/bill's House O Insomnia : Humor, Mindless Babbling

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.

How not to pick up chicks

William — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:37:14 GMT

Obviously these aren't being used in the field, at least I hope not. If they are being used in the field, I'm pretty sure their efficacy leaves something to be desired.

Uhhh, you're kidding right?

William — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:56:00 GMT

I know some men that pretty much refuse to buy feminine products for their significant others b/c they can't take the embarrassment. Personally, I always wondered a little about them b/c it seems you really have to feel shaky in your manhood to let something like that get to you. It also seems as unwise as it is uncool, I mean, would the time you were asked to make such a purchase really be the time you wanted to anger your significant other? Not me.

So feminine products are fine with me, but there's no way in hell I'd ever be talked into buying this (It's a real food product from a well known company and is sold on on Amazon but it does have that NSFW vibe to it). Whoever named this stuff is either the biggest moron on Earth or is pretty clever with a wicked sense of humor. And I'm pretty sure that no matter how tough you look, if you get caught buying this stuff more than once, you're manhood is getting questioned.

I'm glad this stuff wasn't for sale back when I was pledging my fraternity. They had us buy so many embarrassing things, this would have been on the daily purchase list as well as the daily consumption list. I totally dodged a bullet.

If Brian Madsen is really a friend, then he'll...............................

William — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:12:00 GMT

Sahil and I have been friends for a long time since then, but to this day, he's yet to give me the Cobra, Turbin and Flute that I've been hitting him up for. Yes, I'm still salty about it.

Well, I just saw this piece on how bad a55 Dingos are. . Well, since Brianis in Australia, if he and Rob Farley are as cool as I think, I'll have a Dingo arriving in the mail by the end of the week.

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

And Apple Basic is included for Free!

William — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 17:23:00 GMT

Twenty years from now, we'll be laughing about the same sort of stuff

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.

Worst I.T. Excuses

William — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 04:44:00 GMT

It works on my machine
It doesn't matter because no one will ever do that
Users like it the way it is
I don't write any bugs
It'll be fixed in the next release
It'll be ready on Monday, we just need to build the setup package
The spam filter ate it
A little more RAM will fix your performance problem
You can't do that because it's a security risk
The database is slow because it's too normalized

I got these via email and it didn't include the source, so I'm not sure who to give credit to. #1 and #9 really made me laugh. If you have any others, I'd love to hear 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.

Better keep my day job

William — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 02:44:00 GMT

I got this from Brian's - it's been around a while but always interesting to re-check.

My blog is worth $10,161.72.
How much is your blog worth?

Looks like i better keep my day job...

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.

C Ya at the LARP

William — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 11:28:00 GMT

One of the new things I started doing in the mornings was going to the Gym. I live a few blocks away from a LA Fitness that opens up at 5:00 AM. So if possible, I try to get over there at 5:00, work out, do my morning routine and head to work. As I was telling my co-workers though, I decided that it would be nice of me to call Kim up before i head over and make sure she's doing well. So it goes something like this:

Phone ringing, ringing , ringing:

Kim: (1/2 asleep) Waaaaattt do you want?

Me: Sweety is that you?

Kim: Yes, what do you want.

Me: Well, it's 4:50 in the morning and i just wanted to call and say hi.

Kim: You woke up the dog and he'll be barking all morning. You woke me up. You're going to pay for this

Me: Cool, talk to ya later. Love ya sweety.

-----

So she'll wise up and turn off the ringer for a few days, then she'll slip. So this morning as I was headed to the gym I realized that although it was supposed to be snowing this morning, it was only sleeting. Figured I should call her up and give her the heads up. However try as I could, I think she suspected that I would try something like this so I just got voicemail. I started heading out to the gym and realized it was way too cold to go walking around. As I went back upstairs to get the car, I realized it was too cold for anyone sane to be out and about. Might as well update my blog.

This weekend, I'll be back in good old Greenville. My homie Chris Williams opened up a game shop called Reality Check Games. I've been over there a few times and the Williams family has it hooked up. Being the recluse that I am, I don't get out much and sort of missed the whole D & D and game thing. Chris and family have managed to turn Coffee and games into a pretty rocking business. A few weeks ago while I was there, I was introduced to the concept of a LARP. If you aren't familar with LARPs, let me see if I can explain it. You have Vampires on the one side. You have Werecreatures on the other. (I don't know if they have WereCuckooz yet, but if they do it would be very very cool). They meet up at the LARP, get their instructions, head out and well, as they say in Southpark, "It's on". I'm too much of a Dork to participate in the LARP, but I can head there and take pictures so as to justify the digital dust collector.

I had a lot of trouble understanding the concept until I remembered this post by Shawn Wildermuth . Well, Chris still remains friends with me despite my social ineptness and cluelessness about many things. Then it happend... I was rapping with Chris last night and he invited me to the LARP. 6:00 PM Saturday. I'm cheering for the Vampires at this point. Pictures will follow (however if I remember my Vampire lore correctly, you can't photograph them and they aren't visible in Mirrors, so my pictures of the LARP may be one sided favoring the Werecreatures)

Unpimp your ride

William — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:52:00 GMT

Although I love Pimp your ride, I personally don't like bling on vehicles much. I mean, what looks dumber than a totally tricked out Geo Metro right? Well, come to think of it, it's a lot worse when the car is actually nice.

Unpimp your ride

And he videotaped it himself

William — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:47:00 GMT

This is the type of thing you'd do anything to avoid, this poor guy taped it himself:

Watch More Videos

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...

Pretty cool idea

William — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 01:22:00 GMT

Well, it seems I'm the only one who likes goofing on the inline code boy . Not sure who created the site but well, great minds think alike.

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.

Phil Hendrie starts to redeem himself

William — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 02:20:00 GMT

Ever since Phil decided that he was going to leave radio, life just hasn't been the same. However Phil http://www.philhendrieshow.com/ . He's got a new site. He's got a ton of new clips. He's got a ton of vintage clips. Yep, even stuff from Miami.

Chris Norton's "Bringing back the Speedo Tour"? Yep
Pastor William Renick's "Yo Islam"? Yep
Raj Faneen's "Stupid American ***"? Yep
Clara Bingham's "All you can eat Negro"? Yep

And sooooo much more. At least there's enough vintage content to keep me occupied for a while ;-)