The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar

You Know You're DOOMED When...

your new cube has been red-tagged by the Fire Department.

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...

Getting a grip on food, and surfing the web at 80 MPH!

Whose Dumbass Idea Was This?

WTHAIS has had an interesting history on the subject of company provided food. Back in the 90's bagels were brought in every Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and lunch was catered every Wednesday. These were heady days where everyone in The Valley was spending money like it was 1999 (it was!) The food in 1999 was nothing to write home about. In fact, I often when to Carl's Jr. to get a Diet Coke and Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger which I would eat in front of the CEO. The woman who bought the food would then shit herself.

The year 2000 brought the big melt down. Even if you weren't a dot com, your business suffered. WTHAIS made cut backs, then it had a lay off. The cut backs included the bagels and Wednesday lunch. I liked the bagels but the lunches I didn't miss. I survived the lay off and agreed that we shouldn't be spending too much in tougher times.

Somewhere in mid 2002 we got a new CEO. He made big changes to the upper management, and we started doing better. Eventually, we went public, and later a once a month lunch was started. This time we had better caterers, and better food. Once we even had ribs. I didn't leave the lunch room until every rib was gone. At Thanksgiving we have a full Turkey dinner. There are many vegetarians at WTHAIS, so each meal has a non-meat alternate dish. But this month I think someone has gone off the deep end.

This month's company lunch is Meatloaf. I know a lot of people who grew up with this being the dread meal of the week. When you didn't have very much money, you got Meatloaf. When the announcement of the menu was sent out, a few co-workers started twitching. When one started speaking in tongues, I knew I had a responsibility as a leader to take care of my people. I organized a lunch on the same day at Harry's Hofbrau. Here is a Meatloaf-free zone. People would be able to pig out on the meat of their choice.

Unfortunately, I couldn't help the vegetarians. They had it worse than the Meatloafers. The non-meat dish provided them was... Vegetarian Meatloaf! Talk about adding insult to injury. Can you guess what Meatloaf without meat is? That's right, it's Loaf. Let them eat cake!

3G has great promise. It's a wireless networking technology which is extensible, fast, and uses the cellular network as its underlying infrastructure. In each of these areas, it is far better than any of the 802.11 technologies. It's so good that I see a whole new market and platform which could make us rich again.

Think about your car. If you're like me (you poor bastard!) you spend a lot of time in your car. You can't be wireless with 802.11 because the max range is 200 feet and if you're like me (sucker!) you're traveling at about 90 feet per second. 3G is on the cellular back bone. 90 feet per second means nothing to it. So if we crammed a small computer in your car, hooked up 3G and simplified the user interface, you have a mobile computing platform which could be tailored via software to the unique needs of drivers.

I'm not talking playing DVDs when you're driving. You shouldn't be watching porn at these speeds. Drivers have real needs. They need road monitoring, traffic reports, navigational aids, collision avoidance, and better vehicle monitoring just to name a few. By using a general purpose computer and light weight but real operating system, the car can have software written for it by multiple vendors. This means some kid can think of something you and I could never image and flip the world on its ear again. Now your car will decide which lane you should drive in based on traffic reports and density of other cars. It could be a very cool area of computing.

The problem is we are dealing with the auto industry. If you think The Redmond Company is into closed systems, you ain't seen nothing yet. The auto industry loves non-standard components, and closed computing platforms. In a PC you have standard interfaces for most components (even Macs use these). You can buy any hard drive and plug it in so long as it uses the standard interface, and your BIOS and operating system will support the capacity. We have plenty of sources for virtually all of the pieces in the computer. Anyone can get into the business, quality is at an all-time high, and prices have never been so low. This is what open architecture does for you.

Unless someone has nude pictures of the chairmen of the big auto makers, we are likely to get closed architectures, without real operating systems, just like the game makers. The auto makers will control who has access to the market, and any one who reverse engineers the system so they can extend it would be in violation of the DMCA.

It could be a whole new wave for The Valley to boom on. Or it could be a big fizzle.

Odds and Ends

Gov. Arnie has figured out what a "Special Interest Group" is. It's anyone who opposes his position.

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

New Pope Elevates Jacko to Monsignor!

Cookies and "Grape Juice" Available at Neverland!

Let's play, "Who said this?"

Heard in the halls of various software companies.

"I've broken 8 of the ten commandments!"

"That's OK, I'm here to be abused."

"Why do you have a screen saver from a movie you've never seen?"
"To remind me to see it."
"Why don't we install a screen saver that looks like Remedy to remind you to do work?"

"What was I supposed to do? The guy drank a keg of Stupid this morning!"

"You'll always be the whipping-boy to us."

Excuse Me

Order Up!

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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