tuesday, july 04, 2000

You know you worked in the 90's when...

• You consider Starbucks a food group.
• You schedule conference calls on your mobile phone while you know you're gonna be stuck in traffic.
• You hear an electric beeping, 90% of everyone in sight reaches for their belts.
• You find the words "conventional oven" archaic.
• Cleaning up the dining area means getting the fast food bags out of the back seat of your car.
• Your reason for not staying in touch with family is that they do not have e-mail addresses.
• Keeping up with sports entails adding ESPN's home page to your bookmarks.
• You have a "to-do list" that includes entries for lunch and bathroom breaks and they are usually the ones that never get crossed off.
• You have actually faxed your Christmas list to your parents.
• Pick up lines now include a reference to liquid assets and capital gains.
• You consider 2nd day Air Delivery and Inner-office Mail painfully slow.
• You assume any question about whether to valet park or not is rhetorical.
• You refer to your dining room table as the flat filing cabinet.
• Your idea of being organized is multiple colored post-it notes.
• Your grocery list has been on your refrigerator so long some of the products don't even exist anymore.
• You lecture the neighborhood kids selling lemonade on ways to improve their process.
• You get all excited when it's Saturday so you can wear sweats to work.
• You refer to the tomatoes grown in your garden as deliverables.
• You find you really need PowerPoint to explain what you do for a living.
• You normally eat out of vending machines and at the most expensive restaurant in town within the same week.
• You think that "progressing an action plan" and "calendarizing a project" are acceptable English phrases.
• You know the people at the airport hotels better than your next door neighbors.
• You ask your friends to "think out of the box" when making Friday night plans.
• You think Einstein would have been more effective had he put his ideas into a matrix.
• You think a "half-day" means leaving at 5 o'clock.

7:15 pm | Comments (0)

monday, july 03, 2000

Top 10 things you'll never hear from a consultant

1. You're right; we're billing way too much for this.
2. Bet you I can go a week without saying "synergy" or "value-added."
3. How about paying us based on the success of the project?
4. This whole strategy is based on a Harvard business case I read.
5. Actually, the only difference is that we charge more than they do.
6. I don't know enough to speak intelligently about that.
7. Implementation? I only care about writing long reports.
8. I can't take the credit. It was Ed in your marketing department.
9. The problem is, you have too much work for too few people.
10. Everything looks okay to me.

7:12 pm | Comments (0)

sunday, july 02, 2000

The Plan

In the beginning was the plan.

And then came the assumptions.

And the Assumptions were without form.

And the Plan was without substance.

And darkness was upon the face of the workers.

And they spoke among themselves, saying: "It's a crock of &%$# and it stinketh!"

And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said: "It's a pail of dung, and none may abide the odor thereof!"

And the Supervisors went unto their Managers, saying: "It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, such that none may abide its strength."

And the Managers went unto their Directors saying: "It is a vessel of fertilizer and none may abide its strength."

And the Directors spoke amongst themselves, saying one to another: "It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong."

And the Directors went unto the Vice-President, saying unto him: "It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."

And the Vice-President went unto the President, saying unto him: "This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor of the company, with powerful effects."

And the President looked upon the Plan, and saw that it was good.

And the Plan became policy.

The end.

7:09 pm | Comments (0)

saturday, july 01, 2000

Computer Haiku

Imagine if instead of cryptic, geeky test strings, your computer produced error messages in haiku...

Your file is quite large
and might be very useful,
but now it is gone.

The Web site you seek
cannot be located, but
endless others exist.

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.

ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have.
You ask far too much.

First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.

With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.

The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

Stay the patient course;
Of little worth is your ire;
The network is down.

A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.

Yesterday it worked;
Today it is not working:
Windows is like that.

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
but we never will.

Having been erased,
the document you're seeking
must now be retyped.

Rather than a beep
or a rude error message,
these words: "File not found."

Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

7:07 pm | Comments (0)