Motley Moose – Archive

  Make sure you let your peeps know where to find you!  

Do you ever find yourself in awe of where you travel to, without physically moving, when you wander off to various paths in search of a question on the intertubz?

In trying to come up with some brilliant, original, mind blowing, spectacle of an overnight type diary I started pondering whether moose are nocturnal creatures.

An hour later I had learned a LOT about the animal and how much effort has been put into learning about them, too. Let’s not talk about what I should have been doing with that hour, I’ll just say I’m glad the friend I was almost an hour late to pick up for a dinner event we were going to doesn’t read MM…….  

Parts of the southeastern United States had a mild but nasty ice storm this past Friday. Ice storms in January in the southeastern United States are far from unheard of, but this one threw people for a spin because it was so cold that one would normally expect snow rather than rain.

One of the easiest things to forget for people who usually don’t track weather is that the atmosphere is alive and deep. In the United States, there’s usually between 7 or 8 miles of troposphere above you — the layer of the atmosphere in which the weather occurs. Subtle changes at any level within that layer means big differences in what kind of weather you’ll encounter at the surface.

You currently seem all caught up in the idea of adopting the congressional district system that’s currently used by Maine and Nebraska.  You believe that it would give you a hand up in those Democratic and swing states where you control the legislature and the governorship.  You also know that everyone sees through what you’re doing and realize that it’s nothing more than a naked power grab.  Therefore, I have a little piece of advice for all of you.  Dispense with the pleasantries and formality of democracy.  Dispense with the whole concept of letting the people vote for their president.  Openly, and completely, embrace your naked power grab that attempts to subvert the will of the people and prevent that evil Democrat Party from doing pesky things like winning election.

So, how, exactly, can this be done?  It’s good that you ask.  You claim to love the Constitution and only want to enforce it.  Well, there’s a provision in the Constitution that would allow you to do exactly that.  It’s Article II, Section 1, second paragraph:

Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.

See these words:

in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct

?

That means you don’t have to hold elections to appoint electors.  You can just state that your state will have their electors appointed by the legislature, rather than by popular vote.  This means that you can just appoint Republican electors and it won’t matter that the people you claim to represent support a Democratic candidate for president and vice president.  You’re just exercising your constitutional authority.  It’s perfectly legal and it’s perfectly undemocratic.  In fact, there’s even precedent for it.  In the early days of the Republic, nearly all states had electors appointed by the legislature and not elected by popular vote.  In fact, it wasn’t until after the Civil War that South Carolina finally gave up that practice and every state saw presidential and vice presidential electors voted in by the people.

Please use this as your place to post news about health updates.  If it bogs down or falls off feel free to post a new thread.

Use this as your place to post any updates you have about GMB02’s health issues.  If it bogs down or falls off, put up a new post!

Dear Friends,

    My friend, Craig Dunbar, needs a kidney. His fistula, which is the port through whoch he receives his dialysis, is failing. Without a new kidney he will die. He lives here in Ottawa. He is a firefighter who has saved lives. Now he needs US to save his life. I will be writing other diaries about his fight, but today, I need YOUR help.

    We are doing a Twitter trending campaign. If you have Twitter, please, please, please, at 5pm Eastern, Tweet the link to his facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/…

which has more information about his fight using the hashtag : #kidney4craig

    Also, Don Cherry, those of you in Canada will know that name, has a son who has received a kidney transplant. We are trying to get him to mention Craig’s fight on tonight’s Coach’s Corner. Please tweet the link to Craig’s facebook page to: @coachscornerCBC

    Getting Craig’s mentioned on CBC on Coach’s Corner would bring his fight to the attention of millions of Canadians.

    Please, if you have the ability to donate, get tested. I will have much more information in the next diary I do on Craig and his fight.

    Many of you know that my husband, Dan, died while on dialysis, so this fight is very personal for me. I couldn’t save Dan’s life, but together we CAN save Craig’s. Please help, in any way you can.

    Bless you and thank you

    Love and Hugs,

        Heather

A couple of people had asked me to post about schedules in retail.

This piece is something I wrote about on another website in the past. Unfortunately, retail hasn’t changed much.

So here it is…

Vice President – you met him in Diary One – doesn’t like to be at the door to let people in very early on a Sunday morning (Yes, I’m sure you’re shocked by that.)

Therefore, “Bob” who is a non-manager, is given the responsibility of letting in overnight and early staffers. It’s very common for us to work without any managers or “assistant managers” in the facility. Bob is the go-to guy.

Bob also has the responsibility of printing everyone’s work orders based on a just-in-time schedule. He’s not in charge of creating the work orders, that’s done out of state. He just prints them.

We never know what the work plan is for the day until we physically see our work order. The work order might “authorize” overtime, so you need to be available. If you’re not available when overtime is asked, your hours are reduced as punishment.

The work orders can run hundreds of pages. This is harder than it ought to be for Bob to print because none of us, including Bob, are allowed a desk or computers of any kind. He usually asks a sympathetic back office person to leave a computer on for him, and then carries his paperwork around in cardboard boxes.

The work orders change every 24 hours. For example, members of the inventory control team might find out on Tuesday that they are working overnight that night. Or they might find out they need to show up on Wednesday at 2:30am to unload trucks.

Or a combination of both.

(One of the few changes for the better is that Corporate’s insurance company no longer allows the facility to schedule work shifts less than X hours apart. It used to be pretty common).

Otherwise, the expectation is that all workers will be available at all times.

We have no full-timers amongst our number except Bob.

As scheduling is so fluid, the paychecks are variable. It’s not unusual for me to have a difference of more than $150 in my weekly earnings from one week to another, or to have a few weeks at less than $100. On the best weeks, I’m scheduled to work a full 8 hours on a federal holiday, plus 32 hours of straight time: that can be nice money. On the other hand, for the weeks where I’m only scheduled for 8 hours split over two or three days, it’s hardly worth the transportation cost to come in.

Even that wouldn’t be so bad if we only knew ahead of time. Bob can sometimes guess: “Oh, for the last few years we have a sale on the Monday after Have a Solar System Day, so they’ll probably schedule you for 6am to 10am to stock Suns, then you’ll have off Tuesday. But the Other Team will probably have to work Tuesday night and you should be prepared to restock the entire Solar System on Wednesday. We’ll probably be scheduled for eight hours of that beginning at 8am.”

But those are only guesses at best. Bob is often right, but management likes to keep things “flexible” for “just-in-time inventory control”, and therefore won’t allow work orders to be issued more than 24 hours in advance.  

It’s all subject to change at any time; therefore, we don’t know what our paycheck size will be either.

It’s very hard to manage a budget when your hours are varied and your pay fluctuates. It’s also hard to look for a second job, take a class, or socialize.

Salutary Saturday, everyone. I am tempted to sleep in. May I, please?

But first I have questions.  If money was no object, where would you retire to? What’s the best side dish found in the deli? What is your favorite commercial (of all time)? What is your least favorite/stupidest/most annoying commercial of all time? What is the best love song?

Today’s Twitter Stream:

If women can marry Newt Gingrich, they should be able to serve in combat.

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) January 25, 2013

to call the filibuster “reforms” non-substantive would be an insult to empty gestures everywhere buzzfeed.com/johnstanton/fi…

— john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) January 25, 2013

It is more important to get down to the bottom of Beyonce-gate than it is to shine the light on GOP suppressing the vote. #msm

— The Toast (@TheToast2013) January 25, 2013

It’s funny how back in the 80s nobody realized how the movies all looked so 80s.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) January 25, 2013

Sight of hearse rocketing past me in HOV lane makes me ponder definition of “passenger.” @uffishl

— Thérèse Nielsen (@nyreader) January 25, 2013

The problem with Reaganomics is you eventually run out of poor people’s money to give to the extreme rich…

— Phlip (@Pen_Bird) January 26, 2013

Now let’s have some history: