The Curse of Dan Shaunessy

The fellowship of the miserable survives this Halloween with Count Shaunessy the leader of the blood suckers, who did his best to help run young Theo Epstein out of town so he can continue to ply his trade as the Dark Prince of Negativity, and extend his cottage industry with his new book, Death to Red Sox Nation. It was a master stroke of his to denigrate Theo's achievements, compared to those of the Godfather, "Lucky" Larry Lucchino, and to tick him off just enough to distrust the Red Sox hierarchy and force his hand on principle. Now you have a clear playing field to stoke your negative fires, and maybe conjure up a new curse when Manny is traded, Damon leaves for more money, and Ortiz gets pissed off without another top slugger in front of him in the line up. Yes, you vampire, you'll have a lot of candidates to suck the life out of, as well as the Nation itself, brought to its knees, by an inferior General Manager. You'll smile with glee, and do cartwheels on the floor, when the Red Sox are 10 games out at the end of April 2006. You are the zenith of negativity, and only in your glory when the Red Sox are losers.
You have a real problem, and it probably stems from your youth, or are you as greedy a bastard as the all the Red Sox owners? The glass is always half empty for you when it comes to the Sox. Even when they won, you had a hard time embracing it, since all you know how to do is to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. My suggestion to you is get the hell out of Boston, and move to Tampa Bay. You'd feel right at home down there, and your negative views would do them some good, as you are a Master at explaining excuses when things don't go right. And maybe, just maybe you'll meet your match.

Customers are No.1, but Employees are not No.4

It's a shame, but employees of the human kind is just so much fodder to keep the corporate machine rolling, while it spends money improving software to improve systems, eliminate jobs, outsource the maintenance group that handles any malfunctions and answer questions from frustrated workers who can't get the system to work. And, yes, the IT group is also a vendor selected by the company who have no idea what the system is for, but nevertheless have to justify their multimillion dollar contract, so they put plenty of bells and whistles into it, to make it ridiculously complex and user unfriendly with unnecessary steps that do nothing except slow the process down and add to excessive mouse clicking that produces no final resolution of the problem until the umteenth click, at which point the whole procedure starts over again, or a malfunction occurs in which case you call an 800#, and a guy named Kart in India patiently explains the error like you're in kindergarten, and afterward you have no choice but to thank him, so you can continue on to the next problem, and he can go home and thank Buddha for the global economy he can participate in, and he can live a Rolls Royce life in India. So the global tentacles have reached out and ensnared Kart and his family, while corporations trim down, and RIF, and lay off thousands of workers in America. And the workers in the cubes and pods don't get the training they need to do the job right, but the money rolls in, and the corporate giant keeps trampling everything underfoot. It has gotten to the point where gulp, we are merely extensions of the machine, and are merely there to do its will, with the minmum of management supervision. It doesn't matter who's sitting there clicking the mouse, becuause the systems do all the work, and the better they are, the less people are needed. So, truly it's sad but true, employees are the fourth priority, because unfortunately we are cheapest ones to replace. I now understand the mission statement a lot better than when I began, and it's a horrifying thought. Happy Halloween!