Creating a Sacrificial Scapegoat

Traffic was horribly bad this morning, and apparently not just I-5 and 520. Reports of hour-long waits from I-5 to Kirkland along 405 were on the radio, which made me glad I wasn't going in myself, because I'd have been sitting in it.
Had an interesting discussion about John Walker Lindh this morning- about how the government can directly charge him with conspiracy to harm US citizens, and whether it'll be possible to seat a jury in the case.
I could make a case that as a volunteer fighting with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, unless there's a significant piece of evidence directly linking him specifically to Al-Qaeda, that what he's done isn't significantly different in intent than an American kid joining the French Foreign Legion; or Americans active in the overthrow of Batista in Cuba; the CIA arming the Contras in Nicaragua and so on.
Yeah, the US has been with most of the rest of the world in not recognizing the Taliban, and certainly their philosophies seem barbaric from certain human rights levels, but don't the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and expression stand without a caveat of "as long as the government doesn't virulently disagree with what you say."
I'm not even sure the Bush Administration wasn't in contraindication of international law declaring war on terrorism. How can you declare war on a concept? Wars are resolutions of conflict between nation-states when other methods have failed, or between factions within a nation-state. Where was the declaration of war against the Taliban? How can the government charge someone with fighting for a cause in which they believe?

Counting Down to My Meeting

Well, it's not going to be easy. I like Nader and the people with whom I work on a daily basis. I just don't particularly like Office. I think I can still be a decent tester even in my present role, but I'm not enjoying it, I feel as if I'm just wasting my time and not going toward a specific goal.
On one hand, I'm getting paid better than I've ever been paid before, but there's more to working than just trading time for money.
Looking at some of the open job requisitions, there are a few which really look intriguing, foremost of which is a position as a game designer.
Honestly assessing my skill set, I'm really a lot like the bard character class in D&D- I'm a jack of many trades, master of none- there are a lot of things I can do adequately or well, but at the cost of not having one specific strength other than being creative, which is a skill I don't feel I'll ever really get to apply as long as I'm working in Office.

Results of the Meeting

Well, my new boss wants me to commit to staying with Office International through release (currently set for March 2003). He'd like me to learn a lot more about automation and investigate writing automation scripts for testing. I'm not sure yet. I think i'll try to strike a deal- if i get permission to interview for the one game designer, and don't get it, i'll commit to staying until release, at which point i'll see what happens.
Learning the automation stuff sounds interesting, but i don't think it'd be fair to myself to bypass an chance to get a position which is in line with my long term goals of leading the development on a game of my very own.
If I don't get permission, it'll be a sign that Microsoft, in spite of what they're saying at this mid-year review- that keeping talented people in positions where they feel as if they're doing what they want to do- doesn't really have the goal of keeping people enough to let someone to move to a group where they can do what they want to do.
If that proves to be the case, it'll be time to open an eye to external positions- figuring that a year of vested stock grants and (perhaps more importantly,) MS experience including a major product release and a year and a half of testing in less than optimal circumstances (i can't think of many things worse than testing in languages the tester doesn't comprehend!) might be worth enough somewhere else to let me do something which be more interesting than Office.