*UPDATE: Ridiculousness confirmed*

Coming to you at 29 WPM! I failed a clerical test for a classified job I applied for at the Cupertino Union School District that involves computer systems. I was barley half as fast as the minimum typing requirement of 50 words per minute. I left feeling a bit embarrassed, but mostly upset that I had to take the test in the first place. I have shared many epiphany moments with teachers and administrators about the prospects of web systems in the school district. I have good rapport, I know the system I would be working with from an end-user perspective very well, and I have a passion to change it. The test it seems is a silly artifact of a ridiculously logical system; bureaucracy. I have 48 hours to brush up on my typing and try it again.
It's a beautiful day for change, let's practice!

Irony
I have used computers since 1st grade in the Cupertino Union School District. I work on my computer(still an Apple!) roughly 25-30 hours per week as a designer/web developer and do a whole crap load of typing on it everyday! And the test was kind of ironic for two reasons. It's ironic that I failed under my circumstances, yes. But it is even more ironic that the typing test I need to pass in order to have a chance to help evolve a antiquated proprietary system, onto a web system, was actually a narrative about concentrating while taking a typing test on a typewriter! Even typing the test on a computer from a piece of typewritten paper is a relic of yestermillennium. Assuming that the paper was typed on a computer, and not a typewriter, I would ask someone for the electronic file, copy it, and run spellchecker(if the other party was stupid enough to disable it on their word typing program). If it was long enough to matter what my WPM is, it would be faster to use an OCR scanner anyway. But who cares about typing? Isn't the real question what I can do with data once it is entered into a computer system?
It's 2008 here in the left ventricle of Silicon Valley and our bureaucracy strangled organizations are stuck on the reality of what to do with these inter-connected computing machines. We are buried in paper and our computer data is locked in many different systems that don't talk to each other nicely. Using systems that don't talk to each other nicely creates disconnection in our processes(ie. everyone has their own process and works within a small walled garden), creating confusion and frustration. It is the fault of no one, and I do not mean to point fingers in this post at all. Instead I do believe it is the sign of these times when two fundamentally different systems are coping with what to do with each other. Bureaucracy versus something more bottom-up and decentralized; I am not qualified to label it, but it is a system that utilizes and protects the internet(the web) and all the open-source software that supports it, as a foundational piece of it's process. This mornings typing test set off a deeper need in me for change far beyond that office and the school district. However, all systems are interconnected, and they are all coping with the same problems. Does my potential position at the district really need me to type 50 WPM? or is the system blind to a sensible connection that has already been established?

A day for change
On election day, it is not so much if Obama gets in office or not, but what the people will do with the opportunity Obama brings for change. For me, the opportunity sits squarely at the cross roads of bureaucracy and the internet. The internet affords a way of doing things that challenges our being as a huge paper-bureaucracy. So I ask, can we change bureaucracy? If you read this, please leave a comment one way or another. 'Maybe' is not an answer I can accept anymore and I want to know who the cowards are who accept the fate of being trapped by a shitty system. Yes, Bureaucracy, I am talking to all of you; Financial systems, education and transportation, care services, everything. And if we are not careful, the internet will succumb too.
I thought I'd share the things that matter most while I practice typing. And I will practice most of the day tomorrow being a drone, copying text from pages, hopefully in a dawning era of change!