I'm pretty sure I'm already doing business with those people. We all are.

me: So, you're into Carl Orff?
cw: Isn't that elevator music?
me: ... If your elevator is descending to hell.

Oh, man, I remember hearing that as performed by 101 Strings rather than Led Zeppelin.

Only something as lame as 101 Strings or Roger Whittaker or the like can take such a great piece of music and suck all that is good out of it, leaving a dried out husk of notes behind to limply offend your ears.

I have to admit that I'm rather fond of the Rodrigo y Gabriela cover of Stairway to Heaven.

"My ancestors are rolling over in their mass graves right now."

-- my coworker, who is an Armenian descendant

Speaking of Teh Workplace, it seems the MSM has decided it's time to give some coverage to the guy who accidentally got himself pressure cooked at the Bumble Bee Tuna factory last October.

I don't know how to feel about this. If he'd spent 30 seconds tagging out the oven before he entered it, the accident would not have occurred.

Wait... Bumble Bee Tuna is Soylent Green?

I'm really losing my patience with this place in particular and the Air Force in general. They paid my travel costs to bring me here to teach an 80-hour two-week class because that was far cheaper than sending the class elsewhere.

But they don't have adequate facilities. I'm teaching in the middle of an operations floor with dozens of other people around. Phones ringing. People walking THROUGH the class as I'm trying to instruct. People dragging students off to handle unrelated crises. People just walking up and starting to talk to students, not even realizing there's a class. The class getting bumped from our workstations because they're needed for other scheduled events.

Plus the Air Force weirdnesses. 90-minute lunches are practically a tenet of their religion here, so because I can't start early or stay late (due to the other shifts using these systems), I have to teach an 80-hour course in 65 hours, minus whatever OTHER interruptions there are.
I'm good and the students are willing; we will succeed. Probably. But it pisses me off that they put such a low priority on the success of their own people. I'm tempted to just mark them all incomplete because they can't actually finish in the time I have left and tell the colonel to get some other joker to come out here and finish it. They have no influence over me or mine; so long as I say everything in a nominally respectful manner, there isn't a damned thing they can do to me.

I think this is a military-wide problem, although that sounds much more extreme than usual.

Our instructors have had to teach folks in rather inadequate facilities as well. We prefer for them to bring the students to us, when possible, for this very reason.

Some things never change. I remember teaching a programming class (about 18 years ago) in the middle of an active warehouse. Hearing the cherry pickers moving and beeping. Losing my voice as I had to more than double my volume due to no walls to help hold the voice in.. I wish I could tell you it was only military that does these stupid things. But not at all.

Sounds like you're an ideal teacher though. You know how to adapt.

So long as we don't actually get kicked out of our spaces for operational needs, we should do okay tomorrow and everyone will pass. I really feel for these kids; they're bright and they are trying, but they're also institutionalized; I don't think they fully grasp how badly they're being treated by the "urgent" demands that they learn to do this job while not being given the tools necessary.
The more senior people in the class (a prior Army E5 and an E6) know it, but are powerless to prevent it.

In other news, I found out that I've been reassigned to a different team (and probably physically moved) while I've been gone. My schedule is changing also. They tend to do this while I'm on temporary duty elsewhere; I'm not sure if it's just a timing question or a pathological unwillingness to directly talk to me about making changes. They always break the news via e-mail. I'm not THAT scary, but I'm starting to get more than a little irritated. So many of our problems are because of passive aggressive nonconfrontational management tactics.

With luck, I will get sent to Afghanistan this summer.

Maybe you need to give them a reason to be passive aggressive, just so you feel better about it.

Maybe scream and yell, toss a desk around or something.

You need to hire an office furniture throwing consultant. Lucky for you, I hear Steve Ballmer is looking for work.

Ha. So I found out on Friday at 0930 that I was working in an entirely different job come Monday. The Budget Gods decreed that an E7 needed to switch from one program to the other with a quickness to make the FY budgets balance.

So many things left unfinished on the other side. That class, for example; the people who requested it never actually got it put into the training scheduling system, so it's like it never happened. Those poor 7 kids won't get any credit for it. A bunch of other projects I was working, and my general role of trying to keep my old team in the good graces of the people on the East coast for whom we actually work--all probably doomed efforts now.

On the plus side, I'm going to work somewhere with Internet access, and windows (actual physical windows), and I can carry and use my personal electronics (phone, etc.). And I will be interacting with people outside our very insular community, so that's something. I will be the lead instructor and course developer for the basic money laundering and threat finance course, which means a bit more travel, but I can live with that.

In August will your new windows be upgraded automatically? <evil grin>

My windows are upgraded periodically whenever I run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade.

Gah... you're using a desktop instead of server?

My windows need new screens.