Pacificapocalypse

Man, Latino Review has been getting some good stuff lately.
Now they have the latest Max Payne posters. They look pretty good I think; captures the dark feel and oppressive constant snowfall of the first game, but they’ve turned the brooding Wahlbergness (Wahlbergian brooding?) up to 11,  and dude! Look up for once! But the Brooklyn Bridge angel wings are as subtle as napalm. And where’s Max’s Hawaiian shirt?

Click for full size.

In addition to the weirdness from last week and over the weekend, the body count continues from the buyout offer from management. So far 25 people have opted for the buyout AND they’ve pushed back the final filing date from August 22nd to the 29th. Does that mean that they have a large number of applicants or that they don’t have enough? No ones sure.
Of the three people in my department that I’m sure were taking the buyout, two were told that the offers had been accepted and their last day was Monday this week. Holy crap! Gone! Poof! Just like that.
Three more that I know of are on the fence… it’s an odd feeling, the sense of uneasiness. There’s talk of just disbanding the department but they need local people who know the marketplace, so I highly doubt that’s going to happen. I’m guessing we’ll be downsized ( christ I hate that word ) to the minimum number of staff and be done with it. Time will tell. Life goes on, blah blah blah, but coupled with the break-in, this is making me very uneasy.

It’s been one hell of a week.
First and foremost - our house was burglarized on Wednesday last week. Two laptops stolen (with personal data on them both, which of course prompted frenzied password changes and financial information that had to be secured - seriously, do you have your browser store your passwords and login information for all your personal sites? Email? Banking? Insurance? Hell even your social sites, Netflix, Facebook, etc? Well not anymore.), Jewelry, cameras. The list goes on.

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*sigh* ok so the score is now officially three people from my department are taking the buyout; two more are considering it and I learned yesterday that the remaining supervisor has put in her request, which, if she gets it approved, will leave the department with no management at all.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. I see the department being reduced to no more than five people in the future and eventually folded into SFGate.com which makes sense to me.
More later.

Yeah that’d be the town of Pacifica.
Weird isolated fogbank rolled in over the state beach yesterday afternoon and blanketed Linda Mar for about an hour before rolling back out again. And I think I saw Jamie Lee Curtis.

Click to embiggen.

Well, at Least I Have a Great Story to Tell My Plant.

Via Nedroid.com

Sure we do!
Caught the first two episodes of The Cleaner last night on demand. Looks brilliant, great cast, smart dialogue without being too clever. Benjamin Bratt is easy on the eyes as is Grace Park.
The premise is a little shaky:

“The Cleaner,” inspired by the true story of a real-life “extreme interventionist,” stars Benjamin Bratt as William “The Cleaner” Banks, who, after hitting rock-bottom from his own addictions after the birth of his daughter, strikes a tentative deal with God. Now along with his unconventional team, he helps people get away from their addictions by any means necessary.
So kidnapping people off the street is now considered intervention? Isn’t anyone going to notice? Future plot points? Probably. Anyway it looks good and dammit ( SPOILER ALERT!) I shed a tear during the first episode when Micky OD.
That really sucked.

Ok, look, I’m all for activism, social change, inclusiveness and public demonstration, but this is just plain stupid.

From today’s issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian in the Alerts section:

Anti-movement
What better way to show your opposition to the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons than to participate in a freeze action. Come to the trolley turnaround to commemorate America’s 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to protest US aggression toward Iran. All you have to do is stand frozen for five minutes and, when organizers blow the whistle, chant “no attack on Iran!”
5 p.m., free
Powell and Market, SF

Freeze and chant? It’s like the joke when the robber stick the gun in the victims face and says “Don’t move! Put your hands up!” “So wait, do I not move or do I put my hands up?” And I *despise* flash mobs and their associated nonsense; they’re annoying and no longer the unique occurrence they were once upon a time. That time was a Tuesday afternoon, for about 20 minutes, in late 2002. Just ask this girl if they’re still a good idea.
These guys need to take a clue from Improv Everywhere.
Now they know how to do a public scene.

So the fallout continues; another person in my department is taking the buyout; she’s been with the company for 15 years, so again, it sort of makes sense. That’s two definite and two maybes.

What other fresh, disturbing revelations shall the day bring?

Alternate post title: “Regrets, I’ve had a few…”

Oh and by the way, Court… F5!