I work for a healthcare organization. In the lunch room today was one of those cylinders full of caramel corn and cheese corn that turn up everywhere around the holidays.
This one had a note attached: Compliments of your colleagues at the American College of Chest Physicians.
Are caramel corn and cheese corn good for cardiac health? They’ve gotta be terrible, right?
Beware of chest physicians bearing gifts!
CARDIOLOGIST: Who referred you to our office? PATIENT: I saw your name on a container of cheese corn. CARDIOLOGIST: Ha ha, yeah, those things pay for themselves a million times over in stents and angioplasties.
One of our contract programmers tells me that his current project is “basically done.”
“It’s done or it’s basically done?” I ask.
“It’s done. Amanda is testing it.”
“How do you know it’s done if she’s still testing it?”
“All the tickets are closed except one, so it’s basically done.”
“I don’t mean to give you a hard time. I’m trying to figure out if there’s a difference between ‘basically done’ and ‘done.’ Because usually there is. I inherited a project here last year that when I got it, it was ‘basically done,’ except it needed some more testing. I put one of my best guys on it and he was still working on it a year later when it was finally cancelled. It took a year to go from ‘basically done’ to cancelled. Hence my lack of fondness for hearing projects described as ‘basically done.'”
Notes for next team meeting: Effective immediately, we’re not going to describe any task as being “basically done,” “pretty much done,” or my personal favorite, “done — it just needs a little more testing.” (Isn’t that what testing is for — to find out if it’s done?)
We’ll classify things as either Done or Not Done. If it’s not done, we should be able to say what has to happen in order for it to be done.
The dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering expressed support today for a recommendation from a student group that the college create a recruitment and retention plan for women and underrepresented minority students.
It sounds like the dean might be up for lowering the engineering standards to meet diversity metrics. Bad idea. Engineering is serious business.
Also: Preferential treatment by a public institution based on race, sex or ethnicity is prohibited by California law.
I’ve got a better and more legal idea: How about if the women and “underrepresented” minority students suck it up and meet the same academic standards as everyone else?
Or apply to a different school? If they can’t meet the standards at Berkeley, they might do fine at a less demanding institution like Stanford or UCLA.
I’ve attended engineering school myself. We had diversity admits. After one semester, maybe two, they weren’t there anymore. Who was helped?
Directed by Gabriel Axel. With Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel, Jarl Kulle.
There comes a time when our eyes are opened and we come to realize that mercy is infinite. We need only await it with confidence and receive it with gratitude. Mercy imposes no conditions. And lo! Everything we have chosen has been granted to us. And everything we rejected has also been granted.
I had an argument with a Mobius strip. It was one-sided.
Aside
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain . . .
We have closed the gap more with SC. We got a chance to win a championship this week. That’s closing the gap. We haven’t had that chance in the past. We’ll see where the gap is after the ball game, but the gap is closed.
— UCLA Coach Rick Neuheisel, before the game
Tonight they were clearly the superior team. I don’t think that’s the case all the time. I believe we can close the gap, and we will. We weren’t good enough to play a marquee team like USC.
— UCLA Coach Rick Neuheisel, after the game
The gap was really close. You can tell by the score.
— USC offensive tackle Matt Kalil
Maybe Neuheisel meant that the gap has been closed since 1929, when USC won the inaugural crosstown showdown 76-0.
Using any more recent date as a starting point for gap measurement, it looks wider than ever.
At 10-2, USC finishes with the best record in the Pac-12 Southern Division but because of NCAA sanctions isn’t eligible to play in the conference championship.
That means that officially UCLA is the Southern Division “champion” and will play Northern Division winner Oregon next Friday.
Now I know how Santa delivers all the presents in one night!
By the way, if you like to avoid the crowds, Thanksgiving night is a great time to go to the movies! Everyone’s either in a food coma or resting up for Black Friday shopping.
We went to the 9:30 show at the Irvine Marketplace. There was no ticket line, no one in the lobby, one girl working the box office and one at the snack bar.
The box office girl had to work double because there was no ticket taker on duty. Instead of just selling the tickets and handing them to us, she also tore them in half and said, “You’re in Theater 2.”
“We’re in Theater 2,” I repeated for the boy’s benefit.
“Are you sure she didn’t say we’re the only two people in the theater?” he asked.
Image via Wikipedia The New Jersey parents who named their boy Adolf Hitler seem like fruitcakes but if being a fruitcake is now a justification for taking your kids away, you could walk through any mall in America confiscating kids left and right . . .
