns in this country were primarily wages, working hours and working conditions. Later (say, post-WWII), after unions were solidly established and the idea of regular wage increases was firmly established, unions broadened the scope of their efforts to include employee benefits. Beginning in the late 40's workers started getting the benefits a lot of us take for granted now, things like pensions, health care, life insurance, severance pay, holiday and vacation pay, etc.

All of these benefits are essentially additional compensation over and above wages. Certainly some of them can be provided by an employer cheaper, collectively, than they could be paid for by individual workers (group health insurance, for example). But in the end, all benefits are simply additional compensation for labor provided by workers.

Now here's where I'm headed with this: Why is it incumbent (asocial responsibility, if you will) on employers to provide any particular type of benefit? Why, for example, does a company have a "social responsibility" to provide health care benefits? I would maintain that they don't. I believe that what has happened is that Labor Unions have been so successful over the years in expanding the scope of benefits that they have essentially changed the playing field and the nature of the discussion about benefits. It seems to me that because of this success, the term "benefit" has lost its meaning. We use the term "benefit" to mean something we actually consider an entitlement. "Benefits" are almost considered a right, rather than simply additional compensation for work performed.

(People who have been following my last couple of posts and my comments over at The Smedley Log will probably be rolling their eyes up in their heads, saying, "there he goes, defending Wal-Mart again." I swear that isn't what I'm doing here. I just had these thoughts that culminate in the following:)

Because unions have been so successful in changing the way we think about "benefits", we routinely say "benefits" when, in fact, we mean "obligations." Because of that thinking, we frame our discussion in terms like "Wal-Mart costs us $2.5 billion for public assistance, including Medicaid, etc". Why is that? Why don't we talk in terms of General Motors saving us X billion in public assistance because of the generous benefits they provide? Simply, I think, because unions have, through years of effort, successfully changed the meaning of the word "benefit."

What's my point? I'm not really sure. I just have this thing about language and the meaning of words. I think it is fascinating how the debate about an issue is framed by the way we bend the definitions of words.

Of course, in the particular case of Wal-Mart, there is the exacerbating fact that the Walton family is filthy rich. And we have an underlying assumption in this country that anyone who is filthy rich must have done something (or many things) wrong to get there. Otherwise, we wouldn't use the term "filthy" rich or any of the other perjoratives associated with significant wealth. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear likely that the Walton family has been or will be the exception to that underlying assumption.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, April 28 2005 12:07:18 AM

Scoreboard
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For those of you who seem to be enjoying the continuing saga of Cziltang's adventure with (non-working) wireless internet, the score is now Equipment:5, Cziltang:1. I spent 4 hours last night un-installing adapters, uninstalling drivers, etc. then following the error messages to try to fix the problems, then re-installing all the stuff. Then, of course, doing it all over. Repeatedly.

I actually got to the point where I was doing Registry Editing. I know enough about it that "regedit" doesn't scare me, but you know it isn't a happy day when you start playing with the registry. After all that, it didn't work and I'm back to the USB connection from the modem to the computer, with the driver that causes the system to crash. Still, when it is working it is a thing of beauty.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, April 26 2005 09:35:53 PM

Union Thoughts
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While I was researching the numbers for yesterday's post, I came across this quote:

"As America's largest company, with more than $285 billion in sales and more than $10 billion in profits, Wal-Mart has a responsibility to set the standard for customers, workers, families and communities. America's largest employer — with nearly 1.3 million workers — must reflect America's values."

Joe Hansen, UFCW International Union President

Editorial posted in the USA Today

April 18, 2005

I guess my question would be, "Why?" Why must Wal-Mart reflect America's values? Who made up that rule? And what values are we talking about? And who gets to decide what America's values are, or should be? And why should I believe anything about Wal-Mart from the president of a union whose biggest obstabcle to major expansion is that Wal-Mart has successfully kept his union out of their stores. Personally, I believe that although profits would probably take a hit in the short term, in the long run a more enlightened management approach would help Wal-Mart's bottom line. But don't give me any crap about Wal-Mart having a "responsibility" from a guy who is head of a union that is potentially looking at a million new members, given that the UFCW's membership has held steady in the 1.2 million member range for the last 25 years.

(By the way, as a follow-up to yesterday's post, and although I am perhaps being a bit snarky, I really would like to know what percentage of the "average" Wal-Mart employee's wages would go to union dues in a Union Shop Wal-Mart. I don't really have any experience with unions other than the entertainment value in watching the aircraft employees in Wichita repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot in the last few rounds of contract negotiations. Here's a tip, guys: you don't threaten to go on strike when unemployment is high and the company is losing money, you threaten to go on strike when unemployment is low and the company is reporting record profits. And when the company bigwigs get profit-based incentives, ask for your raises and bonuses to be tied to the same profit measures so if they cook the books to minimize reported profits it hurts them.)

OK, here's another one of those "truth in advertising" disclaimers I make occasionally, so folks will know what my (not particularly well-) hidden agendas are. I have no use for unions. I'm not particularly anti-union, I just think they are becoming increasingly irrelevant as they try to hold on to "life as it was" instead of looking to protect their members's interests in new and creative ways. I used to be very pro-union. Three things changed my feelings about unions. First was watching the Aircraft union leaders in Wichita get increasingly hysterical in their demands that nothing change; that the companies continue to provide substantial raises and pick up the costs of all significant benefits at a time when the price and quality of their products caused those companies to lose a steadily increasing number of sales to foreign competition like Airbus and others. Second was watching the teachers union in Wichita continue to demand substantial raises and free health care while at the same time demanding that every proposal to hold them accountable for the quality of their work be eliminated.

While I was interested in both of these examples, they are really tangential to my existence and so were only annoying or amusing depending on the level of hysteria involved. The one that really hit home was watching my wife's Grandfather, a card-carrying, dues-paying, loyal union member for all of his 35 years of driving a truck, get hung out to dry by the Teamsters over his health care. We watched as he was lied to, had the rules changed on him on short notice, get put on hold and then hung up on after 20 minutes when he tried to call (long distance) about his insurance, have his paperwork get "lost" repeatedly and all while he was paying the Union a significant fee every year for the privilege of continuing to be included in a healthcare plan of which his share of the cost continued to rise and the benefits continued to decrease to the point that he and Grandma had to turn to government programs to get their medical needs met. Perhaps that explains why I am somewhat skeptical when I hear the UFCW telling potential union members what a truly marvelous worker's utopia they would be in if only they could get Wal-Mart. Perhaps that explains why when I see the effort the UFCW is making to force itself into Wal-Mart, I ask myself how much revenue the union dues of potentially over a million Wal-Mart employees would generate and what that would do for the UFCW corporate hierarchy.

(Actually, I checked on this after I wrote it. According to the web site of the UFCW Local 1001 in Bellvue, Washington, union dues are $19 to $55 per month depending on your rate of pay and the number of hours you work. Which means the UFCW stands to potentially bring in upwards of $19 million per month if it could unionize all the Wal-Marts in America. Which it probably needs, given that of the $145 million of union dues that went to the UFCW International office in 2003, "$143 million was paid out in salaries, wages and benefits to maintain the organizational bureaucracy." Oh, and in case you didn't know, the UFCW is the 4th largest union in the AFL-CIO, behind the Teamsters, with 1.4 million members and two others. A significant number of unionized Wal-Mart employees would make the UFCW the largest union in the AFL-CIO. There's obviously no motivated self-interest at work here...

One other thing. I read somewhere, on a page I can't seem to find now, that union workers make 30% more than their non-union brethren. If the UFCW actually delivered a 30% pay increase to yesterday's "average" Wal-Mart employee, that "average" employee would still be about 83 cents an hour short of making the $23,705 a year the UFCW touts as a "living wage.")

Wow. That all came out a bit more venomous that I thought it would. I guess I didn't realize how much the thing with my wife's Grandfather pissed me off. But I think it just goes to show that even those of us who try, above all else, to maintain some civility and rationality in our discussion are still susceptible to the ramifications of the fact that very few of us consistently establish our positions based on logic and facts. We are, if nothing else, creatures of emotion.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, April 26 2005 09:09:27 PM

More Fun
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Well, this is just more fun than I should be allowed to have. I installed a gig of RAM on my machine tonight. It didn't (of course) solve the crash problem, but it sure recovers faster when it does crash. I guess it is time to remove a driver and install some hardware.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, April 26 2005 12:12:59 AM

Wal-Mart
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Wal-Mart bashing seems to be the sport du jour at the moment. The general complaint is that the company, which made a $10 billion profit last year, treats its employees like dirt, doesn't pay a living wage or provide adequate health care, etc, etc, etc. The general concensus is that the $10 billion profit is being subsidized by us taxpayers because people (and their families) who don't make a decent wage and don't have health care have to turn to government programs that we pay for.

The problem with huge corporations is that everything they do is huge, everything about them is huge and it is easy to get lost in the numbers. First off, $10 billion is a hell of a lot of money, and it doesn't end there. I got these figures from a UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) web site. In case you weren't aware, the UFCW is not a big fan of Wal-Mart, perhaps because Wal-Mart has been inordinately successful at keeping the UFCW (or any other union) out of it's stores.

Anyway, here are the basic facts as presented by the UFCW on the website:

Wal-Mart employs 1.3 million workers.

The average Wal-Mart worker works less than 34 hours per week.

The average Wal-Mart worker earns $9.68 per hour.

That makes average Wal-Mart worker's annual income $17,114, which the UFCW says is well below the Basic Family Budget requirement (a euphemism for "Poverty level") of $23,705.

Wal-Mart is also castigated for not providing adequate health care coverage for its employees. The complaint is that family coverage costs Wal-Mart employees $218 per month (which the UFCW says would be 1/5 of the average worker's check).

OK, let's do some math:

In order to bring the average earnings up to the BFB requirement, the average worker would have to earn $6,591 more per year. Based on the 34 hour work week, that would be a $3.73 per hour raise for the average worker.

Let's say we make Wal-mart pick up the tab for health insurance for all its employees. That would be $2,616 per year per employee.

Now remember, Wal-Mart is a huge company that made $10 billion in profit last year so they've got the money to treat their employees right if they wanted to or were forced to, right? Except that that "average" $3.73 per hour raise to bring the "average" employee up to the BFB requirement costs an "average" $8.5 billion dollars. And picking up the health care coverage tab costs another $3.4 billion. (That's $11.9 billion for those playing along at home.)

So now that $10 billion per year profit is now a $1.9 billion per year loss. How long do you think Wal-Mart is going to remain in business losing $2 billion per year. More importantly, how long do you think those "average" employees with their new "average" $3.73 per hour raises are going to continue to have jobs. And where are those 1.3 million Wal-Mart employees going to find "living wage" jobs with adequate health care benefits when all the Wal-Marts close? And what are the odds that these newly unemployed "average" ex-Wal-Mart employees won't turn to government programs to make up for the fact that they now earn $23,705 less than the Basic Family Budget requirement?

The simple truth is that it ain't simple. It's all well and good to say that "greedy corporations" should pay better wages or pay for health care or day care or retirement plans or whatever else comes to mind. And social activists and labor union organizers and a lot of very well-meaning people out there are more than happy to demand that corporations do this or that without any apparent awareness of the consequences of those demands.

Now, before anyone comes unglued out there, let me remind folks that I am not a corporate apologist. I think Wal-Mart is a despicable organization run by callous, greedy individuals. Do I think Wal-Mart should pay better? Yes. Do I think Wal-Mart should let people work 40 hours a week and provide better health care options? Absolutely. Do I think they routinely treat their employees like dirt? Yup. Ask my sister. Do I think they are guilty of dubious (at best) labor practices in their efforts to keep their stores union-free? Without a doubt. And they do all of this with an unhidden arrogance that is truly astounding.

The point I'm trying to make is that even with a corporation as despicable (and profitable) as Wal-Mart, the answer isn't as simple as saying they should pay X wage and provide X benefits. The idea that it is as simple as getting Wal-Mart to meet their "minimum obligations" and there wouldn't be significant consequences is, I think, a bit naive.

(After I wrote this and was re-reading it for the nth time, I realized that there is a significant error in my assumptions regarding health care costs, but the general point is still valid. It really isn't simple.)

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, April 25 2005 08:11:41 PM

Diversity Training
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One of the benefits of being older is that I've had enough life experience to know (sometimes) when to keep my mouth shut. Last week I went to the "Diversity Training" I wrote about missing a while ago. (The really ironic thing about the whole mess is that I probably value diversity as much or more than any of the managers in the Department. I figured out a long time ago that in corrections you need as many diverse individuals working for you as you can possibly squeeze in because the more diverse your staff the more likely it is that there will be at least one staff member who can develop a positive working relationship with the highly varied members of the client group. While I may, in fact, be intelligent, charming, wise, modest and a delight to work for, the last thing we need is a bunch of little "ME's" running around.) I got through the training by avoiding confrontation and keeping my mouth shut.

I can pretty well sum up the whole thing as follows: never, under any circumstances, do or say anything to anyone that will make them uncomfortable or offend them. It is your responsibility to know what might possibly offend everyone you work with and avoid all possible offensive statements and actions. And, if you are a manager, you are responsible for making sure that none of your employees do or say anything, ever, that will offend anyone.

Well, that's going to work. Makes you want to get promoted to management right now, doesn't it?

You know, at one level, I'm OK with the general concept here. I was raised to be nice to everyone, not judge a book by its cover, and not be cruel to people. (One of the reasons I can't write fiction is that this idea was drilled into me so much as a child that I still get physically uncomfortable when I try to contemplate specific, deliberately hurtful dialog. Consequently, my bad guys all come off as moderately annoying.)

But, on a different level, I find the whole idea repulsive. In this "respect everyone" mandate, being decent to everyone has been co-opted by the relativism of the far left. (Note that I didn't say "liberals." There are a lot of intelligent, rational, thoughtful people out there who call themselves liberal. I'm talking about the far left that seems to drive the Politically Correct agenda and our national victim culture, the professionally and perpetually offended. Hey, that sounds like a useable acronym: PAPO; the professionally and perpetually offended. You saw it here first.) This is the relativism that says you must respect everyone, not because they've earned your respect, but because every person is unique and deserves respect. No one is better than anyone else, they are just different. No culture or religion is better than another, they are just different. This is the relativism that says you don't be considerate to everyone because it is a good thing to do, you have to, because everyone is the same and deserves such treatment. This is the relativism that says that because there is no inherent value in one characteristic over another, the only important thing is how people feel. This is how you get schools who won't publish an Honor Roll because there is nothing inherently more valuable in getting good grades than in getting bad grades, so the important thing is that none of the children should feel bad.

The point is that instead of it being a good thing to be decent to other people, this agenda demands that doing anything that even implies that one thing might be better or worse than another is wrong and unenlightened (how's that for irony) because everything is relative and there is no objective difference (except for the things they don't like, apparently) and such activities make people feel bad.

So, go ahead and call me unenlightened, but I am still hopelessly convinced that there is an objective reality (which I currently live in) with objective differences in the quality and value of the things and people in that reality. So I get a bit testy when people tell me I have to "respect" everyone, knowing that it is not about it being a good thing (because there is no such thing), its only about no one ever feeling bad for any reason. In my world, the ability to discriminate between the quality and value of objects (and for that matter, people and their actions) is inherently necessary. Being able to distinguish quality is why I drink Laphroaig and not Thunderbird and why I drive a Ford and not a Yugo. Asking me to abandon the objective nature of reality when it comes to interacting with people is offensive to me (not that my feelings matter in this case, me being a middle-aged white male and not a member of a victim group and all). Only a complete barking moonbat on the ultra-far left would really want me to throw out my ability to discriminate between quality compliance with the rules of probation and half-hearted, unrepentant activities on the part of my clients, especially when we are deciding whether to send a child molester to prison or let them out of our facility to live in YOUR neighborhood. I realize this is not a "respectful" thing to say, but some of my clients are bad people and some of them have done things that they should feel bad about.

Anyway, the official Politically Correct position is that DIVERSITY is a good thing. I, myself, am in the mood to demonstrate my wholehearted acceptance of this idea. I wonder if wearing this T-shirt to work would qualify?

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, April 24 2005 08:51:43 PM

And more problems
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I think I've finally got all the navigation links corrected on the re-located website. In the process I noticed a number of things I want to change and I finally got around to updating the links in the sidebar a bit. So much for moving the site.

In the process I've discovered I have a new problem. Something causes my computer to crash when I'm working with web pages that have a lot of pictures, especially when I'm using multiple tabs (as one does when one uses Firefox...). I've narrowed it down to a driver problem (with the help of the Microsoft error reporting gizmo in XP, which annoys me to no end, but what can you do?). The only new driver I am using is the one for the cable modem. Basically, I have two choices: 1) give up the broadband so my computer won't crash (not bloody likely) or 2) try not to get too rambunctious with the tabs on graphics rich web sites and hope I'm not in the middle of something important when the inevitable happens. At least when XP crashes it restarts itself instead of giving you that worthless "Blue Screen" with the error codes which were like 32 characters long and didn't mean anything to anyone anywhere except the demented little weasel Bill Gates hired to write the damn things.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, April 24 2005 03:07:23 AM

More repair work
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Spent some time with the rest of the family, including a little jaunt to pay for Rat, Jr.'s new clutch and all the goodies that go with having one replaced. That eliminated essentially all of my disposable income for the forseeable future. (I've always thought the term "disposable income" was kind of stupid given that most of my income gets disposed of paying bills. Still, I guess it wouldn't sound right to say "unnecessary income"...)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, April 24 2005 12:27:38 AM