AND THE LACK THEREOF*

*we put the "mmm" in communism

about

This is the personal blog of Tim. Here, Tim writes on anything he has enough inspiration to finish a post on. That usually ends up being matters of science, pop culture, technology, religion, and philosophy.

This blog is around nine years old, which is over a third of Tim's current age. Back in 2003, it was called "Of Tim: Tim's life - or lack thereof", and it was as bad as you might expect the blog of a freshman in high school to be. Tim hopes that his writing is a little better, these days.

Tim welcomes any input that you, the dear reader, might have. Comments are very much appreciated, especially if you have a dissenting opinion. If you'd like to learn more about Tim, you might want to see his facebook or google+.

Also: Tim is a very avid consumer of various sorts of music. You may be interested in his playlists!

hrm
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Edith,

Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend for the fall term, due to financial problems. I hope to get back to L'Abri sooner or later, but this fall will not be possible. I should have my debt repaid soon, however.

Thanks for everything.
Tim


For whatever reason, it was very hard to send this email.

God, I miss it.
posted by MC Froehlich at with 0 Comments
humanism
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I'm slowly approaching a full year under the employment of my employer, and my feelings towards the corporation are ever-changing. Some of you may recall my utter disgust with which I regarded Office Depot, and I went into this store with equally strong feelings. For the greater part of my employment, I responded by simply being a poor employee. I purposefully didn't give a shit about my job, I did my best to avoid earning money towards our daily budget, I avoided opening up to or trusting my co-workers, and I convinced myself that I was the only competent person on the staff.

With time, however, I realized that I was consumed with a false idealism. I was determined to hate my surroundings because of how far it falls from what reality should be. I saw the depravity of my surroundings to be somehow unreal, or less real than what I might experience anywhere else in life. Furthermore, I was convinced that I was alone in my hatred of the system, and therefore ahead of the game, smarter than my foolish colleagues.

The first change of heart came simply in humbleness. I'm not actually as good at what I do as I think I am, and that my ego serves nothing but myself. I came also to recognize that people don't submit to this system out of love or ignorance, but out of necessity. We're all in this shit together, and it is more loving to work along side one another for something better than to try and sabotage the system. Additionally, I've also begun to understand that giant corporations aren't necessarily large, faceless entities. Every store is not the same, because (at least for now) individuals are still running things. I'm not a machine, or a part of a machine, or any other lifeless metaphor. I'm a person, working for other people, to provide a service for people.

It is interesting to me, then, that I would make such a colossal mistake as to hand a person a laptop without asking for their identification first, the consequences of which I haven't yet heard. Now, in my defense:

1) We probably process at least forty computers a week between the four or five of us. In the year I've worked there, hundreds and hundreds of computers come in and out.
2) This is a busy store. When people are waiting in line and the phone is ringing, people expect me to get shit done fast, and it's not hard to forget the really important little things.
3) The woman walked up and asked for the specific computer by the name of the owner and the model, and she told me what work had been done on it. There was no mix-up - hers was the only computer of that brand we had.

So, I was pretty thunderstruck when another woman walks in an hour later asking for the same computer, and a phone call to her husband reveals no details about who might have just been in to pick the thing up. Thankfully, no personal information was on this thing (we'd restored it after replacing a bad hard drive). Had there been, I would almost certainly have been fired (although, like I said, my fate is still uncertain). The reason I find all this interesting is because I've finally come to a point where I can appreciate my job and the effort I put into it, and feel like I have come to a place where I can work my way up the promotion ladder and start building my resume. I don't relish the thought of losing my job. I also don't relish the ass-reaming I will most certainly experience tomorrow.
posted by MC Froehlich at with 1 Comments
echo
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The phone at work has an awful, awful ring. It's loud, metallic, and it bounces around my head for hours after I've left the store. It's the sort of sound that nightmares are made of, the sound that I might wake up to, screaming because I thought I was being disemboweled, but in fact, I would merely be remembering the quarter-second tone that blasts through my few square feet of workspace whenever a lost soul comes to me (or my colleagues) for guidance. Indeed, if hell's phones are ringing, I bet they sound like this.

Perhaps the most jarring feature of the all the phones at work, however, are simply their instantaneous ability to command attention, a power that existed even before these hell-born tones were introduced into my day. Whatever I'm doing is secondary to picking it up, and if what I'm doing precludes me from using a phone, part of my job description is to 1) feel guilty about my inability to reach the phone, and 2) silently will one of my co-workers to answering it, if only to stave off that demonic ringtone.

Ultimately, I've never been a fan of phones. They're a strong contender in my rather short list of pet peeves, valiantly wrestling for the top position against my mother's desire to hide the pots I use as ashtrays. It's probably something I inherited from my family. Since the dawn of caller-ID, we stopped answering our phones except to those wise enough to call at least twice, yet my father insists on keeping a phone in every room of the house, that we might more efficiently ignore them.

It's nice to be working again, though.
posted by MC Froehlich at with 3 Comments