On this morning’s enterprise IT conference call, one of our project managers announced the successful release of Project Foobar. Then a woman’s voice — I assume it was the business owner — came on and said, “We had to pull that back out.” “Is that true?” the PMO manager asked. The project manager continued on in the same tone as before: “We had to pull it out after release. The customers are using a manual workaround until we resolve the issues.” Business owners rarely participate in these calls. I assume that had this particular business owner not been on the call, the minor detail about backing out the release would never have been mentioned. Believe it or not, an argument then ensued regarding whether this could be credited as a successful release, with the additional work considered as “post-release” effort. Read more →
Author Archive: Hostile Witness
Why Asian Girls Like White Guys II
As in the previous example, these photos are from the same photoset on Flickr: What could be worse than being an Asian woman in Asia and having to surrender your mystical Oriental hotness to Asian men? In no other race — white, black, Hispanic — are the women so much better-looking than the men. Now you might say: What about Indian or Middle Eastern men? Aren’t they uglier than Asian men? Possibly — but my point is that their women are incredibly ugly as well, so it’s a good match. My wife’s cousin, also an Asian girl, agrees with my theory, but adds something I hadn’t thought of: Asian guys are also boring, she says, because they’re all the same. They all have the same story, same parents, same college major (engineering or business), same, same, same . . . Read more →
A Venn Diagram of My Holiday Get-Togethers
A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats. — George Orwell I have relatives like this — people who are either so dishonest or so lacking in self-awareness that all they seem to gain from any experience whatsoever is an inflated sense of their own self-importance. I also have relatives who can’t remember that they’ve already told you the same story on 10 previous occasions, forcing you to grit your teeth and nod appreciatively for the 11th time. Then there are the relatives who fall into both of the above categories. These people are hell on earth. Read more →
Oregon Nancy Boys
Before BYU’s 38-8 pasting of Oregon in last night’s Las Vegas Bowl, ESPN ran a feature on how the Oregon players and coaches work with Nike to design those gawd-awful uniforms. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ on a moped, how fruity is that?! Why not change the team name from the Ducks to the Battling Halstons? Then they go out and get waxed by a Mountain West team — that’s got be great for recruiting! Hey boys, if you want to be fashion designers, sashay on up to Eugene, Oregon! I’m a proud USC alum, but if I ever hear Pete Carroll talking about threads per inch, I swear to god I’m going to renounce my allegiance . . . Read more →
Black Father of the Year
NEWPORT BEACH — Two Los Angeles residents believed to be a father and a daughter were arrested early today near John Wayne Airport on suspicion of burglarizing four local businesses, authorities said. Donald Perkins, 48, and Kenesha Perkins, 28, were pulled over for speeding at about 3:15 a.m. near Dove Street and Newport Place Drive, said Sgt. Evan Sailor of the Newport Beach Police Department. — Orange County Register Kenesha Perkins is a lucky girl . . . most black fathers are not actively involved in their children’s activities like this . . . Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Bowie Kuhn – Major League Baseball commissioner Updates Bowie Kuhn – died 3/15/2007, age 80 Read more →
Happy Thanksgiving
Things I’m thankful for this year: Nothing lasts forever. Read more →
Ed Bradley: 1941-2006
Ed Bradley died today following a lengthy illness. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Ed a few years ago: I’ve heard the words “compassionate listener,” “soft-spoken,” “instinctive,” “intelligent,” “maverick,” and “trailblazer” used to describe you. How do you define Ed Bradley? I guess all of those things fit. How about “untalented and unaware of it” or “surprisingly full of himself”? I’d have liked to buy him for what he was worth, sell him for what he thought he was worth and pocket the difference, which would have been quite a tidy sum. Read more →
This Will Be My New .sig File
Chris Rock on marriage: Fellas, when you wake up in the morning, you should look yourself in the mirror and say: Read more →
Tennis Parents Can Blow Me
My kid plays Team Tennis here in Irvine . . . on Saturdays, they play other teams from around Orange County. Tennis parents are obsessive, just like hockey parents. The difference is that hockey parents can scream at the kids, refs, coaches, other parents, passers-by, etc., during the games, whereas tennis etiquette requires parents to stay quiet during the matches and berate the kids afterwards. My son’s team played the Balboa Bay Racquet Club team this past weekend. One of the smug tennis dads on our team showed up wearing a backpack with his own racket in it. Now why would he do that? He’s obviously not going to play tennis with it because it’s a kids’ event, so he just wanted everyone to know yeah, I’m a tennis player myself, my son is a tennis player because I’m a tennis player, blah blah blah . . . My lifetime… Read more →
Goofus on Software
Goofus sends out an email to the team stating that the company is going to decommission the custom CRM we just spent 18 months building and replace it with Seibel. Five minutes later, here comes a reply from a troublemaker: “So why did we build the custom CRM in the first place? Just asking . . .” Goofus replies: “Siebel was not on the company roadmap at that time.” Note that he completely sidesteps the actual question of why we answered a Build-or-Buy question by deciding to build a system, only to immediately thereafter buy a new system to replace it. Goofus didn’t get to be a superstar in this organization by being unable to serve up bland, poker-faced responses to provocative questions. Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Norm Crosby – comedian Jane Goodall – primatologist Updates Norm Crosby – died 11/7/2020, age 93 Jane Goodall – died 10/1/2025, age 91 Read more →
ALOHA!
A friend is leaving tomorrow for a wedding in Hawaii. She asks me if I have any souvenir requests. Yes! If you can get a picture of the entire bridal party mooning the camera with ALOHA written across their asses in tropical colors — you don’t have to write the O, just AL HA and bend over — that would be great! If not, I don’t want anything . . . Read more →
A Ready Answer on Diversity
From a corporate diversity report: The issue of having less diversity in the management ranks than in the aggregate among the workforce is faced by virtually every company in America and is one for which we do not have a ready answer. You don’t have a ready answer? I’ll give you one: From a management perspective, diversity, like outsourcing, is best implemented on some other sucker’s job. Read more →
Hate Crime in Irvine
Irvine police are investigating a possible hate crime that occurred early Saturday morning in the gated Turtle Ridge community. Officers arrived around 6:10 a.m. and discovered a car parked on Rose Trellis had been painted with race-related graffiti. The car belongs to an African-American family that lives there. — Orange County Register Now that’s a shocking piece of news. You mean to say there are black people living in Irvine?! Read more →
Drowning in Chocolate
My wife just read me a news item about a worker who was trapped in a vat of chocolate for two hours. “Really?!” I said. “Dark, milk or semisweet? Look, you think that’s bad, this guy should try working with some of the morons that I have to work with in the IT industry on a daily basis. In two weeks, he’ll welcome the opportunity to drown in a vat of chocolate. No sympathy here, candy man. “Now . . . what else is happening in the world? . . .” Read more →
Girls Talk
Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers in a girl’s brain. We’re not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It’s a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm. — Louann Brizendine, M.D., The Female Brain According to Brizendine, thoughts about sex enter women’s brains once every couple of days; for men, thoughts about sex occur every minute. Both numbers sound low to me. Sexy sexy sex sex sex . . . (sorry, thinking out loud) . . . Read more →
Put ‘er There!
God forbid I ever have to have my arm amputated, but if I do, I hope they let me keep it. I’d like to stick it back up my sleeve and shake hands with children. “That’s some grip you got there!” I’d say, when the arm comes off in their little hands. Read more →
Boring in a Good Way
A friend of a friend has started dating a guy with a history of mental problems, including an in-patient hospitalization. That should be exciting. Some guys are boring. Me, for example. My wife tells me all the time how boring I am . . . I remember a few years ago, a woman came over to clean our house — a white woman, which is unusual in Southern California. She was telling my wife that her alcoholic ex-husband was in jail, as a result of which, she wasn’t getting any financial support from him and had to take up house cleaning to make some money. Now that’s excitement! You hook up with a guy who you don’t know if or when he’s going to be home, how drunk he’s going to be when he gets there . . . maybe he’ll end up in jail and you can spend your… Read more →
No Solicitators
My wife sells insurance products to businesses, which sometimes requires in-person “cold calls.” She stopped in to a business today and asked the woman at the desk if she might speak with the manager. “Didn’t you see the sign?” the woman asked. “No. What did it say?” “‘No Solicitators.’” Did I mention that at least one of the people in this conversation is not a native English speaker? “I’m not a solicitator,” my wife said. “I’m here to help your business.” Happy ending: She did get an appointment to speak with the manager, but she was still unhappy about one thing. “Oh my god, I can’t believe she called me a solicitator . . .” Read more →