Last week, we bought a hamster. This afternoon, I got a call at work from my son, who was yelling something into the phone. On the third try, I understood it: “Fluffy had babies!”

Continue reading Fluffy Had Babies

Doreen Waddell, a former vocalist with the chart-topping 1980s British band Soul II Soul, died after being hit by several cars as she ran across a busy road.

Police said it appeared she had been running from a supermarket after being confronted about shoplifting.

Continue reading I Fought the Law . . .

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

— Mark Twain

From a consulting company’s web site, explaining its strategic partnerships with IBM, Vignette and others:

Single entities are rarely the solutions for every business challenge. By partnering innovators of varied expertise, we are able to to combine all of the components necessary to solve the technology puzzle for any given client . . . Ongoing alliances allow companies to share the visionary arena for creative solutions . . .

This inscrutable gibberish should be a tipoff that some larger-than-usual deception is taking place, which indeed it is.

The real reason that smaller companies like this one partner with larger companies like IBM or Vignette is that in exchange for purchasing a certain number of software licenses, the larger company agrees to throw a few sales leads in their direction.

Of course, in pursuing those leads, the solutions they propose are not going to be driven by a detailed understanding of the clients’ business issues. They’re going to be driven by the need to resell the software licenses that they’ve already paid for:

“We recommend a solution based on the IBM Websphere product [or Vignette or whatever].”

“How can you recommend a solution before you understand what my problem is?”

“That’s the best thing about it. Websphere is the solution to any and all problems that you may have. Now let us give that nail a couple of whacks for you.”

“That’s not a nail.”

“It certainly looks like a nail to me.”

Thus spoke The Programmer.

According to the email, our (former) COO “is no longer with the company in any capacity.”

There’s a phenomenon at our company, of which he was a perfect example: People get excited and animated about a variety of things — their cars, their pets, a TV show, binge drinking, etc. — but never, never about their jobs.

In his case, the favorite topic was hiking. Since we’re in the winter months now, you could frequently hear him among the cubicles elucidating the finer points of crampons:

“The thing about crampons is you have to be careful where you put your feet. It’s not like walking around the living room in a pair of loafers.”

I did not know that!

Of course, if I were interested in crampons, which I’m not, I could research them on my own time.

I would have much rather overheard him saying something like

“I read a great journal article last night, and I was thinking about how we might apply it here. I think we need to start building a software engineering culture where people can get excited about their jobs.”

This has nothing to do with why he was let go, but it’s the thing that bothered me most about him personally.

With the opportunity that he had as COO of the company, and the money he was pulling down, he should have been contributing something more than hiking tips.

Thus spoke The Programmer.

defenestrate, v.t., To throw something or somebody out of a window.

I just love that there’s actually a word for that.

I was a big fan of the original vision of this company . . .

• ArsDigita: From Start-Up to Bust-Up
• Diary of a Start-Up
• Goodbye ArsDigita
• The Dot-com Deadpool: ArsDigita