week #26

I don't have my official 6-month employee review until another week or two, but it's been that long already. My supervisor showed me stats, and generally speaking, I'm already performing well above the curve on most of the metrics they have available. Nevertheless, this job stresses me out.

I haven't been reading as much on Dreamwidth recently. I obviously haven't been posting as much either. Yesterday, fed up with being so cold all of the time, I put my job on hold to stand up and turn up the heater temperature. I discovered that the batteries were dead in the thermostat, so there was no heat at all. *sigh* Who knows how many days that has been going on? When I replaced the batteries, I saw it was 13C/56F inside. Thankfully, the house warmed quickly enough to its usual 19C/66F.

But that, obviously, is the condition of my mind these days. Just enduring the passage of time, which isn't ideal.

Read some notes about Minneapolis politics...

I did manage to go voting yesterday after work. I am happy to report that Minnesota civic consciousness is still at very high levels. We vote, even when we don't like the candidates. We have ranked choice voting here, so it wasn't necessary to hold runoff elections for many of the contested races. That's a very good deal. Besides being faster for election outcomes, it's also cheaper for taxpayers than holding another round of elections! It's a win-win situation!

According to these results for Minneapolis city council, my Ward 5 city council member was re-elected with 52.54% of the votes in a 3-way race. I once again have a progressive voice speaking on the city council for my area of town.

The Ward 2 candidate ran unopposed yet won with only 2/3 of the vote. Literally 67.02% of voters picked the only candidate on the ballot, and the other 32.98% of voters voted with a write-in name. That's how strong voting participation is here. Every vote matters, including telling the leading political party that you don't accept their candidate! Minnesota is great for this kind of stuff. It's wonderful to see active participation rather than apathy... or its awful partner often promoted by statements like, "You have to vote for [A], otherwise [B] will win!" No, you literally do not have to vote for [A], and Minnesotans know it. Vote for want you want, not for your chance to support the team that wins. The lesser of two evils is still evil. We're facing existential threats, and you should vote for the policies that you think will best help us survive these dangers.

Remember, it's always the political party and candidate that owe you a reason to vote for them. You are not obligated to them at all. Always vote, even if it's just to register your disapproval. Vote for yourself as a write-in name, if that's what it takes to make your point. That's how we do things here in Minnesota, and I heartily approve!