So that's what you do!

I was eating dinner last night, a somewhat dissapointing carne asada burrito, when I received an email from a VIP. I mean this person's email signature has so many acronyms, abbreviations and titles, that it wraps across the entire bottom of every email he sends out. Obviously he is important, and he has to show us how important he is. I could go on and on about that, but I won't.

So this person is a Senior VP of Marketing, Technical Support and Product Development. Working with this individual, it has been extremely hard to understand what he does. He is out of the office, alot. He rolls in late, every day. Whenever you request something from him, he asks dozens of questions, to the point where a person will just give up and move on, doing it themselves or dropping it completely. The only time I have seen him follow thru with something is when he is cornered by someone with an equal or bigger title than his. And from everything I have seen, he will not hesitate to throw anyone under the bus to save his ass. A real nice guy. A marketing guy. A salesman.

So this guy has been on my ass for months about the signature lines on my team's email. He has continually pushed for me to have my people change to a generic signature, with no flair or flavor. I agreed, to a point, that there should be consistency and accuracy, but that outside of anything crazy, a little personalization would not harm anything. And besides, no one but him was complaining. Our company was bought up by a larger company. They have a fairly complex signature template, and this Marketing guy was kind enough to provide it to the company. We all implemented it, but a lot of us tweaked it a bit to make it look "tight." Nothing crazy. A seperation line between the body of the email and the signature. Bolded name and a font and color change on the "please recycle" line. All in all, the signature looks the same when printed out on paper. The difference would and is really imperceptible to pretty much anyone.

So, last night I received this: I noticed that your signature line is different from the template provided by (company name). This is a corporate standard. You should remove the bold and the line above your signature, standardize the font size and color. We need to make sure that others don't think it's ok to deviate, I'm sure you understand. Let me know if any questions.

A senior VP of a whole slew of departments has become the email signature police! Nothing else on this guy's plate was more important to deal with. Not the pricing issues we have been asking for his group to clear up. Not the contracts that we are still dealing with. Not the outdated and incorrect catalog. Or the fact that some of our mainline products are acting up, and he is in charge of Technical Services. None of that was important for him to deal with. He had to email me at 7pm, to let me know that I was not compliant with his template. Nevermind that he is not my boss, that people at or above his level have similar signature lines like mine. No. None of that was a factor for him last night. He put on his badge and made ready to round up all us "offenders." It was one of those moments that I could just not shake. I thought about it for the rest of the evening. I was thinking about it when I woke up. On the drive in, I could only think about how ridiculous this request was. I don't understand. I have a lot of questions. Not about email signatures of course. To me, this was one of those surreal moments, where again, you are reminded that people are getting paid obscene amounts of money to saunter around policing email signatures. Not to make this political, but I really hope that the checks and balances that Obama is putting into place will prevent this same kind of behavior at the government level. After all, if there ever was a place where you could imagine an email signature cop, it would be in the halls of Congress.

"As governor I am required to make this appointment."

I listen to NPR everyday. I wish everyone would take at least a couple hours of their day, and instead of listening to their Ipod, talk radio, or the drivel that constitutes today's music radio, and instead listen to NPR. The stories, news, and information that a person could learn in just a short period of time, is immeasurable. But, most people do not want to make that effort. It is easier to go through life, uninformed and ignorant to the world situation.

I am for some reason, extremely upset by the situation in Gaza. I am not Jewish. I have no links to that area. Unlike Iraq, there are no American troops involved. And yet I am disgusted to the point of anger with the actions taken by Israel. I will certainly state that I do not have a deep understanding of the whole issue, but on the surface, the action of bombing entire blocks, killing innocents left and right, in response to rocket attacks that have killed less than a dozen, seems extreme.

Some think that Israel has the right to defend themselves. But what is happening is equivalent to taking a machine gun to a bunch of kids throwing snowballs. Yeah, that last slushy ice ball hurt. It stung like hell! But would I be justified in mowing them all down with my machine gun? No!! Hell no!! But for some reason, there is support for Israel to get in their US provided planes and bomb the ever loving shit out of Gaza and the people living there. A little to much response. The spokesperson today for Israel could not complete a sentence without saying "uh, uh, uh" at least 10 times. All he kept saying and referring to was the rocket attacks. The same rocket attacks that the entire world knows, did not do much damage and loss of life. And when asked about Israel's role in breaking the cease-fire, how they have been quietly assassinating Hamas figures, inside the borders of Gaza, he hemmed and hawed and went right back to the "rocket attacks."

There is no justification for this kind of force. Israel, for too long, has been coddled and allowed to grow into a mighty military force. Yes, the history of the Jewish people is long and sad. Yes, the lands in question may have belonged to the Jews at some point in time. Yes, there was a holocaust. But how long can we allow that to be the excuse for their behavior? How much leeway do we give? After all, the land we all sit on was once inhabited by Indians of many tribes. But they were swept up and away over the last few centuries. Would anyone accept it, without question, if they armed themselves and started bombing the crap out of those they felt responsible for taking their land? No way!! No one would think that to be acceptable. But when it comes to Israel, and the Jewish people, so many stand by them, applaud them, accept that they are entitled to their actions. That makes no sense. At least to me.

I really hope that the incoming president and his politics will not just rubber stamp Israel's actions as being acceptable. We all knew that Bush would applaud them. After all, he would look like a bigger hypocrite if he did anything but. I know I will continue to think the way I do, and I hope that others will stand up and speak out. We don't need to be involved with other countries and their affairs, but we do need to speak out when bully nations use their power and might to overrun those that have little means to protect themselves. We all should speak out of these atrocities. But, that is just me....

So I thought I would.....

As we roll into this new year, which has got to be better in some respects than the last few, I decided I would give this blogging thing a try. I mean it is not like I do not have stuff to say. Those of you who know me, know that I can rant for hours on a multitude of topics. No, the bigger question is, is anything that I have to say, worth blogging about? That I cannot answer. But at least I will have the forum, even if just for myself, to just go off. So, stay tuned for what could be total crap or maybe, the next Oprah Book of the Month selection.

I promise to only write the truth. The truth from my perspective, of course.