Back, Forth, Back, Forth

I'm a purchasing manager at an aerospace company. That’s how I pay all the bills. My job is to keep everyone supplied, happy, and ultimately, try to save money. I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at my job. I’ve saved my company hundreds of thousands of dollars, and order times have gone down dramatically under me. It’s an easy job, but there’s one tiny aspect of it that drives me insane: copying and pasting lines from an online order to a purchase order.

Here’s an online order:

I have to highlight each bit of info, copy it, ALT-TAB over to Quickbooks, copy it over, then ALT-TAB back, then do it again, over and over.

It’s one of those stupid things you just have to do, but it drives me nuts, to the point that my leg starts to jiggle like I’m a puppy that needs to go. Back, forth, back, forth. I can sit and read a book for hours, I can type and think and type some more at my typewriter for just as long or longer, I can walk through the woods for miles and never be bored, but the stupid copying and pasting, it’s like the hourglass turns from a steady downward stream to a sandstorm in my eyes.

Back, forth, back, forth.

I was sent to Catholic school in the tenth grade because I was failing every one of my classes. I got into a few fights and mouthed off, and weekend suspensions were common. It was a boarding school, so a weekend suspension meant I didn’t get to go back to Vermont. I would wake up, go to mass in the morning, do various assigned cleaning jobs, and then there would be a long punishment "study hall". It wasn't for actual study, but for doing whatever they told you to do. One time we watched the movie A Man For All Seasons with the volume turned off. Another time we wrote the alphabet over and over for two hours. And one time we had to take a novel, turn to the last page, and copy the book, word for word, backwards, for two hours. I remember doing A Tale Of Two Cities:

“Known ever have I than to go I that rest better far, far a is it; done ever have I than, do I that thing better far, far a is it."

Perhaps that’s why I have such a low tolerance for the frustrating and seemingly meaningless tasks that come up sometimes…

Our glorious leader, President Barack HUSSEIN OBAMA WILL KILL US ALL!!@$!!~! Or maybe not.

There’s been a lot of screaming and yelling and fighting and mass emailing and pontificating about health care lately. On one side of the argument is the belief that the gentle, loving, generous Democrats will bestow upon all of us health care for all, which will make us all live healthy lives to a good age, at which point we will quickly die without pain. It will cost less than health care costs now, it won’t interfere with current coverage if you have it, and if you don’t have coverage then you’ll finally be covered, like under a freshly laundered comfy-dumfy blanket. On the other side of the argument is the belief that the Communist Crusaders are going to turn hospitals into gulags, where decent, hard-working white folk will be lined up and euthanized by gangs of dark goons straight out of Birth Of A Nation. And speaking of births and our nation, have you heard the one about where Obama was born?

I’m a Libertarian, but a moderate one. Like, I enjoy driving on a road that I haven’t had to build myself. And I like libraries. But I’d prefer if we didn’t get into wars like in Vietnam and Iraq and the one on Drugs. And while I wear a seatbelt religiously and keep my daughter snug and safe in her car seat, I think the Click It Or Ticket program is a ridiculous waste of government money and police resources. Because I'm a Libertarian, I'm supposed to immediately reject any government involvement in health care. But I'd also like my taxes (too many as they are) to do some good, for once, so I have chosen to listen and research and think longer than five seconds on the issue.

Every week I pay $85.99 out of my paycheck for pretty wonderful health insurance. The total cost of my wife giving birth was almost $10,000, but all I had to pay was a $500 co-pay and that was that. My only other real medical issue is that I have a thickened mitral valve in my heart, which sometimes gives me chest pains, dizziness/faintness, and all that good stuff. I met with a cardiologist, got an ultrasound before and after running on a treadmill, and was told that it’s actually pretty common but that I should keep an eye on it, as it can eventually lead to blood going the wrong way in my heart and, uh, you know, death. All my visits and tests dealing with my heart put me back a total of $20. So in summation, and in conclusion, I’d like to keep my health insurance the way it is, because it’s worth the $4471.48 a year.

Now, I don’t know how much of this or this is true or sensationalist misinterpretation, but the consistency in some of the criticism of the bill has given me the motivation to actually download the text and start reading (warning: it's a big PDF), which I think should be required for any politician who is going to be voting for it OR against it. It’s one thing to read the headlines and cherry pick and bitch and accuse and namecall, and it’s another thing to actually wade through the 1,017 pages and see just how it’ll affect me, my wife, and my kids. I should be done by September.

Jesus, I sound old. And now, to cleanse the palate: