Friday, February 04, 2005

Friday Afternoon Mélange Aside from having a nice extra-long meeting this morning, today has been a good day.  With that, I leave my faithful readers with a mixture of some stuff that has been swimming around in my head.  There is some sad news for those of you who are fans of the comedy classic that is "Animal House."  Dean Wormer has put his foot down one last time.  John Vernon, the actor who played Dean Wormer, has died.  To the late Dean Wormer, I wish many happy double secret probations in the after-life.  While driving to work this morning, some of the news focused on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's first trip abroad and her apparently hardening stance towards Iran.  The one thing that struck me in the report: hearing the phrase Secretary of State Rice.  Tomorrow, I will be in New York City for an overnight visit with my friends.  One of destinations will be the Brooklyn Brewery.  It should be fun, as I know we will enjoy some of the cool pubs in the city.  Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday.  Here, I will make some quick predictions: Patriots over the Eagles, 31-17.  The halftime score will be Pats up 13-3.  Terrell Owens will play, and he will reinjure his surgically repaired ankle, much along the lines of the career-ending injury to Joe Theismann.  I, along with many other Ravens fans, will have a large smile on their face.  The Simpsons episode following the SuperBowl will be hilarious.  Just a quick thought on the State of the Union Address the other night.  I heard about the Republican show of solidarity with voting Iraqis--dying their index fingers in ink.  Unbelievable.  I am a sucker for Starbucks and the CDs they tend to have at the counter.  The last CD I bought there was Ray Charles's final album, Genius Loves Company.  I highly recommend it.  Yesterday, while grabbing some highly caffeinated beverage, I noticed a new Frank Sinatra CD available, and like a moth drawn to the flame I bought it.  Damn you Starbucks and your damn Sinatra albums!  I was chatting with some people last night over beers, and I was supposed to provide some "goodies."  Would someone in that select group remind me what I promised?  I got bandwidth to burn!  Enjoy your weekend, as I am sure I will be enjoying mine!  12:54:21 PM    comment []  trackback []

"Do You Understand the Words Comin' Out of My Mouth?" I have mentioned this before, but when we returned to work from the holidays, our reorganization went into effect.  In my opinion, reorganizations are a euphemistic way of shuffling ineffective managers around without the stigma of being fired or asked to resign.  In the case of my place of work, I have termed our reorganization as a drunk Chinese fire drill.  Many of the managers who were at the wheel of the car that plowed into the tree have merely changed positions.  Essentially, we have just moved the drunks around in the car and given them a replacement vehicle.  But, I digress.  As part of the reorganization, my group changed and added some new staff members.  The new staff members are pretty cool guys who know their stuff, but one of them has a rather unique way of correspondence.  In my line of work, we use email and instant messenger a lot.  Even though many of us are on the same floor, it is quite easy to fire off an IM to a colleague while in the midst of working on a problematic server.  Well, my new colleague is always getting or asking for "scoops" via email.  As a result, I have given him the nickname "Scoop."  Even better, though, are the subjects he uses for his emails.  I tend to get a lot of email, and I like to be able to glance at my Inbox and see what is important--apart from the spam, personal messages, and the request for help.  We were working together on a recent project, and I am scanning my Inbox after coming back from a meeting.  I see a message from my colleague with the subject "Burp".  My immediate response: WTF?!?!?!?!?  What does that mean?  Do you have some gastrointestinal issues that I need to know about?  Did someone near you burp?  Did I burp?  I read the message, and apparently something we installed on the server was not working as expected--"burped," as my colleague put it.  In another example, this colleague tends to IM one of my co-workers frequently.  The other day, my co-worker IM's me asking me to translate something he sent: Co-worker1: trying to tranlste co-worker2-ese Me: Sorry. Me: How's it going? Co-worker1: what is this Co-worker1: "u see rao 'z umnugget" I started laughing hysterically when I saw this.  It hit me shortly thereafter: how are we going to work together if we are trying to figure what our new co-worker is saying?  He and I were discussing it with our boss, and even he was complaining about what our new colleague was sending him via email.  I guess it's never a good sign when a new co-worker is not being understood by his new group of colleagues.  I know email and instant messages are impersonal, speedy, and pithy means of communication.  Nonetheless, is it too much to ask to get emails and IM's that can be understood?  I would prefer to not have to consult Babelfish just to figure out what needs to get done.  9:38:36 AM    comment []  trackback []