Someone asked me last week if the EppsNet RSS feed includes comments. It doesn’t.
So — I just added a comments feed and a Subscribe by Email option, both available in the right sidebar . . .
Dear Landlord
Now, each of us has his own special gift
And you know this was meant to be true,
And if you don’t underestimate me,
I won’t underestimate you.
That’s Not Leadership
We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.
That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.
Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.
“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”
Falling Down Stairs
The CFO announced at our all-company meeting this morning that one of our colleagues had fallen down the main stairwell at the office yesterday.
(That stairwell has a marble-like tile surface, so if you were to take a fall on it, it’s gonna leave a mark, no question about it.)
As a result, the stairwell is closed until the building architect can figure out a way to make it “safer.”
One clumsy person ruins it for all of us.
I thought about raising my hand and proposing that those of us who like to live dangerously be allowed to sign a waiver acknowledging that we’re willing to walk up and down the stairs at our own risk.
But I didn’t. I just sat there.
Then a strange thing happened . . .
Others began to raise their hands and weigh in on the uneven surfaces, the depth perception in the stairwell being off somehow, etc., and as they did, the futility of what was happening seemed to grab me by the throat . . . I felt something — hope? resolve? IQ points? — draining out of my skull, so I discreetly got up and left the meeting — my silent, feeble protest against what’s happened to us as Americans.
On the bright side, at least she wasn’t in a car accident. I’d have to ride my bike to work . . .
Overheard
. . . at the bagel shop:
What’s on the “everything” bagel?
User Surveys on the Web
Look me in the eye
Then tell me that I’m satisfied
Hey, are you satisfied?
What is a reasonable target for user satisfaction with a web site?
We did a user satisfaction survey last year and found that 14 percent of respondents felt that our web site didn’t measure up to their expectations.
This year, we have an incentive goal of reducing that number to 8 percent, not based on evidence that any web site has ever achieved a number that low, but based on the opinion of the company that did the survey that anything over a 10 percent dissatisfaction rating is always bad.
Or to flip it around, we’re trying to achieve a 92 percent approval rating.
I wish we hadn’t set the bar quite that high. I don’t want to be a pessimist but not only is that considerably higher than, say, Google (at 78 percent — and what’s not to like about Google?), it’s also higher than Santa Claus, crack cocaine and oral sex . . .
[audio:unsatisfied.mp3]LinkedIn Meta
If you’re not on LinkedIn this isn’t going to be funny but I got this email today from my brother:
I’m going through a social media epiphany…so “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” 🙂
Where is the Change?
More than 144 hours into Barack Obama’s presidency, the economy is still in recession, the country is still at war, and in many parts of the country it’s still cold outside. Citizens are growing impatient: Wasn’t President Obama supposed to bring change?
Not Knowing Things
But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.
It’s a Pug Thing
That’s my dog in the top photo, sleeping in his favorite spot. The bottom photo I saw on Flickr . . .
Originally uploaded by ♥ellie♥
BKFF
The Man Happy in His Work
The man happy in his work is not the narrow specialist, nor the well-rounded man, but the man who is doing what he loves to do. You must fall in love with some activity.
Things That Pop Up and Poke You in the Eye
We’re discussing whether our organization will use a popup user survey on our web site . . .
“I propose doing the survey without the popups,” I say. “That’s why browsers have popup blockers, because people don’t like popups. A popup is like a poke in the eye. I don’t like it when things pop up unexpectedly and poke me in the eye. Whenever that happens, I make sure not to go back to that place anymore.”
Unfortunately, no one picks up on the “popped up and poked me in the eye” motif because I was then going to chide them for their junior high school mentality.
“I had a teacher who used to say that,” a young woman says. “‘It’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.'”
I say, “I used to work with a guy who said, ‘You can’t beat that with a sharp stick.’ Why would the stick have to be sharp if you’re going to beat someone with it? You’re really just looking for something with a little heft to it.”
The same woman says, “I had a boyfriend who used to say, ‘You’re not going to hold that over my shoulder, are you?'”
“You have abysmal taste in men.”
I wasn’t able to persuade the team to abandon the popups. The argument in favor was that a lot of web sites use popup surveys so how bad can they be?
I worked for a dot-com consulting company during the boom and bust of that industry. The whole thing was based on the notion that everyone else is doing it so it must be a good idea.
The subsequent implosion of the entire industry disproved that theory rather dramatically.
Since then, I try to stay open to the possibility that even though a lot of people are doing something, it still may not be a good idea . . .
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Scent of a Woman?
Semester Break
My wife is telling me that because Northwood finals are over today — Thursday — the boy now has a four-day weekend.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say. It kind of makes sense to have Friday off, but why Monday?
“It’s semester break,” the boy says.
“Semester break?!”
“That’s right. It’s like the off season.”
The off season . . . it’s so ridiculous I have to laugh.
“Isn’t it nice you have a funny family?” my wife says.
“It’s like the all-star break,” the boy says.
Knock Knock
I Don’t Want to Die
When Zen masters die we like to think they will say something very inspiring as they are about to bite the Big Emptiness, something like “Hi-ho Silver!” or “Remember to wake up” or “Life is everlasting.” Right before Suzuki Roshi’s death, Katagiri Roshi, an old friend, visited him. Katagiri stood by the bedside; Suzuki looked up and said, “I don’t want to die.”
I Will Always Remember This Day
A manager in another department brought in pizza for the IT team today.
Someday I’ll be telling my grandkids, “Of course I remember the Obama inauguration. I got free pizza that day! Unfortunately, that was pretty much the highlight of his entire presidency.”
Dog Food Review: Wellness
I don’t like this dog food.
I will eat almost ANYTHING, including things that you normally wouldn’t think of as edible, like kleenex from the wastebasket, so if a dog food company produces something I don’t like to eat, they must really be doing something wrong.
— Lightning 
Hockey Moms on the Road
My 15-year-old son and I were at the Embassy Suites happy hour having drinks (me) and snacks (him) with some of the other hockey parents and kids.
One of the hockey moms was a really-hot-for-a-45-year-old redhead whose son plays for another team.
“I haven’t seen your son in a while,” she whispered to me. “He looks so different.”
“Yeah, he’s a lot taller,” I said.
“Not just taller. He’s a gorgeous young man.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
She spent the next hour chatting him up, asking him about features on her iPhone, and so on . . .
“Because she was drunk,” the boy said later.
She was kinda drunk, but that wasn’t the only thing going on. Her husband was sitting a couple of chairs away the whole time, surfing the web on his Blackberry, and never even looked in her direction.
I was talking to my son’s hockey coach between games when a hockey mom he knows and I don’t walked between us and hugged him.
“Excuse me,” I said. “We’re trying to have a conversation here.”
Then she turned around and hugged me. She smelled nice.
“You smell nice,” I said. “What is that?”
“Obsession,” she said.
She was wearing a lot of it. I could still smell it on my clothes two hours later . . .