For once I'm not bitching about my co-workers, but still bitching about my job at the hotel

I don't know if there's any way to completely avoid having parties in rooms, but if there is, I'd like to know.

Honestly, I don't care what people are doing in their rooms, even if it is a party. I've been to quite a few parties in hotel rooms, even hosted a few. Never was a problem for hotel staff and certainly was not at all rude to them. However, when my phone rings at the desk and there's a guest complaining about noise on the line, I HAVE TO care.

I have a splitting headache right now. Been dealing with drunk, stupid, and just flat out annoying people all night. Had the police here three times so far. I'm just sick of it all. So sick of it.

I'm going to take a little bit of time for some therapeutic venting about some of the more ridiculous things I hear from guests when I have to tell them they need to shut the fuck up, erm I mean quiet down.

Which room was it?

No, I'm not telling you which room. Does it fucking matter? You need to shut the fuck up that's all you need to know, that simple. Now shut the fuck up. No, you can't smooth it over with them. You woke them up or you are keeping them awake. Shutting the fuck up is the best way to smooth it over. SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Do you know how much I spent? Do you know how much my group has spent?

I don't give a shit. If I really want to know, then I can look it up. I'm the auditor, I can do that. Turns out, I don't care and it doesn't make a difference. You need to shut the fuck up. Do you think there's some point where you have spent enough money that you can be allowed to do whatever you want and ruin someone else's stay in the process? Am I supposed to tell the person being deprived of a night's sleep that their complaint is irrelevant because of how much money you spent? If they or their group spent more, does that make their complaint more relevant? Just shut the fuck up, you are making yourself look more like an asshole.

Go ahead! Call the police!

OK. Start packing your bags now. Could have been avoided if you just shut the fuck up.

I'll have your job!

You really want it that badly? I'll take a night off, I need it. You can tell people to shut the fuck up. How about that? Oh? you want me fired? For doing my job? Good luck with that. My manager will be here in the morning and I'll still be here at night. Seriously, has any hotel employee that works in any security capacity been fired for addressing a noise complaint? No, they haven't. Save yourself the waste of time. Have a Coke and a smile, and shut the fuck up.

But it's a wedding!

Yes it is, and you had your reception in one of the banquet halls. Now you are in your room, now you need to shut the fuck up. Does that negate the fact that you are keeping people awake? And what are all these people doing in your room anyway? Party's over, get to fuckin and shut the fuck up.

I'm calling my lawyer! I'm suing you!

Cool. See you in court. I'll bet the judge tells you to shut the fuck up.

I know the owner!

So do I. If he were here right now, he'd tell you to shut the fuck up. (OK, I don't know that for sure, but if I were the owner, I'd tell them to shut the fuck up.) - True story, I called a guest's buff one time and told them I was the owner's son and this hotel would be mine someday. Know what they did? They shut the fuck up.

But what if.....

The only "what if' you need to be concerned with is what if you don't shut the fuck up. I'm not here to talk hypotheticals, I'm here to tell you to shut the fuck up. What part of "Shut the fuck up" don't you understand?

How about I....

How about you shut the fuck up? This isn't a negotiation, I'm telling you to shut the fuck up. It's not a topic for discussion, you need to shut the fuck up.

I feel so much better now. For the record, I have never actually said "shut the fuck up" to a guest. I may have been holding back the urge to once or several times. I really feel I have to say that. Sometimes the things I say here get back to those I work with. I wouldn't want them thinking that I get as foul with the guests as I do in my blog. And if they are reading this and not having a good laugh, they really need to just shut the fuck up.

$578M school? You have GOT to be kidding me

I saw this in the newspaper this morning and it about blew my mind.

Yes I still read an actual newspaper, I'm kinda old school.

Yahoo News linkage.

Now most people that know me know I'm going to school to be a public school teacher and I substitute in public schools currently. I'm all for improving education, but L.A. is doing it wrong.

From the linked article-

"New buildings are nice, but when they're run by the same people who've given us a 50 percent dropout rate, they're a big waste of taxpayer money," said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution who sits on the California Board of Education. "Parents aren't fooled."

I certainly hope they are not fooled, especially after reading this -

The pricey schools have come during a sensitive period for the nation's second-largest school system: Nearly 3,000 teachers have been laid off over the past two years, the academic year and programs have been slashed. The district also faces a $640 million shortfall and some schools persistently rank among the nation's lowest performing.

Am I wrong when I say this is like slapping some bling on a rusty old beater that barely runs and overheats on the way to the corner store?

Did I just say "bling"?

These "Taj Mahal" schools as they are being called make even the colleges I went to look like slums and I would be hard pressed to believe the children attending them are going to get anything close to the education I had. Even if they did, that still doesn't justify the price.

I think the money could have been better spent on several smaller, simpler schools. Schools with relatively small classroom sizes. Better yet they could take it a step further and on the high school level have career specialized schools. Something like one for the arts, another for trades, another for science and engineering and so forth. These are just ideas that are bouncing around in my head that seem to work pretty well in other parts of the world where the schools don't have massive atrium's, parks, food courts, and buildings that resemble modern art masterpieces.

Here's a really radical idea in education. No text books, no computers, none of the modern "Taj Mahal" school things. Teach the way it used to be done, through lecture and have the students take notes. As archaic as it sounds, it worked great at one of the colleges I went to - Cambridge University. I learned more there than at any other school I attended and I was there the least amount of time, just a summer. I retained most of it too. I was hearing it, seeing things on boards, slide shows, pictures, diagrams and the like and writing it down all the way. Filled up 3 notebooks while I was there! In addition to that I also hand wrote 5 research papers, each about 2,500 words in length. My research was done the old-fashioned way - in a library with books. Part of that was in the same library that Newton calculated the speed of sound in, but I got myself permanently banned for reenacting his experiment.

There's a point to be made with such a radical, yet very ancient, idea. Students to not need all the expensive things that "Taj Mahal" schools have to learn. These things are nice, but are not going to do diddly for education. If I were a taxpayer in California, I would be totally fucking outraged. If I were a teacher in that school system, I'd switch to a private school if not open up my own. With 3,000 teachers laid off, it wouldn't be a bad idea for them to band together and show their former employer how it should be done.

A few muslims are terrorists, so let's burn a Quran!

Let's not.

Before I get started on what I know is going to be a long rant, take a look at these links-

http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68592

http://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Burn-A-Koran-Day/134718123226530?v=wall

Yeah, I know the first one is a forum post that links to the second, but there are quite a few people there that are all for this. If I were not currently banned from that forum, I'd post a link to this if not just post the whole thing there. If anyone would like to do that on my behalf, I'd be pretty cool with it. I'd like to get some comments from those that support burning the Quran or any other book. You know, have like a discussion?

I'm very against this. I know not all Muslims are terrorists. The people behind what happened on 9/11/2001 were, but they only represent a relative few that are extremist fanatics. Nearly all Muslims I have encountered are pretty nice. Aside from that I am against book burnings in general. Nearly all books serve either a purpose of education or entertainment. I think it's completely asinine to to burn a book because you don't like it or don't agree with it. Burning a religious text carries a bit of added weight as that text hols a pretty special meaning to those who are members of the religion that is attached to that text. Burning a holy text is purely an act of hate and ignorance.

From the Facebook link -

On September 11th, 2010, from 6pm - 9pm, we will burn the Koran on the property of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL in remembrance of the fallen victims of 9/11 and to stand against the evil of Islam. Islam is of the devil!

Did I read that right? In remembrance? That alone is something I've got a pretty big issue with. There's a lot better things one can do in remembrance of those that died that day than commit a blatant act of hate. It's total disrespect! Why not have a big group prayer for those that died, their families they left behind and the soldiers still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? I don't believe in praying as I am an atheist, but I do understand that most people that belong to one religion or another do. That's at least respectful. Or how about some big charity fund raiser for the families of the victims? Or send care packages to the soldiers? Or just do something positive and respectful?

But there's other problems I have. As I said, not all Muslims are terrorists. Islam is the second largest religion and accounts for 23% of the worlds population, about 1.57 billion people. At least that's what Wikipedia tells me. It's only a relative few, pretty much their equivalent to militant fundamentalist Christians, that do commit terrorist acts. It seems rather asinine to burn Qurans over a few when many of them are not bad people at all. It would be like burning KJV's because the members of Westboro Baptist Church are total fucking douchebags. In other words, committing a hateful act toward a large group is just ridiculous when only a few are the problem.

And about burning the Quran. It's a religious text. Just a book to anyone else, but to a Muslim it's pretty special. Burning it is only going to make the terrorist fanatics fell justified in their actions and at least annoy the rest. Not to mention make those doing the burning and anyone even remotely associated look bad. Great move there folks, you are doing America a real solid. If any reading this is planning on participating in burning Qurans, before you do, think about how you would feel if it was your holy text that someone was burning.

Another thought on this, where are they going to get the Qurans from? If they are going to acquire them legitimately, well that's a lot of sales of Qurans. The people publishing them and the bookstores I'm sure will appreciate your money. Heck it may even look like a lot of people just converted to Islam. And if they are acquired not so legitimately? Well isn't there something in the Bible that says "Thou shalt not steal"? Hmmm Exodus 20:15, Matthew 19:18, Romans 13:9. And it's usually in the front of the Bible with the rest of the 10 Commandments. So if you are not purchasing your Quran before you burn it and you believe what the Bible says, you are going to Hell. Why not give that money to a charity? You know, do something positive with it? A Quran costs between $8 and $40. You could feed or clothe some people with that. Heck if a large enough group gave that each, they could probly put a child of one of the victims through college, if not a few. Just another thought.

Another thing to those that are planning on burning a Quran. Have you read it? If you are going to buy it, you might as well read it before tossing it in to the fire. If anything so you really know what you are burning and why you are burning it. You might learn something. I suggest you not burn it. Read it and keep it as a reference. It may come in handy in a theological debate with a Muslim. It's why I keep a Bible handy as well as having BibleGateway.com bookmarked. This quote from Sun Tzu's Art of War comes to mind.

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

Not that I consider Muslims or Christians to be enemies of mine, but I do get into debates with them, mostly the latter. Getting back to the point, burning any text without reading and understanding it is just ignorant.

In closing and to sum it up, anyone that is participating in a Quran burning is only exposing their hate, ignorance, disrespect and just being a total douchebag. I feel like for the most part I'm preaching to the choir here, but if I change someone's mind or cause them to think, well them my time wasn't completely wasted. At least I got it off my chest.

So what have I been up to lately?

Quite a bit. Honestly, I spend most of my time exhausted when I'm not doing stuff, but it keeps me out of trouble. Here's some of the highlights:

Thanks for the overtime, could have done without the bad mouthing though.

So Tuesday morning I had to call the GSM of the hotel I work for because there it was 7:15 am, I'm all alone, she's the only one on the schedule and I just heard from one of the maintenance guys that there was an accident that may have been on her route to work. Now I thought I was nice and respectful, I even felt a bad about waking her up, but according to what I have been told, she had a bit of a different story. I'm not sure exactly what was said, but apparently I was shitty to her. I also heard she got corrected by the same maintenance guy that was present when I called her. Oddly enough, when I called her back later on because I noticed I left with the desk keys she didn't seem to have a problem with me then or when I saw her Friday when I picked up my check. Heck, she was pretty nice both times. I thought about confronting her about it, but I'll be over it once I'm done typing this.

Yeah, I'm over it.

Look Mom, I know you are trying to help me here, but I'd rather carry 100 pounds of lead than 10 pounds of feathers!

Well, my mom is out of the hospital, but not quite 100%. I've been helping her out. Kinda wish I could do more. One big thing though is doing the grocery shopping for my parents. May not seem like a big deal, but try carting a weeks worth of groceries across town taking buses and walking. Every week it's the same thing when my mother is giving me the list - she keeps worrying about the weight of the things, I'm worried about size. I'm built like an ox, I can carry a lot of weight. I'm not very big though, and my backpack can only hold so much. I try to keep it limited to a full backpack and 2 bags. I don't care if the backpack is full of canned goods, that's cool. But when I'm carrying a family size box of waffles, a bag of hoagie rolls, a big bag of chips, etc. well space gets to be at a premium. And in case anyone it wondering, my father can devour a family size box of waffles in a few days all by himself.

And speaking of my father....

There's some program he's on now. It's like a day care for geezers. As opposed to putting them in a nursing home. I'm thinking it's not very good. He goes on the days my mom is at dialysis. So my mom has to get him ready before dialysis and usually take care of him when he gets home. He's come home a few times with a Depends full of shit and piss. Also, I don't know what they are feeding him there, but his blood sugar has been higher than ever a few times afterwards. The program he's on is called PACE. I don't know all the details, but if things don't straighten out, expect a rather big long rant from me after we get him out of the program.

And all that being said....

It's getting up on the end of my shift here at work, which means my computer time will be significantly limited until I come back to work. I still need to buy a new laptop. I still can't afford it. Well I could afford it just fine if I was not going to DragonCon.

BTW, you can help me in a small way be clicking on the Google ads, or in a slightly bigger way by clicking on the "tip jar" in the corner.