Government Shutdown Electronic Drip Torture

I trust, as the flames die down and the whirlwinds stop, that everyone survived the Government Shutdown Apocalypse of 2018.

Not to belittle the actual trauma suffered by folks who were indeed impacted. I know of at least one personally. He was inconvenienced to no end.

But for the rest of us, GSA 2018 was a minor squib to be discussed on social media over the weekend before the vast, vast majority of us went back to work.

That includes me, employee of a contractor* to a federal agency.

That’s not to say we didn’t suffer along with those who did actually, you know, suffer. We had, instead, a test of a certain piece of criticality safety equipment that required, with only short pauses, a loud intermittent popping noise to play over the PA system. For more than four hours. I tried to record it, but mysterious things happened to the recording.

I'll try to recreate it:

Pop pop pop pop punk pop pop punk punk pop pop pop pop pop pop punk pop punk.

And so on. The "punks" were lower in tone than the "pops."

I wish they’d sped it up into something like this:

Most amusing aspect of the shutdown: various media outlets including the Washington Post and CNN had a “government shutdown” clock, which as of this writing let the WORLD KNOW citizens of the United States had suffered two days, 13 hours, 2 minutes and 49 SECONDS without an operating federal government. Mostly over a weekend when the federal government is typically closed anyway.

The Chicago Tribune has a telling anecdote of the shutdown: The furlough of two federal employees from a national monument visitors center. Which is normally closed this time of year anway.

And while the closure of the Housing and Urban Development office for a day in Chicago may have been an inconvenience, it may have been just that: An inconvenience, not a disaster.

As an employee of a contractor to a federal agency, I’ve been regularly furloughed – as have most employees – between Christmas and New Years Day since I got this job nearly 12 years ago. We have to use our paid time off to fill in the gap. Me, I’d much rather use my paid time off during other parts of the year, but whatchagonnado?

*Once again, the author of this blog is not in any way a spokesman for said contractor or said agency. He is a complete moron. Anyone quoting this blog for official reporterial purposes ought to have his or her head examined.