Mr. Disproportionate Response

I’ve pissed and moaned quite long enough. Unfortunately, I started the Mr. Disproportionate Response blog just as my signature disproportionate responses were coming to a close. No longer am I nearly as angry or as insecure as I was. My quality of life is much, much higher. Things have changed, a lot, and pretty much everything that I would hope to say about the world, the government, politics, finances… Whatever–other people are saying it better, and they already have more exposure than I do.

Instead, I’m going to take this blog into a different direction. As of today, we’re going to go all Erwin Schrodinger around here. We’re going to play the other (well, AN other) set of quantum cards. We’re going to play a massive game of “What If…” Going forward, this blog will reflect an ever more divergent world and world view. Beginning today and with all of the dynamic events of the last few weeks, we’re going to run this blog as a diary of someone living a daily life in a world where things are turning much more bleak, much darker, much faster than they are in our world. Hopefully, my exploration of an increasingly dystopian world will entertain, maybe even thrill or surprise. Most of all, though, I hope that folks who see it will have the perspective to realize that no matter how bad the things in the world are, they’re better than they could be, and moreover, we still have the rights and power to make it better.

Let me say that again:

No matter how bad, bleak, and dark our world is, it could be worse, and we still have the right, the power, and opportunity to make the world better.

And so: It begins.

If you run a business, sure, that’s cool. Getting and keeping good PR is important and very much helps to promote a positive environment to drive and grow your business. If you’re making decisions, though, that alienate, frustrate, and confuse your customer base, however, the best way to fix your problems is NOT to silence and censor your customers, but to address the problems in a transparent, effective, respectful manner–even if that is to politely tell them, “No, the customer is not always right.” It at least shows that you’re paying attention to their needs, and not being dismissive or disrespectful. After all–a business without customers is no business at all. This is a lesson that Games Workshop would do well to learn.

This evening, a local GW store manager posted some information about an advance order item. After a very brief discussion, it was ascertained that GW’s new policy regarding advance orders is that if you order your item online, you will get it AFTER it goes to stores. This is in hopes of driving additional sales and support into the retail centers. However, when dealing with limited availability items, this also means that the customer might miss out on their chance to get said items. It’s a catch-22: Maybe get it right away, or definitely get it, but have to wait.

The customer in problem felt that this was not a particularly appropriate business model, and said as much on the public thread, here on Facebook. Initially, he questioned what the policy was, then when it was explained to him, he felt that the business practice was a little shady. He was not overbearing, coarse, or vulgar in his response. His responses were simply not supportive. Games Workshop’s response–as it largely has been lately, in response to protests about their price hikes, their de facto embargo on retailers south of the Equator, and so on–was to simply stifle that feedback by deleting non-supportive statements.

After having recently spent nearly $3,000 purchasing a new army, I’ve only assembled 7 of those models, and have only fully painted one of them. The fact that the business’ behavior, both from Nottingham and from the local retail management, has been so negative, I’ve just felt no draw and no desire to paint or assemble this army. This paradigm that they’ve adopted is not only going to continue to hurt their business, in general, but the hobby community.

As for me, though, I’m getting on fine. I’ve assembled two large armies for WarMachine and I’m in the process of painting them up. They look great, and the game is a blast. Cheaper than 40k, too. I’ve assembled, but have not yet painted my Malifaux figures. I’ve not had a chance to play yet, but seeing the models and reading the rules has been exciting–I can’t wait to play! Next is Battletech. I’ve purchased all of the core books, 40 miniatures, and several of them are painted and ready to march! It’ll be fantastic to return to the game that made me a gamer. Finally, there’s Infinity. With their rules published online for free, amazing-looking models, and gameplay that is fast, unique, engaging, and actually encourages tactical thought, rather than picking the right combinations of units, Infinity is on my radar as the next game that I’ll be buying into.

Games Workshop, I’ve been a fan for some time. Me love you long time… But now? Now, you’re on notice. The competition is here, their products look GREAT, and any time I’ve had to deal with their personnel, I come away from it feeling like a person who is valued as a customer, and with my needs satisfied. You, however, GW, are more like sex in a college dorm: Sloppy, uncaring, and as soon as our intimate time begins, it seems like you’re just planning on who you’re going to sneak through your door next. You’re on notice.

Last night, I saw this little gem:

“Let’s stop the posturing and positioning, stop catering to the political base and let’s start compromising.” –Pres. Barrack Obama

I have now seen this quote in three other articles, and it just sort of gets breezed over like it’s no big deal. For me, it’s like a sucker punch to the gut that just knocks the wind right out of me.

This man–our President–is sitting in a room with members of Congress, trying to work out a deal to fix problems with the nation’s debt. That’s OUR money, Americans! Your tax dollars are what they’re arguing over. Anyway, Obama’s sitting in a room with a group of people whose job it is to represent us, and in an effort to allow us to go $2.4 TRILLION further into debt, he tells those representatives, “Stop catering to the political base?!”

IT’S THEIR JOB. They represent the people. The people have said, “Are you NUTS?! We don’t WANT to go $2.4T further in the hole, we want our government to be fiscally responsible!” But, no. Our President, the Constitutional scholar, before having a pissy fit and storming out of the room, advised our representatives to stop representing us.

Upon joining Congress, these people swear an oath:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

As a veteran, I took a very similar oath. It’s one that I take very seriously, to this day, and it’s one that I would HOPE that our representatives would likewise take to heart. It is their duty to represent the political base, and when the President tells them NOT to do so, then they need to tell him to STOP being a fucking wanker.

I look forward to the 2012 election, JUST so I can cast a ballot that’s NOT Barrack Obama.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/14/politics/main20079379.shtml

Got a new camera. Got s’more free time.

I’ve cleaned up the blog a little, and I’m about to set to work updating deviant art. Time to get back to having an online presence. Today, the blog and the photography start back up. In the next couple of weeks, I’ll get a garden going. My goal for June is to stop being my job and to get back to being ME. Even if this sleepy little town is no Seattle, it doesn’t mean I have to stop being what I learned to be.

My intent, I think, is to get to the point that I’m posting an update here at least once a week. New photography at least once a month. I’d like to get to the point that this is a sustained habit , and then, dial it up to the next level: Daily blog updates and weekly photography updates.

I’ve heard it said that there are only two kinds of uncles in the world: Awesome, cool uncles, and creepy child molesters. With the way things are going down at Homeland Security, I’m starting to think that they’re trying to cast Uncle Sam as the latter.

I keep seeing more and more articles and information on this new business from the TSA. This is insane. If you’ve not heard anything else about it yet, the TSA has these awesome new backscatter x-ray machines that look right through your clothes to see anything you’ve got strapped on under the cloth. Now, THEY say that it’s not overly revealing or going to expose a person, but… yeah. Check out some of the stuff on youtube. These things can generate some pretty high-resolution images of naked peoples. It’s invasive, and kinda makes me want to tape aluminum foil letters spelling out the fourth amendment under my clothes and walk through one of these scanners.

The next issue that’s upsetting folks is that if you don’t want them taking naked pictures of you, you have to subject yourself to an “enhanced pat-down,” which involves the feeling of breasts and genitals. As one blogger put it, “Kids, do not ever let a stranger touch you. If they try, scream, run away and tell someone immediately. Wait, whoops! Unless it’s government molestation. Then, shaddup.” I mean, it’s not even government sanctioned, but government MANDATED sexual assault. Wasn’t this kinda like why we let the Iraqi parliament hang Saddam? After the aluminum-foil 4th amendment, I might have to go in for the enhanced pat-down, and give some grinding and moaning during the groinage part. You know, to make the experience more interactive for the TSA…

Finally, there’s the medical aspect of all of this. TSA is telling people that there’s no risk to being bombarded, top to bottom, with x-rays. When I go in for a busted wrist, they layer me in sheets of lead-stuff, so that as little of me as possible gets x-rayed, so that kinda tells me that this stuff is not good. The people doing research with/for the TSA is saying that the health risks are “very small.” Very small is not the same as NONE. I’m sorry, but if someone tells me that I’m going to be in a very small traffic accident, or get a very small disease, I’m not going to be a part of what’s going down! Harm is harm, whether it’s tiny or huge.

These new measures from the TSA are no good. It’s invasive, it’s asinine, and can be done a million better ways than what they’re using. The fact that it ONLY targets air travel and not train, ship, or other transportation methods just makes the words of George Carlin resound that much more clearly: “Airport security is just an illusion to make white people feel safe.”

Well, it’s Wednesday and our Delta 2 is still parked at the SLC. Lately, I’ve been adding periodic updates on facebook from my phone as we get to key moments, but yesterday was fairly well silent. My updates yesterday were silent because HOLY CRAP BALLOON OPERATIONS WERE INSANE. Our normal process involves going through and doing a check of all of our radiosondes the day before the launch to make sure that everything gives us a strong signal and all of our radio frequencies are locked in, so we can just grab a sonde and launch when it’s time to put a balloon up.

We did that Monday night so yesterday morning, everything seemed fine. We prepared to put up our first balloon, and we could just not get the sonde to give us a good signal. We replaced the radiosonde, we tried to re-sync it… and of our 4 tracking computers, only one could get a lock. We got it out, but we’re four minutes behind schedule. We buckled down, we got back on schedule, and everything was fine. Sort of. Over the course of the day, we had a total of something like eleven low-resolution sondes–which are usually very reliable–fail on us. Twice, we had to shut down our tracking systems and reboot, just to get them to recognize our sondes. Finally, toward the end of the day, one of our 12 systems just shut down. It stopped talking to the rest of the system, leaving us down 8.3% of our ability to track balloons.

Adding to the chaos and stress of the day, we had something going down on base that had us on and off of lockdown faster than Lindsey Lohan is in and our of jail and rehab programs. The stories of what was going on were so confused and inconsistent that it’s hard to even speculate at which part was real. So far, none of my staff is sure what DID happen, but it was somewhere between an active shooter barricading themselves inside the headquarters and someone calling an exercise and forgetting to tell people that it WAS an exercise. It was nuts and just added all manner of complications to an already hectic balloon release schedule.

Everything that came up, though, we got through. We’re awesome. We fix problems. …No, that’s not right. We don’t just fix problems–we’re so awesome that we’re undaunted by problems, and manage to just power right through them. And despite having all of our tech take a massive shit on us, we managed to get good data to our launch officers.

The day was amazingly, remarkably stressful, and I was doing it all on two hours of sleep out of 32 hours of work. It was pushing the boundaries of, “Wow, I can do this,” and after all of that…

They scrubbed the mission again, right before launch.

Today, Wednesday, we’re on a stand-down, so our staff can get rested up before jumping back into the marathon. Thursday, we charge back into the bear pit. I just hope we actually get this thing off the ground…

Well, here I am, fishing for iPhone apps, and a find a way to update MDR from my phone. Good times!