Poorly Written Headline #2

This time, from MSNBC.com. This gives the opposite meaning to the story, based upon the definition of a "Bronx Cheer".

Stupid Corporate Tricks - #6

Time for yet another story from the front lines in the ridiculous world of business. This one is at the same company as the Stupid Corporate Tricks - #5, and involves the same two guys. Will had asked Doug about some research he had asked him to do a couple of months previous. Doug realized he had totally forgotten about the project, and had done absolutely nothing toward getting it done. So he says to Will, "Don't you remember, you sent me a memo telling me to forget about it?" Will looked puzzled and said, "No, I don't remember that." So Doug says he will try to find it.

He goes over to his desk and writes a memo to himself, ostensibly from Will, and backdates it by a few weeks. He was pretty good at forging signatures too, so he printed the memo and put a reasonable facsimile of Will's initials on it. He then wrinkles it up a little and stuffs it into his file drawer in a bunch of other papers.

The next time Will came walking by Doug's cubicle, Doug shouts out, "Oh Will, let me see if I have that memo you sent me." He opens his file drawer and shuffles through the papers and says, "Oh, here it is!" He hands it over to Will who says, "Hmmm....I guess I forgot about this. Okay then."

HOLY SHIT! It worked!! I could not believe it, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. I suppose Doug has had to update his repertoire of trickery now that email has largely supplanted printed memoranda.

Boldly Going Where Many Have Gone Before

I rarely go to watch movies at the theater. The cost has just gotten out of hand. I may average about one film a year at such a venue. The feature that got me out of the house this year is J.J. Abrams' reboot of Star Trek. The lovely spouse and I went to see it today, and got in for a fairly decent matinee price of $5.50 each.

I have to say, this movie is a refreshing change. Star Trek movies, while entertaining, had strayed too far from the roots of the original series which debuted on the NBC Television Network back in 1966. Filmed at Desilu Studios, Star Trek, pitched by creator Gene Roddenberry as "Wagon Train to the Stars", was not a big hit initially. It took on a cult following after its cancellation. Eventually the franchise spawned five spin off series in addition to the original; along with what is now 11 feature films. Now, in a mostly brilliantly done movie, Star Trek returns to the original crew of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura.

The actors who played the characters in the 1960s have long been past the age where it was believable to see then cavorting around the galaxy. The new cast did an outstanding job of paying homage to the history of the characters, while bringing their own talents to bear. Probably the most amazing of all was the performances of Zachary Quinto as Spock, and Karl Urban in the role of Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy.

This film will be enjoyed by Trekkies (or is it Trekkers), as well as people who never got into the Star Trek series. While largely true to the original, this reboot of the franchise ends up creating an alternate timeline with some differences to the continuity established over the years. I won't share any spoilers here, but nothing that is changed detracted from the story.

In fact, my only complaint is the fact that science fiction films seem to require a silly alien character. In the Star Wars series, it was the worthless, floppy-eared Jar Jar Binks. In the new Star Trek, engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, has a silly alien pet of some sort. They could have dispensed with him.

There seems to be odd coincidences that sometimes crop up in Hollywood, and this film has one as well. For example, in the 1950s Superman television series, the actor portraying the Man of Steel was George Reeves. In the 1978 film Superman, The Movie, the actor was Christopher Reeve. One letter difference from the actor in the TV show. In this Star Trek film, the actor playing the role of Captain James Kirk is Chris Pine. That is one letter changed from the original Enterprise captain, Christopher Pike. It doesn't mean a thing, but I noticed it.

The bottom line? I give Star Trek a 4.5 out of 5. Highly entertaining for Trekkie and Non-Trekkie alike. Lots of action, good ties to the original, and a fresh start for a franchise whose mythos had begun to get too cluttered to follow. If you can, you should see this movie.

Stupid Corporate Tricks - #5

Today, let us continue the series of stupid corporate tricks. For this tale of workplace merriment, we will go back to the early 1990s. This particular story is more of an employee tale than something done by the company itself. One of my coworkers (let's call him Doug here) was always at odds with our boss (we'll call him Will). This boss will play into several tales before we are done.

To the point of this story, you need to know two things about Will. His desk was always piled high with so many papers that he could never find anything. The other thing is that he had a beloved HP 12C calculator. These used to be very common in business, and used RPN, or Reverse Polish Notation. This allowed for complex calculations in the days before calculators could use pure algebraic order of computation. Will had this one since his business school days, and he was quite fond of it.

One particular morning, we came to work and found a lost and found poster taped to the wall at every elevator landing in our building. Will's calculator had gone missing, and he was quite distressed about it. Now Doug always enjoyed Will's distress, so as you might imagine, he was enjoying this immensely. But then things took a nasty turn.

Will approached Doug and asked him if he had taken his calculator. Doug took great offense at the suggestion, and it didn't take long for him to find his response. As he was walking past Will's cubicle, he noticed the 12c was visible edgewise underneath a huge pile of papers on Will's desk. Doug said, "If I am accused of taking it, I will!" He took it from under the pile and hid it in his desk. He then proceded to create some ransom notes from an anonymous calculator kidnapper. leaving them where Will would find them. Will was going nuts trying to figure it out before Doug tired of the game and put the calculator back, where Will eventually found it.

The story doesn't end there however. A few years later Doug was working in another state for another firm. As fate would have it, I was again working for Will, but at a different company. During this time, Will again misplaced his calculator. I mentioned this to Doug, who immediately created another ransom note and faxed it to Will anonymously. Even though I was quite amused by it all, I also didn't have the heart to tell him what was going on. A couple of days later, Will found his calculator...in a pile of papers on his desk!

King of the Hill

One of my favorite TV shows is Fox's King of the Hill. Sadly, the show has apparently reached the end of its run. There are unconfirmed reports that Fox has ordered a few more episodes, but these may appear on DVD rather than the network.

The program is the brain child of Mike Judge, who gave us Beavis and Butthead, and more importantly (in my estimation) the great movie that shows the inanity of working in corporate America, Office Space. While I didn't much care for B&B, both Office Space and King were strokes of genius.

So here is perhaps the final episode of King of the Hill, starring America's favorite salesman of "propane and propane accessories", Arlen, Texas' Hank Hill.

Jesse Gets It!

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura doesn't take crap from anybody. Here is a YouTube video of a clip where he takes on the mindless talking heads of Fox & Friends. True patriots do not condone our country torturing people. It is anti-American and puts us at risk. Governor Ventura get it. Fox does not.

Estes Park, Colorado

Just another photo from last Saturday. This time it's the rock sign along US 36 as you begin the descent into the town of Estes Park.

Sovereignty, Secession, and the Nutty Right Wing

Many right-wingers rightfully ridiculed some celebrities on the left who threatened to move out of the United States if George W. Bush was elected President in 2000. But now, many righty politicians are doing things that are even more bizarre. Upset with the Democratic administration's policies, these nutty politicians are threatening to take their ball and go home. Last month, Texas Governor Rick Perry threw support behind HCR 50, a resolution in the Texas House of Representatives that asserts the state's sovereignty. (He also uses the oft-used, but false analogy of how to boil a frog).



Now, last Wednesday, the Oklahoma Senate has passed HCR 1028, a similar resolution to the one in Texas. How the Senate passes a resolution of the House seems odd to me. In any case, the verbiage of the resolution states that the Sooner State is "claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers; serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates; providing that certain federal legislation be prohibited or repealed; and directing distribution.”

The resolution, also passed the Oklahoma House 73-22 on May 4th. It does not require a signature from the Governor.

Kurt Hochenauer, creator of the political blog Okie Funk: Notes From The Outback, has a good analysis on his site. He correctly notes that if Oklahoma were to secede from the United States, it would lead to military confrontation, widespread poverty, and a mass exodus from the state. I would add that if Oklahoma wants to leave the US, it had better make doggone sure that Texas goes with it, otherwise it will be a landlocked nation surrounded by the U.S.

Hochenauer also has posted an audio clip from Montel Williams' radio program where he interviews Charles Key, the Oklahoma City Republican Representative who introduced the resolution in the House. Williams calls Key on the fact that Oklahoma pays $19-Billion in federal taxes, but receives $28 billion in federal funding per year. So Oklahoma, good luck with that.

I don't think that either state will actually secede over this, any more than Alec Baldwin left the US over the Bush presidency. But it does demonstrate the lack of rational thinking within the minds of some elected officials in red-state America.

Stupid Corporate Tricks - #4

The same boss that pulled the antics in my previous post, Stupid Corporate Tricks - #3, was well known around the office for another reason. It seems he had some kind of disorder that caused him to doze off at inappropriate times. For example, all of us who worked in the group would watch him when we were in meetings, because invariably the longer the meeting, the more likely it was that he would fall asleep. You would notice his eyes growing heavy. Then he would begin nodding off a bit, and finally, with eyes closed, his head would go down and he would be sound asleep.

While this was a bit amusing to witness, it was also kind of sad, because I am sure it must be some type of medical condition. But the thing that made it most annoying is when he would do this while with you in the office of a customer. The company required our managers to accompany us on the occasional sales call to evaluate and improve our selling skills. This man, who I shall call John, did this on several occasions while with me. One instance I distinctly recall, involved him not only falling asleep in the customer's office, but he began to snore loudly as I made my sales presentation. The customer looked at me and said, "I think John must not have gotten enough sleep last night."

Still, that isn't the worst part. On the way back to the office, John had the audacity to critique my performance, all of which he slept through. He had absolutely no idea what had transpired.

On another occasion, John walked into a customer's office with me. After we shook hands, John sat down in a chair and immediately let out a very loud blast of flatulence! He chuckled and told the customer, "Hey, it sounds like you have a frog problem out here."

Needless to say, when John indicated he wanted to go on a sales call with me, I was not happy, nor did I know what to expect.

Stupid Corporate Tricks - #3

In the early 1980s, I worked in outside sales for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, then an operating company of the original AT&T. I mention the company here because it is pertinent to the story I am about to relate.

My job at the time was selling commercial accounts on leasing large, corporate telephone systems, called Private Branch Exchanges, or PBXs. I also sold local exchange services, long distance, and what were called WATS lines. WATS stood for Wide Area Telephone Service, and was basically dedicated lines with prepaid blocks of discounted long distance.

There was one company that was located along the Houston Ship Channel that still had an old "cord board" PBX. These are the type where an operator used cords to patch through calls coming in to the appropriate person's telephone (see photo). These were rare at the time, as most companies had moved to more modern systems.

This was early in the era of interconnect equipment, or non-Bell System equipment being available for connection to the phone company's lines. We were proposing a Bell Dimension 400 electronic PBX to replace the old system. There was a competing bid in from a company selling a popular system of the time, the Rolm CBX. This particular business had a huge campus with buildings located over a large area, and trucks coming in and out from all over the facility.

My boss had worked for Southwestern Bell for his entire career, and would be best described by the term "Bell Head", a phrase used to describe someone who had been working at the phone company for so long that they couldn't see any perspective other than that of Ma Bell. During the course of the visit to attempt to finalize the deal, the customer asked us if we had any references he could call. My boss stood up, walked over to the customer's credenza, picked up his Houston telephone directory, opened the rather large book to a random page, tossed in on the customers desk in front of him, and said, "Here is a book with our customers listed. Pick some out and call them."

Surprisingly, we did not get tossed out at that point, but when the customer stated that the Rolm CBX quote was quite a bit less than ours, the boss told the customer, "I hope their quote includes tearing up your entire facility to lay new conduit and cables. You know all the underground cables here are telephone company property, and we will not allow them to use our cables for their system. If you go that way, we will come out and stretch the cables very tight, cut them off short, and then fill the conduit with concrete. So you need to go back to them and get a quote for that. Would that disrupt your business any?"

Wow! Talk about a heavy handed close! If I had not witnessed it myself, I would not have believed it. But to some degree it worked. We did not get the customer to lease the Dimension system, but the customer did not take the Rolm bid either. He ended up keeping the old switchboard system in place. He also got to continue paying Southwestern Bell for the privilege. No wonder Ma Bell had her reputation!

Rocky Mountains

There are many good things about Colorado, most of them being the natural beauty and generally agreeable climate of this state. The lovely spouse and I drove up to Estes Park today, about 100 miles to the northwest of of our home. It is a beautiful day, and I took this picture of the mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park just to the west of the town. I never tire of the scenery there is to enjoy in the Centennial State.

Stupid Corporate Tricks - #2

Today, let's continue with recounting some of the stupidity that rises to the top of the corporate heap. This particular episode took place at the same company involved in my previous post, Stupid Corporate Tricks - #1. This one was done by the branch manager for the Houston sales office.

Our offices had moved to a new building and along the way, we also got a new branch manager. This position was over the entire sales organization in the city. The new guy was hired after having spent a few years at our major competitor. The rumor mill had it that when he was fired from the competitor, the people who were under him on the organization chart all stood up and cheered. Then when they learned our company had hired him, the did the same thing again. Of course, I cannot confirm that, but it would not surprise me.

This particular guy was definitely a few tortillas short of a full enchilada plate. For example, he came over to my desk, totally out of the blue, with a porn magazine and opened it up to a picture of a young black woman who was, shall we say, quite under dressed. He said to me, "Hey take a look at this! That'll drive any prejudiced bones out of you, wont it?" So you get the idea of the type of person we are talking about here.

In any case, this particular sales office had one fax machine to support the entire office. It was very heavily used as you might imagine. This was also before the prevalence of email, so faxes were much more important than they are today. This machine was used for various documents coming in and going out of the office. One of the most prevalent types of documents that would arrive on the fax were orders being sent in by customers that all of us sales people had been working with. After all, this was a sales office, and this was a very efficient way to get things done. Otherwise, we would spend several hours travelling across town just to pick up the orders.

The branch manager was getting tired of waiting on the fax machine when he wanted to send something. So rather than getting a second one, he issued an edict. No more orders would be permitted to be faxed in, because they were tying up the fax machine when he wanted to use it. Pardon me? This was a sales office, and he actually shut down a major way that orders came into the company. Oh the stupidity of it all!! Or as Bugs Bunny might say, "What a maroon! What a nincompoop!" Rather than being responsible for getting new customers, perhaps he should have been put in charge of the Sales Prevention Department!