National Park News

The man who saves the National Park vistas | csmonitor.com

My friend Bill Wolverton has yet another high-profile article written about his exotic plant eradication crusade. I wrote an article about him three years ago that got published, and I also put it on my web site at the time. Bill's story is really great. And Bill is a character...Wild Bill. Yep, that fits.

I miss Bill. I miss Glen Canyon. I don't miss Utah.

No one wants entrepreneurs.

I've been looking for work around town, something to supplement my income and pay the basic bills until I can survive on income from my internet business.

I had an interview with an internet web site development company that was so surreal that I still cannot believe it. The woman interviewing me was less interested in my accomplishments and more interested in talking about hers, which were no different than mine. She was trying to talk over my head using Web 2.0 acronyms and a B.S. sales pitch she had obviously used with some success on people with lesser internet knowledge.

Then she told me that I would have to sign a no-compete contract. Then came a bitter diatribe about hiring employees, teaching them internet stuff (which I can learn on my own--the internet is a great resource for that!), then having them get "hired away" by the competition. That was my first red flag, because if you are a decent boss, why would people get "hired away?" Hey baby, that's just business in the real world.

Then I was told that I would be sued and taken to court if I broke this contract, and it was an air-tight contract and they (the company) would certainly win any litigation. THEN...

She then accused me of being a "mole" for a competing company because internet marketing is "EXTREMELY competitive." Yeah. I get that. Anyone that has built a web site to garner business in the last, oh, ten years gets that. Unbelievable. All this in the first five minutes of meeting this crazed woman. She was starting to sound unhinged, and I was getting more and more uncomfortable with her lack of trust. It was unhealthy.

I asked for flexibility to work from home a few days of the week, since it is an "internet" company. ABSOLUTELY NOT! she said. "We need you in the office. If you work from home you're working EXTRA--and we will text you, call you, email you at anytime because we're PASSIONATE about what we do." Blah blah blah.

Wow. So--I can't be trusted to work from home, but I might be subjected to company intrusion on my off time anytime of the week, day or night? Not equitable, not acceptable. I had heard enough at that point.

I got up and said "thanks, but no thanks" and walked out. In ten minutes, I had just been threatened with a law suit, accused of being a corporate spy, and entreated to become some kind of company shoe scraper, even though I couldn't work from home. As I left the office I was shaking I was so mad...all the shit that is still wrong with corporate America is still wrong, in my opinion.

People also hate that I have unverifiable employment because I owned my own business. I can verify that I had government permits to operate as a guide service/concessionaire; is not that enough? Apparently, if employers can't call and ask somebody about you, they are unwilling to hire you. Pitiful.

Is there any job out there where your boss and co-workers treat you like a human and actually extend some kind of trust to you, and respect your experience as a small business owner and independent internet marketer? Perhaps that company exists out there in the ether, but at this point I don't know.

Crocs: It's love-hate.

By Executive Order, Crocs Aren't Chic - washingtonpost.com

The President wears Crocs.

Crocs have already peaked as the "shoe to have," in my opinion. When Wal-Mart and Sears are making a Croc-knock-off, you know the rage is over. Or is it? You would never know by the way Crocs treats their retailers. Dealing with Crocs was a huge pain in the ass if you were a business trying to buy their product for your store.

We carried these shoes back when they weren't cool and built a fanatical consumer base for Crocs via the hiking and canyoneering community. We were a small, seasonal account, but we helped make Crocs what they are today. By the summer of 2005 Crocs would barely ship the order I sent in, and two months' late at that. By 2006, my competitor across the street lied to Crocs and snagged my account--and Crocs didn't even have the common courtesy to pick up the damn phone and ask me if I was still in business (my competition told Crocs I was out of business--I was not).

Crocs treats their accounts like crap. And now I find out this:

Could they (the president's Crocs) have been in a goodie bag at the May fundraiser for the Virginia Republican Party, which, according to the Associated Press, Crocs Chairman Rick Sharp hosted and Bush attended?

Grrr.

They are still great shoes for stream hiking and boating. I cannot deny that. But, as the writer of this column suggests, I WILL consider finding another brand of shoe for day-to-day wearing so I don't look like some white trash dirtbag shuffling around at Wal-Mart.

London 2012 olympic logo : WTF??

London 2012 olympic logo disaster : David Airey : Creative Design

Check out the logo for the 2012 Olympics. I didn't know what it was until I read further down. It's really...bad.

David Airey's blog is great, by the by. He has all kinds of design/internet/printing/advertising stuff. It's fun. Check out the link.

Our Camera

Damn it.

Our camera has gone missing, and it may not ever show up. We were helping my husband's sister and her husband clean their boat, and we were taking pictures and having fun in a Tom Sawyer "hey-kids-clean-my-boat-it-is-fun" kind of way.

Soon it turned to dusk, and we left to go back to our home. We left the camera somewhere at their house, either outside or inside. We have no idea. We loved that little Canon. It was the best! It has pictures of our new home, of fun at the lake with the speed boat, of dogs and cats and happy tree-covered bluffs of Kentucky. But where it is, I have no idea. We looked for it at length yesterday, going over the outdoor area where we were, looking in the garage, and looking again and again. Still, no camera.

And I'm sad and pissed off all at the same time.

ARGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

Father's Day.

I don't have a very good relationship with my dad.

He wasn't a very loving person. I only remember times when I was sick when I was younger than eight, I think, that he showed any love or kindness to me. As I got older we became enemies, and as a teenager there was no one I hated MORE than my dad. I think that maybe he was emotionally ill-equipped to raise children in a metropolitan area being from a farm in Oklahoma, and I heard stories about how hard my grandfather was on all of my aunts and uncles--and my dad, too.

We get along better now as adults, but still we run out of things to say after talking for just a little while. It's easier to be together in, say, a casino setting where we don't really talk. I respect my dad immensely for providing me with clothing, an education, a car to drive, and my insanely accurate moral compass and common sense. Even though he wasn't a loving dad, he did, in my opinion, create a responsible, interesting human being in the person that I've become. As a parent, I don't know how you do any better unless your child becomes the president or an astronaut or Mother Theresa. I love my dad, yes. But I don't have fond nostalgia for, or any sweet memories of, our time together as parent and child. I am in no way "daddy's little girl."

I suppose that's better than not having a dad at all. At least he wasn't some alcoholic jerk. I'm very grateful for that.

TB patient insists--yeah, right.

TB patient insists he was never banned from travel - CNN.com

This story is beginning to irk me. Mr. Speaker traveled anyway, even though he thought he had regular old HIGHLY contagious TB, not the drug-resistant, HIGHLY contagious TB that he does have.

I don't get it.

When prosecutors are idiots.

Sometimes, prosecuting attorneys are so fired up they refuse to see the facts of a case and send an innocent person to jail. Thank god this story finally has a happy ending:

Teacher’s porn conviction overturned - Security - MSNBC.com

Two things that really got me angry:

Superior Court Judge Hillary Strackbein granted Amero’s motion for a retrial Wednesday after determining that a Norwich police detective who was called as an expert prosecution witness had given “erroneous” testimony about the computer.

A date for her new trial has not been set, but prosecutors did not oppose the ruling, meaning Amero is unlikely to face any further prosecution, NBC affiliate WVIT-TV of Hartford reported.

Assistant State’s Attorney David Smith acknowledged Wednesday that erroneous information about the computer was presented during trial. He said the errors came to light when prosecutors sent the computer to a state laboratory for examination after the trial.

Since when is a police detective a "spyware/adware expert?" And since WHEN does the prosecution send evidence to be examined AFTER the trial? I hope this lady counter-sues the state and the Norwich police for mental anguish and suffering. Seriously.