Pat Tillman's family and atheism

So, on Bill Maher last night, there was a conversation I found pretty shocking, regarding the testimony of Pat Tillman's family regarding his death (a fratricide in Afghanistan in 2004, if you remember) and the army's mishandling of pretty much every aspect of it. I hadn't been paying that close of attention to the case since then, but the revelation was pretty shocking. I did my best to transcribe the conversation here:

Bill Maher: Let me get to this week's news, cause that's what we're here for. Uh, back to Pat Tillman. His mother and his brother testified, and they are very, very upset about the way the army portrayed him. Uh. It's one thing to say he was killed not by friendly fire. Okay. A lie, to me I understand that lie. But they tried to make him something he wasn't. And this gets to me at the heart of what is wrong with this administration. They only see one kind of person as an American. They had to remake Pat Tillman as the kind of American that he wasn't. He voted for John Kerry, he read Noam Chomsky, and the family are athiests. Okay. This is. This is.

[applause]

This is unacceptable to the Bush people. And this... Karl Rove said to Cheryl Crow at the dinner the other day when she said "You work for us", and he said, "I work for the American people." In other words, you're not the American people. Only a certain type of people are the American people.

Richard Belzer: And there was a Colonel who castigated Tillman's mother and father, he said "If they were more Christian, they wouldn't be upset that he's dead."

Bill: Yes.

Richard: Now, you know, and the Sermon on the Mound, Jesus said "blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted", so that's a ... he's saying that ... and also Jesus said ... I'm a big fan of Jesus by the way

[applause]

And he also said, the truth will set you free. So they lied about Tillman, they're doing all these anti-Christian things and then they're castigating them because they're not Christian.

Lisa Schiffren: You know, Nobody's gonna defend that behavior.

Bill: What?

Lisa: It's indefensible behavior. It's...

Bill: What is?

Lisa: What that officer said to the family.

Bill: Oh, yeah.

Lisa: It is ... It has nothing to do with Christianity; Christianity is about as ... as pro-life in the sense of ... in the non-abortion sense....

Richard: Yeah, the Crusades were pro-life.

Lisa: Yeah, well, okay, so maybe Dennis Kucinich was wrong that peace was inevitable. You know, war, whatever.

Richard: Well it's a good mindset.

Bill: Well he was wrong about that.

Lisa: But, uh, obviously that's indefensible. The lie about friendly fire, i agree, you see why they did that, it was stupid...

(editorial comment: Richard Belzer is am amusing moron, but he's correct on this one)

Now, I was unaware of Tillman's family's lack of religion, and with all due respect to Lisa Schiffren, while she is correct in describing the colonel's statements "indefensible", the statement that "nobody is going to defend that" is flat-out wrong. Maybe she meant, nobody on the panel, or nobody in that room, but the fact of the matter is, people around the country defend statements like that one all the time.

The exact quote, which I found after minimal digging on the Internet, is as follows:

LIEUTENANT COLONEL RALPH KAUZLARICH, U.S. ARMY: Well, if you're an atheist and you don't believe in anything, if you die, what -- what is there to go to? Nothing. You're worm dirt. So, for their son to die for nothing, it's pretty hard to get your head around that.

(It has been mentioned, correctly, that while the Lt. Colonel was attempting to castigate atheists, it's actually taken by most atheists as a bit of a backhanded compliment: because atheists don't believe in any afterlife nonsense, we have a tendency to take death a bit more seriously than those who do; we believe that life actually has to be lived to the fullest, that there are no cosmic mulligans. This is a good thing to believe.)

In any case, the testimony was as follows:

He said that we were -- we would never be satisfied, because we're not Christians, and we're just a pain in the ass, basically. He also said that it must make us feel terrible that Pat is worm dirt.

This is of course an abhorrent thing to put a grieving mother through, and as indefensible as the comments really are, they make perfect sense in the fact that atheists represent the most openly despised minority in the United States (homosexuals are a very, very, very distant second). If the comment had been about race or nationality, they would have gotten much more airtime, and it wouldn't have taken a loony conspiracy theorist/actor on Bill Maher's show to bring my attention to it.

Moreover, it's perfectly consistent with what conservative-theocrat spokespeople like Pat Buchanan or Jerry Falwell - people with real political power and clout in this country - spew out on a daily (if not hourly) basis.

So, the next time Bill O'Reilly tries to convince you that Christians represent some kind of discriminated-against minority in the US, just remember this little anecdote. It's shared by countless others, but this one involves an American Hero whose name just about everyone knows, and who has been presented in a manner that is wildly inconsistent with what he was actually like in the flesh.

Holy fucking shit!

That's me at the top for a score of over $3900!!!

The funny thing was, it wasn't even that memorable of a tournament for most of its length. I hovered around the average chipstack for a very long time, then suddenly made a series of scores with about 20 people left. I was chip leader for a while and entered the FT at 2/9.

The FT was weird as hell, with it taking forever to get anywhere or eliminate anyone. I lost most of my stack from the BB with AQ, it was raised in EP and I decided I would just call. Flop came 288 with 2 diamonds (i had none). I checked to the raiser, a tight player who I felt played predictably. He bet 90k, which was about 2/3 of the pot and was in no way representatitve of a hand like 77, 99, TT, or JJ (which would push to protect). It felt like a lazy continuation bet and I pounced, pushing (he had roughly 180k more). He instacalled with KdQd. and a diamond hit the river.

From there I raced for my life with 9hTh against 88 and won, then with AK against 66 and won again, building me back up to a healthy stack. And then the weird stuff happened. People kept getting their money in with good hands and the good hands kept losing. I was as guilty of this as anyone. I had been catching a frozen wave of cards and was back down to desperation status (M=~7) and caught JQ offsuit from the button. Pushed, BB called with KQo. Flop came TKA. Heh. Then an equal stack pushed from the button to my BB, where I had TT. I called. He had AA. Flop came ten high. That eliminated him and would have left me impossibly short. Then I eliminated a short stack with AT against his TT. Three very bad beats with dominated hands, I felt a little donkish, but at least my plays were reasonable.

The blinds at Full Tilt tournaments increase with alarming rapidity, and the player on my right was taking full advantage of that, stealing at every opportunity (from the hands he showed down, he was catching cards, too). He knocked out a couple of players and was rolling, but I had built myself up to a good stack. I look at As Qc on the button. L-agg on my right raises it up, a huge over-raise to 300k or so, and I push for my 450k. He instacalls with JJ. Great. Another race for my life. The flop bricks, 2s 4s 8x. The turn brings the 3s, and I see my straight and flush outs. And the river is the 5s!!!!! Steel wheel baby! 5-high straight flush! Now that's a way to win.

That made me chip leader and only required one more big hand. We knock it down to 3-handed (finally) with the blinds at 30k-60k. I'm in the BB with 9s Js. The button limps, which is immediately suspicious. The SB (Mr L-agg) limps, and I check my option.

I am then quite glad that this isn't a live tournament because I think that jumping out of your chair and screaming "HOLY SHIT!" is a tell. The flop comes 7JJ. Trips! SB checks, I check, button checks. Well, shit. The river is a T, which seems fairly harmless, and the SB bets out, again overbetting for 300k. I push, and I have him covered. The button thinks forever and folds, later saying he folded AA. That surprised me. And the SB thinks for a bit and calls. He has 4To and is drawing dead.

I jump out of my chair. Don't even see the river. I now have an over 6-to-1 chip lead and it's heads-up against a tight player. I win two hands by buying the blinds and my lead is 10-to-1. He pushes in 2 big blinds and I autocall with K4 offsuit. He actually has a good hand, A7 offsuit. A seven hits the flop and I hunker down for some battle, but then a K hits the turn, giving him a spade draw. I flip. The river is a harmless red three and the virtual chips are pushed my way. Could hardly believe it. I double-check the 1st place prize, it's $3932.50. Ho. Lee. Shit.

The sick thing is I started the day with just about $100 or so in my full tilt account, and was fully prepared to go out with a bang. This was a $10+1 tourney with rebuys and the start didn't go so hot. I wound up rebuying like 9 times, and the add-on left me with about $3 in my Full Tilt account. Seriously. I figure, well, that's it, but then kept moving up in the tournament. I still didn't hit profitability until there were something like 18 people left, though (top 54 spots paid).

Of course, ~$4k isn't exactly life-changing money, but it's a hell of a score for a small-timer like me, and for someone whose job was recently misplaced (I have an interview set up for next Wednesday, crossing fingers), it's significant money.

The only real question now is, what the hell do I do with a $4k bankroll? Withdraw, or let it ride?

There's a question I'll have to ponder.

Unemployed blogging from Colorado

So, I am no longer an employee of the company I had been working for up until about a week ago, and while I'm not too upset, I'm still a little ... raw. I wasn't planning on staying for that long anyway, but I wish, so as to save myself a little stress, that it could have been more on my terms.

So, my performance evaluation was scheduled for Friday. My company has recently switched to a consultant-preferred competitive system that looks something like as follows:

479
268
135

Where each number in that box represents a quadrant, with bottom to top representing increasing leadership qualities, while left to right represents increasing results-based performance. 1 is the worst box to be in and 9 is the best.

My performance evaluation last year was not stellar. I was a 3 box, with my team leader fairly apologetic about where he felt I was versus where I felt I deserved to be. I hadn't been given much of a chance to prove myself. The evaluation took place in March, but covered the previous calendar year, so it missed three months that had passed. John, my team leader, explicitly stated that based on my year-to-date performance, because of a project I was leading, I was looking at at least a 6-box, possibly even an 8, or even a 9 if I really knocked my project out of the park.

I feel like I did. The project itself didn't go well, and at times the delays were due to electrical issues, which were my responsibility, but all things being equal, I felt I did a job few engineers at the company would have been able to pull off. I was given shit for prints, shit for installation documents, parts were missed, designs were changed at the last second to shit that didn't work, there were no design reviews, and basically I was hung out to dry. Despite that, I brought the fucking project home, delivering 4 very functional, running, producing machines out of very difficult, complex, and differentiated projects. Then, to top it off, at the end of the year, when I was assigned to a project that I had no early involvement in, but was given a heap of responsibilities toward, every single one of those responsibilities that I had went off with very minimal hitches, while other electrical issues that I was not assigned to languished for months, resulting in a machine that still isn't up and running.

So, I felt like I'd done pretty well. Apart from a couple of minor, isolated mistakes, I'd received nothing but positive feedback from John all year, but John was transferred, sometime around September, up to Wisconsin, and Scott, a newbie team leader, took his place. John was still responsible for writing the performance evaluation, and I was expecting something around a 6 box.

So Friday rolls around, performance evaluation time. I head to Scott's office, and he says, "We want to grab a conference room", which is odd, since with John I always did my performance evaluations in his office. So he grabs a conference room that happens to be located near the HR offices. I raise my eyebrows, Scott doesn't say much, he just leads me in and tells me to take a seat. Then he says he's got to go find Rosie. I just give a contemptuous guffaw. I know what that means. Rosie is the head HR person in the plant, who I barely know, but know enough to know I'm not missing much.

It takes him a while to find her, and he comes back in the room, and says she's coming. By this point I'm slouched in my chair, eyeing Scott, giving him a look that says "You know you're not going to get out of this bullshit unscathed." Finally Rosie enters the room and Scott starts up, flipping past the page that has the visual representation of my box. I see that I am a 1 box.

I laugh. "What a joke."

Scott ignores this, and starts in, "Well, Greg, from this evaluation it is pretty clear that you're not meeting expectations..."

"What expectations am I not meeting?" I interrupt. "I mean, specifically."

"Well, from your objectives it seems that your primary responsibility this year was the ARIES project..."

"...which I delivered to near-perfection, given the circumstances."

"Well, the review appears to disagree."

"Then the review is bullshit," I spout out, knowing full well where the discussion was going and deciding that it was now or never to get my licks in. "The prints that were delivered to me were late, and described completely non-functional circuitry that needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, even as the installation was commencing. The work breakdowns and wirepulls I was given were worthless. Everything had to be created from scratch. Software was faulty. The project was as screwed up as a project can be, and despite this, I delivered working machines with an extreme minimum of downtime. P6 was down for an extra week because of electrical complications. P5, which was not my responsibility, was down for an extra three months. What do you think the difference was?"

No answer. I don't think either of the two of them are used to dealing with an engineer that commands the least bit of loquatiousness.

"Furthermore, I find it incredible that anyone can justify placing me in the 1-box when I was not given anything more than a couple of cursory correction-mistakes as negative feedback throughout the course of the entire year, while I can provide more than half-a-dozen specific attaboys from John. I'm of the opinion that a performance review, particularly a negative one, should not come as a surprise. Wouldn't you agree?"

"I would," Scott said.

Rosie chose now to pipe in, and clarified that I had received no coaching throughout the specific year. I said, no, not for anything more than a couple of relatively minor mistakes, and that I would presume I wasn't being put in the 1-box for a couple of minor mistakes. She agreed, and asked me to clarify again, saying she found that hard to believe.

"Are you saying I'm lying?" I boomed, raising my voice up to a shout and flinching in her direction. She recoiled a bit.

"I'm saying I find that very unusual."

"Then it's unusual. It's also the truth. The fact of the matter is, everybody in this room knows I was not put in the 1-box for anything related to my performance. It's preposterous to think that my performance on the ARIES project was anything less than meeting expectations, and quite reasonable to say that I exceeded every expectation that was thrown at me in the past twelve months. Therefore the system is broken."

"But here we are," she said.

"Do you acknowledge that the system is broken?" I asked.

"I think that this review represents an opinion of you from a different perspective."

"Then that perspective is wrong."

And on and on, like that. I had Rosie all but cowering by the end of it, as I:

- Blasted the company for its talent building, at one point saying that the competitive ratings system had turned the entire plant into a "bunch of greedy little knowledge-hoarders, desperately trying to hold onto their own little islands."

- Stated that, unlike Rosie, those of us that did actual work sometimes had trouble scheduling bullshit meetings, particularly when we were in the middle of a 12-day stretch of back shifts, and had informal channels of communication open anyways.

- Accused the ratings system of making a blatantly political and tactical decision based on the common knowledge that I was not particularly happy with my job: "why waste good raise money on someone that might not be around soon anyway?" They didn't deny this.

And so on, for about an hour. Eventually Rosie put a stop to it, and brought up the options about where we could go from here. She said we could put me on a constant performance monitoring system, or I could leave voluntarily here and now. Not a hard choice; I knew that if I didn't leave then, I probably wouldn't get an opportunity, and I don't want it on my record that I've ever been fired. So I signed my resignation, handed in my badge, and walked out right then and there, with the parting shot of "Fuck this bullshit, you'll never get any quality engineers to stay if you keep treating them like you're treating them. I can do better than this shit."

And so, I get paid for one more month that I don't have to work, which is nice, plus I get paid for all my unused vacation, which year-to-date is 120 hours, also nice. Almost two months' pay forthcoming. And I have a very active lead at an engineering firm that hired a lot of ex-employees of my company, where I know quite a few people and have a stellar reputation. I imagine what it will take to get hired there will be a brief phone call, a flight, and a quick, informal interview. I interview well, and my resume will be 100% what they're looking for. They still have job postings up and I know through the grapevine that they have a specific need for Wonderware experts; I have a general reputation as one of the most knowledgeable Wonderware developers around.

So, all in all, the ending of my current job should be very good for me. I was planning on leaving soon anyway, but do kinda sorta wish that it had been more on my own terms, and that it would have left me with less of a bitter taste in my mouth. I have plenty of money saved up (at least, for the immediate time being), and have a 401k worth a great deal that I could potentially dip into if things got really bad, but chances are I will be up and employed again soon. In fact, chances are high that I will ask for a couple of months off, just to take a break, get my house ready to sell, and play poker and video games. I could be all about going to work again sometime in July.

But for now, I'm in Colorado, in the annual tradition that my friend Brian throws together, in the form of a ski trip where we stay at his parents' (beautiful, beautiful) house. But more on that later. Bedtime, and the slopes are calling tomorrow.