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Royal_Foxx wrote:Our can opener has a thingy on it to open pop top, so you can open cans, bottles and cans with pop-tops with the one opener. I usually just use a spoon.

Aye, same here when I can't get a proper hold of the tab. Usually the day of and after I cut my nails I don't have enough...what would you call it, nail lip? Well whatever, when I can't pop it with my fingers, I get a spoon, works perfectly.

Deepcrush wrote:

Tsukiyumi wrote:Seriously, man, you're just doing your job. To hell with her.

Well, my new orders are "to stop doing my job so well" it would seem.

Not to twist the knife or anything, but you ARE a government employee. What do you expect? Congratulations for overachieving?

If there is too many people like you, the citizens are going to realise that the civil workers don't underperform because the assigned task is overwhelming, but because it's in their culture to fail deliberately, so they don't get their budget cut.

In the end, I wonder who is responsible for such mess. The civil servant, for accepting to do not much, the structure around him, which punish him for doing more than expected, or the administrative body, which punish everyone by reducing the structure's budget if they achieve more with less.

Deepcrush, I hope you don't read my previous post as a jab at your expectation, it was more meant at the general stupid structure that is government administration.

I have a good friend here who has the same kind of job that you do (High School teacher), and from what I've heard, she is very good at what she does and very enthousiast.. at least, she was when she began. About 3 years after starting, she's already getting fed up with the whole work condition the public servants force her to work in, and the complete lack of support the parents toward the education and discipline of their children.

Which simply enrages me. Stupid bureaucrats come to schools for 4 hours and know exactly how to reform how the entire province's education structure, after talking it in committees. Schools having no power whatsoever over who to hire, as they have to respect the school boards' rules and instructions, even if these take 4 months to take a decision and are fatly paid with job security and all.

You're dead-on as to the effect, but not necessarily the means. The GWN might be different, but in the 'States public schools do have discretion about who to hire. The problem is that "fading" effect you describe in your friend's case, coupled with tenure - which is an euphemistic way of saying that bad teachers can't be fired.

I hate Christmas. Not so much for the commercial holiday it is, but for the religious holiday it isn't. The "Keep Christ in Christmas" especially piss me off, as he was never part of it, he was just the name they put to the Pagan holiday that they decided to cover over so Pagans would become Christians so they could get more money.

Money had nothing to do with it - it was about making fledgling Christianity more popular. Rome at the time was very cosmopolitan, especially the seaports. Many non-Roman religions had become popular, such as the Egyptian Osiris cult. One such faith was an offshoot of Zoroastrianism called Mithraism - in Mithraism, December 25th was an important holiday. Visibility of the nova which is most likely associated with the Star of Bethlehem has been determined to be mid- to late Spring.

Ah, I always assumed it had to do with money, thanks for the insight. But yeah, it had nothing to do with Christ.

Another problem is the mistake in believing that its a "Government" problem. Its not, its and election problem. Here in the states, career government employees still have to answer to the morons that the civilian population elects every four years. So rather then having people lead who's jobs require a preset rate of section improvement, we get people who could barely care less about improvement so long as they get their paycheck/bonuses/write offs.

Nickswitz wrote:I hate Christmas. Not so much for the commercial holiday it is, but for the religious holiday it isn't. The "Keep Christ in Christmas" especially piss me off, as he was never part of it, he was just the name they put to the Pagan holiday that they decided to cover over so Pagans would become Christians so they could get more money.

While I find the "keep Christ in Christmas" crowd annoying ('cause they are a bunch of religious preachers), I have also a special kind of despise for the uber atheist crowd who want to remove all reference for Christmas, in order to just say "Happy winter Holiday", "Happy Holiday Season", and the other generic stupidity, in order "not to offend those who don't celebrate Christmas". Please, what a load of bull.

Going as far as removing christmas trees from public locations. WHAT DOES CHRISTMAS TREE HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH CHRISTIAN RELIGION?! IT'S AS CHRISTIAN AS SANTA CLAUSE!

Yeah, very true, any extreme position is quite annoying, thus why I try to remain in the middle, I don't believe it should be gone, I think people should know that it has zero meaning in religion and cureently all meaning in commercialism.

Personally, I have no problem with a publicly-displayed Christmas tree or other display. I already know that my faith is a minority, so it's not like some shock when I see that the majority faith is Christianity; also, a person has to be actively looking for a fight to believe that "celebration of my holiday" = "denigration of other faiths."

In fact, the affectation of attempting to elevate Chanukah to similar status is rather patronizing; Chanukah is, in fact, the most minor of Jewish holidays - even being the only Jewish holiday that isn't mentioned in Scripture.

*EDIT* BTW, you're right - the Christmas tree is in fact a holdover from pagan Gothic practice.

I'm opposed to the wanton destruction of trees.



I'm also allergic to pine trees.

I don't think many people use pines as Christmas trees. We normally get a Douglass fir.

Mikey wrote:I don't think many people use pines as Christmas trees. We normally get a Douglass fir.

I have an artificial tree.