Every now and then, in online player vs. player combat, we will see an extremely talented "other" player appear, break ranks, and trash both teams. He--stereotypically a he--will cause confusion, death, loss of objectives, and swearing--lots of swearing. And he is called a "spoiler" for spoiling the game.
     In political party vs. party combat, we will see an extremely talented thespian appear, break ranks, and get on TV. He--or she--will cause confusion, loss of objectives, poll changes, and swearing--behind closed doors. When this person takes election-day percentage from the parties, that person will also be called a spoiler.
     No matter who that person is in public--hero, savior, "a regular Audie Murphy"--that person is a stranger in congress--or will be. Like his online counterpart, the fact that this person has no party to follow means that he has no one to call on for favors. Without that, they can't count on votes, push agendas, sit on important committees. No matter the support in public, therefore, the person without a party is a person alone in congress. This also means that their "getting things done" rate is likely low.
     Therein lies the rub: without a party, the third-party congressperson is ineffective, and a feckless or would-be feckless congressperson is (likely) vote-less soon enough. In a republic (which this is), voters will put up with a lot to keep effective congresspeople working for them--which is why Strom Thurmond, Ted Kennedy, and a handful of others died in office--despite reprehensible events in their past (which I won't recall), these people had influence.
     I would argue that this is unlikely to change. The two parties have all the best seats in all four branches of government (Media, Executive, Judicial, Legislative), and the barriers to entry to all at once are quite high.
     Yet, the extra-party people serve a purpose. Their presence is as necessary as it is controversial, because as long as they exist, the center cannot be ignored. The problem with two-party republics is that there will always be some unclaimed, half-and-half, cannot-decide voters that subscribe to neither party fully. Putting aside the voter apathy problem, these people are usually asked to put aside differences of their own and "just pick one," usually egged on by "what one party doesn't believe, the other one does!" Horse-hockey. The two parties don't have all the answers, and the middle knows that. Off-party candidates DO have the answers--they exist for it--and their popularity causes the parties to re-focus. It is easy--extremely easy--for a party to energize its base, bray loudly about cultural issues and ignore the center, but it isn't until the center starts offering its own candidates to "spoil" that the hard work--re-gaining the center--gets done.
     Thank you for reading.

Do I NORMALLY write this often? Times as mercurial as these--shiny, ever-changing, poisonous--deserve more commentary. Especially when I can, have, will do something about it.
By the way, this is not safe to read at MY workplace, or at yours, for subversive ideas. Also, it has the word F*** in it. Once.
If this sounds a little harsh at first, consider that human thoughts, fears, and feelings went into it, and that if your company is better managed, I would have nothing to say--a happy employee is a silent employee. If I look like a crybaby for pointing out what I think went wrong, so be it--some things need discussion, even if I can't bring them to interviews or the workplace.
The company I work for has fallen on hard times.
We started the year full of promise, ready to tackle the next wave of sparkly, wire-free technology, attach it to a new box, sell a million and make a mint. Well, that was one man's dream--I wanted to demonstrate a few, learn the weaknesses, fix them, THEN sell a few more, then fix all the bugs, THEN go make a mint.
After uprooting myself and my possessions and moving into the sky-rent district of town, I had a tiny drive to work and all the energy in the world. We were about to go turn in a proposal to some investors and trigger a round of big money to go work more techno-miracles.
Something fell through.We missed this round of big money, and the new stuff can't sell well until we iron the wrinkles out. Meanwhile, we plan to contract the office back from 1400 square feet to 800. This reverse-birth or reverse-vomit or reverse-whatever promises to be as painful as it sounds--especially since we want to do it "right" this time, and not make it look like we did the job with shovels.
So, what happened?
Somewhere along the line, we stopped selling the established products, the beta designs became our only marketed things, and the effort was not commensurate with the quality of the new device. This I call mistake one. Second, we wildly overspent on what are basically side-issues--odd technological partnerships, patent applications, personal edification items--when the core money fountain was still very much dependent on the money we had already.  Lastly, I blame the catch-up mentality that forced us to spend on all these things, when clearly the device can stand on its own, if done right.
Blah blah blah, you say. I've put on this particular dog before, haven't I? Well, the contraction brought a new, personal angle to this crisis: all salaries are dropping 25%, for nine months--until the big money comes back. 
I could tolerate 10%, but 25% down is unconscionable, since it gives everyone a good reason to flee. My writer-star co-worker has already been in the wind, calling and conversing. My physicist co-worker is set to run in a month. Our book-keeper won't even be able to pay the rent, and has gotten plans together to bolt. Everyone's efforts to move the offices have similarly ground to a halt, because we know the doors may close for good any day now--25% cuts will be followed by lay-offs, exodus and firings, and the productivity will crash.
I have no plans to live on 25% of my current salary, gentle folk, if you can believe it. I waited three days for my Internet to be restored (my cable splice work broke on me, and Time Warner Cable understands that I suck at it, so the repair was free! Big props to the technician who fixed it!), then put my resume everywhere. Hope shines on, good gentles, for my biggest quarries--companies I would love to work for--gave me their interest the next day, including a phone screening! My references, including all my soon-to-be-ex co-workers, all agreed to back me up. Finally, I have the sympathy of my whole circle of friends. Big props to you too!
If you can believe it this is just the kick in the butt I needed. I'd endured too many "signs you need a new job" before this to even CONSIDER the fact that they might WANT me to stay.
That book, up there? Read around page 231, where the hero agrees to "...rat out [his] uncle over a plate of [censored] squid." That's about how I feel about work now. Soldier on, but both feet are out the fucking door.
Thank you, once again, for reading.

Online, I am not the same as I am in public.
A great deal of this is due to my freedom to rant at leisure. One false move in public, and I might not get to finish a sentence, but online I can complete things. Similarly, the limitless knowledge I can find makes me an instant expert, and thus I appear smarter. Finally, no corner of pop culture is out of reach. Challenged, for instance, to name a Soft Cell song besides their "Tainted Love," I would be stumped in real life, only to chase them onto Youtube and find a perfect video of "Sex Dwarf" (song is NSFW, by the way).
But a lot of it is due to self-selection of my audience. The only people I meet online share at least the medium as an interest--the Internet, a specific game, a particular site--and as we read what the other has written, begin to share common interests. Mark off a section of the Internet for something, and you have instant friends who may all be saying, "I thought *I* was the only one!" In real life, it can be very hard to separate out people who think and believe as I do. and at work it is impossible. The wrong move there, of course, could also get me fired.
So there's the immunity to be considered as well. If you are offended online, escape is an F4 away, and if you really make others mad, they may just kick you out of the tree-house completely, never to invite you back. And, of course, there are plenty of trees, with houses, out there. Even an anti-tree-house club that meets someplace besides a tree--but I digress. Real life conflict resolution can lead to much more dangerous, noisy, or permanent solutions.
Thus the Internet resembles a zombie apocalypse, a national disaster, or a superhero origin story writ large--how would YOU behave if you had more power, if the laws ceased to affect you, if you were free to act in a way that you wanted to, all the time? If no one and no thing could put the brakes on you?
Yet I am not as Jekyll there and Hyde here. I try to write cleverly, calmly, with a sense of purpose. Why? Because the brakes are still there. Because I know I am among friends, and want them to like me. In other words, the core personality shines. I can no more adopt another than take a second body. So, while I am free to rant about the things I believe here, I mean every word, take every stand seriously, and try to focus on the ideas, not the people.
I still want to be thought of as clever, well-mannered, considerate, friendly, and if possible, brief.
On those last two notes, thank you for reading.

A few random essays, addenda, and told-who?-sos...

I have been wrestling with a free-flowing, quick drying cyanoacrylate ("Superglue") adhesive from Henkel-Loctite that goes EVERYWHERE if you let it. It is hard to "break" and has to be scraped off if it dries in an odd pattern. My bosses, who use Superglue everywhere did not KNOW that acetone--nail-polish remover--can clear this right up, nor did my female co-workers, who saw me wrestle with it. I learned this trick from a man who runs a laser-welding firm!

The line between "junky hoopdee" and "I can squeeze a lot more miles out of THIS thing" can be fine indeed, especially if sunk costs are not accounted for. When a mere (?) $850 separate a person from a usable auto-mobile, the soul-searching can be deep indeed, but in this economy, "someone else's headache" is just NOT an option, and besides, mechanics are usually truthful.

Dry skin plagues my hands.  Too many dishes washed? Odd choice of soaps? Henkel-Loctite adhesives? the itching, cracking, burning, peeling, bleeding seem to come and go at random. Ah well.

I take pride in my ability to give blood, and see it as a civic duty. The Red Cross goes to great lengths to make the blood pure. Example: other people's blood can ONLY be handled with gloves, or by intact skin (something my cracked hands don't have), so if I *had* dirty smocks, aprons, or sheets to wash, I'd need to wear gloves the whole time, until the stains dissolved. Second example: I've heard that a few people have stopped donating due to governments' outlawing of homosexuals' blood, but I can't bring myself to protest that way, since life-saving takes precedent--besides, every life saved could be the deciding vote on THAT nonsense being repealed.

Management is a delicate balance of the company's ownership of the goods and services, and employee ownership of his/her individual craft. It's not easy to maintain, and startlingly easy to break. My advice? Give everyone a section to do, let them make it their way, then "fold in". Chickens own the eggs, but the chef makes the cake.

Oh, if you decide to bring ingredients to the bakery, expect the baker to complain endlessly if you don't deliver A) as much as he needs, B) right away, and C) with a big smile. And don't expect any ownership of that cake if it craters ten steps out the bakery door--it's your baking powder, not his. Note: this is a metaphor.
[edit: In the world of circuit boards, this is called "on consignment".]
Multiplication is a pain in the neck, and the times tables may be the HARDEST rote learning you will EVER know (until O-Chem, but that's why I'm an engineer, not a doctor), but it is also the LAST. Split-second multiplication makes fractions a breeze, and division a flow. Just try doing "prime factors," "least common denominator," or "greatest common factor" when the breakdown of said factors and denominators takes time to compute or recall.

[edit] Phone company charges $65 (plus fees) for phone + 7M DSL Internet, and wants $120 to break the contract before January. Cable company would charge $27 for 10M Internet, and wants $50 for the modem. So, $170 to switch now, save $38 a month until January = 190-170 = Bonus $20, more or less. Switch September, 152-170 = $12 down. Switch January, $50 down. Guess cable gets my business now, and the switching fee fails to make a dent.

OK, so this post had nothing to do with this song, but it's in my head.

It's a fact of my life that my family loved to play music while driving, while at work, and sometimes during breakfast. I grew up listening to the 60s and 70s, and it had an effect on my outlook on music in general. One by-product of this sometimes-static-laden, often cut-off music catalog is a head full of musical odds and ends. Add mashed vocals--where the words sound like other words crushed together--and there's no chance of resolving them all.
Enter the grocery store. The overhead music is placid, sweet, and royalty-free, meaning it is OLD. But the great thing is that the music is played end-to-end, the track is static-free, and the noise is pretty low, so the lyrics come through. Also, the inescapable nature of the music--that it can be heard everywhere--kind of mitigates the "what were YOU on when you were listening to THAT" factor.
[One other by-product--the constant repetition--erodes one's respect and liking for certain OTHER songs, but that's another story]
The upshot is that the missing lyrics can be filled in without Google's help. Here're my favorite two of this variety, with the missing lyric taken out:
"Can you hear me calling out your name. / You know I've fallen & I don't know what to say. / I'll speak a louder, or even shout. You know that I'm proud...I can't get the words out... / Girl I wanna be with you _________."
"Is it too much to ask? / I want a comfortable bed that won't hurt my back. / Food to fill me up, / and warm clothes and all that stuff. / Shouldn't I have this, shouldn't I have this? Shouldn't I have all of this, and ___________ from you."
I might call this "Supermarket Brilliance"

Alright, since this glitch happened 5 $%#$^ times tonight--in the span of an HOUR--maybe you all can help me. Sometimes, when I browse this site using Windows XP, Firefox 3.6.3, and High Speed DSL, the system computer shuts down completely.
That is, the power supply comes to a complete halt, all components go dark, and the only light from the machine is the "power on" indicator light blinking on and off.
Punching the reset or power buttons immediately does no good.
The ONLY way to make it work again is to turn off the power supply switch on the BACK of the tower, wait for the "power on" light to stop blinking, then turn the power supply switch back on, THEN hit the "power on" button.
There is also a second mode where the system stays on, but the screen freezes--including animations--and the keyboard and mouse stop doing anything, and this may be a separate issue.
It seems to happen sooner if I'm using flash-heavy applications like Farmville and CafeWorld, BUT has been known to trigger when I'm just leaving COMMENTS! Also has been known to trigger during MySpace, Team Fortress 2, and Pogo.com. [EDIT]It will happen in offline games like Bioshock, when trying to load certain files.
I have replaced the power supply to no avail.
I have used the most sophisticated RAM check software I can find.
I use AVG Antivirus and Spybot Search and Destroy.
I monitor case temperature and CPU, both well below 60C when it crashes.
It APPEARS to be random.
It APPEARS to be trying my patience.

The economy is a mess. The lowest rung workers lose more work everyday to immigrants; the bosses struggle to keep labor costs down and encourage the immigrants to bring in more. Government is stepping in and closing the borders, but never seems to stanch the flow enough.
     And yet, if we take this scenario far enough back, we see that the battle over Ellis Island, with the waves of colonial Protestants, turn-of-the-century Irish and Poles modern-day Hispanics, and so on has been going on, basically, forever. I'm sure, for instance, that the people who worked for Pharoah Ramses to make those monuments once-upon-a-time were pissed when slave Jews were yoked into doing it.
     Arizona gets extra credit for making me take this metaphor out of my history book AGAIN. Right now, I can't really see the connection between the "undocumented not-a-citizen" people who work among us and the chaos that has engulfed the city of Phoenix and the border in general. I'm aware, for instance, that there are a lot of kidnappings, some human trafficking, and definitely some drugs, but the wandering labor doesn't seem to act in the same fashion. By making their entry illegal, we encourage these people to work WITH outright criminals, but even that seems an incomplete thought.
     I can only offer three theories: first, our country demands a lot of low-pay labor to do all kinds of unglamorous work. As long as the employers are allowed to employ people without documentation--without consequence--there will be a demand that Mexico--and points south--would be happy to supply. I therefore refuse to support immigration laws until--and unless--they go after the DEMAND, not the labor itself.
     Second, the wandering labor cannot get jobs at home that pay anywhere NEAR as much as here. If these were successful countries, the flow of workers would slow considerably. Instead, labor flocks here for work. I cannot say what would be necessary to fix such a thing, but the U.S. cannot do it.    
     Third, Re-opening the border to honest laborers, fast-tracking citizenship, and being honest with ourselves about how much we appreciate free trade--of everything--would instantly improve the border situation. With no wandering people to chase, the border patrol would be able to track down and focus on the honest-to-goodness criminals, for one thing. For another, we can be assured that everyone caught in the no man's land WOULD be a criminal, which would make deciding what to do with them much easier.
     And if all this sounds absurd, consider how YOUR ancestors got here. And why.

In the week leading up to Mothers' Day, I was able to talk with a few different women, each with children, all of whom cared deeply for them, and all thrilled with how well things were going. You know who y'all are.
     Congratulations. You did it! If I've learned one thing from the angels I've seen around me, and the hellions I've had to avoid, it's how difficult this "raising kids" thing is. And I realize that I have laughed at those "my child is an honor student" bumper stickers, but I was wrong; forming children into achievers is quite the accomplishment.
     A few other things I learned about this parenting thing:
     It takes time. Picking them up, dropping off, making meals, putting them to bed, making sure they get up, handling play-dates and leaving slack time, well, it's a lot.
     It takes patience. The "battle of wills" ensures that every bedtime, every unwanted vegetable, every homework assignment will escalate to suplexing and stuff-tossing if one is not careful.
     It takes a working car. And reasonable maintenance. Just tossing that in.
     At some point, you have to let go. In stages, the little wonder you've raised will have to go out and survive on his or her own, and it's not the easiest thing to let happen. Strangers will be met, new buildings will be explored, bedtimes will be neglected, friends will be made and, jobs will be taken out of state. The best test of a parent's job well done is the child surviving without you, and the older they become, the further they will go and the longer they will survive.
     And this is the real paradox of parenting: as the child grows, they grow apart, until, just as they're getting interesting (as the cliche goes) or, just as they get their G.E.D., off they go, out of the house to make a life for themselves. Whereas the under-grown child excavates a basement beneath the house, sets up a cave of self and stays forever.
     This is the last thing I learned: it is worth it. Seeing them come back, having survived with new stories to tell and new experiences to share, is a great joy.
     Special thanks to MY mother, who learned all this while raising me, and had sense enough not to guilt-trip me about it. Wouldn't be here without you.
     Happy Mothers' Day!  

P.S. Having a birthday right near this holiday does make things a little weird, but it usually means that all these lessons are thrown into better relief.
P.P.S. Thanks for reading.

Just to clarify a comment I made a few days ago, there are a few stages of product development, especially if you, the company pride yourselves on things like "quality", "service", and "staying in business".
Drawings / Scribbles:  Someone has an idea that might be worth a look.  The idea is passed around, drawings are made, the pieces are ordered, maybe someone gets a piece or two together.
Tech. Demo / Alpha:  Parts arrive and the first few units are made.  Things break.  The team encounters assembly issues, parts fail, parts are re-drawn and re-ordered to fix the issues.  A procedure for assembly is drawn up, at least in someone's head.  Once the unit begins to function, improvements are called for, and the forecast for production begins to set.
Beta:  Issues and headaches plague construction and product alike.  Things are made, then break later.  Numerous changes are possible, and each bug is hunted down and squished.  The outside production house gets a first look, and the marketing team comes by to take pictures, read specifications, and decide what message goes with the product.
Late Beta:  Issues that pop up are filed into "fix" or "not fix".  Things work well, except when they rarely do not.  Customers get their hands on it, and their every comment is cataloged and discussed.  The assembly procedure is pretty much set, and the assembly group shows off its wares; engineering approves or changes the procedure.
Release:  All issues are "known", and show up in the manual as things that will be improved "later".  Things are working to specification or better, and seldom break.  All troublesome features are hidden or stripped away from the user interface, and the overall look of the product is polished.  Marketing makes one more set of brochures and pictures, and orders are taken.

Violating this order is nothing but trouble, top to bottom.  Management looks weak for allowing customers to roll them, engineers feel worthless if their warnings of failure are ignored, marketing suffers credibly if the product cannot perform to promise, and the customer will get a weaker product. 
Though I have only seen this phenomenon in video games, it is clear that, in other scenarios with, say, medical equipment, the effect is the same.  A company that scrambles to make a product ready to sell, when that product exists only as drawings and dreams, is going to have tolerance issues in parts, breakage and breakdown issues in assembly, zero repeatability of what is made, and a fore-shortened testing period which will only identify how not-ready the equipment is. 

Thank you for reading.

For further discussion of Alpha and Beta, please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_software#Origin_of_.22alpha.22_and_.22beta.22

Ok.  Normally, I keep essays apart, but these are pretty short. 
First, "Avatar", by James Cameron.  a lot of what I heard boils down to three phrases:
"It was [expletive deleted] great / awesome"
"I've heard / read / seen this story before"
"didn't he copy [obvious thing] from [obscure reference]?"
linked with the words "but" or "yet" or "except that", meaning that Cameron has, indeed taken something we know, and used it his own way.  I would say, it's awesome BECAUSE he used it his own way.  The story themes (or "tropes", if y'all are feeling educated) are familiar: resources are scarce, humans want them, natives live near them, war seems obvious, peace envoy created.  Also familiar are the characters: partially-broken soldier, corrupt administrator, General-Ripper-style killer, strong feminine scientist or pilot with urge to rebel, chief's daughter.  Yet the story seems fresh and new because Cameron handles them well.  The tropes are not bad, even if they remind you of other things; the tropes are tools to work with: a bread pan instead of the tupperware, a skeleton instead of the straitjacket, or even a foundation, not the siding.  You don't watch a movie for its tropes, anymore than you buy a house for a foundation, but consider how many houses / movies can stand without one.  Just so, a BAD movie that uses tropes that appear in BETTER movies cannot blame its tropes for its failure.
     Tropes are not bad.

I have been playing Dance Dance Revolution a LOT lately.  I have taken to using it for exercise and entertainment to displace running, elliptical, and Pump It Up, and I have been improving my game and my understanding of it.  I have hence been reaching rare, strange, or old levels that few play, and want to play them at home.  Which brings us to "Bag" by RevenG.  This little gem is listed as 10 difficulty, whereas I can normally only reach 8.  What a joy, then to find that I CAN beat it.  A quick search of the available home releases tells me that the song is on a long-ago-released version of the game, and buried at mission L-07.  Brushing aside the "square" jokes, this means I have L times 6 plus 7 "missions" to win before I "unlock" it.  To unlock a song I can play instantly in the arcade.
     What arbitrary silliness!  I have to go through 79 gameplay challenges for ONE SONG?  Slave over 79 instances of odd-ball songs I never play, victory conditions I'd need three legs to perform, hampered by modifiers that cripple my chances?  I'll be knee-deep in new releases before I reach it!  Why limit game play like this?
     I understand that in many game genres, it's accepted--even necessary.  It's hard, for example, to teach portal physics without easing into them.  It makes easy game levels too easy if shooters hand out the most powerful units or guns or whatever at the start of the game.  And it ruins the story if the hero can just trot up to the biggest, baddest guy and face him.  But rhythm games have no story to speak of (that execrable excrement from DDR Rev X does NOT count!), need no easing in because they HAVE tutorial levels AND beginner step charts, and have nothing to teach beyond "hold this down for a 'freeze arrow'". 
     So why do it?  So I play longer?  I liken this to a restaurant where the big beautiful menu cover shows succulent dishes, and the menu itself comes in "mini" and "full" versions depending if the waitstaff like you, where the "mini" menu has only the most basic, bland, boring things the place can make.  Or, it's like a big, beautiful MENU, but in order to have dessert, you first have to order and consume a main course.  And you can't have THAT without a salad, and you can't have EVEN THAT without an appetizer.  Well, my appetite, my time, and my wallet can't stand for that, so I'll never have dessert?  Suppose dessert is all I want!  I'm not playing "reverse flow, dark, random velocity" on a song I can't stand, 78 more times.  [expletive delete] that!
     Long story short, screw this practice.  I paid $40 for this disk, and don't think I won't wait it out on E-Bay to get its brothers for half that, at best.  And the arcade will definitely see me again.