Mad Geek
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
State of the Zuke
Well, it has bee awhile. Things have gotten rather busy here at work, so I haven't had a load of time to update this site. How much has happened? Well not a lot, to be completely honest. But it's how it all happened that makes an interesting story.
Sunday I came back into town and went to the airport to pick Tine up. We missed each other so much and seeing each other for the first time in 5 days was like we were dating again where we couldn't stop holding hands. Fast forward about 90 minutes and we're back home. While watching TV our house guest sets fire to our kitchen by turning on the wrong burner on the stove and incinerating the hot mitt that was laying on it. No major damage done.
Fast forward to Monday morning. On my way to work I stop to get gas. The driver in front of me at the pump decides to back his truck up and hits my bumper. Confused as to why his truck was no longer moving, he gases it and runs up the front of my bumper. His truck was a Ryder moving truck, and he had neither license nor English speaking abilities. Thankfully, the damage to my bumper was minimal and nothing else on the car was hurt.
Fast forward to Monday evening. Tine calls me to tell me that the house caught fire again, this time from an outlet that we've never fully trusted.
Meanwhile, at work, we have a new account that rolled out and I have been made back-up team lead for. So on top of catching up on all my work (plus a years worth of backwork I didn't know existed) I also have to learn a whole new system in two days. In addition, this was my week to carry the emergency after hours phone so I was on call 24/7. Everynight I lay there expecting to get a call telling me everything was going down, but it never happened.
Fun stuff all around.
Last night in one of our random discussions, Tine and I pondered the "epidemic" of immigrant workers you find around here now. Supposedly, all Zion's Bank employees (at least in certain locations) are required to speak Spanish. Of course, we had that same initial feeling most people have of "In America we speak English" until I though about it further.
See, when you look at it from a father point of view, you realize that it's not like there's a load of non-english speaking workers hiding in the parking lot of Wal-Mart waiting to ambush us and take our jobs. As far as they're concerned, they just want to work. Where the real fault lies, I believe, is in the companies who are willing to lower their employment standards in hopes of getting workers who demand less pay. Let's face it, in the world of business if you can find someone who will do the same job for less, you go for it.
The main reason many immigrants don't ever learn to speak English is not so much because they are lazy, but because everyone else makes it so easy to go without learning. It's sort of like professional wrestling; they are not evil for creating it, we are evil for creating a demand for it. And yes, professional wrestling is evil.
It might be sort of interesting to watch history repeat itself with all the immigrants that enter the country now. There was a time when all the same things were said about all the new citizens that came in through Ellis Island as well. Eventually, those different cultures clashed over their new status in the USA and we had all sorts of culture wars; the Irish against the Italians, the Chinese against the Italians, the Polish against the Italians, and most of all the Italians against the Italians.
I can just see a huge gang war build up between the immigrants from the south and the immigrants from the north. Hispanics versus Canadians . . . it'd be great! One side has Cadillacs with the virgin Mary on the dash, the other would hanging out in alleyways flashing their maple leaf gang sign.
"I'm goinna bust yeh up, eh."
Sunday I came back into town and went to the airport to pick Tine up. We missed each other so much and seeing each other for the first time in 5 days was like we were dating again where we couldn't stop holding hands. Fast forward about 90 minutes and we're back home. While watching TV our house guest sets fire to our kitchen by turning on the wrong burner on the stove and incinerating the hot mitt that was laying on it. No major damage done.
Fast forward to Monday morning. On my way to work I stop to get gas. The driver in front of me at the pump decides to back his truck up and hits my bumper. Confused as to why his truck was no longer moving, he gases it and runs up the front of my bumper. His truck was a Ryder moving truck, and he had neither license nor English speaking abilities. Thankfully, the damage to my bumper was minimal and nothing else on the car was hurt.
Fast forward to Monday evening. Tine calls me to tell me that the house caught fire again, this time from an outlet that we've never fully trusted.
Meanwhile, at work, we have a new account that rolled out and I have been made back-up team lead for. So on top of catching up on all my work (plus a years worth of backwork I didn't know existed) I also have to learn a whole new system in two days. In addition, this was my week to carry the emergency after hours phone so I was on call 24/7. Everynight I lay there expecting to get a call telling me everything was going down, but it never happened.
Fun stuff all around.
Last night in one of our random discussions, Tine and I pondered the "epidemic" of immigrant workers you find around here now. Supposedly, all Zion's Bank employees (at least in certain locations) are required to speak Spanish. Of course, we had that same initial feeling most people have of "In America we speak English" until I though about it further.
See, when you look at it from a father point of view, you realize that it's not like there's a load of non-english speaking workers hiding in the parking lot of Wal-Mart waiting to ambush us and take our jobs. As far as they're concerned, they just want to work. Where the real fault lies, I believe, is in the companies who are willing to lower their employment standards in hopes of getting workers who demand less pay. Let's face it, in the world of business if you can find someone who will do the same job for less, you go for it.
The main reason many immigrants don't ever learn to speak English is not so much because they are lazy, but because everyone else makes it so easy to go without learning. It's sort of like professional wrestling; they are not evil for creating it, we are evil for creating a demand for it. And yes, professional wrestling is evil.
It might be sort of interesting to watch history repeat itself with all the immigrants that enter the country now. There was a time when all the same things were said about all the new citizens that came in through Ellis Island as well. Eventually, those different cultures clashed over their new status in the USA and we had all sorts of culture wars; the Irish against the Italians, the Chinese against the Italians, the Polish against the Italians, and most of all the Italians against the Italians.
I can just see a huge gang war build up between the immigrants from the south and the immigrants from the north. Hispanics versus Canadians . . . it'd be great! One side has Cadillacs with the virgin Mary on the dash, the other would hanging out in alleyways flashing their maple leaf gang sign.
"I'm goinna bust yeh up, eh."
Monday, January 17, 2005
My CES visit
Read my write up here. And apologies to Andrew for the pic!
