EckerNet.Com

Doug has a post up regarding what some bloggers apparently feeling diversity is. Apparently you are only \”different\” if:

1. They can\’t be male if they are white;
2. You must have five women and five men;
3. You must have at least three non-Americans.

*sigh*

This reminds me of my companys approach to diversity. Only look at the skin color, the sex…or anything else we can check off in a column. We\’re diverse!! Because this spreadsheet says so!!!!

Wrong. For all you know those minorities were all raised in the same type of environment that all your whites were raised in. For all you know those females have had a more priveleged upbringing than your males.

It\’s a common belief though.

But I did have a ray of hope awhile back. I\’m not going to name names, but someone once expressed to me their exasperation with this policy and their view of what diversity SHOULD be.

They way we communicate. They way we think. They way we react to situations. They way we process information. The world views we have. For example, the Meyers-Briggs personality test was fronted as a much better alternative. If you know what type of personality someone has you are much more able to work with them. You know how they approach problems and you are better able to work together even though you view the world through different eyes.

Now you can nitpick all you want about the teachings of Carl Jung (upon whose teachings Meyers-Briggs is based on) all you want. And I\’m not necessarily a big fan of his teachings either. But the point is this sounded like a hell of a more sensible approach than simply looking at someone\’s skin color and making assumptions about them.

UPDATE: For the record, I have repeatedly tested as an ESTJ in the Meyers-Briggs test. Good descriptions of what that means are here, here and here. And even though I\’m skeptical of the test, I have to agree that these descriptions are fairly accurate of me.

Jack wakes up at home with a huge hangover he can\’t believe. He forces
himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of
aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And, next to them, a
single red rose! Jack sits up and sees his clothing in front of him, all
clean and pressed.

Jack looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order,
spotlessly clean. So is the rest of the house. He takes the aspirins,
cringes when He sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom
mirror, and notices a note on the table: \”Honey, breakfast is on the stove,
I left early to go shopping–Love you!\”

He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast and the
morning newspaper. His son is also at the table, eating. Jack asks,
\”Son…what happened last night?\”

\”Well, you came home after 3 AM, drunk out of your mind. You broke some
furniture, puked in the hallway, and got that black eye when you ran into
the door.\”

\”So, after all that, why is everything in such perfect order, so clean, I
have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me?\”

His son replies, \”Oh THAT!… Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she
tried to take your pants off, you screamed, \”Leave me alone, lady, I\’m
married!\”

Broken furniture – $85.26
Hot Breakfast – $4.20
Red Rose bud -$3.00
Two Aspirins -$.38
Saying the right thing, at the right time………Priceless.

[Hat Tip : Andy Theisen]

For the record: I am not good at trackbacks.

For awhile I was constantly leaving double pings on everyone\’s site. Turns out I had auto-discovery turned on and it wasn\’t necessary for me to manually copy/paste trackbacks when I post.

Has it gotten better?? No.

Don\’t misunderstand. I no longer manually do trackbacks, I let MT do that for me. But every once in awhile after I publish a post, MT returns the following error:

One or more errors occurred when sending update or TrackBack pings.
Check the Activity Log for the error.

So I check the activity log and what do I find??

Ping \’http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2141777\’ failed: HTTP error: 500 read timeout

So I figure the host is busy, the ping didn\’t go through. I try to save again…still get an error. Wait 10 minutes, try again. Nope, wait 10 minutes, try again. Success!! Ok…then I happen to refresh the post I pinged….4 trackbacks from me.

*sigh*

OK anyone with experience in GUI design see a problem with MoveableType interface?? Anyone?

If you don\’t answer I\’m just gonna post the damn answer anyway.

Should have figured.

I look in my referral log and I see a slew of incoming hits via the netdisaster.com site…they can\’t all just be coincidence. Someone has to be sending them. But no trackbacks, no comments, no emails, no nothing.

Who the hell is trashing my site by sending dinosaurs roaming across it!?!?!

Finally my crack research squad, newly sobered up tracked down the source of this diabolical unilateral pre-emptive strike. It\’s that dasterdly MAWB Squad. Well ladies, don\’t think I\’m not on to you.

And don\’t think we\’re a push over.

We are armed.

And we have an attack dog.

And I am obviously a danger to women.

You have been warned!!

Ok, I\’ve been in hibernation trying to get my new puppy squared away. However, during her naps I\’m allowed brief glimpses of the outside world. In short, it\’s f-ed up. I\’ve decided isolation is better.

Anyway, I\’ve heard alot (relatively speaking) about futher discoveries regarding the Red Lake shootings last week.

Apparently he might have accomplices. Apparently it might have been part of a larger conspiracy. In summary, apparently we still don\’t know shit about what happened or why.

I could go on and on about that. But I won\’t. We don\’t know enough to say anything yet. Besides, I\’m sure if you look enough, half the blogosphere is discussing theorizing half-assed guessing about it.

My point is this…

After the shooting, some students had said Weise had intimated last year that he planned some sort of violent act at the school last April, but they said they didn\’t tell school officials or other authorities about it because they didn\’t take him seriously.

Ok folks…stop not taking people seriously. I know, I know, don\’t cry \”wolf\”. But seriously, you can at least cry \”Heh! Possibly big fucking scary thing over there!!\”

He may have been joking. He may have been trying to get attention. He\’s also pretty fucked up. And I would be willing to bet that alot of other people who make these type of threats (especially in this day and age) are pretty fucked up too.

Maybe they don\’t all follow through on them (thank goodness!). But they still have issues. Issues to be worked out. Preferably in front of someone who deals with these issues, rather than behind a shotgun…which also deals with these issues.

…I know, I know…I\’m not the first person to say this, and dammit I\’m not going to be the last if someone doesn\’t pay attention and follow through.

Testing a new treatment for people allergic to cats on …

…

… mice.

Just the thought makes me giggle. And it\’s funnier because it\’s true.

I\’ve just selected Sadie from her littermates. I loved her color and she was the most active of the bunch. After I had watched her beat all her siblings in a wrestling match (even though she was the smallest) I had to take her. She\’s got spunk.

The ride home was interesting. I held her, while my dad drove my vehicle. She wanted to play…alot.

She does sleep quite a bit as puppies are known to do. Which is nice…occasionally I can catch myself a nap too. But more often I\’m trying to get things done around the house.

She whines when put in her kennel still. I\’m trying to work on that. It would help my ability to sleep at night.

Still working on the whole housebroken thing. Going fairly well…a couple \”oops\” but nothing too bad.

Still wants to chew on my fingers alot. Trying to break her of that. Good luck on that one Kevin.

I guess I\’m more worried about her not taking to her leash very well. Haven\’t taken her for walks yet but she hasn\’t gone to the vet yet. But I\’d still like for her to be comfortable with it or allow me to use it in the backyard.

Luckily she likes to play…alot.

Comments and advice are welcome

Yes I\’m alive. Yes I have pics.

But honestly this puppy has me exhausted.

I\’m out of touch with the world and have no energy nor desire to try to figure anything out right now.

She\’s sleeping right now…in her kennel…and she is NOT whining for once. I\’m going take advantage of this and get sleep while I can.

Posting be damned…

I\’ll try tomorrow.

Things will be getting (more?) chaotic here very shortly.

Tomorrow I will be picking up Sadie, my new puppy from the breeder. Tomorrow I will be learning how to give a dog a shot. Tomorrow I\’ll get a microchip implant taken care of.

Sunday the whole family and associate members of the family (yes…we\’re like the mob…the real one, not the M.O.B.) are coming over for Easter dinner and to see the new puppy of course.

Monday is our first vet appointment and the formal beginning of my attempt at training

Tuesday, hopefully we\’ll have gotten this housebroken thing conquered because….

Wednesday I go back to work…sorta.

Bet you thought I forgot right?!? I knew you did. You\’ve never had faith in me. And I\’ll never forgive you for forgetting my birthday 6 years ago.

*sobs*

Ok…I\’m back. Yes, I have restored half the archives of my old site. The other half should actually be alot easier but due to laziness will probably take the same amount of time.

Why does it take so long?? Well EckerNet was started before such tools are Blogger or MoveableType existed. I did everything manually. Every post was an hour+ of manipulating HTML And scripts and such. I eventually patched together some sort of archiving process.

But since my version of archives was extremely proprietary, Moveable Type has no idea how to automatically import it. So I have to do that manually as well!!

I comfort myself in knowing that this is the last manual BS I have to do with EckerNet now.

Of course, if I could just find someone to file the role of EckerNet Secretary I\’ve advertised for they could do it all for me.

As a bonus you get your own mention on our Official EckerNet Staff List.