/bill's House O Insomnia : Humor, Life in General

And you thought I just some moron

William — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:37:36 GMT

Many folks north of Miami-Dade county have never heard of El Chupacabra. And if you try tipping them off to it, they laugh at you like your some kind of moron. At least that's what they did when I told them. I've been warning people of the dangers posed by the old Chupa and I typically got responses like "Yah Bill, well, next time I get a pet goat, I'll make really sure that I don't accidentally let it outside at night." Because of how I was often treated, I can truly sympathize with our former vice president who was horribly mistreated for trying to warn the world about ManBearPig . Well, for those of you that laughed at me, thought I was a moron, all of the above, Who is the moron now?

Business Travel Sucks

William — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:09:32 GMT

I don't remember the details exactly, but at some point in my very early childhood, me and the folks were flying to Pittsburgh for the holidays. I remember pop being really adamant about "flying 1st class so we don't have to put up with all the B__S___". I had already flown a few times with my mom and didn't know the difference but it sounded cool. Until we got on the plane. I remember thinking "This is it?" and wondering what the big deal was. Business travel has been the same sort of anti-climactic event. Except unlike flying first class, business travel actually sucks.

I don't mean when you're 22 and out of college that it sucks. Going places and meeting different people is cool. Until you've done it 20000000 times. Then it sucks. Actually, by the time you hit 4 digits on your travels, business travel will have long been sucking. Jobs involving travel sound cool and important, but seriously, unless you're young and out of school, it sucks.

In case you doubt me, I'm going to explain why in terms I don't think *anyone* can argue with:

1- Airports suck. Going to them sucks. Leaving them sucks. Waiting around for your baggage sucks. Standing in line sucks. Going through security sucks. Airline personnel are largely union which for some reason, makes them hate everyone. Assuming the union doesn't make them bitter, dealing with unappreciative obnoxious a-holes all day does them in every time. Until they make kid|idiot|slow people|complainer free airports, they will continue to suck (trust me, if you're reading this you won't see the day that this will happen)

2- Business travel isn't the same as recreational travel. Unless you don't matter, your home office is going to want you back as soon as possible. So when you leave, you have to come back, quickly. B/c of the travel time, in the 300000 I've been to Seattle, I've only got to hang out with friends about 10 of them. Only twice, and that was when I was self-employed, did I get to go to Portland and hang out with my homie + his lovely better 1/2. You call up friends, say "Hey, I'll be in town" and quickly come to realize unless you can squeeze in lunch or something, chances are you won't get to see them. When you don't, you always look like a douche for not stopping by

3- The only people that drive worse than the people in your city, are those that drive in other cities. Growing up in Miami, it really took a lot to impress me here. Most people had little problem doing 8 lane changes on I-95 and using your turn signal will get you arrested or killed. But you don't sit in traffic all freaking day. In fact, you can't even drive slow in Miami. In Seattle, it's great as long as you don't battle rush hour or get lost downtown. If you do, you'll end up around a bunch of crazed Scientologists, tranvestite prostitutes, drug addicts, vegan homeless kids with laptops and cell phones. It's awful. Pittsburgh, you'll end up going through a tunnel and never seeing daylight until the next day. Boston, well, my good buddy Michael is from Boston so I can't really advocate blowing it up and starting over - but it's not an argument without merit. Minneapolis? Hmmm, I ended up in the hood (scary even by Miami and Atlanta standards) WITH a GPS in the car, got lost every time I tried to get to our office, and got to ride in a taxi with the guy who was voted "Most likely to wage jihad against infidels via his taxi cab". You know it's a bad trip whenever you ask the cabbie "So, you had any famous people in your cab" and he responds "Sure, Keith Ellison and Ibrahim Hooper". "Yah, I was thinking something more along the lines of actors, athletes, models, hot chicks..." and I could just tell by his look and silence that none of those were coversation topics he enjoyed engaging.

More than that though, you have to navigate places you probably haven't been and you're in a hurry. If you do know you're way around, you can't stay anywhere long enough to enjoy it. Ick!

4- Time zones. My family goes to sleep between 9-10:00. I dont' sleep unless it's chemically enhanced by Ambien CR. So getting out of work at 6:00 means it's bed time for the folks at home. 7 makes it late and after that it's getting rude. Well, by the time you get back to your hotel or whatever it's usually too late to call. To make up for it, your loved ones may try to call you first thing in the morning. Which is usually around 4:00 AM

5- Flight delays, cancellations etc are non-billable in most contracts and most companies consider those in the non-billable hour pool meaning you aren't getting much for it. So even in benevolent companies like mine, flight delays get balanced on your free time. I mean, they need me back Monday to be at the client. If my plane is a day late, the client still needs me there. On seasoned engagements, if you can find a way to be billable (usually called VPN + Broadband) than that mitigates it if the client is cool, but the problem still remains.

6- The more you pack the less likely you'll be to get caught without something important. But the more you pack, the more you lug around, the more you have to wait for at Baggage and the more likely something will be broken or damaged. So you'll make tradeoffs and if you're like me, they'll always be the wrong ones.

7- Kids. Ok, if you *have* to fly with your kid, I hereby, just like my Catholic forefathers did, offer you a Indulgence (except mine's free). I'm not talking about the people that fly here and there with their kids. I mean the regular road warriors. And everyone else, all the new age parents with kids with annoying names like "Dakota, Cody, Madison, Taylor" [why are they all lame throwbacks to the wild west or distilled of gender to the point they are completely androgonous?] yes, that's who I'm talking about. I want you to have happy kids. I want your kids to have self-esteem. I really want the best for all of you. But can you do it without your stupid kid yelling and throwing tantrums the whole time right? If not, how about an apology? I know you have to have some pretty powerful sedatives on you, so how about sharing? No, no such luck. Instead, Trevor will kick the back of the seat the whole time b/c of his ADD and mom can't tell him to stop b/c of his self-esteem.

8-Rental Cars - it's hit or miss here. But in the terminals like DFW or San Fran, where you have to drive to another state on a bus before you get to the rental car terminal - yuck.

9- Unhot stewardesses. Ok, the hot comment is childish and infantile but I'm old enough to remember those days. Anyway, they get crapped on. They deal with the world's biggest a-holes at their worst so obviously these people are almost saintly just to be able to make it through a shift. Except the ones that aren't so nice. The ones that are bitter. The ones that - well, like the ones on my flight last night.

10 - Expense reports. REmember to always ask for a receipt. Make sure you got Neat Receipts or you better be orgainzed. Make sure you rush right home and do your reports. Even at places that are fast, the turnaround time is usually at least one pay period. Go racking up 3800k every two weeks like I did, and you can't miss too many of those before people start wondering if you're developing a drug or gambling problem. But you'll forget reciepts. You'll lose them. You'll throw some out by accident. That's when the fun starts.

I'm already funning twice as long as I wanted and I just got started. So trust me on this, Business Travel sucks.

Truer words have not been spoken

William — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:55:13 GMT

Raymond Lewallen posted the following on his Twitter page.

if i get one more vampire bite thingy whatever from facebook, i'm going to kick @CalebJenkins in the nuts! Its seems to have started there. about 8 hours ago from Witty

I know I'm out of the mainstream on this, but having signed up for Facebook a few months ago, I truly don't get it. A lot of times there's stuff I don't like but I can see what the allure is for other people. Facebook isn't one of these though. The little interaction I've had with it was mainly b/c I had no clue what the feature was and just wanted to see what it did. But overall, there's a lot of annoying stuff that doesn't seem to have much value. And unlike MySpace, most Faceboook pages aren't so tacky and laden with piss poor grammar that they provide a good laugh. All the cool kids love facebook so my disdain for it seems to be yet another indication of my unadulterated dorkiness. But a kick square in the nuts from a dork still hurts, so keep that in mind before sending out any more vampire bites.

Fighting the Bull

William — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:15:28 GMT

A few years ago, I read a truly excellent book called Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide . I really liked it b/c I was working at a place with a whole lot of people who were really into talking in business speak and thought they were really cool for doing it. Little by little, they all battled with each other to outdo the other ones. At the same time, they all started to think that talking ambiguously, meaning answering questions by not answering the question was some kind of holy virtue. Meetings were bad enough, but this idiocy makes them unbearable. Because talking in business speak is all about trying to convince people you're smart and hip, it turns into a pissing battle. You only need one of these people in a meeting to really make it so painful it hurts, but G*d help you if you get three or more b/c they will spend the whole time trying to outdo each other. And that's when they aren't battling to be the first to say 'That's a great point" every time a boss says something. They think it makes them sound important and I have yet to find anyone that seriously respects this style of communication. When i read the Bullfighter's Guide, it was really liberating in the same way it's always liberating to find out that not only aren't you alone, that there are many others that agree with you out there.

Purely for therapeutic value, I'd like to describe the phenomenon in a little more detail. The crux of this post is about a tool that's been around for a while and a book that's been around for a while. The book is mentioned above and is an in depth look at the annoying phenomenon known as Business Speak and how to avoid it. There is a Word Add-In that you can use to analyze documents and help you remove Bull as well as let you compute a Bull Index. Better yet, you can create your own lists and add your own words, so this tool can adapt to fight this evil phenomenon.

Here's what it looks like:

You can run the tool (the left hand icon) which works like Word's Spell Checker, or you can compute the Bull Index:

So why is this necessary? Well, because not only do many people think talking in Business Speak is cool, many people now it's stupid and pretentious, yet are uncomfortable saying so out loud b/c it will invariably anger at least a few coworkers. It's a classic case of the Emperor having no clothes. And today, at least in my experience, talking like this is the defacto standard. For example, a few years ago, I was talking with a few of my former coworkers (we all worked for the same Big X Consulting firm where talking like this was mandatory). A competitor of ours actually made Bullfighter. We'd run it on our documents (which were called Deliverables - can you ever imagine talking to your wife or kid and use Deliverable in a sentence? Can you imagine using the term Deliverables ANYWHERE other than work without causing confusion and laughter?) and try to remove all the bull we could find. We'd send it up the chain to the project manager and then to the managing partner, and what we got back was our document, except with Bull words added back in. Just to put it in perspective, this was back in the day when we were still called Resources. Again, imagine telling your wife "Honey, I'm going to be at work pretty late tonight, would you mind running by the school and picking up our resources and making sure our resources get their homework done?) I think the current word is Asset but I hear Resources still lingering around. Is Asset the most up to date one, or is there something newer?

In high school, you have the kids that are teacher's pets. They are the kids who love lecturing you about how 'immature' you are for laughing at potty humor. In a classroom discussion, they always figure out what the teacher's opinion is and spout it out as though it was their long held belief. Then they head off to college. The second week into school when few students know what they really want to do and are busy trying to get drunk and find easy freshman, you often hear these folks at the lunch table or on the sideline of the intramural fields raping people's ears. You hear some poor chap ask them "So what are you majoring in?" and it's all over. They haven't finished a single course or even taken their first test and you hear "Well, I'm going to double major in Poli-Sci and English. You know, 98% of lawyers at the nation's top firms were English majors. So I'm going to go to school on summers and take my LSAT's in my 3rd year. If I score over 190, then I'll be heading off to UVA or Princeton. If I score between 160 and 189, I'll shoot for Penn or Columbia. but i may take the dual MBA/JD program because there are so many MBAs and JDs, that you really need both to distinguish themselves." Then your senior year it turns into "Well, I'm going to work for a few years to get experience and find a company that will pay for my MBA. You know, you can't really get into a MBA program without work experience" They torture their first few sets of coworkers with this nonsense and say really smart sounding things like "You know, the market is going to close up today" every freaking day as though they were the only people in the world that know that the futures markets and market open often indicate the overall mood the traders that day. They start to see that no one likes their ideas and that they offer very little. Then they think "If only I was in management...." At that point, it fully takes over and what you get is a platitude generating Dilbertesque robot that induces vomit on a regular basis.

What happens usually is that someone in your office, usually a younger person on the verge of making management, starts it. These folks spot them and try to copy everything they do. All of a sudden you're in a meeting and they are asked a question and they reply "I'll be glad to take this off-line with you." At that point, you can see the eyes of all the kiss asses and management wannabes light up and you can almost hear them thinking "ooooh, impressive, I need to use that." Two days later, everyone is taking things offline instead of talking to you after the meeting. In another meeting you hear the trendoid say "Well, I have concerns that you may not have the bandwidth..." The same folks mentioned before perk up and take note. Bandwidth, oooh, now that sounds impressive. And then they discover the wonders of ambiguity. Next thing you know everyone is talking about bandwidth and everyone with some pathological agenda is talking about their concerns or telling you that so and so manager has concerns about something {something almost always directly related to their own agenda}. By using concerns, every petty tyrant in empowered to wreak havoc on their coworkers. You see, if you tell people "Well, John said Mr Whoever is pissed off about the network downtime" and John gets called on it, He'll just hide behind the ambiguity "Well, Mr Whoever did have concerns, hugh amounts of downtime is not good for business {all such people also love to slip in completely obvious truisms and state them like it's something profound}, but that's all I was saying. But when they said it in the meetings, they emphasized it in such a way that said "If this isn't fixed, heads are going to roll". The ambiguity is perfect for them because they can get people worked up or hide behind someone else's name and then have complete deniability if they get called out. In short order, they'll start using "We" all the time, so they can take credit if management agrees with their point, but pawn it off on others if management doesn't. This all starts creeping in, just like the business platitudes. These people then start freestyling with each of these techniques:

Bill: "Hey, John, the full database backup didn't run last night nor did the incrementals. I looked into it and the job wasn't enabled. Did someone disable it after you enabled it or did you not enable it before you left?"

John: "Well Bill, we have to do everything possible to take care of customer data. We might be staff here but we are customers at many places and we certainly want our data handled as carefully as possible. It's critical that we leverage each of our core competencies to strategically manage our client's data, even if we're running low on bandwidth or getting pushback about it"

Bill: "Uhh, ok, but I didn't have a chance to look at the error logs, I just want to know if it was left disabled for a reason, or it was an oversight, and if there was a reason, can we re-enable it now, it's been 8 hours since we've had a backup."

John: "Well, we look at our business model as the key to our success and you have to do what's best for the customer and do things that make sense. Right now, I don't have a comfort level with the backup strategy and we may need to have a meeting. I understand you have a concern about it and we totally share your concern. Maybe you could google it and see what comes up and then you can call a meeting and share your findings."

As stupid as this sounds, it's not far from a real conversation I've had and ones I've overheard. I know I'm really long on this rant which is slightly ironic b/c what I'm complaining about is poor communication, but it's because this nonsense is so prevalent that I often wish things were different. the thing is that if you talk to people individually, everyone will tell you they hate this sort of stuff. Depending on the guilt level, you'll typically hear some level of apologetics for their own sins. On the other hand, you just know that there are some people you could never even bring the subject up with, b/c for them, talking like this is absolutely critical to their existence. And if you look deep, you'll find that the more someone talks like this, the less technical skills they have. There are a few exceptions of talented people that speak like this, but the folks with talent are doing it b/c they think it's expected. For the rest, they literally depend on this sort of stuff.

Why do I mention all of this? because I'm going to bet that every single person that reads this works with someone like this. In fact, I bet they work with more than a few people that talk and behave like this, and have worked with many in the past. And these people have driven you nuts. And you've wanted to call Bullsh*t as loudly as possible. At one point, you actually fell for it, thinking that they speak so confidently and sounds so sophisticated that they have to really know what they are talking about. Then you realize that every morning on the ride into work, they hear about the futures markets and that alone is what dictates their daily market predictions. You realize taht without the fancy lingo, they have nothing to offer. And it drives you nuts. If you've felt this and want a good laugh, pull a sample of about 20 of their emails or memos. One day, in a meeting, bring in your notebook and just type in as many phrases as you can without attracting attention. Then run the Bullfighter (yes, it works on everything from Word 97 to 2007) and laugh at the results. Then look at their Bull Index. When you see their pathetic Bull Score, sit back and laugh to yourself knowing they are absolutely full of it as measured by a good objective standard. And run it on your own work just to make sure you never go over to the dark side (the lowest I've scored is a 5.5 and the highest is an 8. I usually score in the 7.0s. The more I use it, the more I 'get it' and hopefully I can improve that.

If you have any really good examples of Business speak (I know I've asked before but figured there are some new good ones based on what I"ve been hearing lately) or memos, Please please please post them or send them to me. I'll keep them confidential unless you tell me it's ok to mention it. For some reason, I find this quite amusing.

I can almost hear Jeff Foxworthy saying...If you write blog posts at 5:00 AM about how much you like running writing analyzers on office memos, you might be a DORK.

JesOS (TM) The First True Christian (TM) Operating System

William — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 02:09:03 GMT

I'm probably going to hell for even reading this, let alone posting a link to it. Atheists/Agnostics and Christians that can laugh at some of the less desirable aspects of their faith will get a good chuckle out of it. If you are of the persuasion that thinks that laughing at any aspect of religion == laughing at God, then you'll probably be somewhere between extremely and totally offended.

Man bites dog

William — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 17:16:59 GMT

A few of these clips are definitely NSFW b/c of the language. In fact, more than a few are. But if you look at some of Jimmy Justice's video, you'll probably laugh your butt off.

Basically, he's a citizen vigilante who goes around and photographs cops doing things they shouldn't be. In just about every one I've seen, he's a complete jerk but the arrogance of the cops defies words. If you have a few minutes and want a few laughs though, Jimmy Justice may be able to help

Passenger's bill of duties

William — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:39:00 GMT

Athough it's been relatively slow in the past few months, I typically have to engage in a good bit of air travel and it seems that many developers/consultants I know are in the same boat.. TSA and similar concerns have made air travel more frustrating over the years, but nothing, nothing compares to some of the obnoxious Pain in the a55e5 that have gotten much worse over the years. So when I read The Passenger's Bill of Duties , I got a real kick out of it. #s 1 & 5 should be passed into law immediately. I think one other one needs added - People who's chairs get kicked repeatedly by bratty kid should be given $10.00 a pop by the brat's parents and People who's kids cry for more than 15 minutes should reimburse everyone disturbed by the kids. None of this will ever happen but it's nice to dream.

The stupidity of this amazes me

William — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 20:27:00 GMT

I had to read a book called The Bell Curve about ten years ago. It was very controversial and I bought it, I just didn't buy the reasoning (don't think race was at the heart of the differences). He pointed out that smart people were having fewer kids and dumb people were having more (Think Bill Gates as compared to that asp guy who's on baby momma #3). Not only were the smarter people having fewer kids, but they tended to be wealthier - again, think of the previous example. So the smarter people had more resources to nurture their kids and could put more effort into their development since they had less of them. On the other end, poorer people had more kids, had less resources to dedicate to them etc. While individually things can vary dramatically (we all know of rags to riches stories, over conversely, Paris and Nicole) - but overall, he hypothesized that there was going to be a cognitive elite driven mainly by this phenomenon and technology. Being computer illiterate gets more and more costly each passing year. So perhaps it's totally coincidental and has nothing to do with this phenomenon, but at least as far as crooks go, seems to me they are clearly on the less desirable tail of the congitive elite curve . (For my more pedantic readers, I'm certainly aware of the fact that dumb crooks have always been and will always be, and that it's media access that makes it seem like there's an increase). But I'm tellin ya, at some level, when it comes to dumb, we aren't regressing toward the mean, instead, we're moving towards the tails. Spammers/Phishers et all show way more sophistication than crooks of old, then you see stuff like this . Heck, my hometown paper's Dave Barry fills his blog with humorous stories of dumb crooks. These guys may not be the dumbest I've heard of, but they sure are dumb. "Joe, what do you think that barking sound is at this abandoned Nursing home? Uhh, beats me Bill. Oh crap, it's a bunch of police dogs - you run left and I'll run right and maybe we can outrun them."

Pimpology vs Harry Potter

William — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 03:44:00 GMT

On Fridays, Kim and I typically go to P.F. Changs for dinner and then go to Barnes and Noble to and go book shopping. Tonight everything was going well, and after dinner we walked across the street to B & N. At some point, I started having flashbacks to the Elian Gonzalez drama that gripped Miami for so long and made many facets of life difficult.

By the time we walked to the parking lot, we saw news truck after news truck. Every major media network was represented. The whole complex was just packed and all the parking spaces by B & N were taken. At that point it dawned on me that this was Harry Potter release night. Actually, that last part isn't exactly true, that's how I wished it went down.

Right before we were finishing dinner, Kim mentioned that it was Harry Potter release night and that it might be crowded. I opened my big trap and said "Jeezzusss, how crowded to you think it can be?" After all, this is still Greenville. It's not uncommon for people to send letters to the editor talking about how Harry Potter == speed train to h*ll. I frequently overhear people in stores and restaurants talking about how awful Harry Potter is or how terrible so and so is b/c they let their kids watch/read Harry Potter stuff. So I couldn't possibly imagine that many people would be out waiting to pick up the book. Not surprisingly, I was wrong.

The store was packed. I mean Jammed packed. There were people walking around with "The end is near signs" everywhere. Everyone under 20 it seemed was dressed up in Harry Potter garb ranging from just wearing the glasses to going all the way. Few things irritate me more than crowds and to be honest, the last time I was in a book store that was this crowded, I was a Senior in high school in B Dalton trying to get a copy of the Satanic Verses before they pulled it from the shelf. Heck, they were pulling it from the shelf so it had to be cool. If I remember, it was really expensive (this was 1988 or 89), something like $50.00 - which back then, was pretty pricey for a book of that nature. Anyway,, I couldn't get into the computer books isle so I took a detour to try to go down the aisle from another direction. I walked back the Self Help aisle and was kind of chuckling at some of the folks there and the titles of books. I was almost expecting to see some unemployable dork reading Drive Yourself Sane or some equally lame garbage when, low and behold I saw this:

Pimpology - The 48 Laws of the Game

Never forget yo, the Hype is real.

Mind you, this was in Self Help/Self Improvement section. At first I figured it was humor just b/c of the title. Then I picked it up though and realized it was actually serious. It should have been in the Business Books section although I guess I can't argue that it's a self improvement book too.

It's a classic case of don't judge a book by the cover I guess, b/c it's apparently a very serious book,extremely serious from the parts I've skimmed, but well, as Pimpin' Ken says "Remember that if ifs and ands were pots and pans, the whole world would be a kitchen" So it caught my eye and I just had to flip through it. I said "Look honey, this is just what I need" and Kim just rolled her eyes at me and gave me that "there he goes again" look. Some guy next to me was reading something by some dude named James Bradshaw about healing your inner child or something. He glanced at the cover of my book and looked at my like I was buying a Harry Potter book for my kid or something. So I flip through the Table Of Contents:

Law 4 - Keep a Ho in Arrears

Law 8 - Pimp like you Ho-Less

Law 19 - Turn Ho ends into dividends

These were just a few of the valuable lessons contained in Pimpology - The 48 Laws of the Game. Kim disappeared at that point, I suspect b/c she realized how stupid I was going to look when I walked up the counter to buy this book. The lines were insane and as I tried to cut through the crowds to get over to the checkout line, all I could think was "It's hard out here for a Pimp". As I was in line, Kim found her way over to me. I started reading excerpts of the book and with each passing phrase from Pimpin' Ken, she seemed more and more convinced I'm a complete idiot. So I get to the counter and proceeded to check out. The girl behind the counter was a school teacher and stared at the cover , looked at me, looked really confused and then told me "Well, people buy all kinds of stuff. People come in and buy High Times magazine and books on how to grow pot. They always say it's for a class project and I know it's not b/c i'm a teacher." I assured her that my interest in the Pimp Game was purely academic, but I figured there was no way she was going to believe it was for a term paper. The fact that this book is actually serious, still kind of amazes me. Although it's sort of silly sounding, Pimpin' Ken is totally serious. Virtually every facet of pimpin is covered in depth and he brings a lot of real world experience to the table. If you'd have told me 20 years ago that 20 years from now, I'd be in a bookstore late on a Friday night, buying a self-improvement book on Pimpin, by a Pimp, well, I probably would have fallen over laughing.

But there I was. It seemed surreal b/c well, I just tried to imagine my picture on the cover instead of Pimpin' Ken and thought, "Nope, it would never work for me". I remember back when Self-Improvement was the same in most every store - Psycho-Cybernetics, Dianetics, all the Napoleon Hill series, Tony Robbins' stuff, M Scott Peck's books. On the less serious side there was also a whole bunch of stuff on inner children, families of choice and other silliness and "Recovery". Over the years, Self-Improvement has developed a whole lot of niche areas, but never did I think I'd see a book on the Rules of Pimping. There was all sorts of books there on how to get over crappy relationships, healing anger, assertiveness and the like - so I'm not sure how that crew would deal with Pimpin' Ken. As surreal as all this was, I guess it was the Harry Potter insanity was the perfect backdrop for it. Hey, if all these people can sit around dressed up like Wizards and whatever, carrying around "The end is near signs", some reclusive computer nerd like me has every right to try to keep it real with Pimpin' Ken (although something about that name isn't sitting well with me. I mean, the Pimpin' part is ok, but Ken just isn't working. I think a single consonant would at least sound a lot more real.

So at this point, I need to quit writing and get back to reading Ken Blanchard , Agatha Christie and Dale Cargnegie quotes framed in the context of a modern day Pimp. By tomorrow morning, I'll hopefully be able to Turn Ho Ends into Dividends or more practical stuff like "Be a leader". Once I get that down, I'm going to get busy reading "Law 36 - Be Internationally Known, Nationally Recognized and Locally Accepted". This is critical of course, because the streets are watching and I'm not sure I've done enough prepartion building my street cred. We'll see. All in all though, I'll take Pimpin' Ken over Harry Potter any day of the week.

I'm hoping by the way, to finally get my career as a gangsta rapper started. As i have mentioned before, I was thinking of starting a rap crew called "B Nice and tha Hoe Killaz". I of course would be B-Nice (B as in Bill for those of you that dont' keep it real). Finding the Hoe Killaz however, has proven to be illusive although I've found some possible leads during the two times I've ridden on the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority aka MARTA

Accordingly, following Pimpin' Ken's 33rd Law "Bring Your People with You to the Top", I'd like to offer any of my regular readers an opportunity to join the Hoe Killaz. I'd prefer people with some fresh Grillz , but in the spirit of keepin it real, lack of a fly Grill and bling, will not bar you from consideration to take it to the next level as a Hoe Killa. Use the contact me link for more information.

UPDATE: Since I first posted this on Friday, it's gotten the crap indexed out of it. If you Search Google for the phrase Pimpin Ken this post is # 11 . Since then, I started doing a little research and I found Pimpin Ken and got an Add from him. Also hooked up with Big Paper Chase aka Oil Can Harry and Hoetester. If you haven't figured it out - IMHO, Hoetester has to be one of the flyest rappers I've heard in years but for some reason, I never came across his work. As far as Paper Chase goes, he's already come up and proven his game is tops. I'm not a big MySpace fan and in general, am not a big social networking guys. But with Adds like this, Barbie Cummings and some of the other folks I've come across, I'm starting to see the light.

Programmers do actually make suckier interfaces than other people

William — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 01:56:00 GMT

Aaron's post asserts that programmers aren't to blame for crappy UIs and I'm not sure he's right about that point. As a programmer and software user, I have to say that most of the truly terrible user interfaces I've seen in my life were not the result of bad user requirements or anything of the sort. They were created by programmers who were in love with their own ideas. Less than two weeks ago, I had an argument with a fellow programmer about UI design. My contention was that in a Winforms app that has "Ok", "Next" or "Continue" functionality coupled with required fields, you should disable such buttons until all of the required fields are filled in properly. Allowing a user to click a button, only to have a MessageBox pop up telling you something you filled out was incorrect/missing/required/whatever is just lame. I'm sure you can find exceptions to the rule, but we weren't talking about exceptions. I had a project lead who was a programmer once instruct me to stick in a button that flashed (visible = true, visible = false, repeat) until all the required fields were entered correctly. Another developer I worked with built a form on an application that 15 tabs on one form and a few hundred controls on it. You had to scroll down and to the side to even see all of the controls. He bragged constantly about how great this design was b/c users never had to leave the current screen or open another form. The stated benefit of this 'feature' had something to do with Alt/PrintScreen functionality. (I often thought that even assuming you bought into his core premise, if users had to take that many PrintScreens of the app state, the app by definition really sucked. User Interface design should *not* be driven by making bugs easier to deal with). And lest it seems like I"m beating up on other people, I've had so many moronic ideas about user interfaces that I could fill an enclyopedia with them. A former coworker of mine commented on my obsession with UI effects that consumed CPU cycles and RAM yet provided no tangible benefit to anyone other than me so I could say "Isn't it cool?"

I don't disagree with anything else Aaron is saying, in fact, I think he's dead on. I haven't used a typewriter since I was a freshman in college and haven't seen on in an office that I can remember. Inoking such users is definitely off base. But I do disagree with part of his contention - that programmers aren't to blame for bad UIs - the whole reason there are User Interface consultants IMHO is precisely b/c of know it all programmers (and yes, although I think I"m reformed I certainly would have to plead guilty to such charges) who forced their brilliant ideas on users. Ignorance and being a novice can lead to many mistakes, but to truly suck I think something requires intentionality and such intentionality usually comes from those in my profession (then again, most networking people I know are pretty inept at UI Design)

My personal solution to this problem was to swear off front end components entirely and focus on back/middle tiers and communication mechanisms. That way I can just plead "I really don't do front end work" up front (no pun intended) and just basically abdicate any responsiblity I have for the topic. On the other hand, if you ever want to see user interfaces that suck, just head over to MySpace. That's the friggin Meccha or terrible UI effects and bolstering Aaron's argument, such atrocities aren't driven by programmers.

The AngryPharmacist and the Drug Monkey

William — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:07:00 GMT

Every day we go about out lives and we interact with people who we probably don't even think twice about. Many of us interact with pharmacists and never think twice about it, or what they think of us. I know mr 375lb bench press aka 'the lower cased one' interacts with a phramacist all the time although he's been completely remiss in posting pictures of her any more. Anyway, I came across to absolutely hillarious blogs, the DrugMonkey (formerly the Drug Nazi) and The Angry Pharmacist. With site descriptors like "Your Pharmacist may hate you" you know the site is going to be classic. In short, these are two pharmacists who blog about annoying customers and annoying doctors.

When I first came by http://www.theangrypharmacist.com/ site, I started to think, what a pr***. The DEA has many doctors terrified of writing scripts for many substances and a lot of people go under treated for pain and other maladies. So I started reading try to understand where this guy is coming from and it all became clear.

When I was in undergrad, a good majority of my friends were pharmacy majors. I never thought of being a pharmacist as being a real job (after all, you don't hear mothers advising their daughters to marry a doctor, laywer, engineer , accountant OR pharmacist) but saw how unbelievably hard it was to be a pharmacist. And I'm no spring chicken. I graduated right about the time when you could be a pharmacist with only 5 year's education. Now you need a Pharm D (with the exception of Education, getting a Ph. D is a real honor and a lot of work, some a lot harder to earn than others with Pharm D being at the top of the food chain). Anyway, I really learned how hard it is to get through pharmacy (and I also learned that eating more than 5 Percocets at a time will make you itchy).

As I read through these guy's blogs though, I started to laugh out loud quite a bit. I've been waiting for my scripts many times and repeatedly heard someone giving the pharmacist some rap about getting their scripts early. The AP has a pretty funny post about SOMA and yep, I've heard people more than a few times trying to hit the pharmacist up for SOMA. In fact, since I usually wait around for my scripts, I've heard all sorts of stuff. And for some reason, I never thought twice about it. I guess it's b/c the pharmacists just never let on that it's annoying them. But after reading these guys blogs, I thought, they must hear more BS than any profession other than motorcycle cops.

These two blogs have quickly become two of my favorites. Listening to really smart grumpy guys complain about morons is just hysterical. If you like that sort of thing, I highly recommend both of them...

Back with a bang

William — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 03:41:00 GMT

I've taken a hiatus from blogging but am going to try to get back on track full speed. I've been tech editing a great Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) book titled Professional WCF Programming: .NET Development with the Windows Communication Foundation . But more on that later... I'm chock full of good stuff and since I'm flying out to Redmond for some top secret work for a few days, I can finally get back into the swing of things.

So I work in the Perimeter area and live in a place called The Place. I know, that's a lame name but it's pretty cool to live here. I live on the penthouse floor which is largely unoccupied. So there's only about 6 people and there's about 60 units (the building is huge) One of the people is a fellow Miami alum. One day, I was testing my GPS to see how it would resond as I drove down from my floor to the ground, I wanted to see how it detected depth. Not so good. Well, other than my buddies at Magenic, I don't know anyone here and in general, I'm quite bored when I'm not drowning in work. To entertain myself, I started going late night speed trials up the parking garage. This reminded me of old school Miami Vice episodes except I don't have a mullet or a Ferrari. Anyway, my neighbor saw me doing this and thought it was a cool idea. So he started doing them to. I think a few others saw us racing up the parking lot and decided the idea was cool. (Now, if anyone from the management of the place is reading this, I'm making this up. There's two different guys from Miami on the top floor that do this, not me and Carlos).

Fast forward until today. I'm driving home and see something I can't really believe. A truck has a Honda Accord embedded in it in the parking lot. The Honda has a mustang embedded into it. Another car was embedded into the Mustang, but he decided to get his sober girlfriend to get them out of there.

From the concierge downstairs, this appears to be what happened: So apparently, three guys decided to race. The guy in the Accord pulled out really fast and hit the truck. The guy in the Mustang hit the guy in the Accord, (I guess Mustangs have tighter turning radiuses). Another guy hit the mustang. Now that guy decided "Wow, we're really screwed up, I'm getting my girlfriend and getting out of here, we can take care of it tomorrow." So he leaves. The other two get into a fight over who's fault it was. The one guy decides to call the cops. The cops start asking what happened and the whole thing about the cars comes up. They tell the cops it was 20 minutes ago and the like. The cops realize the dudes were piss drunk and just implicated themselves. So they got a free night's stay in Dekalb County Jail. The owner of the Ranger isn't home, it's his utility vehicle but I'm sure he'll be pissed. And the amazing thing is that they were home free. They could have just handled it themselves, paid the guy in the Ranger a few extra bucks and been done with it. But no, they needed to call the cops. Morons.

Wally, if you're reading this, that is a Georgia Tech tag on the Accord, who by all accounts was the lead Dumb A55 ;-)

Is this a joke?

William — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 20:19:00 GMT

I got the following phishing/spam yesterday and didn't think much about it.

Dear Greater Atlantic Bank Cardholder,

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the Greater Atlantic Bank system. We recently contacted you after noticing an issue on your account. We requested information from you for the following reason:

Our system requires further account verification.

Case ID-Number: GAB7896CUO

This is the final reminder to log in to Greater Atlantic Bank Online Account immediately.

To get started, please click here.

Be sure to log in securely by accessing this link. Once you log in, you will be provided with steps to restore your account access. We appreciate your understanding as we work to ensure account safety.

In accordance with Greater Atlantic Bank Security Agreement, your account access will remain limited, until the issue will be resolved. Unfortunely, if access to your account remains limited for an extended period of time, it may result in further limitations or eventual account closure. We encourage you to log in to your Greater Atlantic Bank account as soon as possible to help avoid this.

Please do not reply to this message. For any inquiries, Contact Customer Service.

Greater Atlantic Bank, N.A. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender.
Copyright 2006 Greater Atlantic Bank, N.A. All rights reserved

However a friend of mine shot me an IM asking if I'd seen it so I clicked on it and viola'.

Could it be any more obvious.

How screwed up are you?

William — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 01:58:00 GMT

I was listening to some old Phil Hendrie episodes and Vernon Dozier was on. This woman calls with a strong Southern Accent and as always, it reminds Vernon of 'mother'. He tells her "it's the kind of thing that makes you want to sit in a room with no furniture and cut the eyes out of pictures." (Strangely enough, I'm starting to truly understand where Vernon is coming from...) If you aren't hip to Phil Hendrie then you won't understand... So I came across the following meme and decided to post it. We've been getting killed with blog spam and the server's been having trouble, looks like I can post again though ;-)

You are 94% messed up.

You are excessively messed up. Presumably your mother dropped you on the head several times when you were younger which lead you to a life of erratic behavior. You are likely to go crazy at the drop of a hat. A Davey Crocket hat, that is.

'How messed up are you?' at QuizGalaxy.com

AOL Customer Service Call from H3ll

William — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:18:00 GMT

This is a Absolutely shocking . It took this guy over 20 minutes to cancel his account (and although AOL claims they don't encourage this stuff, how many nightmare stories have you heard about people cancelling AOL? Granted, few people use such a lame...(read more)

I got snubbed again!

William — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 01:01:00 GMT

The old saying goes, "You don't want to be a member of any club that would have you." Well, doesn't look like I'm going to run into that problem b/c I got snubbed for Bilderberg. So far, I've gotten subbed by the Trilaterilists, the Council for Foreign Relations and of course, the Bilderbergs. This is totally whack on their part b/c I think I'd make one hell of a global elitist. I can be a snob. I like expensive stuff. I like hob nobbing with important people. The only thing I'm missing is about 4 digits on my tax return but heck, how about some affirmative action for unknown American computer geeks? If you happen to be going and need a flunky, please let me know as I'm available.

[Immature Subject Matter Warning] When Office Humor becomes painful

William — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 21:54:00 GMT

Friday may have been the most excrutiating day of my life. I left the office thinking "If I never hear another attempted joke again in my life, it will be too soon. If I never smell another fart in my office, it'll be too soon." Just b/c you really like someone doesn't mean they can't drive you nuts. And bad jokes are killing me. Coming in your office and dealing with Farts and burps you can taste - it's driving me nuts.

Let's face it, it's pretty hard to consistently make funny jokes or witty comments. In general, even funny people lay an egg for each funny comment they make. And this ratio is pretty generous. The more one tries to be funny, the more it typically fails. However, I think there are two types of attempted joke that never fail. Anyway, mainly to retain my own sanity , I've decided to put forth a few guidelines for "Trying to be funny in the office." [Anyway, what I'm about to share with you is a composite of a few people's sense of humor - however, as incredible as this may sound, every one of these has really happened. While the people's names might be different, these are almost verbatim quotes. Does anyone else have to suffer through stuff like this?]

1- Some things were never funny, aren't funny now and will never be funny. Ever! Let me think of an example, OH, I know.

Aspiring Commedian: "Bill, _____ is on the phone and they are having trouble accessing the ____ site. Do you know if there's anything wrong with it?"

Me: "First, have them verify the URL. A lot of times they input the wrong URL and forget to use the secure site. Make sure they are typing in h-t-t-p-s, w-w-w InfoProGroup Dot COM.

Aspiring Comedian: "Dot ***?, uhhh hahahahahah hahahahaha."

Me: "Can we save the jokes until after we fix the customer's problem?"

Aspriing Comedian: "What, I wans't making a joke, I thought you said Dot ***, hahahahahahahaha".

Me: "Oh, ok. You honestly thought there was a upper level domain for Dot *** and you not only thought that, but you also happened to think that although we've been InfoProGroup Dot COM for the last 6 years, that out of the blue, we just up and decided to change or add a new corporate domain. And you think somehow that all of this would have happened and not a single word of it would be mentioned to anyone and that you woulnd't have been told of it, right?"

Aspiring Comedian: "You never know. I can't believe you thought I was making a joke."

Me: "I do think you were attempting to. You've only done it about every single time someone mentions a URL that ends in Dot COM, so yes, I did think you were making a joke this time."

Aspiring Comedian: "I said it once, one time."

Anyway, here's a little bit of advice. First off, plays on words are seldom funny. Especially if the word you "thought you heard" doesn't sound anything like the word in question and especially when the word you think you heard wouldn't make any sense. I know, Dot COM and Dot *** might sort of sound like each other, but honestly, even if the Dot *** thing was every funny, that time died back in '92.

2 - Don't pretend that you weren't trying to make a joke just because it bombs. This,has to be one of the most annoying things I've ever come across. Every time a joke is made and someone points out that it wasn't funny, someone starts acting incredulous and says "What, I wasn't trying to make a joke." The attempt to cover it up just attracts more attention and makes the whole process even more annoying. And the more you try to play it off "What, I don't know what you're talking about, I seriuosly thought you said InfoProGroup Dot ***" - the more you sound stupid. I mean, does anyone that works in the Networking department of a company really think there's an upper level domain of Dot ***?

3-Word Substitution Humor is really lame. Really.

Well, I've touched upon this in #1, but I honestly can't begin to point out how lame this type of humor is. Here are a few:

"I think he works at Fort Gordon" - "Fart Gordon, hahhaahaha.
"She really looks nice in that dress. She looks good in red" -- "You want her to give you whaaattt?"

I could go on and on but I won't do that to you. But seriously, the whole "I thought you said" thing is just pathetic and seldom works. Very seldom. Like most of the other ones I mention, this isn't that bad in and of itself. but in the middle or work, when you're trying to get something done or a client is on the phone, this stuff gets really annoying. I mean, if it happened once a day, fine. But when you interrupt every friggin paragraph spoken by someone, it starts getting old.

4- Word association is really lame. Really.

Me: "Teresa is having problems with the VPN. Can you take a look at her box and see if you can find anything?"

Aspiring Comedian: "You don't think her husband would mind?"

Me: "Mind what? You fixing her computer?"

Aspiring Comedian: "No, me looking at her box?"

Me: "Wow, that must have been funny twenty years ago when you first told it"

Aspriing Comedian: "What do you mean, I wasn't trying to be funny, I was being serious."

Me: "You really thought I was asking you to go in Teresa's office and look at her private parts? What made you think that, the VPN issue? Come on man, you know it was a feeble attempt at humor"

Aspiring Comedian: "I don't know what you're talking about. I thought you wanted me to check out her BOX. I'm married and so is she, that's WHY I acted surprised."

5 - High School humor should be left there. Really!

Take for instance, the whole 420 [or Four-Twenty, or 4:20 or whatever other derivation you choose] . My buddy Ben used to make jokes about this and for some reason, he was able to pull it off. But he's not at the company any more and I'm not sure that anyone else has been able to fill his shoes in this repsect. [And yes, if I was at work, the second I said "Fill his shoes" there'd be some joke made about it followed by forced laughter, followed by "What, I wasn't trying to make a joke." followed by me wanting to kill somone. But other than him, I haven't seen it happen. But the thing I'd ask is this - how many times can you try this joke and think it's still going to be funny? Over the last year, I think I've heard the 420 thing just under 2 Bazillion times. Friday was a classic example. Two of our other developers were in my office and we were discussing some programming issues. Our tech support guy comes over and knocks on the door. We assumed it was something customer related. The person says "I need to talk to Richard" and Richard said "Yah, what's up?" Right about that time, I realized, because of who it was at the door, that there's about a 10% chance that this was something work related and about a 90% chance that it was some dumb joke. I could tell by the look on his face that it was a 'joke.' Because it happens SO OFTEN, I looked at my computer, checked the time, saw it was 420 and just really started to get mad. "Dude, i can't believe you just interrupted us for that." So he replies "What. I don't know what you're talking about, I had to give Richard his phone." So I say "Well, that's funny, you had to do it at exactly 420. Richard's phone was on his desk and he didn't 'need' it. We're not even supposed to be using cell phones anyway. And you come in, make a goofy face, then 'show' Richard his cell phone opened up with some message on the screen. And this wasn't some stupid 420 joke". He replies "No, it wasn't. I don't even do jokes about that stuff, I can't believe you're accusing me of that."

Other than the fact this is the 2,000,000,000,000 time he's made a 420 joke, I might believe him. Well, there were a few other things. For one thing, he decides to interrupt us at exactly, you guessed it, 4:20. We have a new "no cell phone in the office" policy so why he'd need to bring him a cell phone is suspect. Then he comes in an gets a really goofy look on his face, the same look he always has when he lets go of a terrible joke. He mumbles something to Richard and shows him the phone, then Richard gives him a superficial chuckle. Anyway, this is enough evidence to pass the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' burden. And the ultimate proof was his adamant denial that he was trying to make a joke.

So I ask this - was saying "It's 4:20" ever funny? Even if it was, isn't that time long gone? And even if it's not, doesn't the law of diminishing returns kick in at some place?

-----------

Update - apparently there was a little confusion about this. The post was a 'Joke' lest there be any doubt. It was not meant to be taken seriously and hopefully no offense was taken - none was meant!

Double Update - Ok, this is getting nutty. First off, there was nothing directed toward anyone that I *used* to work with. If you think I was taking a dig at you out of the blue - I'm really sorry for the misunderstanding, but it wasn't a dig.

Second - just so I'm totally clear - this was an attempt at humor, it wasn't serious and I wasn't being mean or anything like that. God knows I have a ton of annoying traits and have driven most people I work with Nuts, on more than a few occassions. Since bad jokes are such a small issue - I really didn't think anyone would take offense and I honestly want to convey that wasn't my intent. Not in any way shape or form. The 'aspiring comedian' in question is one of the coolest people I know and without a doubt, one of the nicest people I've known. I was just goofing on the jokes and really don't want any confusion over it. Rule #1 of blogging is 'never blog about work' or 'former work' . Sorry for any confusion.

You've got to be kidding me...

William — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 03:49:00 GMT

At first when http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/08/D8I489R80.html I thought it was a goof but apparently it's not. I know I start getting really nervous if I don't look at my email screen for more than 20 minutes, but I think it's, uhhhh, what they...(read more)

Why Technical People shouldn't design interfaces...

William — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 03:24:00 GMT

Not too long ago , I discussed the fact that programmers are pretty much the last people that should be developing interfaces. My point wasn't that developers are incapable of understanding good UI design concepts, it's just that for some reason or another...(read more)

Warning - Juvenile Bill Humor (The Shocker)

William — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 00:41:00 GMT

At the end of the day, a few of my co-workers decided to head to Stool Pigeons for drinks at Happy hour. My buddy Sameer and I went although neither of us did any drinking. The guy in charge of Technical Writing (Ben) brought a friend of his (Adam) with him. Ok, so I learned a lot about modern culture, and the shocker in particular.

So what is the Shocker? Well, I'll get to that in a minute. They were making this hand gesture that looked typical of what Teenage Rapper Wannabes would do when they were trying to look like gang members. Basically, you point with your two top fingers, bend back the finger before your pinky, and point with your pinky.

Then you say “The Shocker” and one of the following:

"Two in the pink and one in the stink"
"Two in the coot and one in the boot"
"Going to town with one in the brown".
"Two in the bush, one in the tush."
"Two in the slut, one in the butt."
"Two in the grass, one in the a55."
"Two in the goo, one in the poo."
"Two in the cake, one in the pudding."
"Dos en el rosado, y uno en el morado." (My Personal Favorite)

There are some other ones, but they are profane (and lame) so I'm not posting them.

The last one seems to ring of “one of these things is not like the other”. So I did one of my typical Bill searches and wasted an hour looking into something mindless (My last little 'fascination' was Scientology and ickk I'm glad to be done with it). Urban Dictionary has this Definition of the Shocker . this dude definitely knows how to do it .

So after I started searching, I found This killer T-Shirt Site with "The Shocker" T-Shirts and much more. Then I saw this on ebay .

How out of the loop am I that the Shocker is sooooo mainstream and this is the first I've heard of it?