Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
My grandmother died last night. This wasn't a shock or a surprise. Her health has been on the decline, and she's been in hospice for the last month. She lived a long life, and in her final days she was surrounded by her three adult children.
My grandma was a kind woman. She wasn't perfect, but I always felt loved in her presence. She was a retired kindergarten teacher, and was still working when I was a kid. I have so many happy memories sitting at her kitchen table, and I'm going to carry those with me for the rest of my life. She was also proof that anyone who claims that you get more conservative as you get older is full of shit, because she certainly didn't.
I think it's interesting how the body processes grief sometimes. I don't know that I'll cry, but over the past month, knowing this was coming, I've felt a tension in my gut. Now that she's passed, instead of relief that tension is replaced by a sense of emptiness. That something is missing that should still be there. Something has been taken away, and I feel it.
Of course, as I wrote that, I immediately started crying... so I guess my body processes grief in pretty ordinary ways too.
I wanted to come up with something profound linking this to Beltane, which we sit in the middle of right now, but it just seemed hackneyed. Like I was trying to dig out some greater significance when the truth is death comes whenever it wants. The only predictable thing about it is that it's the end of all of our journeys. I hope that when I pass I'm so lucky to have lived such a long life with people that I love around me in my final days.
For the record, I will be fine. I just needed to get these words out while they were still in my head. I don't have some rousing conclusion or deep insight to tack on here at the end, just that gut feeling that something is missing.
Because it is.
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Got to ask here: Why was Terrence added to Bork Con staff if he was this incompetent?
Forgetting his ego issues, someone made a big mistake recommending Terrence and approving his addition. The weird thing is it doesn’t seem like anybody has any prior experience with him and someone just about had to.
Bork Con has open meetings where anyone can join general staff. It’s not an uncommon thing
Sometimes the con’s parent organization insists that you let someone be on staff even though you already have a list of ways he’s already screwed things up and caused problems and they’re going “But he means well and he’s so energetic!” so you go along with it because you’re trying to get them to agree to a bunch of cool things they have to approve like having the talking elevators speak Japanese for the weekend and you’re trying to choose your battles wisely and you have to hold your tongue when they throw him out two years later for all of the new problems he’s caused and you don’t show up at their meeting yelling “I TOLD YOU SO!” when they complain that he copied the entire organization mailing list and started using it.
It happens a lot in the business world, too. There’s the obvious cases of someone who is just borderline competent enough and just good enough at staying on the good side of the right people to remain employed for years despite being worse than having no one in the position at all. But there’s also random new hires who can make it through an interview just fine, and seem to do okay in training, but then turn out to be utterly incompetent whenever no one is actively watching them to make sure they don’t screw up. It’s actually really hard to tell who is going to work out and who isn’t until you see them work, which is why the death of the middle-manager position is so bad long-term for companies, even if they don’t realize it.