Happy Thought for Wednesday

When it's pouring outside, gray and dreary, I like to think that it's not rain, but all of the angels in heaven, spitting on us. Over and over and over.

Geek L0ve

As today is Geek Valentine's Day (February 0x14), a love poem seemed appropriate. Thanks to Kevin for starting this one.

Geek L0ve

Roses are 0xFF0000
Violets are 0x0000FF
This poem's in hex
And in binary 0010

My feelings for you
Are more than a bit,
And a byte or a short
Will still not quite fit.

Words can not say
What is stuck in my head,
So I'll try longs, doubles,
And arrays instead.

My passion for you
Recurses so deep
My stack runneth over:
I'm all out of heap.

Geek Jokes 0111

I wonder:

Are dead security programmers encrypted?

Are native programmers given burials at C?

Are dead VM programmers garbage collected?

Are programmer graveyards full of hackin' and coffin?

Are programming cowboys buried on Reboot Hill?

Valentime Again

It is once again that time of year when we should think about the ones we love and forget to send them a card. Rather than send any cards myself, I offer up the following happy thoughts that might have been in some cards that I should have sent.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
So is my heart,
Bled dry over you.


Love is a squirrel, flitting feverishly from tree to tree, looking for acorns, only to slip and fall into the street to be squashed by a truck carrying nuts.


My love is a red, red rose, covered in my blood. Damn thorns.

Corporate Survival Guide: Girding for Battle

Any warrior knows that you don’t go into battle without appropriate weaponry, and Corporate Warriors are no exception. But the tools of bygone armies aren’t sufficient for the needs of today’s Corporate Warrior. It turns out that management frowns on swords in a meeting, catapults don’t even fit onto the elevator, and bagpipes are laughed out the door.

So what should today’s Corporate Warrior bring to ensure victory and glorious bathing in the blood of the enemy after a full day on the Bureaucratic Battlefield?

If there is one thing that man has perfected, besides molded plastic packaging on kids toys that is impervious to all attempts to open it shy of nuclear explosion, it’s a set of weaponry designed to reduce an enemy to a thenemy. Although the weapons themselves differ between the real battlefield and the much harsher corporate battlefield, the fundamentals of weapons haven’t changed since the first monkey carved his toothbrush into a shiv and offed his buddy at the watering hole for mocking his enunciation. Weaponry basically boils down to: sword, shield, armor, and an optional decorative cup device for the men who‘d like to stay that way. Let’s step through each of the required three and see how they work in today’s corporate wars.

Sword: This is clearly the most important weapon at your disposal; it’s your weapon of attack and defense, and also serves as a suicide device for warriors that completely screw up and are afraid to ’fess up about the debacle. Who can forget that heart-warming scene in Julius Caesar when Marc Antony falls on his own sword, apparently mistaking it for a fluffy bed?

Obviously, swords simply will not do in today’s environment. It has been tried and it just sets off alarms on the way into the building. Also, the things are just plain awkward, and cause you to constantly bump into things simply making your way to your cube. And while it is useful as a pointer in meetings, it tends to reduce the live attendance.

Someone once said, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” A ridiculous statement to be sure; that author obviously never went up against a crazy Scot swinging a broadsword. And pens are so passé in today’s corporate environment that it wouldn’t get you any more than a chuckle in a meeting. No, today’s warrior carries a cup of coffee in his hand. Apart from the sustenance that it provides, a large cup in your hand can serve to emphasize points you’re making. In defensive mode, a quick ‘accidental spill’ can distract the opposition long enough for you to find a way around the impasse. And in extreme situations, you can always throw the contents at your opponent, probably doing no physical damage, but the stains on their clothes will damage their image for the rest of the day. Finally, when all goes horribly wrong in a project, you can always save face by drowning yourself in your latte.

Shield: The shield was crucial to yesterday’s warrior in parrying blows while they readied their counter-attack. Also, shields served as handy stretchers for bearing home the wounded, the dead, or the extra donuts from the battle. The corporate warrior also needs a good defensive weapon like this.

Your laptop is your shield. Not only is it similarly shaped (initial laptop designs were actually derived directly from full-body shields of the middle ages, while modern laptops resemble the smaller shields used by famous heroes so that the local portrait artists could depict more of their body), but it is also an object that you can endlessly hide behind when being attacked from all corners of the room. Imagine: someone attacks your conclusions on a recent project, and your laptop can quickly come up with full-color, animated slide presentations that can refute their points or, even better, completely distract the audience. And if everyone in a meeting is attacking you or undercutting some point, you can go into ‘focus’ mode and simply start typing on your laptop, pretending that you didn’t hear their points because you had something more important on your machine to attend to. Finally, if you upset your enemy enough for them to launch their cup of coffee at you (see the earlier discussion on this strategy), a well-wielded laptop can easily deflect the spray, or even bat it back at the attacker.

Armor: Finally, a warrior needs armor to protect those vulnerable spots that can be pierced by your enemy if they succeed in getting past your sword or shield. In the olden days, armor would consist of anything from a leather vest (for the disposable cannon-fodder: “Here, wear this vest. Now, march over to that big pile of bodies wearing leather vests and attack!”) to chain mail shirts (for those that didn’t quite understand the concept of “holes”) to large plates of metal covering every bare patch of skin. Although the leather approach can work in a pinch in today’s company, the general approach of a suit of armor just doesn’t cut it. For one thing, the metal suits are so loud that it is difficult to overhear the speaker in a meeting. Also, the helmets make it difficult to hear anything anyway, and answering calls from golfing buddies is nearly impossible.

Obviously, the corporate warrior’s armor is the “power suit,” designed to strike fear into everyone as you stalk around the department. But I have found it helpful to add some nuances to this basic clothing, to ensure that the armor is more effective. For one thing, nobody can harm you if they cannot get within striking distance, so it’s usually a good idea to avoid showering for the day or two before an important battle. This invisible barrier will form a force field around you that both prevents others from getting close and causes physical damage to those that attempt it. Also, carry several personal devices, one for each pocket of the suit. How many times have we heard the anecdote about someone’s life being saved by the object in their pocket because it stopped the bullet? By putting a mobile device (phone, PDA, laptop battery) in every pocket, you increase the likelihood of stopping whatever attacks they throw at you. Finally, cover your suit completely in plastic wrap. Not only will this make the suit more shiny and noticeable, it will also provide nearly perfect protection from any coffee attacks from those who would bring you down.

Remember: the clothes make the person, and this is particularly true for today’s Corporate Warrior. After all, how do you think the word ‘wardrobe’ originated?

Corporate Survival Guide: Dollars and Nonsense

In these times of economic hardship, what do you think your boss wants the most? Right: a foot massage and tickets to the game this weekend. But close behind those is their desire for a solution to the company's dire situation.

Face it: the economy's in the tank, nobody is buying anything, and companies have to start eating their young just to survive.

But it's times like these in which the battle-ready corporate Warrior can not only survive, but thrive.

What you should do now is to spend about a minute thinking about how the company can cut costs, and then spend weeks slaving over charts, slides and meetings, and schmoozing the management chain until they know you better than they know the local barista.

The important thing here is that it is irrelevant what solutions you come up with, or even if they will work; the executives are all so confused that they'll try any sorry plan that comes along. And if that sorry plan came from you, all the better for your career.

Here are some quick ideas to get you started: you should be able to turn any one of these into a full-blown Plan for Economic Corporate Knowledge Recovery (PECKR):

• Pay cuts for executives: Let this one sit there in silence for a couple of seconds, and then crack up. The execs in the room will love this joke, and they will know that you are one of them. Then get onto the real suggestions.
• Pay toilets: Every employee uses the facilities in the company several times a day. Think what it could mean to the bottom line if per-use fees went toward corporate revenues. But consider your audience: make sure that you propose that the executive washroom is still free.
  This one is in the can.
• Waterless urinalsThis one hits two hot buttons at once: cost and eco-friendly green-managed enviro-ware business. You've probably seen the waterless toilets in different public or corporate environments. It's a great idea, saving water that can then be spent washing your hands more after dealing with urinals that had no water. But it still costs money for the fancy urinals and the mechanisms inside. Let's take this a step further, and go back to our societal roots: what about simply a hole that went down through the building and into the ground? Now we're saving money on water and on the fixtures.I call it "The in-house outhouse". It's going to be huge.
• Car wash: The company could hold a local car wash to raise money, with the employees of the company donating their weekend time to make it happen. To raise awareness of the event, all executive cars would be washed (for free) to start it off. It works for the cheerleading squad at the local high school; surely it can save the company, too.
  
• Cube compression: It's easy to come up with spreadsheets that show savings when you start dealing with real estate, because nobody really knows how much the company is spending on any of that. Come up with a plan to cut cube sizes in half, thus reducing overall worker square footage and the amount of real estate required by the company. Of course, the company won't be able to actually lease or sell that extra space in this down market, which is why you'll propose that until it's sold, that extra space will go into larger executive suites, including a bowling alley.

The observant reader will probably notice that many of these ideas draw money from the hard-working employees of the company itself. This is intentional, because the executives would love to figure out how to get some of that money back. If they can do that while also making money for the company, you're plan is safe. Or at least your plan will be attempted long enough to get you onto the fast track, and nobody will ever remember the complete mess that your plan made later on.

Remember: It's not about saving the company; it's about advancing your career.

Little Jokes for Tuesday

When bulimics die, do they go to purgeatory?


Q: Why did the poet stop rhyming?
A: Because his advisor told him to di-versify.

When I am King: Ad diction

When I am King...

Ads will say more about less. More or less.

Last week, I received some email spam from my telephone provider about their new universal cable/phone/internet services. Normally, I would ignore ads, but this piece was a gem.

At the top, as an incentive for reading the rest of the details, it offered "10 tips on finding a job!". Then it went on to talk about how I could get more and better TV channels for just $100/month plus installation.

I don't know which part excited me more: the fact that the phone company has our back and is going to help us find jobs in a tough economy, or the fact that they think that people with no income should be spending $100/month on cable TV. After all, watching TV could be what job seekers are going to be doing more than anything else in the next few months. And what else are they going to do with all that money - eat?

I can picture what happened at the company. Someone in Corporate Marketing had a sudden realization, "Wait! We can't go out with this new ad campaign in a bad job market! What about all of those people out of work that have no money for food and rent, much less entertainment? Shouldn't we wait until more prosperous times, when people have extra money and time to blow on TV?" Then his boss fired him and replaced him with the first person that could spin it into a positive message.

When I am King, I'd like to see a whole new era of ads, where negative situations are encompassed openly and honestly in an overall message about the product. Why should we let tragic situations halt the progress of American advertising and consumer spending? For example:

• Joe's Peanut Butter: "Go nuts - Now, with 10 tips for treating peanut allergies with limited fatality!"
• Joe's Jewelers: "The Second Time's the Charm - Buy one engagement ring and get another for 10% off!"
• Joe's Donuts: Now, with donut holes that have 0% fat and no sugar!

or how about:

• When I am King...: With several blank pages for those that don't appreciate the humor!

When I am King: Filet Minions

When I am King...

Pet fish must die.

As a kid, I owned fish as pets. We had the tank with the filter with cotton and charcoal in it, and rocks and decorations, and lots of different fish. Dead fish. Dying all the time fish. That's all I remember about them: fish died. You get them, they swim around, then you find them belly-up in the tank one morning, transfer them to the toilet, and give them a watery grave.

So now, as an adult, or as someone pretending to be an adult so that my kids don't notice how unqualified I am for the position, I pushed back on having fish in the house. "Fish die," I told the kids, thinking that they'd see the wisdom of my sage advice. But why would they start now?

They kept at it, wanting fish, talking about getting fish, getting an aquarium, getting the whole thing and finally, in a momentary lapse of reason combined with a birthday for which we had no other present in mind, we got them some fish. It's basically the same setup I had as a kid, although the filter is now nicely packaged in disposable pouches that you can handily pay more for every month.

There was considerable grumbling as I got things ready to go: getting the tank located, getting the equipment situated and plugged in, getting the water stabilized, but we finally got everything working, got some fish and - tada! - we were fish owners.

And I have to admit, they had me going. After a few weeks of owning the tiny filets, I was thinking it wasn't too bad. In fact, they're a lot easier as pets than dogs, for one very good reason: they poop where they live and I don't have to worry about it. It's like raising a dog in a plastic bag that I never have to throw away.

But then they started dying. One day I walk by and one is floating at the top on its side like a, well, like a dead fish. The kids are wondering if he's practicing his sidestroke and I'm getting down the net of death for a toilet-bowl funeral.

Then the following week we lose another two, and all my memories of morgue tanks come floating back to me. The aquarium becomes a killing grounds. I can't walk by without feeling like the Grim Reaper. I start calling out, "Bring out your dead!" as I near the tank. They used to come up to the surface when I was around, assuming that it was feeding time. But now they swim lower down, thinking that it's the ones that hang out on the surface that never come back.

Clearly, we have water problems. So we study up on the problem and start cleaning the tank (apparently you can't let them swim in their poop for too long before it has an effect - I wonder how they handle this in lakes?), and changing filters, and vacuuming the gravel, and still they're dying by the pound.

Apparently, one of the problems is that the kids have been overfeeding them. Funny - the fish never complained.

Now, the whole tank has something called Ich, pronounced "Ick." Which I find hilarious. Imagine going to the doctor and having him tell you, "Mr. Haase, you appear to have a case of what we in the medical field call Yucky."

The disease is brought on by, among other things, stress. So the fish are working too hard in there, swimming from one side to the other and looking for food? Or is it just that they're stressed out wondering when they're going to die of some mystery tank problem?

We'll work through this latest problem, probably losing most or all of the fish in the process, cleaning the tank again, and populating it with new doomed creatures.

When I am King, fish will not be pets. They are simply too much work and tragedy. Instead, people will be encouraged to put orange and lemon peels into the tank; they look and act about the same, and have the added benefit of already being dead so that you don't have to suffer at the bedside of the terminally ill patients as they slip away.

Other solutions to the pet problem will be encouraged, especially those pets that live much longer. Like rocks. Fish as pets simply don't scale.

Geek Jokes 0110

Q: What dance does a compiler programmer find most frustrating?
A: The JITerbug

Q: A subway travels from point A to point B. A bus travels from point B to point C. Light rail goes from point C to point D. How do we know that Mr. Smith can take these modes of transportation all the way from point A to point D?
A: The mass-transitive property