The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar

You Know You're DOOMED When...

You get out the box of crappy gifts you received last year, hoping to palm them off on others this year, and you can't remember who gave you which Piece-O-Crap.

You've stumbled onto another issue of The Crapolla, a journal written for software professionals. No not the managers; I mean the people who do the work.

This Crapolla is sponsored by...

In This Issue...

Darth Vader's Ring Tone.

Ring!

This is stupid! I heard a report on the radio that cell phone ring tones might ruin the music industry. It turns out that the Music Industry thinks that people will put entire songs on their phones as the ring tone, and some how the no one will ever buy music again.

Let's look at this head-up-ass idea and see what we can learn. First, where does this "music" come from? Either the "music" is sold by the music industry, or someone else who presumably would be licensed to sell it. So I'm guessing if the music is copyrighted, someone is going to be paid.

Is your phone's crappy little speaker really the device you want to listen to music with? Come on! It's mono, tiny, and not that good. You can't go trunk-thumping with a cell phone. Sorry, this isn't an iPOD killer.

You receive a call, the song Hey Jude starts playing. You...

Start dancing.
Turn off your iPOD and start dancing.
Tell your professor to shut up because the Beatles are playing.
Answer the phone.

If you answered 4 I want to know why the hell you would load a 4+ minute song into your ring tone. Right, you wouldn't, because that really freaking stupid.

I've heard people's phones go off where the London Symphony Orchestra tunes up and starts playing some long-haired stuff from a few hundred years ago. Do you know what the look is one their face when this happens? Utter embarrassment. I figured they didn't set the ring tone, their kid did.

My logic is that they were embarrassed, so they didn't do it. Second, they are too old to figure out technology, so they had their kid do it. To enforce this guess, I remember my Chiropractor handing me her phone asking me to change her ring tone. She's younger than I, but it's known that I can make "gadgets" works. It's really fun see a Chinese lady's phone go off playing Dixie.

No one listens to the entire 1812 overture when the phone rings. They answer the phone. So how the hell is this going to kill the music industry? It's not. The RIAA was just running a sphincter check that week. They wanted to make sure the executives could still do an emergency pinch-off.

What does my phone play, the first few bars of the theme from Dragnet. That's because when it rings, it's more often that not the Twinkee with some disaster that needs solving. It's never good when my phone rings.

Odds and Ends

How come most guys in Product Management are a bunch of sissies you could deck with one punch? Have you noticed this? It's like product management is a defense against Darwinism, all the "Pretty Boys" work there. They would die if they didn't know how to use a Gant chart.

I was extremely disappointed the day after Thanksgiving. Target had set up a wake-up call service. You could pick from a dozen or so personalities. I chose Darth Vader. He was supposed to call me at 9 AM. At 9, a Stormtrooper called and said Lord Vader commanded me to get my ass out of bed and to go to Target to spend money.

A Stormtrooper. Isn't this an example of how Upper Management screws up everything? They promise to do something, and then delegate it to some lackey. I didn't sign up to talk to some clone grown in a tank. I wanted the Iron-Lunged Lord of the Sith himself. Vader sent his boy.

I think this is why the Empire looses. Poor management who does not sweat the details. I bet that second uncompleted Death Star was shipped on time by some Product Manager using a Gant chart.

A Go!

This is the first issue of The Crapolla covered by an RSS feed. You can subscribe to the RSS feed by pointing your RSS reader to http://www.lowcomdom.com/crapolla/index.rss

This Issue's Headline submission to the National Daily World Enquiring Globe.

IQs R Plummeting!

Sponge Bob Finds Audience

Let's play, "Who said this?"

Heard in the halls of various software companies.

"Your office smells like a cheap cat house."

"I have a question I'm going to ask you later."
"That's always a good time to ask."

"When is this going to stop?"
"When are you going to stop releasing software that isn't ready?"

"We're going to change your title to 'End User'."

"I enjoy these Master Po / Grasshopper moments we have."

Excuse Me

I'm suddenly feeling a constriction around my throat.

Fek'Lar
(The Last Honest Geek)

Remember: The Crapolla contains my personal opinions. That's right they're mine, so get your own! And you kids get off my lawn!

Although written with the software professional in mind, my mind tends to wander all over the place, and I sometimes write about politics, mass stoopidity, dumb things I saw, and whatever else comes to mind.

From time to time, I use salty language, thus The Crapolla is not intended for children, or certain people in the Bush Administration.

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EOJ

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