sometimes it's hard being right

so i spent my day at work finding other peoples' mistakes and making them fix it. unfortunately for one person, the issue encompassed months of work in which the mistake in question was propagated for over 6 months.

since i would not put my signature on the documents in question until the issue was fixed, i asked the guilty party to spend the afternoon fixing each mistake, crossing each one out, initialing, and dating.

at first i thought: is this my fault? did i not train properly?

no, silly.

the answer is that the analyst was a lazy mother fucker and didn't think i would catch it. this was also confirmed by the sheepish grin and apology which accompanied the returned documents, with a mumble of "i guess i wasn't paying close attention..."

it hurts to get burned!

my religion

found this on the craigslist "atheism" forum. sums things up for me very nicely.

"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." [Voltaire]

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism." [Einstein]

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzsche]

"I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life – our desire to go on living … our dread of coming to an end." [Edison]

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." [Lincoln]

"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?" [Arthur C. Clarke]

"Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies." [Thomas Jefferson]

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile." [Kurt Vonnegut]

freedom

i was just sitting here thinking about when andrea and i were in paris. the evening we finally went to the champs elysees, we walked up and down the boulevard and made it to the arc de triomphe. it was late afternoon and the sun was setting. there was a tribute going on at the base of the arc, commemorating some soldiers. a band was playing, and spectators gathered around the arc and across the street.

when it was finally over, we made it under the street and up to the base of the arc. we climbed the steps to the top, and the sun was about to disappear behind the horizon. it was a perfect view of paris on a fall day. the air was crisp, but not numbing. the sky was bright, lit up with orange and pinks amidst whips of clouds on the horizon, easing into white, gray, then light blue. we took pictures, laughed, talked with people, and absorbed the evening. as we descended to the bottom, we took the time to enjoy the sculptures on the arc. large flood lights were embedded in the ground and pointed right to them, illuminating the details. we ran around all 4 points of the arc, strategically standing over the floodlights to try and get an eerie photo basked in the glow.

that night, it felt like we spent an eternity there, when in fact it only was a few hours. i think it was because i finally let go of everything - i was on vacation. i was free to release the worries of everyday life and live in the moment in it's truest sense. it's really hard to do when you are thinking about it. but as i reminisce about that evening, i didn't even realize i was doing it. i had let go of everything. i felt relaxed, playful, and at ease. i felt happy. it was one of the best days i can remember.

music this week

andrea was really nice and let me "borrow" (aka put on my iPod) her smiths and morrissey CDs.

i've always liked the morrissey i've heard, but i never actually delved into his full length albums. now that i've done that, it could explain why i'm melancholy this week.

i want to hug morrissey and tell him that i love him.

shine a light

waiting for something that will never arrive kind of sucks. but the beauty is, if don't know that, you still wait. you can wait and wait and wait but it'll just never happen and you'll never ever know it. (unless someone tells you, of course).

stop waiting, start doing. new plans for a new year!

deep thoughts

i think barry manilow should be the next willy wonka. he can sing and he's creepy looking.

blogger is new... sort of

so i guess blogger is no longer beta and i can now log on via my gmail account. that is cool. however now a page of back-logged comments that i was unaware of requires my authorization to "publish" or "reject". i didn't even know this was there.

i initially set up my blog so that anyone can leave comments - that way i don't have to approve them. but i guess in some sort of transition from beta to the real deal, this changed and i missed:

• rafi's $0.02 on how dumb it is that i have 2 blogs with minimal content.
• hello! i didn't blog about my 2 weeks in europe.
• other random comments on my rant and rave about the israel/lebanon war

other than this and the MUCH improved spellchecker, i don't see much difference on my end. maybe if i used my blog more, i would. :)

>:P

step the fuck up. falling off my radar.