TC the Terrible

One of this blog’s regular readers works for the department of Veterans Affairs and wanted to pass along his/her thoughts on my post from this morning. But since he/she works in the IT branch of the VA felt it might not be the safest thing to use the comment form from a work machine. Instead hammered out a message on their handheld. Below is a reconstruction of his/her thoughts on how the VA has reacted to having so much data stolen.

Trust me, this is hurting me waaaay more than it is hurting you. The usual VA beauracracy is kicking in and now no one can burn CD’s (i.e., back up important data so that when the piece of shit computers we use go down it’s not completely lost), they are taking away all VA owned laptops, but not touching the laptops which belong to researchers because they were paid for with grants or University dollars. My job that takes 10 hours a day now takes 16. The people who do their job right are being punished by the top brass dickheads who are the people most likely to make dumbass mistakes like this guy in DC did in the first place.

Oh, by the way, the guy who did this doesn’t exist anymore. Before he vanished he was quite properly flogged about the head and shoulders with a cat-o-nine-tails made of 10 foot USB cables duct taped to a surge protector. As he was bording the plane to Antartica to run the IRM dept. for our boys and girls there, he was heard to say, “Paperless Workplace my ass!”

Don’t hurt me I just work here and they got my shit too.

The above comments pretty much sum things up. Have a wonderful night, and remember that Big Brother is always watching you.

Damn, it has been one long ass day today. Interviewing potential new hires is tiring. For every decent applicant it feels like we sat through a half dozen that weren’t worth crap. One girl even bragged endlessly about how she joined Toastmasters so she would be better at interviewing today. Let’s just say that if this is what Toastmaster’s turns out, then they need to close their doors.

Somedays my job sucks, but it never gets this bad. No amount of money could get me to watch nine minutes of Paris and Nicole acting like idiots. Well, okay, I would do it for a very large amount of money – but only if I were allowed to drink myself into a stupor first.

Who cares if my boss is reading my e-mail? All I’m asking is that they don’t discover my blog, or figure out what those stains on the conference room table are.

I’ve had enough for one day.

It’s the middle of the week and time to start doing all the things that I should have done Monday. Having the new guy on board is going to be a big help, once he gets oriented. Of course with the way things work around here the azimuth changes about every six weeks so none of us are really that well oriented.

On top of helping the new guy get settled in I’m on the hiring panel for the civilian in our office too. The first round of interviews starts today. It’s going to be interesting to see how these people stack up against their resumes. I’ve always found that to be fun, but then again most people consider me to be an asshole. Take from that what you will.

Too bad the ground breaking for the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial will be by invite only. It’s taken too damn long to get to this point in the process to start with. No doubt the Pentagon is going this route because of security issues, but it really sucks. The nation needs to be reminded again about what happened five years ago. A huge public turnout on the 15th might help along those lines. But what the hell does a old fart like me know? I think we should replay the planes hitting the World Trade Center about ten times a week on network TV to keep the anger fresh.

I can tell you that the anger is going to stay really fucking fresh at the VA for a long time to come. The spin at first was it was only retirees whose personal data had been stolen. Now it turns out that 80% of the active duty force has compromised data too. That’s a wrong as two boys screwing. Period. The VA employee that let this happen should be hung up in public by their short hairs. And that goes for their boss too. Being the government both dick heads are probably already up for promotion.

Well, off to the first of the interviews.