05.05.09
Posted in Life, Work at 23:57 by krikkert
Inappropriately stolen from The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat, apparently a fellow paper-pusher:
Rule #O: “The Rules of Bureaucracy are mutable, non-canonical, non-ordinal, and contradictory, except in the cases where they are not.”
Rule #1: “Document everything you do; if you didn’t write it down, it didn’t happen.”
Rule #2 [The Sixty Minutes Rule]: “Never do anything that would cause Ed Bradley, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Steve Croft, Leslie Stahl, or even Andy Rooney to pursue you down a hallway with a camera crew.”
Rule #3: “Nothing Simple is Ever Easy”
Rule #4: “It’s about the money; follow the money.”
Rule #5: “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Rule #6: “Politics is the enemy of good government.”
Rule #7: “The biggest detriment to public service is the public.”
Rule #8: “The second biggest detriment to public service is the service.”
Rule #9: “There’s a reason; there’s ALWAYS a reason.”
Rule #10: “The Law is a harsh mistress: The rigorous and exacting application of which can benefit of society when used correctly to advance good policy and block bad, and be the bane of society when used incorrectly to advance bad policy and block good.”
Rule #11: “Public service often involves waking up in the morning, opening up the newspaper, and discovering that someone, somewhere out there thinks that you’re a dickhead.”
Rule #12: “No one really knows what you do.”
Rule #13 [Luke's Rule]: “No one ever acts like the bastard they really are.”
Rule #14: “Bureaucracy endures.”
Rule #15: “The longer you work in bureaucracy, the more Catch-22 resembles non-fiction.”
Rule #16: “Politicians are not smarter than you.”
Rule #18: “Money is not created equal.”
Rule #19: “Mediocrity is normalcy.”
Rule #17: “Within any bureaucratic structure, resources (e.g. people, money, knowledge, etc.) are not distributed uniformly.”
Rule #20: “Don’t assume a fiduciary liability without a committed resource allocation.”
Rule #21: “If you do your job and obey the law, they can’t reasonably fire you.”
Rule #22: “The Budget will always be wrong.”
Rule #23: “Always sign in blue.”
Rule #24: “A Bureaucrat must be able to explain and justify his/her actions to laymen without resorting to the phrase ‘because the Rules say so.’”
Rule #25: “Never voluntarily relinquish control of an original document.”
Rule #26: “Sometimes you just have to say ‘Screw the rules’”
Rule #27: “Change sucks.”
Rule #28: “Sometimes the answer is ‘No.’”
Rule #29: “It is very easy to make difficult decisions when no one has a clue what’s going on.”
Rule #30: “If you hang around long enough, eventually you will become an expert in something.”
Rule #31: “Data, technology, and automatic processes can never completely supplant human interaction.”
Rule #32: “Cover thine own ass.”
Rule #33: “It’s not real until it has its own acronym.”
Rule #34: Coming Soon…
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19.05.07
Posted in Education, Life, Work at 23:21 by krikkert
I had nearly forgotten that I had even applied. But as it appears, they not only received my application, they even processed it. And sent me a reply. Saying that I had been accepted. For the last week or so, I’ve been tormented by whether to attend a public school, or the private school so gracious to extend me an offer.
I’ve signed and dated the offer, and returned it. This fall, I will be attending BI — or the BI Norwegian School of Management. It’ll be a Bachelor’s program in Economics and Business Law, and I’ll hopefully be extending that into a full-blown law degree. Hopefully.
Also, I’d like to request a few good wishes for my friend Shamini, who’s in a tight spot with regards to the National Higher Education Coordination Board due to some misinformation on their part.
Work’s been hectic this month. I don’t think I’ve had a day off since early April, around Easter. My paycheque also came in the mail — roughly equivalent to two months’ budget when living on government study grants. Money tastes so much sweeter when it’s earned. Sadly, it also leaves so much faster. 
23:20, signing
~Christer
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17.02.07
Posted in Life, Work at 01:46 by krikkert
It appears I’ve arranged my last LAN party.
Our story begins yesterday, Thursday the 15th. I had just been informed that we were due to start preparations for our winter holiday LAN party (Saturday-Wednesday) on Friday at 10 o’clock, when my co-admin had finished at work. This was far too late, so I called him and made arrangements to pick the keys to the school we’re arranging it at up earlier. It should’ve been obvious to me then, that he hated having control wrested from him like that. But I didn’t care at that point — we couldn’t start arrangements 12 hours before we were supposed to open the doors!
Today, it continued. At four o’clock, my younger brother, Kenneth, and I started shuffling tables around so people would have somewhere to sit. A couple of hours later, our crew showed up — four more people to help us lay out power lines, work on networking, suchlike. Fast-forward another four hours. My co-chief shows up — only to point out that nothing is done to his satisfaction, and that everything will need to be redone. Now, at this point, my heels were aching (more about that in another post later) and I had finally managed to get on top of the bucking bronco that is a volunteer arrangement. Only to basically be told to get off it.
I left. Frankly, I’m not being paid highly enough to have that thrown in my face. Not to mention not being paid anything at all for the actual setup, only for the actual LAN itself. Three years of what I thought was cooperation, only to realise he’s been a prick about it all along.
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09.07.06
Posted in Life, Work at 00:06 by krikkert
9-17 day, as all my Saturdays. I have to start up stuff. And, today, I’ve been running around like a yo-yo. First, around noon, a customer arrives. She has a purchase order of around 33k NOK, paint, flooring, suchlike. She’d been directed to me and presents her case fairly — all her cards have a block of 10k NOK, so she can’t pay the order (we’re not allowed to split payment of one order over three). Apparently she had been bounced around three other people before being sent to me. So I had to ring up my manager in order to get an OK for a deposit solution (we charge you 30% of the sum right there and then, and send a bill for the rest). She was so happy to get it through that she spontaneously hugged me. I’m sure that must’ve been a sight.
One moment after that situation finishes, a new one starts. This guy had been bounced around the store, arguably because nobody understood his dialect. Until it was pointed out that he was speaking English.
Three weeks left in this job. Then one more week. Then Canada.
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