Monkey Work

I remember watching television re-runs of the television cartoon "The Jetsons" as a child. I actually liked it for its social commentary, for which I don't recall that it was known for. Honestly, I found the whole idea that George Jetson's job, that he was often complaining about and desiring a deserved pay-raise, was pressing a button. I don't remember him having to press that button very often, but it seemed vital to things, for the constant threat of a firing always seemed to dissolve away in the twenty or so minutes of any episode that featured his boss' angst. This was my first exposure to "monkey-work", which I define as paid work that trained monkeys could easily do. On "The Jetsons", George's "monkey-work" was a funny running gag that probably would be a little embarrassing in today's world as almost all of us just press occasional buttons as employment these days.

Monkey-work is everywhere. In my first job at a movie theatre, I had a checklist of things that needed to be done on my shift.  Other people did about the same thing on their shifts and that list varied very little over the months that I did that job. It was really easy to get bored with the monotony of it all, but the pay was supposed to make up for that. I got a few promotions, which meant that I had a different list of tasks which might require a slightly higher IQ, but typically only meant that I made slightly more money. Over the years, I can say that more than half of my paid employment was basically a list of simple tasks to do, for which I received increasingly larger amounts of money. Most times, I have functioned basically like a monkey, albeit an increasingly better-trained one.

I only really notice this these days because I don't really engage in monkey-work. The stark contrast came because my job just before this one demanded that I behave like a monkey, basically just following an intricate flowchart of canned procedures in diagnosing and repairing computer problems. If you followed the process religiously, the solution would reveal itself ultimately. Sadly, as a non-monkey, I never looked at the flowcharts and just found solutions by "the seat of my pants", often with far fewer steps than expected. One time, my supervisor both praised me for my efficiency and chastised me for not following procedure. It is interesting how much I like my present job and how much I disliked my previous one - the work was basically the same but the "monkey-ness" was really different.

If you want a sad realization, just know that most people, armed with some training and a decent procedure, would make adequate medical doctors or corporate executive officers, both basically very(,very, very) highly paid monkey-work jobs. If you find a better version of almost any paid employment, you are probably not looking at a better person, but a more detailed and involved procedure adhered to more strictly.

It brings to mind the global obsession these days with "STEM" training, which stands for "Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math", which are supposed to be the tickets to a vaunted high technology, high wage economy. Sadly, the extent of creativity imbued in the entire effort was basically spent in coming up with the acronym. The curriculum, for the most part, is an exercise in slavishly following a flowchart, reading detailed instructions completely (the mantra of schools and societies), and doing so quickly. If you look at education today, it can be summed up in the "timed test" culminating in college entrance exams that really only measure one's ability to quickly follow instructions. Apparently, these are the sort of skills the modern "college" and the larger society desires and rewards.

And what does the modern economy demand of us? It is the manufacture and consumption of a high volume of highly-marked-up and low-quality trinkets. Monkeys build such, monkeys consume such, and their masters profit from both ends by providing low-value products at exorbitant prices. The monkeys find it difficult to complain as they are often paid proportionately for their extremely low-skill labor, they are foolish enough to desire and buy over-priced and valueless trinkets, and they have few scruples to comprehend that they could do and have better. Every marketer knows that the best profits are to be made from the most naive and stupid consumers and therefore our schools manufacture these as well.

It brings to mind the excellent wisdom of John Taylor Gatto, the man who taught school for about thirty years and then walked away because he couldn't live with himself and what he and his fellow teachers did to children. As he began to look about for more purposeful learning, he investigated how the most elite American private schools prepares our next generation of masters and was stunned to see how different it is from a public education. The next leaders of the world don't engage in "monkey-work" themselves but know how important it is to impart such a living on their underlings so that their own superiority is an unquestioned reality. If all you need to aspire to is "monkey-work", you only have to be a monkey and your natural masters don't need to be much more capable.

If you are interested in avoiding a "Jetsons" future for yourself and your children, I would suggest a few things that anyone can do:

Avoid School-ish-ness.  If you can physically avoid it by homeschooling or perhaps fishing, that is best. On the other hand, if circumstances don't allow a real divorce from the institution, you can avoid the "dumbing-down" effect of school by putting what bits of time you have to better use than cruising the halls or creating pools of slobber on your desk.  I raced through math with good grades and spent my earned "free time" in class creating a little comedy called the "Term O' The Day" that I distributed covertly. No monkey could produce that!

Emphasize Production over Consumption. Fight the urge to spend your time and money trying to buy happiness or prestige. The only reason to have an iPad is if you are developing "apps" for it. Convince your kids that the only decent reason to be a "gamer" is to be a game developer. You will always do well to be more productive than consumptive, which I harp to the kids about a lot. Since you live in a "monkey" world, why not profit from them?

Build Your Creativity. Even if your creative efforts don't make you a dime (like this blog), you will be a far better person for having made the effort. Instead of watching TV, put on your own play. Instead of just reading a book, why not write one? Rather than eat pre-prepared meals out of the freezer, why not buy the ingredients yourself and make your own (and likely better)? Don't bother so much with a monetary cost/benefit analysis because being creative pays off in dividends far beyond the bank account.

Be "Value-Added". I used to do monkey-work for a government program, handing out food vouchers to poor families. I joked around with my clients and had fun bringing them "raw entertainment value" and I had one of the highest caseloads because my clients liked to come around! (I am not advocating the government dole here.) It would have worked in any endeavor and made people's days more pleasant and my life far more fulfilling.

Everything around us seems to encourage toward "monkey-work" and a sad life that accompanies a lack of real accomplishment.  Don't let it happen to you!

I'm Back!

After a bit of a hiatus, this blog and I are back!

I thought it might be good to bring up some of my favorite movies, a few which are what I consider to be "perfect movies", which I seem to recall blogging about in the past. Of course, as a person of Jewish ancestry, I can help but love "Fiddler on the Roof"!  I am a bit like Motel but the older I get the more I channel Tevya.  Nothing brings out a desire to think about my heritage than the premiere Jewish play/movie!

So, I am back and this is a really easy thing to do while I am constantly called to the door by cute little trick-or-treaters!

Home Server Reborn!

I actually reactivated this blog as a bit of a replacement to the old web/gopher server I used at home. I was using an old POS board that used old laptop hard drives that are very very fragile and everything that was transferred to them was ultimately lost to little stuff. I have upgraded that system to be totally solid state, but I haven't put it back into service for now.

Instead, I am now using an old consumer minitower with a software RAID in it, which should solve my worries about losing data again (at least for a while). For now, I am populating the server with some very, very old data that was backed up eons ago, some of which was on the previous server and some that never was, so things are a bit different.  Explore away!

So, I expect to continue the blog for a bit as a replacement, but with some interesting stuff on the home server that are probably unique due to their age.

The Great (Yet Premature) Down-sizing

It was almost a week ago when some spare hard drives, disturbed by my shuffling about in preparation for our upcoming move, dropped from a cabinet onto the open-faced motherboard that served as my web and gopher server for the past year.  The debris dislodged the sound card and jarred the hard drive enough to gouge the surface and totally ruin the drive.  I typically have a none-too-recent backup of the drive, but I have had to shuffle around the backup drives to put my daughter Shayna back into service, so the backup drive had been recently formatted and EVERYTHING is now lost!!

Fortunately, I had been slowly moving most of my core documents to cloud servers, so all of what I would consider to be the really important stuff has weathered this storm.  The server itself is back in service and there is a web and gopher server running, but they are both quite empty for now.  Both the old podcasts are totally gone, which is a bit sad, but it would probably be just as well that I render most of the information that went into the podcasts into far more concise text, probably for posting in the future on this blog.

Frankly, there were likely some very dangerous recordings and essays on the server that probably were very outdated and really needed to be removed.  It isn't good to have too much of your uncensored self out on the public web anyway.  It was okay when no one really looked at the site, but with job changes, moving, and graduate school in the offing, there was a good chance that something damning that I have said/wrote in the past could come back to haunt me!  I am quite prepared to attribute the falling hard drives event to a fortuitous act of God and be grateful for the happening...

If you go clicking on links to the old QuIX properties, I hope you are not too disappointed at the lack of objects to browse.  Life happens!

Navigiary Begins

After years of effort and trying to walk away from the thing, the first book of the Navigiary series: Escape, is finally out and available on the Kindle store.

There is also another blog that I have just for Navigiary. Surprisingly, I also allow commenting on that blog as well!

See what I have been working on all these years but know that Escape is but an introduction - the meat of the story is yet to come!

More than a New Year's Resolution

I am tired.  I find myself bored with my present life and the person I am right now.  I have a fine, fine job and I work alongside wonderful people, but I need to be doing more.  I need to become more and I am reasonably sure that this is also what God expects from me.  I hope you readers don't consider this a "cocky" statement as I consider it an indictment of my lack of activity in the area of rising to my potential.  I have no idea what that potential is, but I have not be making much of an effort toward discovering it.  I want to begin to rectify that, starting right now.

Every Sunday, we hold a family council and a bit of a "home evening" with whatever family members are available.  During the council, each family member has an opportunity to ask a question, present a concern, or make a comment.  Last Sunday, during my time to do "questions, concerns, or comments", something popped into my head and, after only a moment or two of thought, I commented that I wanted to share a personal goal.  With all the insight of a minute or two, I said:

"I want to celebrate my fiftieth birthday in London."

That may sound silly and totally unrealistic, especially given our family finances, but that is because you are likely not aware of the context of my statement.  Please allow me to tell a little about what almost unconsciously informed this goal.

Ever since my children were small, I have thought and spoke "internationally", which is to say that I dreamed of far-away places and things.  What would it be like to live in one foreign country or another? What places would be most possible for us to go?  What different cultures or languages would we have to understand to function well there?  Coupled with a total inability not to keep my thoughts to myself, I shared these questions and my research toward answering them with my family.  Over time, I began to see that some of my children were being affected.  My older daughter took it upon herself to teach herself Hebrew and to look forward to visiting and perhaps living in Israel which is not an inconsistent thing to do as both she and I share a Jewish heritage.  My younger daughter dreams of someday living in Italy and enjoying the beauty and art of that place.  Though my other children have so far expressed no desire to travel or live internationally, I would not be surprised if they quietly dream of such things or, at the very least, are familiar enough with locations outside of the USA to be far above the local average in a world geography exams.

When I was a younger man, I left a wonderful yet boring job and went to sea, getting a position as a seismic navigator hunting for oil.  It was an interesting two years, floating in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of west Africa.  Although I became familiar with various airports in exotic places, I took little opportunity to explore past being an airline passenger in the international terminal.  Although such travels whetted my appetite, it did nothing to address my hunger.

Unfortunately, outside of dreaming and flying a bit, I had not yet really taken my own advice.  I was encouraging my chlidren, but I was not being an example of someone who works toward the goal and accomplishes it.

I need to do a better job.

So, I don't know exactly how I will get myself working in London and in what capacity, but I have taken the first step to making it happen.  I have my passport updated and all my credentials in as much order as I can.  I am already interviewing with the company I worked for internationally over a decade ago and I hope they hire me and get my foot back into door of foreign travel.  It really helps to be there even occasionally when you want to live and work there.  It is also far easier to get transferred to London with a company than to get a job there as a non-resident non-citizen.  If I want help, especially from God, I will need to show everyone that I am willing to do as much as I can to make it happen myself.

I will likely keep you readers informed on how it goes.

The Asocial Unetwork

[Update: I do have a facebook account now, but that is only to advertise blog posts and such to the world.  I rarely look at what others post there.  Like me and be my friend knowing that I probably am not reading your stuff.]

I have just been regaled by the utterly thoughtless postings of several of my talkative extended family members on a "service" called "facebook".  My oldest daughter is an on-and-off member of this chronic exhibitionist collective, which is how I know anything about such things at all.  At the ripe age of 44, I am one of those "old farts" that avoids "texting", much less its more evolved cousins like twitter and a procession of social yammering spots.  I just never got interested.

The larger problem is that I decided long before this technology existed that it was far smarter and safer to keep your thoughts to yourself.  I can't say that I do a marvelous job of this, but I seemingly do far, far better than the typical youngish person.  In the distant past, people wanted their lives to be private and even went to far as to say that such a "right to privacy" existed or needed to be codified.  In our modern times, it seems no one even bothers to use the word "private", much less exercise privacy themselves.

I know all the tawdry gossip about the people around me because it is broadcasted to practically everyone through some social network.  The saddest thing of all is that these tidbits are not really gossip at all, these missives are actually posted by the person themselves.  Once upon a time, something unsavory such as an out-of-wedlock pregnancy was whispered around for weeks until the person finally admitted that the circumstances were true.  These days, the "mommy-to-be" uses something like twitter or facebook (does no one capitalize names anymore?) to inform everyone before the old-fashioned rumor mill even has a chance to warm up.  This must make "news agencies" infuriated as there seems to be very little "dirt" to dig about these days as starlets and CEOs just let their totally uncensored private parts "hang out" from moment to moment.  So much for "scooping" a story!

I only have a cell phone because my job requires it and I don't pay for a "texting" add-on, no matter how inexpensive it is.  I immediately saw that I would have what little concentration I can muster constantly interrupted by little non-sequitirs.  To think that I would invite further interruptions by signing up for a text message aggregator like twitter and the much more expansive social networks is just no where near my interests.  I have nothing to say at a moment's notice that would be proper and I doubt anyone else has useful things to say without some thought that an email would not improve.  I purposefully disabled commenting on my blog, which is the closest I will likely get to becoming electronically social - if you really want to say something to me, I prefer either an email or that you keep comments to yourself.  Rude, but true.

If you want to know what I do from minute to minute, I will say this:  I tend to breathe (and much more so now that I have discovered the Aveo TSD), I read various obscure texts, I ponder about life, talk incessantly at no one in particular, and write occasionally.  I blather on-and-on courtesy the podcast and I place the odd essay on my gopher server.  That is about all the "social networking" you are going to get from me!