Doug Ross @ Journal

Worst Working Environments... Ever

Funny Slashdot thread on the worst working environments (for developers, mostly).

"I'm working 2 jobs right now (paying off credit cards/student loans). One as a half-assed programmer, the other cleaning monkey s**t at a primate lab. 40 hour week at the monkey lab, standing in a puddle of monkey poo, while shooting hot water through the empty cages.

Hosing poo, trying not to be splashed, while wondering "Is this one of the cages with the SIV poo?" SIV is Simian HIV. Or maybe it'll be a Hepatitis C monkey cage. It won't kill monkeys, but it'll kill humans.

But hey, it's winter so the poo isn't as stinky and there's no flies & mosquitos. I'd much rather freeze my ass off then wonder if I'm getting bitten by an mosquito that's been dining off an infected research monkey.

Last month they did some work on bubonic plague monkeys. I can't wait for the R.A.G.E. monkeys. Then I'll have an excuse for my upcoming killing spree.

...or...

...I did work in a pit in yorkshire - just outside Hull. The working day consisted of getting up at 5:30am, setting off at 5:50 arriving at the charcoal pits about 6:30 - think of giant power station chimmneys, half-height with the tops blocked off. We'd get changed into our disposable overalls and face-mask, enter a bunker which was lit by giant and very very hot floodlights. A big truck would be backed-up against the doors and we'd start unloading it. This meant climb up, grab a sack of charcoal, carry it back into the bunker, split it with your knife and tip it out. Go back again. Split it, tip it, go back again. Split it, tip it, go back again, etc. We did three bunkers a day, four hours a bunker. We'd take a break between each one - a fourteen hour day, not counting travel. We got 4 quid an hour.

You'd have a shower when you got back, but it'd take a hour to get properly clean, and even then you'd still cough up black stuff for the rest of the night. And my god, did your back ache!

And you try and tell someone how lucky they are to be working at a computer, and they just don't believe you! "

The absolute worst working environment

Village Voice Pillories Kerry on MIA's

It's not exactly a bastion of conservative thought, but the Village Voice has published a scathing article on John Kerry and his alleged coverup of a major issue: possibly hundreds of POW's and MIA's that were left behind after the Vietnam War ended. I could be off-base, but this strikes me as an extremely sensitive issue for Kerry's campaign.

"Senator John Kerry, a decorated battle veteran, was courageous as a navy lieutenant in the Vietnam War. But he was not so courageous more than two decades later, when he covered up voluminous evidence that a significant number of live American prisoners—perhaps hundreds—were never acknowledged or returned after the war-ending treaty was signed in January 1973.

The Massachusetts senator, now seeking the presidency, carried out this subterfuge a little over a decade ago— shredding documents, suppressing testimony, and sanitizing the committee's final report—when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs..."

When John Kerry's Courage Went M.I.A.

Don Bendell goes OFF!

In the Kerry vein, check this Don Bendell rant out. It's been circulating via email and the web for several weeks now. I happened upon it via Google News. It's pretty intense.

" I was a green beret officer who volunteered for duty in Vietnam and fought in the thick of it in 1968 and 1969 on a Special Forces A-team on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, just for starters. We were the elite. We saw the most action. Everybody in the world knows that. But we did not just kill people, we built a church, a school, treated illnesses, passed out soap, food, and clothing, and had fun and loving interaction with the indigenous people of Vietnam, just like our boys did in Normandy, Baghdad, Saigon, and everywhere American soldiers ever served. We all gave away our candy bars and rations to kids. Our hearts to oppressed people all over the globe.

My children and grandchildren could read your words, and think those horrendous things about me, Mr. Kerry. You are a bold-faced, unprincipled liar, and a disgrace, and you have dishonored me and all my fellow Vietnam veterans. Sure, there were a couple bad-apples, but I saw none, and I saw it all, and if I did, as an army officer, it was my obligation to stop it, or at the very least report it. Why is there not a single record anywhere of you ever reporting any incidents like this or having the perpetrators arrested? The answer is simple. You are a liar. Your medals and mine are not a free pass for lifetime, Senator Kerry, to bypass character, integrity, and morality. I earn my green beret over and over daily in all aspects of my life...

John Kerry, you personally derailed the Vietnam Human Rights Bill, HR2883, in 2001, after it had passed the House by a 411 to 1 vote, and thousands of pro-American Montagnard tribespeople in Vietnam died since then who could have been saved, by you. Earlier, as Chair of the Senate Select Committee on MIA/POW Affairs, you personally quashed the efforts of any and all veterans to report sightings of living POW’s, when you held those reins in Congress. You have fought tooth and nail to push for the US to normalize relations with Vietnam for years. Why, Mr. Kerry? Simple, your first cousin C. Stewart Forbes, CEO, of Colliers International, recently signed a contract with Hanoi, worth BILLIONS of dollars for Collier’s International to become the exclusive real estate representative for the country of Vietnam..."

Don Bendell on John Kerry