Halffull.org

I am about to write my most racist rant ever. You will probably find it vile, spiteful, and those wussy liberals who I know read this site but don’t post will cry. This is rage for rage’s sake and I’m going to enjoy it.

You’ll notice I haven’t been as angry as usual lately. I’ve been suppressing. It’s wrong to get into politics, I say to myself, because I’ll just get angry and I won’t try to understand the other point of view and I wish everyone could stop conflicting with each other. Well you know what? Repression is just wrong. Repression hasn’t helped anything. My anxiety has gone through the roof the past few months because I’ve tried to repress anger. Now it gets unleashed, and just be grateful I’m not the type to unleash my anger on a bank.

I started picturing in my head today the potential race between Hillary and Condi. The image popped into my mind as they talked about it on Fox and Friends this morning. It is obvious to me that Hillary would say something sassy like, “I’m more of a nigger than you are, bitch”, and Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would cry and clap and it’d be ok she said nigger because she’s a Democrat. That makes it totally ok. If anyone else says it, they must be a racist. But by some bizarre twist of logic it’s ok to use that word if you have the little (D) next to your name. No, dude, it’s cool, I can say shit like that because, like, I totally believe the opposite of what I’m saying. And there’d be t-shirts saying “Don’t Sell Out” (I heard about a black guy running for mayoral office giving out t-shirts like this). It’d be all about sticking together and doing what’s best for the black community which always means voting for the candidate who will give more money to the sinkholes that are inner cities while blaming white police for the black-on-black crimes that occur.

The biggest problem in the black community today is that they are waiting for help. They expect it to come from outside. Meanwhile you have a serious problem with fathers actually staying around to raise their children, everyone buying into the rap culture, and money that should be spent on food and clothes is instead being spent on jewelry and cars and stereos and just about everything else you can get from a pawn shop or a “Rent-to-Own”. Keep in mind I’m going to continue making generalizations here. Generalizations don’t allow for exceptions, of which I’m sure there are several. But they do a fairly good job of describing the majority of the population.

Continue Reading »

If you checked into the site this weekend, you might have noticed redshift’s post about someone who copied and pasted an entire article from this site and copied it onto their weblog. A couple of hours after he posted it, we found a couple of other people who had also copied entire articles from this site and pasted it onto their weblogs as well.

So, to you who have cut and pasted entire articles onto your site, I have written you a song. Actually, in your honor I have plagiarized the song, but re-written the lyrics for you.

To the tune of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin:

Here’s a little blog we wrote
Some noobs want to copy it note for note
Don’t worry… They’re crappy.
Their sites are ugly and have no style
I guess that’s why they copy our files
But don’t worry… They’re crappy.

Don’t worry. They’re crappy!
Don’t worry. They’re crappy!

Can’t think of anything original to say
Just cut and paste because you’re totally ghey
Don’t worry… Be crappy!
This should be corrected in all good time
You’ll learn not to plagiarize in Junior High
Don’t worry… Be crappy!

Don’t worry. They’re crappy!
Ooh! Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh…
Don’t worry.
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh…
They’re crappy.
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh…
Seriously, their sites have no good content!
Ooh! Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh…
So don’t worry.
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh…
Their sites are crappy.
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh…

Continue Reading »

So the death toll is climbing in India, Pakistan, and Kashmir. It’s up to 20,000. I would recommend waiting until the dust has cleared a bit before making a donation so that the authorities have time to figure out where money should go. Should you like to make a donation now, I would recommend the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies. The Red Crescent is essentially the Islamic version of the Red Cross.

This may sound horrible, but it’s still true: This is a prime opportunity to win the PR war. Let’s show the extremists that they’re wrong. America can be a good place. We’ve listened to tons of whining about people being sheltered in the various super / astro / mega / ginormous / ultra / super-duper-special-happy-family-fun domes getting a cold sub after the first week. That’s the biggest problem in America. If your belongings get washed away, you have to find a new job and a new home and you get a cold sub. Guess what you do in India/Pakistan/Kashmir? In many cases you suffer a lot more. I don’t know. I’ve never been there. I do know they don’t have nearly as much money as us. Being poor in America is nothing compared to being poor there.

Honestly, I think your donation is better spent helping these people than helping New Orleans people move back into their city-which-shouldn’t-exist-in-the-first-place-because-it’s-below-sea-level. The mayor is clearly an idiot, and he’s hoping casinos will give him the revenue to rebuild his town. Oh and by the way, feel free to shower even though you’ll die if that water touches your lips. IDIOT. He’s desperate to bring his city back, which I understand. It’s home. However, he’s playing this very politically and not taking an overall view of the situation. He should be considering options, as should all the government officials involved. Instead, they’re going to spend billions. Members of Congress are rushing to spend our tax dollars to generate sympathy. Oh look at me, I’m sponsoring this bill to give more money to a sugar research foundation in New Orleans to give them back some jobs. Oh, it’s so hard to spend the taxpayers money. Remember to vote for me! It’s just the career politician problem though. They don’t recognize how far away they are from our actual interests. Mostly, their aim is to get in that soundbite in the news that we’ll remember so they get re-elected. Because hey, they’re different, and they know they can make a difference - if only they can get re-elected.

Continue Reading »

In a surprise anouncement today, God told reporters, “The Armaggedon has already begun. It started with ‘Glitter’ and reality TV, and it will end with a massive explosion from the center of the Earth outward.”

When asked to clarify, God said, “See, I couldn’t really compete with Michael Bay. I mean that movie was AWESOME. And Liv Tyler, man she’s hot. I really dig that whole, ‘I’m an emotionless, featureless robot’ look. It went well with her relationship with Ben Affleck, where you felt absolutely no emotion for two robots pretending to have feelings for each other. Anyway, after that movie I had to scrap Plan A for the End of the World. I was going to go to Plan B but then Tom Cruise beat me to it! I mean all those aliens, well, just the sounds coming from the aliens and the bright explosions, and well, I gave up entirely. Then the four horsemen were all like, ‘Dude, are we still doing this or what? C’mon, we could be booking another gig, but you’ve got us on reserve for eternity. It’s kind of unfair.’ I realized I owed them one. On to Plan C. That whole ‘Tsunami’ thing? Yeah I did that. Then I moved on to Hurricane Katrina, then Hurricane Rita. That one was clever, I had everyone pissing themselves because they forget Texas wasn’t going to flood like New Orleans. Now I’m doing Longwang in Southeast asia. I mean, ‘Longwang’, you’d figure people would catch on that I’m screwing with them at this point.”

One reporter brought up the wildfires in LA. “Oh that’s a totally separate thing. XXX-2: State of the Union? Man did that suck! I mean Ice Cube gets an inflatable boat to leap through the air and magically blow up cop cars? Then that train nonsense? Really, I was the most pissed off at Willem Dafoe and Samuel L. Jackson. They’re better than that crap and they know it. Willem Dafoe needs to get back to playing crazy-ass gay guys, I really feel it’s his specialty.”

What’s next for the Supreme Being? “Say Goodbye to California for good. It’s been screwing up America since it was founded, sucking up all the country’s water and making crappy movies that inspire cave-dwelling suicide bombers to kill crowds of their own people just because of Barbara Streisand. That whole place needs to go. After that Canada’s gonna get it. Sure they seem all sweet and nice, but if you look in their basements, man! They are sick bastards! Underneath that happy-go-lucky ‘Welcome to Canada, Eh?’ exterior, most of them are sadistic murdering assholes. I’m sending a blight on all their maple trees. I figure it’ll take about a week for them to starve.”

Finally, God said, “Anyone even reading this post is gonna burn with the author.”

This afternoon I was writing up the weekly news report (since I haven’t done it in two weeks) when I reached the portion about the anti-war protests at the White House this weekend and Cindy Sheehan’s arrest. And that was when it happened: I felt the hate rise up within me and explode onto the page. It was in danger of taking over the article, so I cut it out and decided to stick it here instead. You’ll get the regular news report tomorrow, but in the meantime, you’re stuck with my opinion.

This weekend, over one-hundred thousand people camped outside of the White House, protesting the war in Iraq, among other things. During the protest, police had to keep telling Sheehan and her fellow protestors to “keep moving”, and not sit down on the sidewalk. After having to tell them on three different occasions, the message was still not sinking in and the police started making arrests. Cindy Sheehan was the first to be arrested, while protestors chanted, “The world is watching.” Okay, whatever you say, crazy people.

Continue Reading »

You know if we ever were to open Halffull up to the flames of the internet we’d be subject to constant criticisms about little things we say, such as me using a matrix phrase. There’d be a 60-comment long thread beneath this post just based on the title and the thread would become complex enough to have intelligence and would take over my computer, launch all of the nukes in the continental US and then say, “I’m sorry Dave”. Thank goodness we make people register to post comments.

Moving on to my rant. While speaking recently Dan Rather remarked that Hurricane Katrina was one of news’s finest hours, comparable to the news coverage of Watergate and the investigative journalism that went on there.

Let me at least try to understand his viewpoint. Yes, there were plenty of journalists. Yes, they were climbing over each other to see who could get in harm’s way the most. Yes, some stayed in miserable conditions. But the finest coverage ever? Maybe including field journalists in with anchors isn’t fair. The anchor coverage has been terrible. It’s been terrible for a while. We have to turn to the specialty shows to get anything approaching coverage, such as Greta Van Susteren, or that woman with the short hair on CNN. Even Bill O’Reilly or Hannity and Colmes or Hardball are piss-poor coverage of events. Why do I say this? You’re right, I should be more specific.

I want them to earn their salaries. Continue Reading »

I now understand the frustration of people who say “Six Sigma is nothing but another fad”. It has become one, at my company. I hear people talk about older systems they used and they reminisce. The ones who actually understand Six Sigma reminisce. I also understand those who say Six Sigma is not a fad. It is a robust methodology full of useful tools. It is not magic. You are not permitted to turn off your brain and blindly follow the methodology. You should certainly not set up an entire department of bureacrats who compete with each other to set standards and rules for how one can be given a Six Sigma belt and which projects are considered Six Sigma and how people should be taught Six Sigma and just how they’re allowed to use Six Sigma.

Six Sigma is a toolbox. It comes with a helpful booklet in your toolbox that says, for building a proper project, use your pencil followed by your ruler followed by your screwdriver followed by your pencil followed by some spackel. It doesn’t always apply, but it usually applies. However, it was never meant to come with the following restrictions: You cannot move through a tollgate until you identify these six meaningless roles for your project and you fill out this type of tool and you then get approval to move to the next phase where you can only take a month - no more, no less, and you must fill out this tool followed by that tool followed by another tool, and when you’re all done, spend your time totaling up the savings to the company so I can tout it as my accomplishment when I talk to my boss. That’s right, I’m the one in charge, so your accomplishments count as mine. By the way, I’ll change all the rules next week.

Allow me to give some real life examples. I’m currently working on a belt. The rules for certification have changed three times in the past month; all major changes. All changes involve more paperwork. I’ve also been told to fill out useless tools after the fact (meaning the tool would only have potential use earlier in the project). At least twice I’ve been asked to fill out tools well past the point where they would have been useful. Why? The first time for a presentation, the second for certification. I should also mention that the program is being run by people who don’t even have full knowledge or grasp of the tools. The most important things to know with a Six Sigma tool are that these tools were around long before Six Sigma, and they require a lot of thought before being used.

Allow me to transfer back to the metaphor of the toolbox. Would it help if, while building a house, you ran around smacking the hammer into every piece of wood you saw? Then maybe you whacked some windows with the hammer for good measure? Obviously the example is ridiculous. Yet straight-faced people who earn much, much more than me have taught me that tools should simply be used without thought to their application or even questioning the reason for using it. I’ve taken training in Six Sigma and Design for Six Sigma and ironically at the end of both training sessions I was told only to use the appropriate tool when needed. Then why do you turn around and demand that these tools be used? Wouldn’t it make sense to leave it up to the discretion of the project team as to whether or not they use a tool? Granted, they need significant training in Six Sigma to understand that some of these tools can be very, very useful. However you should not demand that I perform a designed experiment as a part of my project!

Continue Reading »

There’s no escaping it – everyone in North America will be talking about Katrina for a long, long time. I’ve been wracking my brain for something a little lighter, something more entertaining that I could soothe the tension with, but there’s no point because all there is right now is Katrina and the fury of politics surrounding the disaster.

In fact, the politics are screaming out so loudly now that it’s hard to hear anything of value regarding the matter, like trying to locate children or get people some clean underwear. Earlier in the week, I mentioned the media frenzy that’s come out surrounding Kayne West’s anti-Bush comments during a fund raiser being held for those stricken by Hurricane Katrina. In fact, everyone has been talking about it, and I have to say, I actually feel sorry for the guy. From what I’ve been reading, it sounds like he realizes that the media responses to his comments have now been overshadowing the more important issues such as relief efforts, and he seems to be genuinely sorry. Not sorry for his anti-Bush comments, but sorry because he really could have chosen a better time and place to make a statement. And he’s right; he should have picked a different time to spew his venom because those comments hurt more than they helped.

Unfortunately, Kayne West’s comments have fueled more Democrat criticism about FEMA Director Michael Brown. Allegedly, (I heard this on Fox News, I didn’t actually see this myself so I use the word “allegedly”) there was an email or website that polled people on how they felt about the FEMA Director, and whether or not they thought he should be removed from his position. If a person voted to remove him from the Director position, a window would pop up asking for donations to the Democratic Party. And of course when the criticism poured in about the Democrats trying to profit off of a tragic situation, the Democrats were very embarrassed, removing the site immediately. Poor Democrats. They just really, really suck at this whole politics thing.

Continue Reading »

So I got appreciated today. I wish it never happened. We were all sat down in the conference room to listen to a six minute taped message from my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. The main points of his message?

1. We need to save money
2. We need to get new customers
3. You all need to appreciate each other more
4. We can only accomplish our goals if you all work together
5. This company is really about you

I would’ve burst out laughing if my boss weren’t right there. Ironically, earlier in the day I had mentioned the movie “In Good Company” to some co-workers because of the scene where Dennis Quaid questions the CEO on the nonsensical phrases and buzzwords and meaningless entreaties in his speech. Something about synergy, I don’t remember the CEO’s speech exactly. My boss sidled right up to my side and I didn’t want to be obvious so I finished what I was saying about the movie. Then I get a pretty similar speech from the boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. Now you might be thinking, “Yes, but you’re just a cynical employee. You’d never be happy.”

You may be right. I could name a few things that would make me happy. Perhaps a speech with this message:

1. Here are my major priorities
2. Here is how I will find solutions to these priorities
3. Here is where you fit in to that (followed by some division-wide examples)
4. No meaningless slogans!

W. Edwards Deming devotes quite a bit of attention in his book “Out of the Crisis” to meaningless slogans. If you’re a manager, take heed, because Deming was part of the team that taught Japan all it knew. Deming was a genius of industry who could solve all sorts of industrial problems on a high level. He knew that meaningless slogans simply made the worker more frustrated. They would feel that they should attain the goal referred to by the slogan but would find it impossible to do so from their level and would thus feel frustrated. Examples? “You make a safe workplace” or “We drive customer quality” or “Aspire to improve revenue” or “Only you can prevent forest fires”.

Continue Reading »

I’ve been hearing a lot in the past few days about looting and rioting in New Orleans, and isn’t it terrible — all these poor people running around with guns, scaring the daylights out of reporters, holding nice middle-class people in terror, etc, etc. I don’t mean to be rude, but really — is anyone surprised?

It’s self-evident that we continue to live in a racially and economically divided society — although those of us who live on the upper sides of those divides don’t have to think about it much, unless we drive through the barrio or the ghetto or the bad area of town that doesn’t have a name. So we can ignore that part of town, that part of society, and that’s fine in theory until something like, say, a natural disaster forces us to confront the existence of that part of society. And here it is — and it’s pissed.

Nice Middle-class White Person: Well, gosh, why are they all so angry? Why the guns and the looting and the rioting? It’s so scary!

Erm, let’s think about this. A hurricane is a predictable event. What to do in a hurricane is to leave the area. Those in town who could, left — which means they gassed up their cars, bought food and bottled water, and drove away. The part of society that’s rioting right now didn’t have that option — they don’t have cars that work, they couldn’t afford gas, they couldn’t get everyone in the family into the car, whatever — leaving wasn’t an option. Now they’ve been stuck in a flooded town with little relief aid for several days, and they’re asking why they’re not being helped. In the absence of a concentrated and immediate relief effort, they’re helping themselves to what they want.

A similar phenomenon occurred in Nicaragua over a decade ago — only in this case, the hurricane that swept through in 1994 was absolutely predicted and the upper class was absolutely told about it. The government just neglected to tell the lower classes about it and then provided no relief aid. The fallout from the event is still occurring, and the people have lost any faith in the government, because the government’s lack of action basically said “we don’t care if you live or die.”

Rioting and looting can be selfishly motivated, sure. Most of us wouldn’t pass up the opportunity for free stuff if we could get away with it or if the situation were right, even if we think stealing is wrong. But rioting and looting as a mass phenomenon spring from another place, I think: desperation and anger. When it’s been demonstrated (again) that you’re at the bottom on the scale of whose life is worth more, breaking the rules of the society that deems you worthless has got to become easy, if not necessary.

It’s all bad. But the system that allowed this to happen was laid in place long before the hurricane hit.