"I'm A Moron. Common Mistake."

Honestly, I don’t try to complicate things. Things sometimes just get complicated around me.

Or, the other explanation – and given the evidence, it’s hard to dismiss – is that I’m a moron.

On occasion, I fail to be detail-oriented. That’s a flaw for a technical writer, and it’s something I’m working on. But right now it appears my occasional failure to be detail-oriented means I’m sitting once again in a cubicle in town as my new badge tries to make its way to me.

Here’s what happened:

About a week and a half ago, I got notification that my new ID badge for work was in. This is the high-security badge that’s the result of a background check and a wait of almost a year (it would be a year as of March 14^th). All I had to do was set up an appointment to pick it up.

Here’s where the failure to pay attention to detail falls (and I can’t verify this right now, as my saved emails are on my work computer, and that’s where the evidence lies). 

Apparently in the email it says where to go pick up the badge.

Problem 1: If this is the case (and I’m about 90% sure it is, given the snafu-ed world I’m in) it’s out of their normal practice. Traditionally when I go to get a new badge, it doesn’t matter where I go to pick it up.

Problem 2: Apparently the reason this matters is that these badges can’t be made locally, and have to be mailed.

Problem 3: I wanted to pick up my badge on a Friday, for reasons. Mainly because I don’t have to leave work early (and I mean HOURS early) to get to where I’d need to be to get the badge at either location (one of which, though technically closer to my workplace, is hard to get to as shuttles don’t run there and I’d either have to drive out for the day or see if I could wrangle one of the scarce company vehicles for the trip). If I do it on a Friday, it’s a quick, fifteen-minute errand. Any other day, it would be a minimum of two hours.

Anyhoo, when to pick may badge up Friday, at the wrong place. Very likely my fault, as I failed to notice (likely) there was a specified pickup location. Still . . . 

Sunday night, my current badge got shut off. So I had to be let into the building this morning and am now frittering (and I mean fritterin; memorizin’ jokes from “Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang” and all) away time as my badge and I try to meet up.

Had I paid attention to detail, I might have discovered where my badge was, and acted appropriately. However, wouldn’t it be nice if we were allowed to decide where to pick up our badges, because I’d pick in town every time just due to the inconvenience of getting to the other location. Those sending the badges out don’t seem to care.

Hopefully by the end of the day I’ll have this all un-fubared and everyone will just look at this episode as an unpleasant memory in an otherwise stellar-to-lackluster career (I have to be honest, because I will continue having my moments).

I’ll file this all under the rubric PAY ATTENTION, ZITBRAIN and try to learn from it. You’d think as an adult I wouldn’t have to keep learning these lessons, but, you know, being an adult is about 90% faking it until you make it.

Ironically, I saved this little self-missive in a public folder where anyone in Document Control could have seen it; fortunately it was only there for a few moments and in a little backwater that would have been difficult for anyone else to find. Still . . . evidence points to me being a moron. On occasion. And hopefully, those moronic moments are getting fewer and further between. One can hope at least.

Further bulletins, of course, as events warrant.

Update: Still badgeless. Badge is in town, but the computer system needed to activate it was down all day. So I try again in the morning.

SECOND UPDATE: I have my badge now. But the lady I saw first thing in the morning -- the same lady whom I've been talking since Friday to get the badge -- asked, first thing, if I had an appointment to get my badge. I wanted to scream. Then she said they typically don't hand out badges until 8 am. I was there at 7. Fortunately, her co-worker was much more accommodating.

Me for Veep

Dear Mr. Obama,

I’d like you to consider choosing me as your vice president.

I admire your idea of bringing change to Washington, however vague your ideas of change might be. I say vague because, like most Americans, I haven’t been following much the day-to-day primary process, and only get my news from the randomly-heard sound bite, occasional mentions on Digg and those whacked-out folks at the Huffington Post. Perhaps you have very firm ideas of what this change might need to be. Let’s hear them. Like you, I’m all ears.

What would my name on the ticket bring you? It could well change a red state (Idaho) blue. Okay, who am I kidding? The last time Idaho voted for a Democratic president was, I believe, for Lyndon Baines Johnson. And that was, if I remember right, because he promised to KEEP us in an unpopular war. So we’re a little whacked out here. We’ve had a Democratic governor – Cecil Andrus – and a fairly prominent Democratic senator – Frank Church. But such political affectations rotate around personality, and are anomalies for red-state Idaho. But with a native son on the ticket, you might get, you know, 25 to 30 percent of the popular vote here, which is saying something. You could get at least five percent of the vote simply because you’re not Hillary.

True, Idaho’s numbers don’t look promising for Democrats – You did win the state primary by a nearly four-to-one margin, but if the election had already been held, you would have lost to John McCain, who got just over 87,000 votes to your nearly 17,000. Of those Republican votes, I could probably earn you, at most, a dozen – and those would be immediate family members. Or some of them, at least. But there is a sizeable portion of the Idaho Republican party unsatisfied with the current crop of Republican hopefuls. Six percent of those who went to the polls May 27 – a total of 7,974 voters – indicate they’re uncommitted among Republican presidential hopefuls. Even in Madison County – touted as the reddest county in the United States – a full eight percent of those who voted in the Republican primary are uncommitted. That represents, of course, disappointment that Mitt Romney isn’t on the ballot. Choosing a Mormon VP (I’m waiting for your call, Mr. Obama) could help tip the scales. Not enough to win Idaho, of course; plenty of Mormon Democrats have proved that in the past. I’d bring religion into the race by asking everyone who asked a question about my Mormonism the Golden Question: Would you like to know more? That’ll shut ‘em up in a hurry.

What else could I bring? Doritos, probably. But I insist on having my own bag. We have a wiener dog. I have my own pair of steel-toed boots. If those aren’t good in politics, I don’t know what would be. Aside from a protective cup, I imagine.

The biggest thing I could bring is Change, Mr. Obama. Why pick some slick political insider with a hundred thousand skeletons in his or her closet, when you can pick a half-Dutch former journalist technical writer father of three who has an amusing collection of rocks that resemble pig noses? I may have a few skeletons in the ol’ closet, but they’re more along the lines of cornering my sister [name redacted to protect the innocent] in the bathroom when I was six and peeing all over her because my older sister Chris [name included because she’s not all that innocent in this case] told me that if [name redacted] didn’t let me use the potty first, I should pee on her.

I don’t know a thing about politics, the economy, the military, the balance of funds, mortgages (aside from how escrows work) and I’m in favor of putting the violence back in all those old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Give me an assignment and I run with it. All right, I run as far as the nearest pizza parlor, but I do indeed run. As a neophyte, I might find ways to cut through red tape, cut spending, bloat, graft, waste and, at the same time, develop a fuel made from rocks, and give you all the credit because, Mr. Obama, I am, generally, a self-effacing kind of guy. I also might spend all my time at the vice presidential desk surfing the net and whirling around in that big leather chair. But you’ve got to admit that’s more than most vice presidents do, don’t you think? And just think of the Village Idiot vote you’d capture. I won’t even require a secure, undisclosed location because, if there’s trouble, I’ll just head home to Sugar City, and there are people in Idaho Falls, only 26 miles away, that don’t know where the hell that is, so I can’t get more secure or undisclosed, unless I go hide in one of the lava tubes out in the desert. As a plus, I don’t hunt, so there’s absolutely no chance I’ll shoot a lawyer friend, even by accident. Even if I had lawyer friends. Even if I had friends.

Change this year could mean, Mr. Obama, bringing a complete political outsider into the White House. Don’t poll after poll show that Americans are sick of politics as usual? An Obama/Davidson ticket could bill itself as Politics as Unusual.

I promise I won't get all White Boy ethnic with you, either. You and your wife may fist-thump all you want. I'll settle for something along the lines of the Wonder Twins activating their powers or something a la Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. I'll be Barnacle Boy.



I'm not bitter, though I am religious.

Oh. And I own all eleven seasons of MASH on DVD, plus the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We could have us a time with all those plasma TVs in the white house, unless Dubya takes them all back to Crawford with him.

So, Mr. Obama, I’d like to hear from you.

Vice Presidentially Yours,

BD

Structurally Thinking . . .

Should it worry me that as a professional writer I'm having a seriously bad time writing a four-page essay (double-spaced, even) on formal writing? And should it worry me that earlier tonight, when I was talking to my wife about this essay, we had the following exchange:

ME: I don't think about structure when I'm writing.
SHE: You don't think about structure.

So I'm feeling a little self-conscious.

I think part of my problem is that I'm such an ur-writer, getting into the whole thing without taking classes and fussing a lot about how to write; I just write. It's probably evident that I don't have a lot of formal training, or a lot of coaching. But gosh darn it, I'll keep up with it all.

It also probably doesn't help that I'm sick to death of hearing how Michael Patterson is doing with his writing. Two novels now, the little shit. And he's a fictional comic character from Lynn Johnston's "For Better or for Worse." Is it wrong to be jealous of a fictional character? I think I need serious mental help.