The forest of balance and serenity..

Very Few have come and visited seen and possibly enjoyed hanging out in my back yard. Though who have notice that it is covered in Fir trees, alders, oaks, and other various lush green plants of the forest.

Quiet, slight breeze most of the time, a few combat hardened critters (gotta be with my cat around, Yes it has beat up the raccoons), Raccoons, deer, porcupines, and such.

So as I was back enjoying the silence, I simply projected myself forward in a fast forward mode to think of how it would be say, when I’m 80.

Then I realized the serene forest and quiet balanced location compared to the disruptive environment of suburbs and cities, and well..

The realization is, the forest is anything but serene. It’s in a life and death struggle for the superiority of species, much like the different races in the lord of the rings.

The alders grow fast create a thick canopy in order to starve others of their food source, the sun. If sunlight hits the tree it will throw branches out to gather as much sun as possible. If there is not enough sunlight it will drop its branches to give all its energy to those in direct contact with sunlight.

The Firs, grow all year around, much slower, however because they are slower growing they are capable of surviving this shadow casting tree. Though the starts are total smothered in the dropped leaves in fall which kills them.

The problem with the Alders is because they grow so fast their wood is less dense, and at a certain height the wind takes ‘em down with the annual wind storm.

The Firs however can withstand the wind storm. And if they get past the height of the alder’s “layer of death” then the Fir’s establish a “beach head” which then forces the Alders away from them allowing more Firs to gain foot hold

When we humans interact and cut things down, the alders literally take over the area choking the other trees out. The Firs don’t grow fast enough to respond to human intervention.

Where the pines are established, then the Alders are chocked out and don’t make it.

The oaks are similar to the Alders in that they branch out and attempt to “choke out” other trees around their base. They are a bit slower the Alders, however they grow taller, Withstand the windstorms a bit better (but still not as good as the Fir trees) and are more of a toe to toe competitor with the Alders, having all out battles that take decades to unfold.

So to us, we see quiet green leaves, slight breeze, quiet, peace. However if you took life and ran it fast forward by a factor of x300 you might really see this battle going on, and you would have a completely different view as a handful of species battling for life while trying to knock out its competitors for the food source known as sunlight.

Now for the plants..

Re-org designed by Harvard...

Yah, That’s what I was hired for…

Day Jobs tend to suck, unless your in business for yourself, in which case your doing what you love to do. (or you won’t be in business very long.)

Jumping from job to job, I have done everything from getting paid to break shi#, fix shi#, ripping off cars (Repo-man), to tracking psychotic crack heads (That leads from Repo work, when your good at skiptracing). Now I went from the underground to above ground, (only by societies description)

Went FROM: the jack of all trades (A Tech) basically dealing with everything from when a reporter touches a keyboard, the computer, network, servers, print equipment, dealing with plating equipment, photography development, mixing chemistry, dealing with pneumatics, hydraulics, and 220 power sources, TO: moving a mouse, and fixing text on a ad in the same company.

They say they don’t need Techs anymore, however, they still have me doing the equipment, chemistry, n fixing “issues” while moving a mouse around and clicking on a keyboard. (Yawn)

Companies suck., this is all in response to a couple points on a profit chart. Being in the black, having almost 20% profit margin after everything is said and done, it is totally unacceptable now adays to only be profitable and suceeding.

If a company makes $5M, a year, they must down size, outsource the work and strip everyone of their pensions, and medical benefits because they could then make $5.18M in profits. Because somebody who is educated beyond their intelligence from Harvard stated that points count when it comes to business profit margins.

The company will probably be gone in 10 years because they continue to loose their customer base. In response the Harvard wizard, cuts within the business, cuts back, cut the quality, to save on money to respond that people are dropping the paper because the product is really starting to suck. I would think improving the product and increasing sales would be the target here?? Apparently I am no Harvard wizard. "This (as I was corrected) is not about our customers, this is about our stock holders!"

Meanwhile, this brainiac, states he can squeeze another three points out of the annual bottom line, then cuts product ability, eliminates the high paid individuals with skills that made the product worth while and replaces them with, Interns..

Interns now (who where there to learn how to do things) are running the departments, are the main workforce talent, because they don’t get full time wages, or any benefits to speak of, they cost 1/8^th what it took to have someone competent who made the product worth while.

Mean while people are dropping the product, (news product) because it is falling with a snipit of what you already seen on network TV 48 hours earlier feathered in with mailer type advertising that breaks up most of the stories. Stock pages? WTF folks. Who the hell does stock trading with information 24+ hours old?

Sports section. Movie review sections, I mentioned they should have a game review/info section. Like get some literate kids who spend their days on WoW, and other various things like, Ummm, the 360 live, PS2/3, PSP ‘n other such “Crap.”

There where several fundamental responses on this suggestion (after they asked the companies employees for suggestions on how to turn this tub of shi# around before it beaches itself on the rocks in the middle of nowhere.)

1^st response. (Yes folks this is a direct quote from one of the managers) “What the fuc# do you know about publishing?!, Are you a published writer? Do you run a paper?”

I held my hands up and walked away.

2^nd response (different person) “There is no money in video games, we are talking about serious stuff, not kiddy stuff” The point in this is they have two dedicated sections, sports and movies. Now videogames has a GNP higher then the entire sports industry, and higher then the entire movie industry, if not on the point of out doing both together.

I would also like to point out the people in charge of this are near retirement and have little or no contact with computers, which when it crashes calls me on the help desk stating “The internet is down” when I ask “internet?” the response is “Yes, the entire internet is down! I cant get to my email!”

Hope they die soon or retire*, (*people like this do not retire they stay in till they die because they can not retire on SS alone.) and get replaced with someone under 50 years of age, before the company is dissolved due to business incompetents

They also stated that there is no future with “electronic entertainment” in printed media. Funny how there is a news stand with 20+ magazines dedicated to only video games that brings down more then this business made over the past 5 years, and that’s annually per magazine.

Not sure, but if the local paper had an actual section that had pointers on local guilds in WoW, where to do things, tips and tricks on how to get the stuff you need, how to navigate the local auction houses... Well I'm a sure the holy grail of the 18-40 market would start buying the paper with daily hints tips, Organizing of local guilds ran by local people who could hit the local coffee house and actually meet each other would be a selling point.

A listing of the MMO’s that people drop big money to play in, some walk troughs for recently released PC and platformers, you might find they would open the holy grail of all newspapers (How to grab the under 40 crowd.)

They still walk by me scratching their heads. “If we could only figure out how to get the new generation, they don’t read papers, so we need to get all the profit we can because newspapers are done for”

The magazines are exploding, which suggests that print isn’t dead, they are reading, they just are not reading shi# geared towards those 65 and older mentality. Much like the management crew of this failing business who is trying to tell me to my face, that they don’t need me to do Technical work, however I still need to do the preventative maintenance on the equipment, deal with the servers and “user emergencies” (Technical work) while taking over a position that was eliminated, because they didn’t need the work hours for it. (which now I get all the over time I want because their isn’t enough people to do the work that was eliminated.)

I’m starting to think, if this is a representation of the best Harvard education has to offer, I can see why Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and started Microsoft.

Had he finished Harvard then Started Microsoft, MS would have been bankrupt and out of business in 8 years. Even though they would have tons of money the mismanagement and inability to function on a business and intellectual model would have sunk the company.

To all you parents out there DO NOT LET YOUR CHILD GO TO HARVARD! All they will do is destroy American businesses and send all our jobs to India or China.

It’s a sad day for all here as our country is being destroyed by a cancer (People educated beyond their intelligence making the decisions which run the business of America.) And you wonder why Every President of America Sucks...