The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar
You Know You're DOOMED When...
You ask your manager for the escalation path and he says, "I know the answer, but I'm not going to tell you." You also know he doesn't know how to manage his way out of a paper bag.
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...
If it were only sponsored by a muscle relaxant! What am I doing up at 3:30 am writing this? Back Spasms! Your painful pal who keeps you sitting up straight all night trying to stomach more of Jane Pauly and the big story at Claris!
But First, This Week's Corrections...
In our last issue, indeed, the proofreader was inhaling. Both PhoneBoy and Anthony Lee found...
"It's only 30 degrees. What till it gets cold tonight!"
Yeah, I meant "Wait".
So just for you guys... I'm going to paint Steph's car!
I'm a news junkie. I tape the news so I don't miss anything, then I play the tapes while I sleep to absorb the information during down time. My girlfriend hates this. But what's the deal over at MSNBC?
They must not be making money. "The Site" hosted by cyberbabe Soledad O'Brien was canned. This is the one program that defined MSNBC as having some kind of connection with the net. That's gone.
We now have three shows left. The Big Show with Keith Obermann, the News with Brian Williams, and Time & Again hosted by Jane Pauly. The first two aren't bad, but Jesus H. Christ, every other hour it's Time & Again! SOMEONE SEND JANE PAULY THE FUCK HOME! If I didn't know better, I'd say that Jane is really a Disney animatronic. Maybe an old version of the Mr. Lincoln robot. But then Disney owns a competing network. So that's out.
Really, Jane, go home and send back the cyberbabe.
So I had lunch with a colleague of mine over at the former Claris now The Filemaker Corporation. As you might know, Claris was a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple Computer. Apple Computer is run by Steve Jobs.
Jobs is a co-founder of Apple, but he was canned by his board in the 80's. John Sculley from Pepsico took the reigns until he had screwed the company into the ground. Now after a couple others have flushed even more money down the toilet, Jobs returns until a CEO can be found. Okay, that's the background and cover story, here's the real poop.
Jobs owns no Apple stock, that's no secret. Jobs is paid based on Apple's profitability. Claris was the most profitable asset in the Apple barrel. But Claris only transferred part of it's bottom line to Apple's bottom line. So Jobs storms into Claris one day, insults a bunch of people and goes off into a rant.
He tells people that Apple is this tremendous resource and asks why isn't Claris using it? He is told that a Claris badge doesn't open the doors at Apple, and the people at Apple don't return phone calls. This angers Jobs even more.
What happened next can be looked at two ways. Jobs declared that Apple card readers would open for Claris badges the next day. Then Steve did the radical move. He looked at what was selling at Claris - FileMaker, and what wasn't - everything else. He canned everything that wasn't selling and moved the company closer to Apple to re-integrate it into the company.
This may look like a productivity move, but remember I said there's another way to look at this story? In the move, Claris' entire bottom line is transferred to Apple's. In other words, Jobs just made Apple more profitable without actually changing sales or revenue, or cutting costs. That means Steve Jobs can be paid more.
Personally, I think it's a big waste of time. Moving Claris into Apple isn't going to fix what's wrong. Apple is in a deep hole, it's going to be a long time getting out. I just don't see Apple doing a lot to get out. Moving Claris will be about as effective as the new Apple Snail ad. It looks pretty, but it won't sell one computer. Last time I looked, that was the business Apple was in.
Let's play, "Who said this?"
"Oh, you sweet man, remind me to blow you later."
Or how about this one...
"My advise in this life is to never tell an Asian woman that she would look good as a blonde."
Excuse Me
Scooby-Doo is coming on.
Fek'Lar
(Destroyer of Laptops - Morale Officer - The Last Honest Geek)
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