The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar

You Know You're DOOMED When...

you inadvertently kill productivity in your group by showing one guy a cool game.

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...

WikiMoron and soda with caffeine.

Most Dishonest VP?

I'm reading a lot of RSS feeds these days. I use NewsFire to pull in about 18 different feeds. Some on the right, some on the left. The lefties are amusing. Some of them smell blood in the water. The other day I saw a headline declaring Dick Cheney the most dishonest Vice President of the United States. Pulleaze!

For the record, I think Dick Cheney has been bad for this country. The real problem since 9/11 has been the Executive Branch (which he does belong to) pumping up the fear in this country while finding new ways to shread the Bill of Rights. bin Laden doesn't need to terrorize us, this Administration (and much of it done by Cheney) is doing it for him. But that's not an excuse for declaring Cheney the "most corrupt" VP we've had. How about getting some perspective?

Dick Cheney once shot a guy in the face because he looked like a small bird. That's nothing, Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Hamilton didn't even resemble a small animal. It was a "matter of honor" as they used to say. We don't get these anymore in Washington. Mostly, because no one can claim to have any honor.

People say Haliburton got their fat no-bid contracts with the government because they paid Dick Cheney a fat severance when he left to become the VP. Vice President Schuyler Colfax was not asked back to Grant's second term because he was implicated in a stock market scandal. Sounds like business as usual. I don't see this as more corrupt than the rest of the hogs at the troft. (Not that I'm condoning it.)

If you really want to talk about corruption, I give you the Dynamic Duo, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Nixon was VP under Eisenhower. At that time there were questions about some "gifts" he had received. During his presidency, he was a secrative, and un-truthful man. He maintained an enemies list. And at the end of his presidency, when he resigned to avoid impeachment, Nixon had told so many lies, no one in the White House could really say what had happened.

Nixon's first Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigned his position after being charged with tax evasion resulting from a kick back scheme. (The IRS doesn't care if you got the money in an illegitamate manner as long as they get their cut.) A comedian once said, "When Nixon and Agnew play golf, who keeps score?"

I'm guessing the people who wrote the article declaring Cheney the most corrupt VP were young and had no memory of the Dynamic Duo. It's kind of a shame that we Americans don't pay attention to our own history.

Maybe I Could Shove Some AAA's in There

When I launch Winders Vista in a virtual machine, I've noticed I blow through my battery much quicker. Since I need Vista to run Truecrypt, I thought I'd buy a second battery for the MacBook Pro.

The Valley Fair Apple store was being remodeled. They'd made a tiny little store out of a great big one, so the unused space could be worked on. Outside, on the wall, was painted a paragraph explaining that they had all the same great products and services, just in a smaller space.

I entered the cramped quarters and swam my way back to where the batteries should be. I found batteries for Macs that are no longer sold, but nothing for my machine. I found a staff member and asked about the battery. He looked exactly where I had, then said he'd check the back. When he returned he said they didn't have it, that Apple had not sent as much stock since they were going through the renovation.

But hadn't I seen that paragraph painted on the wall outside? I asked about the "same great products" promise. The answer blew me away.

"Yeah, well they said there was WMD in Iraq," said the Apple staff member.

Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish! He actually said that to a customer! He excused his store's lame inventory, and broken promise by equating it with a blunder that allowed the U.S. of A. to slip into an unnecessary and fruitless war!

You can always count on the professional and polite staff at your local Apple store!

WikiMoron

We found a great new way to keep the sales and marketing guys from bugging us. We gave them a Wiki. This is perfect! We told them it would help them get answers quickly because the gestalt would know everything. Most didn't know what such a big word meant so we waved our hands in front of them and said it was magic.

Now they're at each other's throats. The sales idiots are blaming the marketing morons for stuff that doesn't work. The marketing morons are blaming the sales idiots for selling crap we don't have a press release about.

They all sit on a different floor than my group. It's much quieter in my area now. What other technology can we give to the primatives?

I Love Disaster Days!

Yesterday WTHAIS got royally screwed over by one of our big vendors. It was a complete train wreck. Red lights were flashing, klaxons were blaring. Someone went running through the halls with their hair on fire. I love disaster days!

Disaster days give you a real sense of purpose at work. You don't just sit around killing time, wondering which of the women are wearing thongs, and which are just not wearing underwear at all. During a disaster, work is like a 3-D video game. You're shooting down the vendor screw up monsters as they pop up. At the same time, you have to manage the customers who are screaming, and sales people who need their diaper changed. It could only have been better if that guy who was running through the halls with his hair on fire was wearing a Pac Man costume.

The other fun thing about disaster days is they make me very manic. I talk way too fast for the folks in Bangalore to understand, especially if I switch to caffeinated Diet Coke. On good days this scares people. Having cut most caffeine from my diet to help control my through-the-roof blood preasure, now I'm a cheap date when I go for the hard stuff.

Yeah, I love disaster days.

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

OJ Arrested! Britney Looses Her Kids!

The New Fall Season of Entertainment Tonight has Started!

Let's play, "Who said this?"

Heard in the halls of various software companies.

"I'm an ugly American. But it's OK, we have THE BOMB!"

"I'll deal with my bullshit, you deal with yours."

"I'm rich, I have a dollar. That and a 20 and I can get a cup of coffee!"

"If I had believed in the Tooth Fairie, I would have gotten out a pair of pliers and ripped out everyone's teeth!"

"If you have a choice between a retard and a moron, you vote for the moron."

Excuse Me

They just hired an FNG. Let's see if he can drink from a fire hose.

Fek'Lar
They pay me to think. These are my thoughts. Do you think they are getting their money's worth?

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.

feed available from http://www.lowcomdom.com/crapolla/index.rss

EOJ

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