Senator Ted Stevens Gets Big Tubes!
The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar
You Know You're a Real Geek When...
you can cuss people out in Punjabi!
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...
Icy BM's!
OmKumar in Cube 6043 writes...
Dear Fek'Lar,
Please revert to me how can you determine the health of the company.
Cheers,
OmKumar
Cubicle 6043
Hello Om,
There are many ways to judge the health of your company. The stock numbers are the obvious. But if you're working for a private company, such numbers might not be available to you.
I think of the company much like how I think of a car. You sometimes you have to take it for a spin to see its condition, sometimes, just a look under the hood (bonnet) is all you need.
Take WTHAIS, the door I use sticks. You have to give it a real yank to get it open. The phone system drops calls in mid-sentence. The company's web site crashes twice a week. And here's the real kicker, the sewer line has been broken for a month. Our building stinks!
What's this got to do with the health of the company? Simple, we're losing money. Nothing Mein Fuhrer has told us about returning to profitability in the past year has come true. His solution was another layoff and sending more jobs to India (you lucky bastards).
Perhaps it doesn't matter that the headquarters building is turning into a cholera infested cesspool. Perhaps it's the building in Bangalore that I should be concerned about.
Here at Case de Fek, we lost our heat for two weeks in January. By east coast standards, our winter is mild. For me, a laid-back Californian, winter is a frozen hell of mid-fifty degrees weather.
Now I can buck-up with the best of them. For 14 days, I wore three layers to just take a dump. But my home electronics didn't fare so well. I first noticed the satellite remote not allowing me to scroll up through the channels. Then the off-the-air PVR/DVD burner wouldn't burn a disk.
I thought this was really weird. I mean, yes, every home electronics gadget we own has an operating range. We look at these numbers in the specs and think nothing of it. Turns out, going colder than the operating range will cause your doo-dads to do dumb-ass stuff, which I found surprising. How many demos have we seen where someone froze a PC so they could over-clock the crap out of the processor? Maybe that's the difference. The computers in my office all did well, but the TV-related stuff took a powder.
At the end of the two weeks, we had a new heating and cooling system installed, and my nuts started to thaw out. So did the electronics. Let this be a lesson, don't store your TiVo in the freezer.
What's wrong with me? I should have thought of this a year ago! With the latest round of off-shoring jobs at WTHAIS, I had a brilliant idea. What if people could off-shore their own job?
Ok, the nasty, yet not so secret reality of off-shoring is that Indian workers get paid about 10 percent of what we make. So if you could off-shore yourself, you could still make crap-loads of money without actually doing any work! Sounds like Executive thinking, eh?
The first step in off-shoring yourself is to make sure your boss won't miss you. You need to get a note from your doctor that says you need to work from home permanently. You're never to see anyone from the company again.
Once you're a ghost-worker, you need to find someone in India to do your work for you. That's where my next get-rich-quick idea comes in. Since you don't know how to contact people in India, and they don't know how to contact you, I figure a web site running the same software as the dating sites could match up labor in India with workers in the US who don't want to ever go to work again. Of course, there will be the usual fees for hooking up the Indian and the American, but you could easily pay those with the cost of the gas you're not going to buy in the first week!
After the match is made, you need to teach your replacement in all aspects of your job, including how to speak to your co-workers. In my case, the replacement needs to swear at people for no particular reason, and use the phrase, "It's always been this way."
Just think if you could get two or three of these gigs. You'd make tons of money, and only have the expense of paying some guy in India 10 percent of the check! (And my very reasonable fee.)
I just need to think up a domain name. Maybe buyanindian.com, or slackhere.com. I could make millions!
The Sales staff showed up the other week. It was the annual sales kick off meetings which end in a big karaoke party. My team decided to get into the spirit of the event and give out some sales awards.
To Nicole we gave a set of tongs to help her get that stick out of her ass.
To Rob we gave a membership to AA.
Luke got the Milton Bradley game Clue.
And Stacey, we helped her re-write her resume.
People often say my team is difficult and not helpful at all. I hope these awards have put that ugly rumor to rest.
This Issue's Headline submission to the National Daily World Enquiring Globe.
Senator Ted Stevens Gets Big Tubes!
Heard in the halls of various software companies.
"This brings me to my next point. Don't smoke crack."
"You're trying to make sense. That's the problem."
[Modem squawking in background]
"I'm sorry about the noise. I can't turn off the speaker."
"That's okay, it reminds us of our youth."
"I'm broke. I drink coffee for lunch, or whatever this crap is."
"10 days isn't a trading window. It's a crack!"
I need to visit some people on Sand Hill Road.
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.
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EOJ
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