2002-01-17 - 2:35 p.m.

Day of the Morons

Every now and then there is a day when you just really question why certain people are allowed to talk. To start the day off, one friend of mine was chatting on an email list about a creepy cyber stalker who has been following her for years. He isn�t really dangerous, but he is far from honest. He tells people in California that he lives out here, when in fact he doesn�t (well this was true a year ago, he may have actually moved out here by now, I don�t know). In any case, he does actively try to make people believe he is something he is not.

It creeps me out as well.

Then on the same email list some other idiot was trolling around and slandering Shells. It happens, and he isn�t dangerous. But it was enough to make me mad.

But people can be incredible assholes and cowards when hiding behind computers.

Environmental Hearing

I attended the public hearing for the environmental project I killed. The project was to sell land to the state so that it could be used to augment water supplies. Nothing wrong there, except that the way it would augment water supplies would result in huge costs and worse yet, serious violations of state environmental standards (note: in California state standards are much more strict than the Federal standards).

My boss�s boss presented my work from Dec and this month. He did a great job too. But some lawyers wanting the state to pay the costs of their client�s farming were asking some unrelated questions (a minor annoyance), then one asshole sitting in the back was harassing the biologist who was talking about species preservation. This guy was only hearing what he wanted and then honestly heckling everybody.

That was enough to really begin to bug me, but I just about blew my top (if I were a dog, I�m sure I would have bitten somebody) when the landowners trying to sell the state this land stood up and lied. These guys are engineers and they claimed that their own monthly studies did not show water quality violations and were superior to my hourly studies, which show that the project results in serious violations.

I�ll skip the long story, but the reason engineers like these guys would lie is because they don�t give a shit about the environment. They want to sell their crappy land, and they will do this by any means necessary. Unfortunately for them I don�t give a shit about my potential for advancement here, because I actually consider myself an environmental engineer first. (I�ve heard stories that the governor was bribed by them a few years ago � so politics are everywhere.) That means, if I have to disprove lies people likes these say about the environment I will. It helps that I work for similarly minded people.

LISTENING TO: Arzt + Pfusch Warum?

-=-

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