Intellectually I know that the raging river just down the hill is full of massive amounts of snow melt and all the rain we had earlier today, running down from the headlands. Further downstream I know that it is causing flooding because I can see it on my drive to work. Yet, somehow, the sound of that rushing, raging water brought peace to me tonight. I cannot begin to quantify the why or the how, I simply know what is, and I am at peace with it.

January

1. We started the year under the shadow of a DHS investigation for possible child neglect and endangerment.
2. I was gainfully employed, albeit through a temp agency, with a very real expectation that the job would become permanent.
3. Shortly after the start of the new year the brakes start to fail on the Durango, requiring taking out a line of credit to get them replaced. Not a big deal since I was earning some good money.
4. The day after getting the brakes fixed I get served my walking papers at my temp job.
5. Shortly after that we get served with an eviction notice while we are in limbo with trying to get unemployment benefits restarted.

February

1. My in-laws agree to take us in, and purchase a travel trailer for us to use as our primary living space.
2. We sell off, donate, or simply give away the majority of our furniture and a good share of our belongings, boxing up the few things we are keeping for storage in the barn or to have out for daily use.
3. Our expected two weeks to make the move out to the farm is suddenly cut more than in half when the landlord decides that we need to be out sooner than the final date on the eviction notice, forcing us to pull some long, stress filled days trying to get the move done. Stubborn pride took hold and we decided to not call on the kindred that we had been visiting to see if they could help. For some foolish reason we decided that we needed to prove to ourselves that we could do this move ourselves, especially after so many people chipped in to help us move into this place a mere four months prior, and now we were being forced to move out again.

Things were pretty quiet for a few months while I worked at finding a job. Finally I got a call from a recruiter at Comcast asking if I was still interested in working there. That led to a phone interview, then a face-to-face interview, and finally a job offer. I started with Comcast in June and am still working there. Sarah says she has never seen me happier, even on my bad days.

August

1. Looking forward to spending a weekend with the folk at the annual Jambermoot event, which would be on my birthday weekend this year. We had actually paid our way in with tax return money back in February.
2. The transmission in the Durango goes out on Sarah while she and the kids are on their way to Jambermoot. I was at work and planning on joining them when I got off shift later that night.
3. Sarah’s folks rescued Sarah and the kids, tracked down and purchased a replacement transmission, and Tim (Sarah’s father) spent the next several weeks working on removing the now shot transmission and replacing it.

September led to me getting an earlier shift, much to Sarah’s delight, and I was finally able to be home in time for bedtime with the kids for the first time since I started my job. Better yet, I now had days off together rather than the split days off that I had when I started.

October and November were relatively quiet, with one exception. That exception being on the drive to the other side of town to spend the evening before Thanksgiving with my family since I would be working the holiday. We were headed down Germantown Rd and hit a patch of wet leaves on a sharp corner just as I was braking going into the corner. End result was no traction, minimal steering, and us headed across oncoming traffic and into a bramble patch on the wide shoulder on the other side of the road. The other side of that bramble patch was a sheer drop down into the ravine that Germantown Rd climbs down. Thank the Gods we had functioning 4-wheel drive in the Durango and were able to extract ourselves from the brambles, especially since nobody headed up the road bothered to stop and check on us when we had the Durango’s nose buried deep in the brambles. Our nerves were shaken, but the vehicle was undamaged, and we made it to the family gathering in one piece (with the exception of our nerves).

December was the capper for the year for us, culminating in Sarah and I oathing to the kindred, becoming the newest full members of the kindred. This is a huge item for me, and something I had wanted for several years. At one point I had actually contemplated the concept of moving out to Kansas just to be close to Jotun’s Bane Kindred, a group of folks that I had started to bond with online. Now I am happy that we managed to find a group that fits us here, though I still long to meet Mark and Rod and the rest of JBK someday, hopefully at a Lightning Across the Plains event one of these years.

So, as you can see, we had an eventful year. My schooling has taken a temporary back seat while we sort out finances, and we hope to get me back in and finally finished up this year. Last year was quite trying when it came to my education, and there was far too much going on with that to try to cover it in the above list. Suffice to say that it added a completely different layer of tension and stress to the mix.

My hopes for the new year are simple in concept, though they may prove challenging in execution:

1. Get me back on task with my education, and finally graduating, finishing my 2-year degree completion program before it takes me five years to complete it.
2. Continue working at Comcast, improving my skills, and hopefully getting into an analytical or support role within the company, ideally with a nice pay increase.
3. Be able to afford to move back into town so that we can be closer to friends and work.
4. Visit my father more often, especially as the Parkinsons is hitting him harder now. I want to spend as much time as possible with my father before that is no longer possible.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 52 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

I have always known that the protective urges of a parent could be strong, but I had no idea that it could be this strong. It is one thing to contemplate protecting your child from physical danger, but social and psychological danger? Yeah, I don’t think that social niceties would stop me from doing whatever I felt I needed to do to protect my children. Nobody gets away with using my family or my children for political gains. Nobody!

That said, and since I seem to see a large volume of traffic driven here by a couple of sites who’s creators seem intent upon doing just that, consider this a wake up call for personal responsibility. I don’t deal well with Trolls, but if being a Heathen has taught me anything, trolls can only be effectively deal with by bashing them in the head with a hammer. Thor is a great example of using effective troll management techniques. Granted, these days we are talking figurative rather than literal hammers. Even so, remember that while it might seem that one can hide behind the anonymity of the Internet, there are ways of peeking behind that curtain. It might take some detective work. It might take some time. Regardless, eventually I intend to speak to these people face-to-face and question their intentions. No more anonymity. Talk to me as a human, face-t0-face, or fade into the background never to be heard from again.

I think I have made my point clear. Engage in conversation if you so desire. Me, I am done ignoring the trolls. You want to use my family you go through me to do it!

Before I delve into the topic I must first provide a definition of what constitutes a stakeholder. A stakeholder is anyone who has an effect or is effected by a decision or strategy. In a business environment this term has often become synonymous with stockholders and the Board of Directors. In a project management environment this term reflects managers that will be impacted by the results of the project.

Now that I have established what constitutes a stakeholder, I should advise that the title of this post can be deceptive. For most of corporate management groups this statement is interpreted as what makes the stockholders happy, and what can be done to create healthy investment income. Not a bad concept, and certainly one to keep in mind, but I propose that there is another group of stakeholders that are often completely disregarded: the employees. In this day and age management views employees as a resource to be manipulated and utilized at need. Even well respected business schools teach this perspective, and in so doing dehumanize the employees.

When did this change happen? I don’t have a definitive date, but I believe that it was a gradual shift that started sometime in the last 30 years or so. Talking with people who worked in a corporate environment in the 1950′s, and even the 1960′s you get the impression that management actually considered the employees, and took them into account in their strategic planning. Over time this has shifted, and employees have become resources rather than humans. Why? Resources do not have names, and can be utilized until depleted, discarded, and replaced with fresh resources. Resource inventory can be reduced to create temporary profits, and then be stocked up again at need.

Now consider the definition of a stakeholder. An employee is clearly a stakeholder, albeit a minor one, in any business strategy decision. Does this make any one employee less of a stakeholder than another? Is this stakeholder impacted to a greater or lesser degree by the strategy being implemented? My opinion is that the employee sees the greatest degree of impact, often on a very personal basis, but this degree of impact does not enter into the equation when strategy is being determined. Instead, the degree of impact being considered is how much of a savings will be created, and how that savings can be converted into increased dividends for the stockholders.

My opinion is that the employees are the greatest stakeholders, and as such the impact to them bears the closest scrutiny when formulating business strategy. I believe that it is time for those formulating these strategies to consider the individual impact. Gone is the day when you could formulate a strategy that involves laying off employees and assuaging the guilt associated with the decision by positing that the employee will be able to find work in the job market. That environment simply doesn’t exist in today’s job market, thus increasing the degree of impact upon the individual employee.

I may not be in a position where my opinion on this matter makes any difference, but someday that will change. As such I am taking some time to try to formulate my own personal approach. I want to understand just what degree will impact the employees.

Being realistic, is this something I can actually do in a modern corporation? Truthfully, no, it is not reasonable. However, I can take this resolve and use it to temper decisions when I am once more in a position where I must make these decisions.

Was I really so naive to believe that my words would not be twisted and used by others with intentions completely at opposition to my own? Apparently so, and even now I have a hard time believing how twisted this has all become, and how tightly it has become involved in the political debate regarding midwife assisted birth regulation.

This all has me reconsidering a decision I made at the time when I agreed to allow the recording of the surgical procedure that saved Caulla’s life. My thought at the time was that due to the rarity of the situation it would be good to have additional documentation and training materials to use when training future surgeons so that they might be better equipped to handle similar situations in the future. All good intentions, and I still agree with that choice. I think that it has the potential to provide valuable learning material.

However, in signing the release I may have helped contribute to the political situation that we now currently face. By signing that release I may have also made the records available to anyone in the medical community, and as such they are now being used by members of this community as an example of what can go wrong with a midwife assisted birth. Never mind that the surgeon who performed the procedure stated that what he was repairing was not the side effect of the birth, but rather a result of placement in the womb. Whether that comment made to me in private conversation ever made it into the record is unknown, but I suspect that it would be ignored if it was present.

So, now, almost four years later, looking at the political environment, and how the events are being used in such a negative fashion, I am actually considering revoking that release, and sealing those records. This is my right as the parent of the child in question, and while it is a step not often taken, or even realized as a possibility, it is a step that I may very well take.

The question I keep asking myself is whether this decision is an ethical one to make. It is certainly politically motivated, and is a potential reaction to the way things are being misrepresented. But is it an ethical decision. Can a greater good be created by allowing the release to stand, or is the greater good done by removing the record from availability as training and educational material? This is the decision I have been weighing in my mind, and I have yet to come to a decision that I am comfortable making.

First off is school, and the struggles that I have been having with the current class. The current class is an online class, and I have been really struggling with it. Consider that a vast majority of my time spent in Higher Education (i.e. college) from the 80′s through to today has been spent in on-campus classes. The few online classes that I have taken have been disasters, thus leaving me with a very bad impression of online classes. Now consider that my approach to on-campus classes for the last four years has been to do the majority of my homework over the course of a day or two just prior to each on-campus session. Online courses require daily attention with significant contributions on a daily basis. Do you see where my problem lies?

Once I started really looking at the two approaches I realized with sudden clarity why I was struggling so much with my online class. Years of ingrained study patterns do not change easily, and those study patterns are what is contributing to my difficulties. I have known all along what I need to do to complete the class, but I have been fighting with myself to actually get it done consistently, with habits winning out over willpower time after time.

Too bad this realization came at the end of Week Four of a five week class, eh?

[a:Larry Correia|1136158|Larry Correia|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66.jpg], you are a very mean author!!! Ok, I loved the book, right up to the end, and now I need the next book in the series. You know the one: the one that may not even be written yet. Some authors will leave a book on a cliffhanger, but not Larry. He wrapped it all up nice and neat, making it a wonderfully complete story. However, he also set the stage for a next book without making any promises. Aaargh!!!

Now, as to the rest of this book rather than just the finish. The story was an unexpected departure from the other books in the series, focusing on Harbinger rather than Owen. Mechanically it was much the same as the other books in the series, but it did a great job of introducing new characters for you to love and hate before killing most of them off again by the end of the book. See? Just like the prior two books. One great thing about this book is that we finally get a look at Harbinger and get to know his back story. That alone was worth the price of admission.

Will I read this book again? You bet, and I imagine that by the time the next book is released this book will in tatters and need replacing.

View all my reviews

View all my reviews