There are no bad soldiers, only bad officers. — Army saying Tuesday, June 11 To: Developers From: Director, Software Development Subject: Outing We are planning a outing to D&B1 on Friday 21 at 2 pm. I need to know who will be able to attend as we have to make the required arrangements. Please RSVP to me by tomorrow morning. 1Dave and Buster’s, a restaurant featuring multiple bars and a huge video arcade. Monday, June 24 To: Developers From: Director, Software Development Subject: Outing In future if you RSVP to a planned outing please have the decency to show up. Since [the CEO] paid for this out of his own funds it shows a total lack of respect for him and the company. I would not be expecting any type of recognition from the company for commitment and work effort in the future since it was thrown back in his… Read more →
Soccer Balls
Testicle cancer rates for World Cup nations ranked Like they say, here’s one that won’t show up in the box score . . . Read more →
Quietus
ORANGE COUNTY, CA – A 26-year-old Sacramento man was stabbed to death late Tuesday in front of a Garden Grove apartment where he was visiting residents, police said. — The Orange County Register Probably the only way to stop him whining about the Lakers-Kings series . . . Read more →
Another Difference Between USC and UCLA
NBC analyst Bill Walton attended UCLA. FOX Sports analysts Marques Johnson and Jack Haley also went to UCLA. Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss attended USC. Read more →
Embracing Couple Killed By Train
A young couple in New Jersey held hands and stepped in front of an Amtrak train, electing to be simultaneously obliterated in one final embrace. Relatives told The Associated Press that the couple were drug addicts who had been evicted from their apartment and saw suicide as their only way out, which takes a lot of the romance out of the story as far as I’m concerned . . . Read more →
Warhol’s Prophecy
I wish Andy Warhol was around to see that his most famous prophecy — that everyone will eventually enjoy 15 minutes of fame — came true with a vengeance. Talk shows opened the stage door to trailer park America, and now game shows are celebrating anyone who knows the capital of Spain or who marries a potential wife-beater on camera . . . — Michael Musto, Village Voice Read more →
USC Alumni Notes
Trojans win 16th NCAA men’s tennis championship. Mark Prior strikes out 10 in major league debut with Cubs. Chandra Levy found. Read more →
Word of the Day
sang-froid, also sangfroid \sang-FRWAH\, noun: Freedom from agitation or excitement of mind; coolness in trying circumstances; calmness. Sang-froid is from the French; it literally means “cold blood” (sang, “blood” + froid, “cold”). Read more →
Welcome to Irvine!
Education is important in our community . . . Word came home last week that this year’s Stanford 9 testing starts the first week of May. Immediately, my wife got a call from another mom announcing that she’s cancelling all play dates through the end of the testing period so her kid can spend every waking moment on test prep. The gauntlet has been thrown! Meanwhile, in business news, thanks to the tech meltdown, office space vacancy rates in southern Orange County continue to hover around 30 percent. The screaming rent deals this creates were enough to induce the company I work with to pack everything up and move one off-ramp further south on the 405 . . . Read more →
Road to Destruction
Road Accident in India Kills 21 The victims were Hindu pilgrims on their way to a temple to worship Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. Read more →
We Were Programmers
In We Were Soldiers, commanding officer Mel Gibson is the first man off the helicopter and the last man back on. He leaves no one behind, dead or alive. Contrast that with my manager, who has far less enthusiasm for his work than for his car, his dog, leering at women, painfully coarse humor, or getting drunk on a golf course somewhere. Not the kind of inspirational leadership you make movies about, unless it’s kind of an ultra-dark comedy in which the leading character is eventually humiliated and/or killed, to thunderous applause . . . Thus spoke The Programmer. Read more →
Hiring the Best
The following email went out at the office: Please stop by and say hello to our newest Project Manager Skip Intro [names changed to protect the guilty]. He is a great person, lives in [a nearby city], tons of experience, and has two black labradors. What more could you ask? Leicester Dedlock Director of Project Management What more could I ask?! We’re hiring project managers and can’t think of anything more to ask them than what kind of pets they have? This explains a lot . . . Thus spoke The Programmer. Related Links Hiring the Best Explained Guest columnist: Céline Read more →
Take a Hike!
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… Read more →
ArsDigita, Vita Brevis
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 Read more →
Teaching Kids to Write
Having students write essays about books accomplishes three things. It makes them hate writing, because it’s such a fruitless, uninteresting assignment. It makes them hate reading, because even books they enjoy are turned against them. And it probably makes them hate thinking, because the kind of analysis they’re forced to do is so strained and dull. — Joseph Weisberg Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Joey Bishop – TV host Ernest Borgnine – actor Red Buttons – actor Kitty Carlisle – game show panelist Alistair Cooke – TV host Buddy Ebsen – actor Glenn Ford – actor Eugene McCarthy – U.S. senator Jack Paar – TV host, “The Tonight Show” Don Pardo – TV announcer Artie Shaw – clarinetist and bandleader Byron White – U.S. supreme court justice Richard Widmark – actor Updates Joey Bishop – died 10/17/2007, age 89 Ernest Borgnine – died 7/8/2012, age 95 Red Buttons – died 7/13/2006, age 87 Kitty Carlisle – died 4/18/2007, age 96 Alistair Cooke – died 3/30/2004, age 95 Buddy Ebsen – died 7/6/2003, age 95 Glenn Ford – died 8/30/2006, age 90 Eugene McCarthy – died 12/10/2005, age 89 Jack Paar – died 1/27/2004, age 85 Don Pardo – died 8/18/2014, age 96 Artie Shaw – died 12/30/2004, age 94 Byron White – died 4/15/2002,… Read more →
Topics to Avoid
From ExecutivePlanet.com: England Do not make references to the mediocrity of British food, since it has now improved significantly. Read more →
Crazy Eddie’s Movie Reviews
Entertainment for mental patients I was a student at Cal State Fullerton in 1976 when Ed Allaway went berserk, shooting nine of his co-workers in the university library, killing seven. Read more →
Radical Notions Debunked!
The big controversy at the office this week was a “radical” idea offered by one of our developers regarding data collection with a series of web-based forms. The idea was that rather than just pouring the data into a relational database like everyone else does, we’d build up an XML tree, essentially a gigantic (in this case, ~200K) string, and pass that around from form to form. The advantages of this, if I understood correctly, would be to simplify the data model design and eliminate the need for table joins. Of course, it also violates every known rule of efficient data access and ratchets up the processing requirements by several orders of magnitude, but that didn’t stop one of the development managers from throwing his full-fledged support behind it. I TA’ed undergraduate software engineering classes for a year at USC, and every so often an underclassman would advance some… Read more →
Overheard
Him: I’m going to Shooters tonight, if you want to go. Have you ever been there on Wednesdays? Her: I’ve been to Shooters. Him: Have you ever been on a Wednesday? Her: Actually, I try to avoid places like that. Him: I’ve never been either. My buddy wanted to go. Read more →