The Flash Made Me Blink! Can You Take Another One?
Ass Kissers, Flag Wavers and Team Players
I don’t like ass kissers, flag wavers or team players. I like people who buck the system. Individualists. I often warn people: “Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, ‘There is no “I” in team.’ What you should tell them is, “Maybe not. But there is an ‘I’ in independence, individuality and integrity.” Avoid teams at all cost. Keep your circle small. Never join a group that has a name. If they say, “We’re the So-and-Sos,” take a walk. And if, somehow, you must join, if it’s unavoidable, such as a union or a trade association, go ahead and join. But don’t participate; it will be your death. And if they tell you you’re not a team player, congratulate them on being observant.
Presidential Endorsements
Following the Debate on Twitter
The Chevron Guy
My boy and I are buying sodas at the Chevron station . . .
I notice they’ve got the place plastered with breast cancer donation stickers . . . donate a buck to breast cancer research and you can put your name on a 3×5 sticker with a pink car and a Chevron logo and they’ll stick it up on the wall.
I object to that. Let Chevron donate their own damn money instead of shaking down the customers.
“Would you like to donate a dollar to breast cancer research?” the attendant asks.
“No,” I reply. “Shouldn’t Chevron make their own donations? They’ve got more money than I do.”
It takes the guy a few moments to pick up on my theme, but as we’re wrapping up the transaction, he grabs the ball and runs with it.
“Yeah,” he says, “and the price of gas keeps going up.”
“It does, although I have to admit it’s down a little bit in the past week.”
“They bounce it,” he says, “but in the long run, it always goes up. It’ll be five dollars, then seven dollars. And they control everything so there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“You’re exactly right,” I say to him.
When we get outside, I say to the boy, “Chevron should fire that guy. Not a good company man.”
IT Recruiters
I’ve worked with some great IT recruiters but they’re the exception, not the rule.
I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn recently as part of a job search, and it doesn’t make you feel good about IT as a serious profession when you see how many IT recruiters are former waitresses, bartenders, shoe salesmen . . . honorable professions, but not likely to give a person a good understanding of technology and the people who work with it.
Here’s a sample phone conversation I had with a recruiter:
“First question,” the recruiter says. “Do you have any experience with software development? Because that’s key for this position.”
“Uh, that’s all I’ve done for 25 years. Are you looking at my résumé?”
“Yes, but I don’t see anything about software development.”
“Are you sure it’s my résumé?”
“Yeah . . . I don’t see anything that specifically says software development.”
I’m speechless because this is clearly impossible.
“Hang on,” I say, “I’m going to bring up a copy of my résumé here. Okay, let’s make sure we’re looking at the same thing.
“Developing and maintaining a portfolio of enterprise web applications on ASP.NET. That’s software development.
“Designing and implementing business-critical web services in .NET environment. That’s software development.
“Design and implementation of multiple concurrent ASP.NET projects on high-volume customer-facing websites. That’s software development.
“Granted, we haven’t seen the word ‘software’ followed by the word ‘development’ but that’s what all of this is, right?”
(I may as well stipulate here that IT practitioners are a pretty bad bunch themselves when it comes to lacking appropriate skills for their work.)
Time to Worry?
A colleague says, “Are you talkin’ to ME?” Oh, and he showed up at work this morning with a shaved head.
Jerry Kill, (Minnesota) Gopher
We’re watching SportsCenter when a picture of Jerry Kill, coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers football team, comes on the screen, accompanied by the unfortunate news that Kill suffered a seizure following the team’s 21-13 loss to Northwestern.
“He’s still alive?” my son asks. “He didn’t die?”
“He had a seizure,” I say.
“So he’s still alive, right?”
“Yeah.”
“In that case, I’m going to go ahead and say that he looks like a gopher.”
Pug Walker
Aside
Joshua Kerievsky: Stop Using Story Points
Lodi
We stopped for gas in Lodi a couple of days ago on the way back from Berkeley and I can’t get the damn song out of my head . . .
If I only had a dollar for every song I’ve sung
For every tiiiime I had to plaaaay while people sat there drunk . . .
At Least He Went Out a Winner
Edward Archbold was, according to those who met him on Friday night, the life of the party – a bit of a showoff who was up for anything, even a giant cockroach-eating contest.
He won. And then, tragically, he died.
Not every death is a tragedy. (We pause here for a moment to give Darwin a chance to spike the football.)
Whenever I hear someone described as “a bit of a showoff who’s up for anything,” I find myself wondering how soon they can die in some bizarre attempt to attract attention.
Given what we know about the deceased, how surprised are you — on a scale of zero to 10 — that a shirtless mug shot was available for use in his obituary?
Card Stunts
We’re in Berkeley for Parents Weekend, watching Cal and UCLA battle it out on the gridiron.
One of the halftime highlights at Cal football games is card stunts. I know, welcome to the 1920s, right?
Everyone held up their cards, which were either blue or gold. The cards on the opposite side of the stadium from us spelled out “Memorial Stadium” but we couldn’t see what our own cards spelled.
“I hope they say ‘UCLA Sucks,'” I said to my wife standing next to me, but unfortunately loud enough for a nearby husband-and-wife team of Bruin fans to hear me.
“Did you really just say that?” the woman asked. “We’re helping.” Meaning that they were holding up their cards to support the card stunt and didn’t deserve to be insulted.
When you venture into enemy territory, you have to expect some derision.
Cal 43, UCLA 17
We’re up here in Berkeley for Parents Weekend. I was saying since we arrived that this looks like a winnable game for Cal and couldn’t find one person — student or parent — to agree with me. Cal was 1-4, UCLA was 4-1.
Cal fans are conditioned for disappointment. I’m a USC guy and USC fans were the same way in the pre-Pete Carroll era. Fans showed up for games not to cheer on the team but to bemoan another disappointing performance.
This is a nice wakeup call for the Bruins. Despite their record and ranking coming into the game, they’re not very good.
The Real Obama
What we saw last night was the real Obama–a bright but incurious and inexperienced man who four years ago was promoted well beyond his level of competency. The Obama that guys like [Chris] Matthews and [Andrew] Sullivan expected instead was a character in a fairy tale–a fairy tale written by guys like Matthews and Sullivan.
Western Motel in Pink
Have a Nice Day
. . . and the dance ends, the joke is forgotten; and strength vanishes, and youth is past. — Kierkegaard
“Creating Jobs” and Other Fallacies
Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word government. Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity. It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to him as a social being.
My fellow Americans —
I’m hearing in the pre-debate analysis that voters are looking for the candidate who’ll help them have a better life.
Speaking as someone who was there at the beginning, I can tell you that helping you have a better life was not America’s original value proposition. Everyone was welcome to come here and try to make a better life for himself and his family — unless he was from Africa or Asia, of course — but there wasn’t what we now call a “safety net.”
If you tried to make it and failed — and a lot of people did — you had to go back where you came from. No guarantees! You tried, you failed, let the next man have a chance.
I still believe that the majority of Americans want a government that gives them the freedom to succeed or fail or their own merits, and not a government that “helps them have a better life.” I don’t believe it’s a large majority, but I still believe it’s a majority.
Politicians over the last 200 years or so have doen a masterful job of convicing Americans that all of the good things in life come from government. As my friend Tom Paine says in the quote above: government takes the credit for everything and the blame for nothing.
If business is booming during my term of office, the credit goes to me and my policies.
If business is bad, it’s because my policies haven’t had a chance to work yet. Or because my opponents obstructed me. Or because the last guy in the job screwed things up so bad that nobody can fix them.
Anyone who thinks about this notion that government is making good things happen sees what a fallacy it is . . .
If President Obama could “create jobs,” give me one good reason why he hasn’t done it. Do you think he wants to run on a record of increased unemployment, increased poverty, increased debt, plummeting net worth . . .?
Please don’t tell me that Republicans in Congress are preventing him from doing it. How would that work? I want to hire a man and a Repubican congressman shows up and stops me from doing it?!
BULLSHIT!
If politicians could “create” jobs, they’d be doing it all the time.
Overheard
Self-Reliance: Another Idea That Never Caught On
One of the TVs at the gym this morning was tuned to a political panel discussion . . . someone named Roland Martin, a black man with an enormous forehead, said that voters are asking themselves which candidate will help them have a better life.
Yes — that’s the 47 Percent.
Someone once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” It’s a shame that never caught on.