Facebook Passwords: Employers and Schools Demand Access; Facebook and Senators Respond - ABC News

Facebook Passwords: Employers and Schools Demand Access; Facebook and Senators Respond - ABC News

Somewhat fitting, this comes to you a mere day after a release by the unnamed company that I work for.

I say unnamed to protect both myself and this unnamed company.

I must also note that my opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the unnamed company I employed by, nor am I a representative of said unnamed company.

So I went into work yesterday and there is an announcement waiting for us on the company's HR weekly release.   The announcement that caught my attention was a section dedicated to social media networking.  The company goes through a spiel about being careful what you post (duh), but also about the above disclaimer.  I will make mine universal.  I go to work and I come home.  Outside of work I do not represent whatever company I work for, I represent myself.  I would kindly respect that unnamed corporations should also refrain from representing me outside of said working hours.  I want it noted that their opinions and beliefs do not necessarily reflect those of this writer.

The announcement encourages you to "like" them on Facebook. 

As I am a firm believer of separating my private life from work life, I shall decline.

I wonder if said unnamed company had looked into the bad publicity recently in the news regarding employers attempting to either demand passwords, or imply that you have to grant them access to your private Facebook account in some way or other.

So, to said unnamed company, should you search my name on Google and find this blog, or should one of my backstabbing coworkers turn this link over to you, please understand that as a Free and Independent person, I refuse to represent you outside of working hours.  Also, please note that my opinions do not reflect your opinions and I prefer it that way as my opinions are my own.  Please stop trying to control or gain access to parts of my life that have no relevance or bearing on work schedules or hours.

And for corporate tools everywhere who tolerate these actions, shame on you.  People throughout our history have fought and died to ensure we keep our freedoms.  Oh, sure, we're not going to get arrested for saying what we want about the places where we work, but your opinions and independent thoughts or your desire to publicly share those thoughts and opinions should not have weight over your job unless you are sharing said thoughts on company time. 

Remember, "All Tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."  - Thomas Jefferson.

"This is how the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper." - T.S. Eliot.

What will you do?  Whatever they tell you?  Or will you do what you think is right?  Are you a corporate tool?  Or are you an individual who demands her privacy?

Gym Antics

My life is less than exciting, I will have to admit.  My most entertain part of the day lately has been the gym.

Now, don't get me wrong, I do not have a gym mom body.  I have a desk job body and I'm hoping to keep it from getting worse.  I sit on my arse all day tip-tapping on my computer listening to the world's misery.  It's a cheery place to be, so I guess the gym is far more entertaining by comparison.

Anywho.  Here are some things that amuse me in an annoying fashion. 

First of all is the male ideology that the weights section of the gym is man-town.  There is a forty something chauvinist out there in Webster, Massachusetts, who was recently shown I could do whatever he could do on those damned weights, so any who harbor this mentality can shove it.  Mind you, I had difficulty walking for a few days after my little show, but it was worth it.  Totally.

Also, and this is to my traitorous female coparts - what the hell, guys?  Why aren't you in the weight section?  You know as well as I do that we are not going to tone up by running on the elliptical or treadmill alone.  Stop letting the weight section and male wannabe body builders intimidate you.  Pump it!

Okay, and while I'm on it, what's with locker room modesty?  Does anyone else out there think that's weird?  I went to high school, and personally recall hordes of girls changing clothes in front of each other without one thought about it.  Since when did we become so modest?  Is it homophobia?  Is there a freakish new phobia about potential lesbians?  I gotta tell you, we all have the same packages, just different wrappings, so I don't get the big deal with all this locker room modesty.  I am not going to cramp myself in a bathroom stall to change my pants and my top and my shoes.  It's just not happening.  You don't like my flab, turn around.  I'm a mom, I have no modesty.  I've had students and strangers parade at the foot of a hospital bed staring at my cervix while writhing in pain.  You think I care if my bra color makes you uncomfortable?  Man up, ladies.

So here's what society says we should do at a gym:

Yeah, we've turned the gym into a night club, with hoodies.
Also, was anyone else fixated on the girl with the gray hoodie?  Ummm... Duct tape, I'm thinking.  I hear it fixes everything.  That needs some serious help.  Or at least some more support.  And this is why we don't post such videos, because these are the thoughts people like me have.

That being said, here's what I'd like to see at my gym:

Just an idea.  I mean, seriously, we could use some punching bags, don't you think?  ;)

You know you love me.

The Definition of Madness

A conversation in the car on the way to the Elementary Art Show

Kaitlyn - "You know we have another neighbor, Mom."

Me - "Who?"

Kaitlyn - "You know, our other neighbor."

Me - "Sweetie, we have lots of neighbors, which one?"

Kaitlyn - "You know, the guy.  I met him when I was three."

Me - "Yup, now I know who you're talking about.  He was there with the girl with the hair at the place."

Kaitlyn - "There wasn't a girl there.  Just the guy.  You know, our other neighbor."

Me - "Honey, I was being facetious.  You have to be more descriptive."

(You have to imagine Patrick driving down the road while giggling at this conversation.)

Kaitlyn - "You know, the guy I met when I was three."

Patrick - "My earliest memory was when I was five.  It was the blizzard of 1978."

Me - "I was four.  I fell in the neighbor's pond."

Kaitlyn - "Mom, our neighbor doesn't have a pond.  Don't you remember, I met him when I was three?"

Random Marriage Story.

I don't blog often enough, I know.  I'd apologize, but you know it'd be fake.

I am making an effort, though.  See?  Me, here writing.  Eh.

Actually, I have to tell you a funny story.  It's a funny story that only a married couple will appreciate.  I've been married for 6 years.  My husband has yet to learn the famous words, "Yes, honey."  Instead, he's still asking, "Are you sure?"  Men, just learn to say it, "Yes, dear."

So, two weeks ago I had my hair done.  It's totally a girl thing, getting your hair done.  It's also essentially vital to a woman's self esteem to have good hair.  My hair is my vanity.  It's very Biblical Samson, I know.  So, two weeks ago I go to see Amanda at the HairZone, in Dudley. She's amazing and works magic with my hair.  She lightened up and threw in some highlights and bobbed in some new layers.  Long and the short of it, my hair look gorgeous.

A few days later, my husband has yet to notice the hair.  Or, if he has, has yet to comment.  Instead, he opens up the bank account online.

"Honey," he says.  "I've been looking at the bank account trying to find ways that we can cut spending.  There are some discrepancies in our bank account that I want to point out to you."  I stole a moment out of eye sight to roll my eyes, because I know this translation:  "Honey, I've decided to take this moment from your life to criticize you and your spending habits, while I pretend to be innocent in these spending infractions."

So he pulls up the bank account.  He points to a debit from the account of $185.  "See," he says, "That's a huge chunk of money.  I certainly didn't spend that much money anywhere, did you?"

"Ah, I see what you mean."  I said to him.  "By the way, did you know that the line under the price tag there shows you exactly where that money was spent?  You see this one here, for $185?  The line under it says Market Basket.  I know that you are unfamiliar with this type of store, but this is called a grocery store.  This is where I buy all the food you eat each week.  And yes, it's expensive."

That shut him up for about two minutes, when he found the bill for the HairZone.  "You spend over a hundred dollars on your hair?!"  His head nearly exploded at the idea.  "I don't spend a dime on my hair.  I buzz it in the sink, and you're spending over a hundred bucks on your hair?!"

"Patrick, your hair doesn't count. You're going bald."

This led to a long debate about whether or not I should buzz my head and make a fashion statement.  He later stated I could buzz my hair if I wanted, but he would not be seen with me.  He then refused to admit that the way I looked, the way my hair looked, was important to him.  I decided pointing out his own contradiction would serve no purpose, so I walked away from the lost cause.

That's not my funny story.  That's a married story, and we've all heard them/had them/whatever.

Tonight, we're watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith on FX.  It had waaay too many commercials.  One such commercial caught our attention.  Sitting in a room of bubbles and whipped cream, sparkles a bottle of vodka surrounded by confetti.  Sitting on a swing next to the vodka with a bottle of whipped cream is a woman with platinum blond buzzed hair.  Seriously, it's as short as Patrick's.

He says to me, "Why in the world would a woman buzz her hair like that?  I mean, does that make sense to you?  Does she think it looks good?"

"I don't know honey, maybe she just didn't want to spend $100 every six weeks getting it done.  Or perhaps she simply got tired of her husband complaining about the bill."

Patrick groaned and buried his head under the pillow.  I, of course, in all my poise and graciousness, cackled like a fairy tale witch, laughing until tears spurt from my eyes.

Patrick sulked all the way into bed.

So, as the world's laziest blogger, it has been over a year and a half since I last posted a blog. I think this says wonders about my viewing audience.

I have discovered many things in the last year and a half. First of all, it is quite impossible to work on your BA full time, work part time, raise a small child and blog. Thus, blogging failed. As a result, my child is beginning to mimic me in many things that raises my hopes that she we be just as demented as me. I have also learned that being a Type A control freak does not make the school age years very enjoyable.

My baby is a Kindergartener now. She is in the dreaded public school system I hate myself just a tiny bit for putting her in public school, but it's not really a bad school system. Don't get me wrong, it is public school, but as far as schools go it's not so bad. Momma bear has a hard time with the school at times. I find that stupid people abound in this world and the public schools are no exception to this rule. With as many times as I've had to talk to the school you'd think they'd learn to say my name right.

Seriously. Lank Toe. Remember Home Depot is not pronounced Dee Pot, and neither is my name Lank Scott. Lank Toe. It's French people. Kaitlyn asks me one day, "Is my name Kaitlyn Lankscott?" Poor kid.

She brings home some drawings today. Friday's are the day she brings home all her school work. There's a paper in there that appears to have been drawn by a little boy in her class. In huge Kindergartener letters he writes "I LOVE YOU KAITLYN, ZACH M." Cute, right? Then below this is a drawing of her on the ground and him standing above her on some round thing. The teacher was kind enough to write down the explanation of the picture. Supposedly it's a picture of Kaitlyn having fallen off a trampoline whilst lover boy continued to bounce gleefully. The assignment was to draw someone you care about.

So, Momma Bear's response to this was to be disturbed, of course. What the hell? What, he thinks about people he cares about being hurt? Does this make him happy, how do you relate someone getting hurt to a title "I love you"? Freaking 5 year old sociopath in the making.
Now the reasonable person that is locked away in a small part of my brain knows that this is likely just expressionism and isn't it nice that he cares about Kaitlyn, but the larger more irrational part of my can't help but be disturbed by the child who relates love with injury and classify him as a member of the Future Wife Beaters of America.

Realistically she'll have a new love interest in a couple weeks. She had more so called boyfriends in her first semester of Kindergarten than I had my entire High School and Jr. College years.

Supposedly she's one of the teacher's favorite students. Now, she's my favorite kid in the whole universe, but I can't help but wonder if the teacher tells all her parents that. How would it look if she actually did tell some parents that their kids were little shits? "Oh, you're Keagan's parents. Wow, you've done a really shitty job raising him thus far. He is by far the worst hellion in my class. I couldn't help him with one on one teaching and the world's best educational funds." I suppose that wouldn't work very well for repertoire. Anywho. Supposedly Kaitlyn always does her school work first, then plays happily with the other kids. She does what she's told and listens to the teacher. I fear there may be a little too much Patrick in her. I'm going to have to work on rebellion techniques when she's older. Once, she told a lie to her teacher and her teacher was so freaked out she told the school nurse about it. Okay, so come to find out Kaitlyn really was sick that day. But, still! That's her tell? One lie? That was her acting out? Where is this kid at home? I get much worse than that here!!!

Why do they act differently in school?

Because these things happen to me....

So, I woke up today groggy and weary with the usual neck pain induced headache. I wasn't paying attention to my surroundings while walking Kaitlyn into the living room. Less than a foot from the living room I slipped and nearly fell into a puddle of kitty cat vomit. Yup. Vomit. It was very gross. I cleaned up the vomit, gagged a bit and went about my business.
I noticed the cat bowl was devoid of water and food, so I filled up some water and kitty crunchies and watched my little man munch. Talk about a mistake! After two bites of crunchies Edwin lost control of his bowels and vomited all over the banister! Horrified, I called the vet.
Three vets later I found one that would take him immediately. They asked if he'd gotten into anything or if I'd introduced him to anything new. I told them I'd put a flea collar on him yesterday. "Take it off immediately! Those things can be toxic to cats!" It was a flea collar for cats and kittens - said so on the box! I took the collar off and washed him in a sink of water and dawn dish soap. I dried him off and loaded the kiddo and the kitty in the Envoy and drove 40 minutes to the vet in Brooklyn, CT.
The vet trip was fine. Nothing too spectacular. They gave him a shot of atropine and told me he should recover. That was when they told me that Edwin was, in fact, a girl.
Yeah, you'd think I'd've noticed that. I've had him/her since March. He's/She's a very furry kitty and I never had any desire to go poking around in his/her privates. I have no obsessions with kitty testicles, so when I was told that he/she had them I went with it.
In retrospect I have a dog who is a lesbian and a cat who miraculously underwent a sex change within 6 weeks. I think there's something terribly wrong with my life... I seem to be animal cursed.
Upon coming home I discovered that the animal sick catastrophe was bigger than originally presumed. I found puddles of kitty diarrhea in the laundry room, the bathroom downstairs, and a small amount on the rug in the living room. I spent, without exaggeration, 2 1/2 hours cleaning kitty pooh puddles and disinfecting my house. The kitty litter box looked like a pooh bomb had exploded in it. Needless to say, I feel extremely nauseous and so tired I can hardly stand myself. This was a bit more excitement than I had anticipated on my day off.
Kitty seems to be doing okay. He's sleeping it off. I keep checking on him to make sure he's not dead. Poor guy/girl. Have to figure out what to do about his/her name now. Edwina sounds dumb and I really liked the name Edwin. He/she may just have to suffer through gender confusion.

If I were President.

I hear this a lot, "Well, it's easy to criticize the office of the President, but I doubt you even know what you'd do differently." So, that got me thinking, uh, yeah I have tons of practical ideas. Now, I know that the system is more complicated than that. We don't live in a tyrannical realm where one person makes these decisions. However, the office of the President is a powerful position that has been used irresponsibly in recent years, landing and keeping us in a dreadful recession.
So what would I do differently?
Honestly, I'd create a flat tax. You'd have to be reasonable about it. For instance you couldn't implement the tax on any individual making less than $28,000 a year as an individual or $56,000 as a married couple. And it should be a small percentage as well, since it won't wipe out state taxes, medicare or social security taxes. I'm thinking if we charged a 5% tax on EVERYONE making over the aforementioned amounts, we'd kick ass. We'd have to do away with loopholes for everyone, which would suck, but there's no point in a flat tax if there's a way to get around it. On top of that, the social security tax is not taxed on all amounts over $106,800 so those amount over 106,800 will be charged an extra 2%. That's what I think, but that's just me.
I also decided that churches today are righteous examples of tax evasion. Not all of them, just lots of them. Consider that tithes paid to a church are considered charitable donations. I personally feel like churches should have to prove their charitable works in order to maintain tax free/exempt or lower tax status. I don't feel like we should impose a tax on churches, but I feel if they're existing as a charitable entity and are enjoying benefits of this representation there should be an audit of sorts to maintain these churches are not abusing the system.
I actually have no desire to BE President, which is awesome since there has never been a female President and I doubt I'll see that in my lifetime. Just because I don't want the awesome responsibility of the office doesn't mean I don't have some constructive criticism for that which is in power at the time of this blog.

Here's a few hints for those in power right now:
Pelosi: You're a witch and a wretched representation of your race. You suck. Ass. Seriously, nobody likes your overcompensating power hungry push for power. Reign it in and be responsible.
Reid: Grow a pair.
Obama: You're a bully and you're using bully tactics to get your way since you can't get a majority support. Don't think having your Dem friends will help you if they lose majority in the Fall. You're too late, though. You've not done enough to preserve Americans or their livelihood and you haven't even tried to be partisan - the very foundation of our success. You, also, Suck.

I have a couple other thoughts. Unemployment benefits should not be extended past six months. I have spoken to many unemployed and I have to say a few things on the matter. Unemployment officers do not do enough to help those on unemployment seek new employment. I know people who don't know how to successfully apply to job postings online, yet the vast majority of companies hire via emailed resumes or online applications. I know of many others who know the system and choose not to seek employment actively. Also, instead of discouraging applicants from attending college to better their chances of hire, direct them toward online universities. These do exist and should be a tool offered by Unemployment offices.

I have a few more ideas, but I'm being called away right now. These are my thoughts and thankfully I live in a free country where I can share them.