I am a contractor for the government. Translation: I am a slave to the government. I am meagerly compensated. As a "contractor" I am treated like a 2nd-class citizen by many "true" government employees, who are paid twice as much as I am although I work just as hard. If I get started on the injustice regarding vacation time or benefits I'll spin into another dimension, so translation ends here.
For many months now, the government has slowly limited all employees' (not just contractors') ability to effectively use the internet as a resource. We're not only blocked from Facebook and certain Twitter pages, but I often find myself unable to search university directories for reviewer/author names and contact information. In those cases the government is not keeping me from taking unauthorized "breaks" from work, but it is instead preventing me from doing my JOB.
Yesterday's instance, while I admit is on the "unauthorized" side, sent me into an unparalleled rage. I found myself unable to LOG IN to my personal blog.
I do NOT post blog entries during work hours. I rarely post comments to other blogs during work hours, but when I do it's only during my lunch hour. HOW Is that unreasonable?! Should there be no fun at all between 8 am and 5 pm?!
Jen and I joked that soon we'll be blocked from Manuscript Central* (the site through which we do 95% of our job), and that we'll be made to request hall passes to go to the bathroom. I don't know about her, but I was 100% serious. What's irritating is that if put on the spot, I could certainly point out others' far more inappropriate behavior during business hours, but I choose not to fight back in that manner. I'll vent instead.
The icing on the cake: my government-run institution sponsored a workshop to promote social/business networking through Facebook, Twitter and Blogger a few months back. Thanks for that big brother. Maybe next time you'll dedicate your resources to tools we can actually use.
And yes, this post was written last night and scheduled to post Thursday morning. No part of this message was written while imprisoned in my cubicle under big (ass) brother's watchful eye.
* Manuscript Central does have a Twitter account, to which important service updates, etc. are posted. I do NOT have full access to that page and/or its posts. I'm not surprised.
2 comments:
Those "blocks" on certain internet sites are mere hurdles, ones you can step over pretty easily.
http://www.proxy4free.com/page1.html
That's a list of free web proxies (servers who are probably not blacklisted, that will happily connect to facebook or any other blocked site for you, and act as a passthrough - or proxy - to go around the blockage).
From a technical standpoint, it's pretty easy to get information from point A to point B no matter what roadblocks are put in the way. Of course, from a policy standpoint you might be taking a risk by "circumventing" their controls.
robert said he could help you get around the "blocks" if you want.
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