How do you fight stupidity?

frickin frack - 1 definition - A variation on 'What the fuck?' as said by Alice Piezsecki on The L Word.

These are my sentiments regarding the office these days. However, despite the insane environment and bureaucracy that is just rampant in here and was never more prevalent than yesterday -- today's rant only has to do with more websites that they are now blocking.

I should be careful, since it's only been about 6 months that they reallowed Blogger in the editing mode. I can't view blogs, but I can at least write my own without having to email it in! "They" (the mysterious Big Brother who watches us) go back and forth between allowing cached views via Google , or restricting them; and that's relatively hit or miss. Right now we're in hit mode....tomorrow, maybe not.

However, as of today, the newest trend of sites that are blocked are sites that have the word "yoga" in the URL. Yoga. Seriously?! What's the logic behind that one? I understand why they block social networking sites, porn, alcoholic beverage sites, gaming sites -- and as ridiculous as it is - even Pop3 email sites such as AOL. But yoga? I don't Google yoga that often, so imagine my surprise when I went to go on my studio's website to find out for sure what time class was tonight (and it's 6pm as I thought!) - only to find that it's been filtered.

Oh, and now webmail is blocked. Which is insane - it's not any different than a regular website, so there's no security parameter that would call for that. Sometimes, we have to use external email to transfer data because not everything is able to be carried on our mail due to size constraints -never mind the lack of stability the network has.

It seems that more and more websites or rather, content of websites are being filtered for foolish reasons. For example, stock photography and design sites are blocked. Well, if you're a designer (as I am) and need to find images -- how should one do that? "They" certainly don't buy cd's for you to peruse, so the web is a tool of necessity. Interestingly enough, even Microsoft and development sites are blocked so that when it comes time for patches and updates -- our own help desk can't access the data they need. They have to do it elsewhere, download it - and bring it in. Can you imagine?!?

At some point, at this rate -- access to the internet itself will be prohibited. Which is beyond ridiculous because we as a society have become so tightly dependent upon it. We don't use paper, or books any longer -- we can find all that we need electronically. Assuming of course, that we're allowed to.

Isn't this a violation of one of my amendment rights? Because this feels more like censorship than ensuring a productive work environment. I'm all for security and controls from cyber threats....but seriously. Enough already.

Flipping politics.
This frickin' frackin' place drives me crazy.