Speaking of the book...

(This is a repost from my geek blog. Content from that other site doesn't normally show up here; it's far too hilarious for this serious forum. But I thought this one was worth cross-posting).

I ran across my new book, Flex 4 Fun, in the wild this weekend and managed to get some photographs. I thought that it might help you to understand how you might benefit from the book. Here are some ways that others have found it useful.

First of all, the book makes a lovely objet d'art, and was being displayed alongside other great works of art when I encountered it here:

It also makes a nice decoration for some household areas, such as this aquarium:

This person apparently found the code recipes useful in the kitchen:

At 280+ pages, the book is a perfect size for some household tasks, such as leveling this piece of furniture:

A good graphics algorithm is always music to the ears:

This family apparently found the book more interesting to watch on a Friday night than television or a movie:

And of course the book looks great on a bookshelf, where it fits naturally with both the great works of literature:

and the less great works of children's literature:

But the book won't stay on that kids' shelf for long:

Even the family pet may enjoy the book - everyone wants to be an RIA developer:

And finally, this Flex developer was so excited by the book's arrival that he bought two:

As you can see, there are plenty of uses for the book. What will you do with yours?

When I am King: Dry, Dry Again

When I am King...

Drying hands in the bathroom will return to traditional methods.

There's a growing trend in society, and in American bathrooms in particular, to stop using tried and proven mechanical devices when there are electronic ones available instead. In the home, this results in magnificent effort-savers like battery-operated pepper grinders (which are nothing to sneeze at). In the workplace bathroom, the result is sensor-driven devices for the toilet, the sink, and the paper towels.

I've written previously about these ridiculous devices, but today I want to come down harshly on the towel dispenser. I'll use, for my case study, an office bathroom with which I'm intimately familiar, having frequented it often in the past few months. Originally, there were two manual towel dispensers. These were complicated mechanisms that involved reaching under the dispenser and grabbing the dangling paper towel. When one didn't do it, you'd grab a second.

One of these machines was replaced recently by an electronic version of the same thing. This machine is roughly twice the size and has a little red light on it like a Cylon device (I'm never sure whether it's going to dry my hands or exterminate my species). Again, the towel hangs below the machine and you rip it off to get a second one delivered. From the user's point of view, there's no effort savings; on both you have to grab the towel. In fact, the electronic device requires more effort because you have that extra rip to perform, which can be difficult for your average technology worker. Also, you have to wait for the second towel because the machine has to think about it for a few seconds first, scanning you with its Cylon eye to deem your worthiness and consider its extermination options.

But here's the catch: the electronic one is often out of order. Either it runs out of power (it turns out that batteries don't last as long as, say, no batteries), or it runs out of towels, or it runs out of patience. I don't know. I just know that about half the time I go to get a towel, it refuses to spew one forth and I'm relegated to getting one from the older dispenser, which just keeps chugging along.

So here's this machine that obviously cost more to purchase and install, costs more to maintain as it runs through a Prius-load of batteries every month, takes up more space, and takes more time to get towels (when it's working) and to not get towels (when it's broken). And half the time it doesn't even work.

I understand technological advances. Why, if it weren't for my battery-powered pepper grinder, I'd probably have to go without that spice or eat the cloves whole rather than suffer that extreme wrist-twisting exercise. But I don't see why we're replacing perfectly workable devices for electronic versions which cost more and work less.

When I am King, we'll go back to traditional means of drying our hands. On our jeans.

Geek Jokes 0000 1001

Is a crash in transition code a seguefault?

Happy Thoughts for Friday

Life is a journey, ending in death. Enjoy the trip itself, because the destination sucks.

Success is what's left after all possibilities of failure have been exhausted.

Winners are just losers on a good day.

Happy Thoughts for Friday

The glass isn't half-empty; it's half-full. Of cyanide.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then pictures by children are worth a thousand little words. Words like, "Is this your abstract phase? What's that supposed to be? I've seen modern art better than this. Are you color blind, or just missing some crayons from the box? Did you get any color on the inside of the lines? Was the light off in the art room? Maybe you should take up a different hobby, like paper shredding."

I'm not bothered by the hours spent sitting in traffic. I like to think of it as time for myself, breathing in carbon monoxide.

Little Jokes for Wednesday

I wonder:

Is a fish prostitute called a hooker?

Does she have a tough roe to ho?

When I am King: Shop Till You Drop Dead

When I am King...

Zombie movies will be easier to make.

There's a recurring theme of zombies in pop culture. There are movies every year about them, songs about their zany flesh-eating antics, and a firm idea in the collective consciousness about these endearing flesh-eating creatures. The story is always roughly the same; some disease ravaged our society and somehow produced creatures that have a hankering for human flesh. They're basically like us, but with less of a hangup about cannibalism and slightly worse personal hygiene.

I believe that popular entertainment is a reflection of our fantasies and fears. We fantasize about wielding chainsaws and massacring hordes of people, while we fear another high school musical sequel.

So what is it about zombies that captures the public imagination? Is it their listless look as they stumble through life like a teenager in math class? Is it the shy and retiring way that they feast on brains? Or is it just that they provide more interesting target practice than cans and the neighbor's cat?

I would argue that zombies are real, and that these movies are actually documenting an important social phenomenon that we are all trying to understand.

I see zombies every time I go shopping in Costco.

I was shopping last weekend, noticing that everyone around me was slowly shuffling along, pushing their cart. They looked slowly around the shelves with dull, confused eyes. They grabbed flats of cookies and gallon jugs of mayonnaise. And they kept moving forward in their ambling gate, lurching from one foot to the other in an effort to just keep shopping. They didn't notice me or any of the other undead in the store. Carts bumped, feet were rolled over, and nobody noticed. They all just kept moving along on their zombie shopping excursion.

The only thing missing from the scene was blood-smeared bodies and the smacks of zombie feasting. Then I passed the food court of the store and got that too; faces covered in ketchup and fudge sauce completed the experience.

When I am King, zombie movies won't use actors and far-fetched stories to explain the undead. Instead, filmmakers will just take their cameras to these stores and roll film. A few screams to enhance the soundtrack and they'll be done. This will free up the movie industry to put more effort into other fictional masterpieces, like more high school musical sequels.

When I am King: Kindleness of Strangers

When I am King...

E-Books will be cheaper.

Or at least my e-books will be.

Okay, so this is just a cheap ad. But heck, it's a cheap book.

I just knocked nearly a buck off the selling price of the Kindle version of When I Am King..., taking it down to the low, low price of $2.99.

But wait, there's more...

No, scratch that. That's all I had to say. Same book, cheaper price == more laughs per dollar.

So hurry up and order yours before they run out of bytes.

Geek Jokes 0000 1000

Do church servers have mass storage?

Q: Why is religion like a programming language?

A: It's all about the sin tax.

When I am King: Be All You Can't Be

When I am King...

We will all be imposters.

I've had this nagging feeling through many years of university and every job I've had since. I feel that I have landed where I am not through merit, accomplishment, or actual intelligence, but rather through some magical coincidence and general mistaken belief by others that I am someone entirely different and better than the person I know myself to be. I am, essentially, an impostor.

On one hand, it seems like something that's not so horrible; lucky me if I can achieve at a level impossibly above my potential. On the other hand, it's followed by a feeling of guilt and fear. Guilt that I'm occupying the spot that should be rightfully held by someone far cleverer than I. And fear that one day I will be found out and will soon make my living dispensing carts at Walmart. And still, I'd have a feeling that I was unqualified for the work. (Am I saying "Have a nice day!" too forcefully? Does my blue polyester vest ill-fit me appropriately?)

I heard, recently, that this is a common feeling, called the Impostor Syndrome. Apparently, others have this same feeling about themselves. Which means that if you feel like you don't belong, then you should feel right at home.

The fact that psychologists have named and documented this syndrome should make me feel better. If others feel this way, then maybe I'm not so far out of whack, after all. But instead, I find myself wondering whether I should feel more out of place than I do. Am I as good an impostor as I can be? Perhaps these other impostors impost better than my amateurish imposting. Perhaps there's someone out there that would fit in better because they would feel more out of place than I do.

Meanwhile, the workforce of our society malingers in this cesspool of self-doubt, unable to achieve to its full potential because of the emotional energy being spent on sheer adequateness. The productivity lost to internal feelings of ineptitude is staggering.

When I am King, everyone will be an impostor. No longer will we wonder whether we are good enough in our roles, because we will be placed in jobs for which we are wholly unqualified to begin with. Engineering students will become social workers, forced to work with people and issues that they've spent their entire lives trying to avoid. Beauticians will be employed as butchers, accountants as performance artists, and mimes as talk show hosts. Politicians can stay politicians, because they are already perfectly unsuited for what they are elected to do.

No longer will we have these nagging self-doubts about whether we're doing the right thing in life and whether our peers wonder how we got there. Instead, it will be clear to us and to everyone else that we are exactly the wrong person for the job. And so are they. We can finally get past the doubt and insecurity and get down to the business of confidently screwing up our work.

Note that I will keep my position as King, for which I am imminently unqualified. Although I do sometimes wonder whether I'm really unqualified enough...

When I am King: Age-Old Logic

When I am King...

There will be no more aging.

Obviously I am not proposing stopping people from growing old. We’ll always have older people around, driving slowly in the left lane with the blinker on, saying completely inappropriate things in loud voices, and telling the rest of us that we don’t call home often enough.

But what I can and will change is our age.

Time marches on, minute by minute, day by day, and year by year. Even when it seems like time is standing still, like when you’re in line at the DMV or you’re sitting next to someone on the subway that’s talking on a mobile phone in tedious detail about every one of her children. Even then, time is racing by, pushing us further toward the cliff of our existence into the chasm of our not.

And as the years roll by, they add to our age, one by one. Another birthday cake eaten, another year gone.

Some try to cheat the system by simply telling people the wrong number for their age. But everyone knows. And it's rather sad.

But there’s a better way. Why change the number when we can change the number system?

For millennia, humans have used the decimal system, in base 10. I suppose this came from our having ten fingers available, but that makes it a cruel joke that we’re taught not to count on our fingers in school.

But haven’t we lived with that system long enough? Don’t you think we’ve gotten smarter in the last couple thousand years? Did Plato have reality TV? No, he just had reality. Did Copernicus have the internet? Of course not; he just had the galaxy. Did Benjamin Franklin have glasses? Well, yes, but they probably looked a lot dumber than today’s designer glasses and certainly cost far less. And he certainly didn’t have contact lenses that he could lose, tear, and have to replace every few days.

So isn’t it time that we had a shiny new number system, too? In fact, we should have several to represent the fact that our society is complex, diverse, and horribly bad at math.

When I am King, our age will be kept artificially low by increasing the base that we count in. For example, if you are about to enter your 40th year, then you might tell people, truthfully, that you are 37 (in base 11). Or if you are feeling particularly spritely, you can tell them that you’re having your 28th birthday (in base 16).

Or if you’re feeling young and completely nerdy, you can say that you’re 2A (in base 15).

The system also works in reverse. If you’re only 14 and you feel you really really need that six-pack of beer, then you can tell the clerk at the 7-11 that you’re 22 (in base 6).

No longer will people have to construct elaborate and pathetic lies about their age; they can simply tell the truth while using the power of Math.

Remember: It’s not how old you are, but how old you feel... like telling everyone you are.

Little Joke for Wednesday

Should an arsonist burn for his crime?

Or should he get a lighter sentence?

When I am King: A Time for Reflection

When I am King...

Everyone will smile for the camera. Everywhere.

I was leaving an office building the other day and was amused to see a woman approach the building and stop to fix her hair as she stared into the reflection that the mirrored door presented. The door opened into a building housing hundreds of people, any number of which might have been behind the glass at that time. But to her, it was just a mirror. And a chance to fix her hair.

We all do this: any time we see a mirror, we see just how awful things have gotten and we make some feeble attempt to patch something that nature irrevocably screwed up. We push the hair down that pops back up immediately. We scratch off the scabs from hitherto unknown shaving cuts, allowing them to bleed all over again. We scrape off the bit of chocolate cake that apparently missed our mouth the first time and then enjoy dessert a second time around. Or we do a quick zipper check (unzipped trousers is something else I’d like to see fixed. But that’s another topic entirely).

But that mirror doesn’t have to be a bathroom mirror - we’ll take any reflection anywhere. Give us a look at ourselves and we can’t help trying to fix the wreckage. This could be a car mirror, a reflective gum wrapper, or, most often, some mirrored glass in a random building.

It’s this last bit that I love; someone will go up to a public piece of glass and treat it like their own private boudoir. Meanwhile, there could be dozens of slovenly people on the other side of that dressing-room mirror, looking out at the person plucking that errant nose-hair. It encourages a dynamic of voyeurism that’s not otherwise available outside of seedy strip clubs. Reality TV tries to satisfy this need, but it’s too scripted and over-acted; we can’t really capture the moment unless the poor saps don’t know they’re on camera.

When I am King, webcams will be mounted behind all mirrored glass. No more will these episodes be reserved for those lucky few that happen to be on the other side when the person stops to spit-wash the lunch off their face. Instead, the precious scenes will be captured and broadcast live for everyone to enjoy. Isn't this the true purpose of the web?

If we, as a people, can’t learn to discriminate between private and public places, then we owe it to the rest of us to make our public indiscretions as public as possible.

When I am King: Can Do Attitude

When I am King...

Airplane bathrooms will always be clean.

There are two irrefutable facts in life: everyone prefers a clean bathroom and is generally tidy when they perform their ablutions, and the bathroom on an airplane looks like the remains of a frat party the morning after "free grain alcohol and beef jerky night" at the local liquor store.

Since everyone is a model of toilet fastidiousness, how does that tiny room become such a hellhole after a few business travelers have gone in there to take care of business?

If you're the first person, you're set. FAA regulations may be somewhat lax on things like de-icing wings and avoiding rivet-shaking turbulence (which the pilots apparently think is more fun than riding a rollercoaster, though the sick hordes in coach beg to differ). But they're absolutely rock-solid on two things: the bathrooms should be tidy on takeoff, and nobody should have a container of toothpaste in their carry-on that holds more than the amount needed to cover a single bristle.

But if you're the second or later person to use the bathroom, good luck. You're better off holding it until you land, rent a car, and drive to the nearest gas station with a rest room that hasn't been cleaned since the Eisenhower administration (now there was a presidency that believed in bathroom cleanliness). If you can't wait that long, then you just tiptoe carefully into the airplane bathroom, close your eyes, and let fly. Which, come to think of it, probably explains the mess.

When I am King, there will be accountability for airplane bathroom mess. There will be a Toilet Monitor official on the plane (I nominate the Air Marshall, who hopefully has nothing better to do for the duration of the flight). After each person leaves that little closet of personal space, they must wait while the bathroom is inspected and approved for further usage. If the bathroom fails inspection, the former occupant is responsible for cleaning up the mess they made. Think of it like cleaning up after your dog when he goes on the pavement. Only this time it's you, and there's no plastic bag available.

Only through such means can we expect everyone to do their part when they part with their doo.

When I am King: The Plane Truth

When I am King...



There will be no more flight safety instructions before the plane takes off.

I'm fine listening to the repetitive drivel that precedes the 15 minutes pre-takeoff joy ride around every runway in the airport. I'm even okay with the lesson about buckling and unbuckling the seatbelt, if only because I have kids that still have trouble getting their belts fastened in the car on the first try, and the folks on the airplane certainly have more patience explaining this instinctive behavior than I do.

But I draw the line at the fake Hollywood-wannabe approach of airlines in the last few years. All airplanes have television screens, many of them in every seat back so you can't fail to watch TV no matter where you look on the plane. It's like being in a sports bar with assigned seating. The airlines have figured out that they can use these TVs to avoid to pay people to deliver the speech live. Or maybe it was the flight attendants' union, fed up with years of saying the same damn thing on every single flight to every single passenger that had already heard it several times that year, and probably one or more times that very day on previous legs of their tiresome journey. "Enough," they said in the polite but firm tones that they learn in flight attendant school, "is Enough!" And so the airlines hired cut-rate crews of actors and film producers to produce the world's most boring movies (with the possible exception of most of Kevin Costner's films).

First, you have the "pilot" turning around in his pilot seat to face the camera, as if the film crew just popped into the cockpit unannounced, Candid Camera-like, and Pilot Jim thought he'd give them a quick explanation of the flight procedure. The best part is that he spoke into his radio microphone, as if the camera crew forgot their audio equipment. Meanwhile, the pilot-actor was comprehensible, which meant two things: he couldn't be a real pilot and his voice obviously wasn't being recorded through a real cockpit microphone. If either of these were the case, it would have sounded just like it does every time the pilot comes on during the flight to update everyone on the fascinating bits of your progress between Atlanta and Omaha: "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is Jim Carbenherm, your pilot today. We've now reached our cruising altitude of 35,000 feet en route to rrrmmm mhem grrrgreem ehrhehhre. Off to your left, hrmmmth fffrmmrmrmrm greb foogub, just ahead on the right. Now sit back, relax, and feegstl crab. Flight attendants, bring me another scotch."

After the pilot/actor finishes his bit, it's time for Scene 2. A flight attendant/actor appears and gives the typical speech about the seat belts (Oh, *that's* where the clip goes!), the bit about saving yourself before your screaming whelps, and some helpful information about the seatbelt light (which provides a nice callback to the seatbelt fastening discussion). All of this is fine - we've heard it millions of times. I'm pretty sure we could all get up and do it if we had to. There's probably a performance-art troupe somewhere that does just this, each person getting up one after another and repeating the same shtick verbatim, each with their own personal interpretation of the words. They get zip for an audience, but it's an important statement in the arts scene of Bakersfield.

But the twist with this Meryl Streep understudy is that she's obviously received direction ("What's my motivation?") to smile every chance she gets. Apparently, people listen when you smile. Or take you seriously. Or something. And it's true - a smile, even one that doesn't go further than the lips it's pasted on, certainly makes us feel better than someone drooling or dripping blood from gnashing teeth. But a smile interjected before, during, and after every word spoken, is more than annoying - it's stupid. It's the smile of someone who's just puked their evening's consumption of rum and coke down your front, smiling because they don't know what else to say, and are doing anything they can to ward off probable physical response.

It's as if she's excited - Really! Excited! - that we all get to sit down, put the belt on, and sit in our amazingly cramped seats for 5 hours. And! we! should! be! just! as! excited! as! she! is! And maybe we would be, too, if we got the same medication that she's on.

Consider how much time and energy it takes from all of us to hear this over and over in our lives, even if most of us pretend to not listen and focus instead on the important task of leafing through the Sky Mall magazine to see what kind of crap people actually buy when bored out of their minds on long trips. I figure the speech takes about 2 minutes. If you assume about 250 people on the flight, that's just over 8 hours of life that they've sucked down the tubes on that single flight. Multiply that times the number of flights happening all over the world every day of the year and it's plain to see that this little airline speech accounts for millions of lifetimes per year. This is the biggest travesty and waste of life since Reality TV and the waiting line at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

When I am King, there will be a much simpler system installed for plane flights. No more mindless tedium of the speeches,either live and rehearsed or recorded and pathetic. Instead of the speech, there will be a written contract on the TV screen on the seat back in front of us. In order to get to the entertainment channels, we'll have to click through the contract and agree that we read and understood it in order to proceed. It'll be just like every software or website agreement we've ever dealt with - we just zip to the bottom, click on the "Agree" button, and continue on. No time or brain cells wasted - we can do this operation with muscle-memory. Having saved all of that time and energy, we can hurry onto worthwhile pursuits instead, like watching some Reality TV while leafing through the Sky Mall magazine.

Little Sports Jokes

I wonder:

Do speed-walkers pace themselves?

Do joggers ever get the runs?

Are soccer players goal-oriented?

Is scoring in basketball a net positive?

Do hockey players stick together in a fight?

When I am King: Yes We Cancer

When I am King...


All parents will take up smoking.

When I was a kid, I'd bring home "gifts" from art class; projects that I had made in class with limited materials, constrained time, and no talent. But the thought was there; the thought that I had better get something for my parents for their birthday, Fathers Day, Mothers Day, or an apology for the baseball through the living room window.

These objets d'art were always ashtrays made from clay and baked in a kiln until hardened into its irreversibly misshapen form. There were white ashtrays, gray ashtrays, lumpy ashtrays, and lumpier ashtrays. These blobs of primordial earth littered the house, protecting our furniture from ash as they protected our interior aesthetic from taste and refinement.

There was no thought given to encouraging our parents in a deadly habit, or promoting second-hand smoke that we would all breathe in every day (anyone remember the smell of stale smoke in a hot car on a road trip?). Instead, there was just the guarantee that you could throw some clay on the table, mash it into a roughly concave shape, paint it, bake it, and you'd have another heartwarming present to give to the folks.

Nowadays, of course, that just isn't done. It would be wrong of schools and teachers to encourage kids to make colorful accessories of death. It would be like decorating a syringe for their drug habit, or giving candy to prolong their obesity: it's just not done (except for the candy bit. What else do you give someone that obviously loves it so much?).

So kids today are left completely at a loss for gift ideas. Birthdays and holidays come and go, and the kids are always scrambling for what to give to demonstrate their undying desire for more gifts on their own birthdays. Should they draw something? Paint something? Buy a tie that won't be worn?

All of this worrying is causing unnecessary stress for our children. How can we have our nine year olds fuss about such things when we need them to lose sleep over future SAT scores and music recitals?

When I am King, all parents will take up smoking. By so doing, we will create a demand for ashtrays in our houses and thus resolve the art-gift dilemma for the next generation.

Pregnant women will, of course, be an exception. But once that kid's out of the oven, get yourself a pack and start puffing; that child will be making ugly clay objects before you know it.

When I am King: Apparent Failure

When I am King...

There will be no Father's Day.

I used to think that Father's Day was about feeling guilty as a son. It was the one day each year when you got to reflect on everything that your father did for you, like letting you be born in the first place and then not managing to kill you out of neglect and incompetence. It was also a chance to reflect on what a worthless son you were, because how could you ever compensate for such awesome contributions to your own life? Out of unsalvageable situation came a card and a gift:

Dear Dad: Thanks for life. Here's a tie.

I thought, as I grew up, that the only way to ever pay back the favor was to become a father to your own children, passing along the gift through the generations.

What a load of crap.

Now that I'm a father, I realize that it's a far more complicated occasion. Not only do I still feel inadequate as a son, but I also feel like a complete disappointment to my own children.

This day is not about celebrating those in your life that are special, or paying back in some small way the love and sacrifice that these people have squandered on you. It's about making you feel guilty about everything you're not: you are not the perfect son, and you are not the perfect father. You're just the person that happened to be there at the time. You're like the stunt double for the real actor, who's over in the canteen having a mocha while you climb through the burning wreckage of your life.

When I am King, there will be no Father's Day. We just can't handle this annual guilt. Besides, I don't wear ties.

I'm not sure about Mother's Day, because I can't speak for them. From what I've seen, Mothers are a lot better at their job than we Fathers are, so they may not need the break.

Happy Birthday Ditties

Every year, his birthday made him older.
But he still felt young, or so he told her.
"I only feel pain from the neck up,
I don't need a medical check up."
Though he was completely numb below his shoulder.

Every time he got out of the bed
He was one rising closer to dead.
So one morning he tried
To turn the tide
And stayed in bed forever instead.

So many candles on top of the cake,
Nearly more than the pastry could take.
He hated this reminder of aging,
The physical war time was waging,
Though a birthday's better than a wake.

Happy Thoughts for Friday

I wonder...

Is multiplication a sign of the times?
Does one hand clapping sound like screaming from mimes?
Are all of these questions just cheap shots at rhymes?
Or are they all deep thoughts to think?

Is mother the root of the word smother?
Is ugh that of daughter or some other?
Is it odd that broth starts the word brother?
Or do I just need more to drink?

When I am King: The Seat of Power

When I am King...

Toilet seats will be much cooler.

Recently, I've run across warm toilet seats. Okay, maybe "run across" is the wrong phrase; let's say I've come in contact with them. And I'm not happy about it.

These high-tech seats are engineered to stay at some pre-warmed temperature. I think the idea is to create a pleasing experience, warm and comforting like the womb or a cup of hot cocoa.

But they don't please me. For one thing, I'm not looking for a comfortable experience in a public bathroom stall. It's not a place I want to hang out and spend a lot of time, so comfort is not a top priority. Toilet seats should be second in comfort only to airline seats; at least toilets have more leg room and the option of getting up, opening the door, and leaving without falling down 30,000 feet to your death.

But more importantly, there's an awkward association we have with warm toilet seats. A warm toilet seat means that someone else was occupying that spot right before you got there. And that's not something I like to think about while I'm spending quality time on the seat. So the idea that these automatic seats try to recreate that experience of sitting down right after someone else is just plain wrong.

The only thing worse than sitting down on a warm toilet seat is sitting down on a wet one. Perhaps these bright potty engineers are working on new toilet seat technology to pre-spray the seats as well, to give that complete lived-on feel.

When I am King, toilet seats will go back to being cold, hard, unpleasant places to sit. In fact, to improve upon the experience, the seats will be pre-cooled. It will never feel like someone else sat there before you, even when they're still there. The seats will be so cold that any liquid on the seat will turn to ice and you may leave behind a layer of skin when you stand up. It'll be like using an outhouse in northern Minnesota in the dead of winter. It will help you focus on the task and develop quick bathroom habits.

More research is needed in other bathroom possibilities, but for now the work is stalled.

Corporate Survival Guide: All Hands on Deck

In war, or at least in war movies, there is always a dramatic scene in which the troops come together to hear a rousing speech from the General, which inspires them to march happily off to certain death. The General moves down the line of bleak, scared faces and offers words of inspiration that, despite being outgunned, outwitted, and out-and-out doomed, they will prevail. All they have to do is this one little thing of marching straight into the line of fire while the General observes from far in the rear.

This same epic battle scene also takes place on today’s corporate battlefields: it’s called the “All Hands” meeting. This is a regular meeting of everyone in the department or the entire company in which executives address the troops, inspiring them with predictions of victory and regaling them with presentations about fiscal responsibility, budgets, and layoffs.

But the All Hands meeting is not just a time for reflection and dozing; it is a prime opportunity for the Corporate Warrior to shine. Think about it: what other forum is there where so many of your co-workers and your management hierarchy are present?

Here are some ways that you can use the meeting to your advantage:

Sit in front

Educators say that sitting in the front row is the best way to learn the material. Your proximity to the teacher forces you to pay more attention, and the lack of distractions in front of you help you focus. But sitting up front in an All Hands meeting has nothing to do with learning (hey, nobody’s listening anyway). Instead, it’s all about access and visibility.

First of all, make sure to reserve a chair front and center before the meeting starts. You could put your notebook or your laptop on the seat, but I’ve found that spilling coffee or, better yet, cooked oatmeal on the chair is more effective at keeping people away.

Next, wait in the back until the meeting starts. The first speaker is usually the highest-ranking executive talking that day. That first slot is a sign of honor and respect for this highest-ranking executive, and this person is also usually the one that has nothing in particular to talk about, so they just do the fluffy intro. Wait until the audience has stopped talking about their kids’ soccer games and the executive starts to speak to a hushed and awestruck crowd. This is your time to move.

Make your way to the front confidently and noticeably. A mobile phone is a good prop for this entrance, as you can make your position clear in a fake conversation. The trick is to appear busy, important, and yet respectful of the All Hands and the presenters. A quote like this might help: “I don’t care how, just make it happen! Now start thinking for yourself – I’m in an important meeting with very important people!”

Now that you’re at your chair, make sure that the executive at the microphone knows you’re there by saying something subtle, like, “A spill? No problem – I’ll clean it up just like our company is cleaning up in the market!” Then wipe up your seat-reserving spill and sit down.

If you played your part successfully, you interrupted the speaker. That person is now staring at you, trying to get back the lost train of thought. This is an excellent time to help, saying something loudly to them like, “You tell them, Pat!” This serves two purposes: it brings you to the attention of the executive, and it shows everyone in the audience that you’re on a first name basis with them. The best part is that you don’t have to know the person at all; you just have to know their name. With the entire company spread in front of them, they’re not going to have the time and presence of mind to stop and ask who you are and would you mind shutting up, please. Instead, you’ll get your salutation out there and they will continue reading from their index cards, and the audience will think that you helped them do it.


Ask questions

Usually, there is time for Q&A at the end of an All Hands meeting. This is the time for employees to ask serious questions about how the company is doing, or how the budget cuts affect their department, or how they’re going to tell their spouses that they have to sell the children to make ends meet. This is all irrelevant, of course; Q&A is your time to get attention.

Ask pointed questions of the executives, calling them by name and making them notice who you are, and what you stand for. Don’t bother asking real questions about hard problems – these people have enough to worry about getting their golf scores down without people pestering them about personal gripes like "jobs" and "salary cuts." Instead, focus on questions that make both them and you look good, because that’s what it’s all about.

Sample questions might include:

“How is it that the economy is so bad, but your financial management of our company is so good?”

“I don’t know about anyone else here, but this is the most wonderful company I’ve ever worked for. My question: was it always this amazing, or was it through your leadership that it got to be so great?”

Feel free to throw in the occasional not-a-question as well, as long as you have a strong point to make:

“I just want to be the first to congratulate you on a fantastic job. Everybody, let’s hear it for Mary!”

Remember the first rule of the Corporate Warrior: never stop sucking up.


Lead the troops

Shell-shocked soldiers and battle-weary veterans need constant motivation to keep on fighting. They need leaders who inspire them to ridiculous feats. You can be that leader.

In this kind of meeting, the speakers are lucky if the audience stays awake, much less pays attention during the entire event. That’s why they need you to drive the applause that lets everyone know not just when to applaud, but, more importantly, who the applause leader is.

Every time a speaker pauses and looks out at the crowd, it’s clear that a note on their index card or teleprompter reads: “[Applause]”. Be the first one to jump up and lead a round. It doesn’t matter what they just said – you won’t be able to follow any of it since you’ll be too busy watching for cues. It’s more important that you let the speaker know that the audience appreciates what they said … when you told them to.

Watch for other cues as well. When an executive smiles, laugh out loud and throw out a, “Good one!” and then jab the person next to you and gesture that you thought that was a really funny point. When a speaker makes a dramatic point, talk back to them: “No! What did you do then?”

This constant salvo from you, their main indicator for audience appreciation, will give them the feedback they need to continue in their speeches, in their jobs, and ideally in recognizing you as someone they can trust.


Eat

If you’re lucky and this is one of those All Hands meetings with food, take as much as you can. Stuff your face with Danishes, put extra donuts in your pockets, and make off with as much as you can carry. For one thing, you know that the executives won’t be anywhere near, so they won't be watching you make a pig of yourself. But also, a soldier never knows where his next meal is coming from. And heck, it’s free.

Things I Believe

If there's anything in life you can count on, it's your fingers.

Everyone's days are numbered; it's just a matter of how many digits there are.

Corporate Survival Guide: Retreatise

Success on the battlefield doesn’t just depend on how you win, but also how well you lose. The strategy of retreat is exceptionally important not just for how you save your arm and your skin, but also how fast you can make it back to the town to get your story told first.

Besides, as the abbreviated saying goes, “He who fights and runs away lives.”

Similarly, today's Corporate Warrior must know when to charge and when to high-tail it out of there. Sometimes the enemy is too powerful and you must cede the field. And sometimes the other side has compromising pictures of you from the holiday party.

It’s at these times that you have to know how to quit.

One of the most crucial elements of quitting is the goodbye email. This final communication to the team must strike the right note of camaraderie, professionalism, and awesomeness that will leave your co-workers and management with a feeling of warmth and envy for the opportunities that you are pursuing. Even if you’re quitting to flip burgers or pursue the life of homelessness that beckons every time you step over the vagrants on your way into the office, you want to leave your peers with the feeling that your life will surely be better than theirs. This usually entails bold lies, but since you'll never see them again, who's to know?

But it’s tricky composing this email. Many corporate warriors have spent their entire career composing their magnum opus, but still failed to deliver a compelling case. You can do better.

And you will do better by using this handy template I've created, which is suitable for most corporate situations you will encounter. I've borrowed the template from another blog, so I should give credit here, but I feel my additions more than make up for this flagrant theft of copyrighted material.

[To Whom it May Concern, Dear Coworkers, Fellow Drones, Life-Sucking Parasites],

After [make up a number here; nobody will know or care] [years, memos, cups of coffee, harassment complaints], the time has come for me to move on. Although it was a difficult decision made over a series of [weeks, months, beers], I feel it is something I must do because I:

A. ______ want to spend more time with my [family, dog, self]

B. ______ am taking advantage of a new, exciting opportunity

C. ______ am bored out of my mind

D. ______ have been fired for gross and disgusting insubordination

E. ______ need to get my inbox down to zero messages

F. ______ none of the above

G. ______ all of the above except F

H. ______ some combination of ABCDE: __________

I. ______ other reason (please explain in 1 word or less): __________


Good luck to everyone here. It's been my pleasure and honor to work with each and every one of you [optional: list every person in the organization][optional: except [list people you hated]]. Know that I'll be rooting for the team regardless of what I may be doing at your direct competitor. It's a small [industry, valley, city, world, galaxy]; I'm sure we'll have the chance to work together again.

Should anyone feel like contacting me in the future, you can always reach me at [you should give a fake email address here, since nobody will bother. Your are dead to them now].

[Good luck!, Go team!, Love and kisses!, So Long Suckers!]
[Your name here]

So go ahead, use the template. Send out the email and then get the Hell out of the building before Facilities wonders what happened to all of the office supplies on the second floor.

When I am King: Exexercise

When I am King...

We will exercise less and eat more.

Common wisdom and dull scientific theory say that exercise helps prolong our lives. So the time that we spend in the gym allows us to live longer and enjoy more time on this planet.

But it this actually true? That is, will we actually enjoy that time?

The problem is that we have to spend the time in the gym in the first place. I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually enjoy my time in the gym. I like having worked out, not working out. So that hour and a half spent pushing pieces of metal around and grunting and sweating is worse than a waste of my time; it’s time that I’m actively not enjoying my time.

While it’s nice that that gym time might actually back-end load more time onto the end of my life, I wonder about the tradeoff.

First, let’s look at the numbers.

I figure I spend, on a “good” week, about six hours exercising. This doesn’t include time that I might get exercise while doing something worthwhile, like walking to a donut shop or climbing stairs because there’s no escalator or elevator handy. This six hours is dead time that I’m spending purely in the pursuit of this activity that I hate, just to stay healthy.

Six hours a week adds up to about 300 hours per year. Assuming about 15 hours per day of physically active time, my workout time amounts to about 20 days per year. Let’s assume I keel over at an overripe age of about 80. I started working out when I was about 20 (after a childhood spent developing a damn good impersonation of a sloth), so that’s 60 working-out years. That means that by the time I’m 80, I’ll have spent nearly 5 years of my life exercising (60 years * 20 days/year = 1800 days ~= 5 years). So unless exercising adds more than 5 years to my lifespan, I’ve lost in the bargain – I’ve gained some time, but I’ve lost more than that amount to a pursuit that I thoroughly detest.

Next, let’s look at the time that we'll gain by being healthy. Exercise isn’t adding any lifespan now; it’s adding it to the end of our lives. You know, that time when we’re less mobile, less happy, less mentally aware, and less employable. Our kids have written us off, our friends have died, and our interest in anything except our latest hip operation have waned. And now we get another few years to live? Oh, boy. I can’t wait.

When I am King, we will exercise less. I’m not saying that you can’t exercise if you want to. I mean, if you actually enjoy going to the gym and grunting and sweating and seeing your fellow gym members primp and preen in front of the mirrors and you like grabbing the cardio machine handles that are dripping with someone else’s bodily fluids, then by all means you should keep doing it. Because you’re enjoying it. You nut. But all of the sane people in the world will wake up and realize that we should enjoy our time more by exercising less and by doing other things instead that are actually fun.

I propose that we all take the time that we would have spent in the gym and spend it doing something we enjoy: eating donuts. We all like donuts, so it’s an irrefutable fact that more time spent eating them will lead to a life well-lived. And since donuts probably help stop up our arteries and cause heart problems, they will actually take away years at the end of our lives. This might seem sad at first. But if you think about it, this means that we will have spent more time eating donuts during a shorter life, so the proportion of our time spent enjoying life will be that much greater, and we will all die happy. Besides, they're just taking away time at the end, which doesn't sound like much fun anyway.

So get off that elliptical dreadmill and have a donut. Or three. You’ll thank me when you’re dead.

Little Jokes for Friday

I wonder:

Why are watermelons and bananas so tasty and sweet, but sweets with those flavors so awful?

Why is sandpaper so good at wiping off surfaces, but it makes such terrible toilet paper?

What’s the punishment for being illegally blind?

Sheik, Rattle and Roll

Apparently, one of the clerics in Iran is claiming that that country’s earthquakes are a result of women dressing inappropriately.

I wonder:

• Are these earthquakes caused by under-covered agents?


• Are the tremors more the fault of the women than the faults of the land mass?


• Is this a veiled threat?

When I am King: Celebrating our Differences

When I am King...

Marriage vows aren’t the only things that should be renewed; we should celebrate all of the permanent commitments in life.

Some couples get their marriage vows renewed. I used to think that it was because they were reaffirming their relationship, but now I realize that it’s probably because their marriage was so many years ago, they couldn’t remember whether it had happened or not. Meanwhile, my married gay friends and family members are so lucky. Thanks to the constantly changing laws in our states, they get to renew their marriage vows on a regular basis.

That act of that reconfirmation is so important, remembering each other and the promises you made as the years go by and you each get progressively less attractive in your own, distinctive way. It’s society’s way of telling each other, “I will if you will.”

But other than these vows of marriage and lifelong marital indentured servitude, there are no commitments that we take the time to renew in our lifetime. Of course, there’s the renewal of our driver’s license, but that’s just an affirmation that the DMV is still a place that we’d rather not spend any more time. Which, come to think of it, sounds like a lot of marriages I know.

When I am King, we will renew all of the truly important and permanent commitments to each other. For example:

Prenuptials: What’s the good of having built-in distrust at the beginning of a relationship without, every few years, renewing that legally binding contract of mutual wariness? It would be wonderful if, every five years, the happy couple could take a weekend retreat away, just with each other and their respective lawyers, and hammer out the new clauses to cover life’s evolving circumstances and return with a fresh, new prenuptial contract with both signatures. In blood.

Divorces: The statistics clearly prove that divorce is a more common commitment in any relationship than the marriage itself. What marriages ever go to term anymore? Few things are more sacred than marriage. But nothing is more permanent than divorce.
With that reality, let us celebrate our differences by gathering on neutral ground every 5 years to renew the commitment to staying the Hell out of each others’ lives. This celebration will be a warm, even heated, remembrance of why the couple got into this situation in the first place, from the reading of the respective restraining orders to the final words in the ceremony, “Till death do us be apart.”

Sure, we should remember the good things in relationships. But we should really celebrate our differences.

When I am King: Buy the By

When I am King...

“Best by” dates will become more realistic.

Recently, I listened again to Jerry Seinfeld’s bit about the expiration date on milk cartons. Unlike milk, that routine doesn’t get old and curdled.

I was reminded of the time that I first noticed the “Best by” date on food products. I was about eight years old, and I noticed a stamp on the Grape Nuts box that said “Best” and then a date that was some seven months in the future.

I thought that seemed kind of strange: what would make a cereal better if used on that date? But being the curious, and apparently stupid, child I was, I had to find out. So I stashed the Grape Nuts way in the back of the pantry, so that nobody would find them between now and that magical date in the future when the cereal would suddenly become more tasty.

I guess I learned the meaning of the word “by” in those seven months, because the next time I took the cereal out, I realized that it meant that it would taste better before that date, signified by the word “by” in the phrase “Best by.” Like the child in Joyce’s Araby, I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity, except for me the driver was illiteracy. And my stomach burned with anguish and anger.

I finished the Grape Nuts immediately, anxious to avoid letting even more time pass and making the cereal taste worse, although it’s not obvious how that could happen with a food apparently made from wood chips and gravel.

There’s a basic problem here that’s not solved by that helpful “Best by” date: the products do not, in fact, stay in some holding pattern of goodness until that date and then suddenly fall off the Cliff of Yuck. Instead, they start at some mediocre level and get progressively worse as time, staleness, and insects eat into them. That date is nothing more than a point in time when the company lawyers have decided that the potential of food-decay-related illness lawsuits outweigh the corporate benefits of customers overbuying the product and storing it on their pantry shelves. Cereal is not fine wine: you should eat the stuff as soon as you buy it if you want it to be as fresh as possible. Anytime after that, it’s just worse.

Besides, the current “Best by” approach confuses kids. Or at least it confused me. And I’m pretty sure kids these days are dumber, at least based on their spelling over IM and SMS. (That’s my token “grumpy old man” comment – I need to do that to maintain the kind of dignity that Kingship requires).

When I am King, the “Best by” paradigm will shift and we will adopt a simpler approach: all foods will be stamped with the phrase, “Worse after” plus the date that the product is actually made. We don’t want to know when the lawyers would like us to stop eating it; we want to know how long ago the stuff came off of the assembly line. Then we can decide where the hunger-versus-staleness balance lies.

Oh, and by the way: Grape Nuts after seven months? Tasted about the same. That’s the advantage to food products made from inedible substances. But that’s the subject of another blog.

Ode to a Donut

The problems not solved by a donut are few,

And even those problems are solved by two.

When I am King: No Child Left Behind Left Behind

When I am King...

There will be testing testing.

The U.S. government decided recently that the “No Child Left Behind” policy of the former administration wasn’t working. Perhaps it should have been called “Many Children Left Behind” or “No Child Left Behind, but Many Run Over by the Bus,” because it clearly wasn’t making the grade.

Maybe it was the fact that it was a system designed by America’s favorite C-student president (“I pledgify my allegiance…”). Or perhaps the kids in the failing schools are just plain dumb, and no amount of attention focused on those schools can compensate for their willful thickheadedness. Or maybe it’s just time to try something new because that’s what governments do.

But I think the problem is rooted in testing.

In order to judge whether schools are failing, the children in those schools take standardized tests. Schools with enough children who pass the tests are considered okay, and the teachers can get back to work beating some sense into the children. Schools without enough passing children (a.k.a., “dummies”) are considered failing, and the spotlight of shame is focused on the school to inspire fear and educational prowess.

This system of ritual embarrassment is apparently not succeeding. Of course, anyone that was ever ridiculed in school for doing something unusual could have told you as much; taunting only benefits the ringleader and the laughing onlookers, not the victim.

But how can you successfully test all children on what they’ve learned in a systematic and consistent way across the whole country? What tests will you use? Who will create them? Will they need #2 pencils? Will they test the children’s ability to fill in the circles completely? Will they allow for bathroom breaks? Will there be more “C” answers than “A” because it always seems like cheating to have the first multiple-choice answer be the right one?

When I am King, there will be a focus on testing. In particular, we need to make sure that we have qualified testers to create and administer the tests. We need an entire system designed to test the people that write the tests, to make sure that their testing skills are tested. Testers that succeed can go on to give other tests to testers. Those that fail will be mercilessly teased, and can then apply for a job at the local Department of Motor Vehicles.

This system of writing tester tests, testing testers, and grading tests taken by testing testers test-takers, will result in a progressively more refined testing environment with the best testers we can produce. But in the meantime, teachers can get back to actually teaching and children can focus on learning. Or taunting the weak ones and taking their lunch money, which is what school is really all about.

Little Joke for Thursday

I wonder:

Are those people that aren't on some kind of reality TV show called the unwatched masses?

Video: Chet Does Nerdcore

I wrote this geeky music video piece for a recent tech conference about the product I work on. It's about people and product-related things you've probably never heard of, but I'm hoping it's funny anyway.

When I am King: Fashion Tips

When I am King...

Button-up shirts will be tucked into pants that fasten at the waist.

Somehow, while I wasn’t paying any attention, it has become a fashion trend to untuck those button-down dress shirts that men wear. I think it’s supposed to give the wearer a look that says, “I care enough about what I look like to spend money on a nice shirt, but not enough to bother tucking it in.” It also has that casual, slept-in-my-clothes look, combined with a feeling of having forgotten to tuck back in the last time you went to the bathroom. All that’s missing is some toilet paper stuck to the shirttails.

I’m having a hard time dealing with this development. For one thing, I can’t get at my pockets anymore because they’re covered by these shirt tails hanging around like last month’s cold. But even worse, there’s this loose feeling of my clothes not being completely on that I just can’t adjust to. The shirt is wafting around, open to the elements, and I’m not liking it.

Then I realized; the men’s shirt has become a blouse. Maybe if we wore bras, things would feel more secure and cozy in there.

Meanwhile, the pants have become looser and ride lower than the waist, showing a part of the body that is only attractive on about 2 people in the world.

The strangest thing about it is the disparate origin of these fashions. Untucked shirts come from the world of Large. Instead of tucking in shirts, men trying to hide their gut would untuck and let the shirt fall straight, like covering a nuclear arsenal with a camo tarp. Instead of seeing who could stand to miss a lunch based on the size of their middle, you’d just have to look for the untucked shirts. This worked like a charm until this new fashion trend where everyone seems to be untucked. Maybe it’s a conspiracy by the Large-ish Association of People (LAP); by forcing the trend on the rest of us, they can now hide in public.

The low-riding pants fashion, conversely, comes from the usual place: the world of Thin. This fashion mistake is brought to us by supermodels who haven’t fully digested a single meal in years. The pants look great on them because they add a third dimension to an otherwise 2D body. But you put them on a real person and everyone looks like a plumber in mid-repair.

Shirts that hang out, pants that don’t come up to the waist: It’s like a married couple going through a midlife crisis. They’re having a trial separation and playing with their lifestyles. Maybe the shirts are going to start seeing other articles of clothing, maybe even other shirts. And the pants are just sinking lower into depression. I just want to shake some sense into them, “You’re shirts and pants! Get ahold of yourselves! And each other!”

When I am King, shirts will tuck in again. And they’ll do so into pants that cover all of those parts of the body that should never have been seen in public in the first place.

When I am King: Hello, My Name Is...

When I am King...

Everyone will wear nametags. Always.

You meet someone at a party. You introduce yourselves, you shake hands, you exchange meaningless conversation about the weather and the essential pointlessness of human existence, and then you return to the buffet table to add more guacamole directly onto your waistline.

A week later, you see them again. You say hello and realize that you haven’t a clue what their name is. It’s not the right situation to ask them, so you get by without it, just avoiding any sentence that requires using their name. If you’re with someone that you should introduce to them, you rudely forget so that you can avoid admitting that you don’t know their name. If they’d forgotten your name too, it would have been fine. But they said your name right off the bat, so you couldn’t launch into the proactive, “I’m Bob – we met at that party?” and hope that they’d pay you back in kind.

You see them again the next week, and then frequently after that. And you never remember their name. Years go by and you now know them pretty well, seeing them at local barn burnings and gun rallies, yet you still never recall their name. You just get by with such timeless phrases as, “Hey, you!” and “Hey!” and the classic “Yo!”

Meanwhile, there are other people that, no matter how many times they’ve met you, consistently forget not only what your name is, but that they’ve ever seen you before. There are probably people that you know at work like this. They sit near you, they work on a related team, and you pass them several times a day around the department. Yet eventually they will end up talking to you and will say that you haven’t met and they’ll kindly re-introduce themselves. It’s not so bad having your name forgotten, but to have completely passed through their consciousness without registering a blip is a bit of a letdown. Especially since you slept with them. Twice.

When I am King, we will all wear permanent nametags. In fact, given the current trend for tattoos (a trend that follows a 40 year cycle, which is the amount of time it takes for a tattoo to turn the color of bile and sag that pretty butterfly design into a cobweb of horror), these nametags will be tattooed onto our foreheads. This will prevent the awkwardness of not knowing someone’s name because you can always look straight into their eyes, or slightly above them, and read it. It will also prevent the embarrassment of you being forgotten by people. Not that they won’t still forget you as soon as they blink, but at least if they can read your name they may skip that awkward re-introduction that otherwise inevitably ensues.

That’s my plan. My name’s Chet, by the way. And you were…?

Little Jokes for Thursday

I wonder:

If “fat intake” is what you eat, does that make puking a fat outtake?

Why do pregnant women drink “virgin” mixed drinks? Isn’t it too late for that?

Is incorrect use of lower case a capital offense?

Things I Believe

The apple may not fall far from the tree, but neither does the bird poop.

Cruel and unusual punishment sounds bad. But cruel and usual punishment sounds worse.

Sunset: A Haiku. Or Two.

I was pleased to see Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's former CEO, tweet a Haiku as his resignation letter:

Financial crisis
Stalled too many customers
CEO no more

It's brief, it's to the point, and it's probably all that the Oracle lawyers would let him say on the subject.

Given his exit package, I figure that resignation is worth about a million bucks per syllable.That's probably more money than all poetry has earned total since Early Man rhymed "Oog" with "foog" in a sonnet to his love, before clubbing her on the head and dragging her back to his man-cave.

But somehow, this CEO-poet's final words didn't quite do it for me. I feel the need to amend his Haiku with some of my own:

Customers all gone,
Sun blames the economy.
Oh excuses, excuses.

Economy downturn
Causes Sun to get acquired?
That's not the whole tale.

High tech implosion;
Old business plan gone awry.
Time to get acquired.

Sun needs umbrellas:
Employees must weather the
New Oracle reign.

Sun disappears in
Clouds of ruin and despair.
Rain, Oracle, Reign.

When I am King: Spelling Beegone

When I am King...

I will do away with the Spelling Bee.

Last week, I spent an evening at a Spelling Bee for fourth and fifth graders. I don’t like to admit it, but I was emotionally overcome by a sense of, well, horror.

A Spelling Bee is like a death match with letters. There is no team to win or lose with. There is no score or grade. Instead, play continues until only one child is left. The last one standing in the puddle of tears must by definition be the winner.

A girl steps up to the microphone and the judges say the word, “psychoanalysis.” She can ask for it to be repeated, derived, defined, and used in a sentence. These are all good stalling tactics and you can see their mind whirring around thinking, “I have no idea what that word is.” Meanwhile, I’m in the audience thinking, “Does that 9 year old really need to know that the word is a combination of roots from French and Celtic?” Then the girl spells the word, haltingly, knowing that everyone is watching and listening to every letter. And since everyone in the room is either a competitor or the parent of one, they are all secretly hoping she will fail.

And she does, eventually, because every child except one does. The judges let her get to the end of the word, while everyone else in the room knows that she was dead as soon as she said “P-H”. After she repeats the word at the end, signaling her completion, the judges ring a bell. it’s a small bell, a friendly bell, and it means YOU FAILED. Each child will remember the sound of that little bell for eternity, listening for it in the auditoriums of life waiting for it to ring out and tell them that they have been judged and found wanting. That they are a Bad Speller.

The girl waits politely at the microphone while the judges tell her what she should have said, and all of the parents and other children nod knowingly, “I would have spelled it the right way.” One of the parents served as the failure committee, greeting each losing child with a goodie bag so that the kids can remember losing. She gives the girl her bag, pats her on the back, and sends her, slowly weeping, toward her parents. Then the failure committee mom goes back to the box of shame to get another goodie bag, because there’s another kid stepping up to the mic, and they’ll probably lose, too.

When I am King, there will be no spelling bee. It obviously doesn’t go far enough in training these children that it’s every man for himself in this world. Instead, children will be locked in a hot room with a single juicebox. Then we’ll see who’s got what it takes. But at least in this competition there will be no roomful of people witnessing each child’s unique failure, no goodie bags of shame, no sweet bell of doom. There will just be a prize, a winner, and a roomful of straw-gouged runners-up.

Little Joke for Monday

I think this would be a good name for a religious mortuary for couples:

Hymns and Hearse

Corporate Survival Guide: Don't Get Fired

In my previous article on New Years Resolutions, the final item was “Don’t Get Fired”. But far from being the least important goal on that list, it was perhaps the most important one of all. First of all, Not Getting Fired (NGF) is such an important step toward becoming tolerated and eventually even relevant in the company. But also, in these times of economic hardship, company downsizing, and unreasonable corporate demand for competence, it is increasingly difficult to avoid getting fired, so it is important that this goal is the one you must strive to reach each year. Besides, Not Getting Fired is, according to one survey, an important way to keep getting a paycheck.

The inexperienced worker might think that Not Getting Fired can be achieved through initiative, hard work, and success, but they are, of course, completely wrong. HR won’t care who you are when they come to your cube with triplicate forms and a company-issued tazer. No, you must be far more clever and devious to win this battle. Here are some proven techniques that you can use to avoid getting fired in your situation.

Blame Someone Else

Sometimes, despite all of your efforts and bullet points to the contrary, you make a mistake. It’s human to make a mistake, but corporations, like politicians and other reptiles, are not human and typically do not tolerate error. Industrial accidents resulting in injury and death, product fraud costing the company millions in damages, plugging the break-room espresso machine with chewing gum and causing a minor explosion: these are just a few of the things that can be put down to simple human error on your part. But they’re also some of the things that can result in termination. So how do you recover from these misunderstandings?

The advantage to working in a big company is that there is always someone else to blame. Ask yourself: how many other people are there in my department? That is coincidentally exactly the number of people that you can point the finger at whenever anything goes wrong. It doesn’t matter whether they did anything, whether they know anything about it, or whether there’s any credibility to your accusation; the fact that you accused them will throw a delay into the process of corporate blame that should last long enough for you to weasel out of whatever you did.

Get Terminally Ill

Companies usually won’t fire someone that is terminally ill. This doesn’t come from any form of human empathy as much as a fear of bad PR and good lawyers. So all you have to do to stick around is to contract some terminal disease. This limits your time at the company overall, of course, but your job is safe in the meantime.

Die

A tactic closely related to the last one is to actually die. This approach has been a proven-safe measure against getting fired since ancient times. However, I wouldn’t recommend this strategy in general, as you lose some of the more interesting benefits from still having the job, such as living. This tactic was often used in ancient battles, where generals would fall on their swords rather than stick around for the humiliation of defeat. They certainly achieved their goal, but unfortunately weren’t around to enjoy it.

Claim Sexual Harassment from Everyone

Sexual harassment has become a serious issue in the workplace, resulting in lawsuits, firings, and hours and hours of required HR sensitivity training for employees to attend. The last thing the company wants is any charge of sexual harassment.

Of course, the simple thing to do if you know you’re going to be fired is to claim harassment from your boss, because that’s what everyone expects. But this tactic is so expected that the company will have measures in place to negate that claim. So you have to go bigger: claim harassment from everyone: your boss, your cube-mate, your HR representative, the guy in the mail room, the woman in Finance, the CEO, and even yourself. The more people you can drag into the situation, the longer it will take for the company to sort it out and the more inclined they will be to just step away from you and let you keep doing your job.

Be Somewhere Else

If everything else on this list fails and the company is going through with the act of firing you, then make sure you can’t be found. They can’t actually throw you out if they can’t get ahold of you. Sure, they can turn off your badge so that you can’t get back in the building, but who says you need to leave? That handicapped stall in the bathroom is larger than your apartment and you can always take showers with the spray nozzle at the sink in the break room. Become invisible and you might just hold onto your job even after every shred of dignity has deserted you.

Remember the Business Battlecry: “He who works and runs away lives to work another day.”

Cry

If the tactics above are unsuccessful and they’re coming to take you away, break down in tears. Besides having a cleansing affect on the soul, it’s just possible that you will spark some feeling, some idea deep inside of that HR representative that you’re going to get water and snot all over their suit and maybe they have better things to do that day than fire you.

Corporate Survival Guide: New Years Resolutions

It’s appropriate, at this time of year, to set goals, to form plans, to set in motion devious and unstoppable strategies for world corporate domination; in short, to make New Year’s Resolutions.

Since ancient times, warriors have performed this ritual as they looked forward with grim determination and blood-soaked chainmail to the coming year’s conquests. From Alexander the Great’s epic “I’d like to see what Persia is like this time of year” to Napolean’s ill-fated “I wonder what the Borscht is like in Moscow?”, soldiers and leaders alike have set battle goals that shaped their not only their lives, but the entire shape of society and the combat-fatigue fashion world around them. Today’s Corporate Warrior owes it to himself and his fellow troops to do the same.

Here are some suggested resolutions to draw from, but feel free to improvise for your particular situation. Remember, the main idea is to set optimistic but reasonable goals, ones that will be difficult to achieve, but which are realistic enough for you to attempt them. I’ve listed these in reverse order of achievability; choose accordingly to your abilities.

Veterans

• Become CEO and fire everyone that ever slighted you. Remember that guy that cut in line in the cafeteria and ordered past ahead of you, causing you to have to wait an extra 2 minutes? Sure, he apologized and said he didn’t understand that the general milling-about was actually a line, but he didn’t really mean it. When you are CEO, you get to fire him. HR will say that you need a reason and a paper trail, but the best part about being in charge is that you can have other people do that work for you.


• Invent a new product that becomes the cash-cow of the corporation. Nobody has power in a corporation like the person running the most profitable product. They get to set the overall corporate agenda, pick the best meeting rooms, and change the coffee vendor. There’s nothing to stop you on the grueling battlefield of internal politics if you’re the guy bringing in the payroll. All you have to do is come up with the product that makes it all happen.

Warriors

• Get invited to The Meeting. There’s usually one conference room where it all happens. You can tell the one by looking in the hall outside; there are always catering carts for breakfast, lunch, and afternoon tea, because these people are busy, and I mean busy implementing corporate strategic imperatives. Obviously, this group of people is critical to the future success of the company or else the company wouldn’t be spending so much on catered cookies every afternoon, so it stands to reason that every person in that room is a star. So all you have to do to be a star yourself is get in that room. You can use subterfuge (“Alan couldn’t make it today, I’m his proxy”) to ignorance (“Oh, I thought this was the Accounting Principles and Practices weekly”) to actual aptitude, although this last one is a pipe dream, so I’d focus on the others.

New recruits

• Suck up every day. This one is obvious; you only get promoted on the Corporate Battlefield by sucking up to your entire chain of command. But make it a goal this year to do it not just once or twice a week, but every day, even several times a day. Remember: there’s always an excuse to talk to your boss, and there’s always some compliment you can come up with (“Nice shoes!”, “Good joke at that meeting last month!”, “You radiate power today!”), so do it, today and every day.


• Don’t get fired. Sometimes the best you can achieve on the battlefield is not dying. Some days, it’s not the bodies that you littered No Mans Land with, but the fact that one of them wasn’t yours. Do whatever you have to, every day, to not get fired. Call in sick, contract a debilitating disease, file for sexual harrassment, kidnap your manager’s dog, acquire compromising photos from the holiday party: whatever it takes. If everything else fails, when you see that HR person coming to your cube with an envelope and a box of tissues, switch nameplates with your coworkers and hide in the printer room.

Maybe you have a better resolution in mind (doubtful, but possible), which is fine. But the important thing is to make some New Year’s resolution. A resolution is like a goal, and a goal is like a plan, and a plan is like a strategy, and a war with no strategy is like decaffeinated coffee or nonfat desserts: what’s the point?