I'm a PC and I'm obsolete

I have never been much of a fan of smart phones or texting, neither reading nor writing it, I may as well learn Klingon as learn the ins and outs of text messaging. That’s probably why I don’t now nor ever will own a so-called smart phone. I never had much use for them seeing as how I don’t see the need to be connected to the internet where ever I go 24/7. That’s what I find so attractive about my PC when I have to leave to go attend to the business of my everyday life, I know I have to push myself away from it and turn it off. Maybe I’m just getting old or perhaps simply old fashioned, but I prefer my human connections be done the old fashioned way, face to face or talking voice to voice over a standard telephone.

I did join Twitter a couple of three years ago, and brother what a hot mess that was at first, Twitter, the place where the English language goes to be butchered; 140 characters at a time. I still go there but most of the people that I follow don’t write like they would text, and I can read most of what my friends there write fairly easily, but there still are a few of those pesky Klingons that insist on squeezing every half a word that they can into that 140 characters. Nope, no cell phones, no texting for this guy, no pin sized keyboard that you need a number two pencil sharpened to the point of a light sabre to try to type with. I like having a 19 inch screen with a full sized keyboard to type with, I like having to full sized speakers to listen to. 

Am I old fashioned? Sure am, is my PC obsolete? Sure, as soon as I took it out of the box it was obsolete, technology moves too fast to keep what you buy today from being obsolete tomorrow. Every year Apple, Google, Samsung and the rest of their ilk come out with the next best thing, making everything that you currently own a relic of the past. The Way I see it- people are just going to keep buying and doing whatever makes them happy and that’s ok, just so long as I’m allowed to buy and do whatever makes me happy. Let everybody else chase after the next big thing, I’m perfectly content with my little PC, sitting on my desk in my little corner of the internet.  Now if you’ll excuse there’s a football game on and I really want to watch it now. On my big screen TV, and yes I know that’s probably obsolete too. 

Some people just don't want to work.

I really am beginning to think that I am quite clueless in regards to my understanding of how people think. Given the current state of the economy jobs anywhere are getting quite hard to come by, I personally was unemployed for a little over two years before I found the job that I currently have.  Trust me I was thankful to find it. Companies everywhere are feeling the pinch and in my little corner of the world Production Pattern Foundries are no different. Work in the past three weeks has slowed down to a crawl, where we were going guns-a-blazin, working six and seven days a week, suddenly, the orders for parts that we make are barely tricking in.

Last week they had to lay off 35 people from all departments, there simply wasn’t enough work to go around, so those of us they have been lucky enough to remain have been cleaning, shoveling sand and painting line on the floors to designate forklift areas. Everyone I talked to in our department have been speculating, “they’re going to lay the rest of us off next! You’ll see! It’s not going to get any better!” now, I’m more of a glass half full kind of person, but I listened patiently to people piss & moan about how they were worried that they were going to lose their jobs, how unemployment wouldn’t even cover half of their bills.  Well Friday rolled around again and nobody else got laid off.

The rumors persisted however, “they will probably get us all next week then!”  I must admit, gossipers and naysayers can really piss me off sometimes, but rather than waste my time trying to interject any kind of positivity into the conversation, I decided to go right to the source. I just asked two of the big bosses outright what was going on with the work slowdown, and they told me that it was nothing out of the ordinary that it always gets slow at this time of year for at least a month and then it picks up again,  so not to worry. And sure enough on Thursday morning they fired up the big main molding machine, the boss gave two of the naysayer’s an option, “it’s all the work we have right now so you can either work on the line taking off parts to be cut by the band saws or you can go home if you want.  It’s your choice.”

Both guys elected to go home rather than work on the line, WTF? They complain for three weeks about work slowing down, they fret and worry about getting laid off, and the first time that something encouraging happens and we get a few orders, they turn tail and run home. He only had to ask me once to work the line, in fact I was ready to volunteer if he hadn’t, we did 115 molds the first day and 130 the second day, no it wasn’t a lot compared to the 320 molds a day that we normally do but I thought it was encouraging.  I just don’t get it,  why do people walking around fretting all day and waiting for the other shoe to drop? Jump in where there IS work to be done and do your part, that at least shows management that you WANT to be there, and you WANT to work. If there is another lay off I have a hunch who is going to be next. And it won’t be me, not if I can help it any way. 

The Donut Apocalypse.

I stumbled out of bed this morning a little later than usual; having an unplanned vacation day off from work can do that to you sometimes.  I got up and showered and fell into my usual routine, made coffee, milled through the cupboards looking for something for breakfast, nope nothing, that’s when I decided to do the unthinkable, I walked to the local quickie mart to get donuts.. Yeah I know, that’s healthy isn’t it? Donuts for breakfast, what? Lots of people eat donuts for breakfast and they don’t worry about what kind of shape their in do they? After all; round is a shape. Isn’t it?  So I get about a half of a block from home when I begin to notice something rather peculiar, there were three- count em THREE figures lumbering along the sidewalk in front of me.

I immediately began to take notes of the three ominous figures; now about three quarters of a block ahead of me. They were of average size, shoulders were slumped a little, heads down, their feet appeared to be scuffling along, over all disheveled appearance,  not walking at all like normal people would. I quickened my pace to get a little closer as more clues began to develop. They were making grunting noises, but no legible language that I recognized was being used. That’s when it struck me, I was following three zombies! Three actual walking, grunting zombies!  At that point I began considering turning around and heading home to fetch my camera, but surely they would have gotten away.  I carefully maintained a safe distance of three quarters of a block; I didn’t want to get too close after all, being zombies they might attack even if I hadn’t provoked them.  

I tried to calm myself back down by thinking about my actual mission at hand, I was hungry and I wanted donuts.  Mmmmm..  Donuts, Donuts with powdered sugar all over them, donuts with glaze all over them, chocolate donuts, vanilla donuts,  low fat donuts, donuts with waaay too much sugar,  Kristy Kremes, Dunkin donuts, Hostess Donuts,  yeah, so I like donuts. But I had gotten so completely caught up in my donut quest that I had forgotten about the three zombies walking only a half a block ahead of me now. My fears of being eaten alive by zombies were soon dashed when we reached the stop light and I saw that they weren’t zombies at all, Silly me, they were just three teenagers texting on their cell phones on their way to school. But you could see why I got confused, texting teenagers do kinda look like drooling lumbering zombies don’t they? Now then, where was I? oh yeah, donuts..