It’s interesting how many HTTP 4xx return codes could be used in response to a request for intimate access to a woman:
401 Unauthorized
402 Payment Required
403 Forbidden
405 Method Not Allowed
411 Length Required
413 Request Entity Too Large
417 Expectation Failed
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I’ve got a little list–I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed–who never would be missed!
People who say “pitcher” when they mean “picture” . . .
My son and I are watching Monday Night Football when an ad comes on in which every somber, sallow-faced environmentalist in the state is telling me to vote No on Proposition 7.
I say to the boy, “You know, I don’t even know what Proposition 7 is, but if all of these sanctimonious pricks are against it, then I’m for it. GO HUMP A TREE, YOU PUSSIES!”
The dog, who, unlike other members of the family, loves to hear the sound of my voice, jumps up on the sofa and starts licking my face.
“That’s right, pup. Lightning says he doesn’t care about trees either, except that he likes to pee on them.”
My son sighs and says, “We need trees” — very slowly, like he’s talking to an idiot.
“Oh . . . well in that case, put me down as Undecided.”
My son had an assignment this weekend to write an essay on cultural values vs. personal values in Huckleberry Finn.
The teacher didn’t assign the whole book, just an excerpt in which Huck has to decide whether or not to send Jim, the escaped slave, back to Miss Watson.
So I read through the excerpt and sure enough, it includes multiple uses of what’s now known as “the N-word.”
I asked the boy, “Did Mr. Murano discuss with you guys about Mark Twain’s use of the word ‘nigger’?”
“No,” he said. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, our school is mostly Asian. Now if Mark Twain had overused the word ‘chink,’ then we’d have a problem.”
I use charts like this one to track open project tickets, color-coded by priority.
At a meeting last week, I pointed out that the number of open tickets on this particular project had peaked out at 70 and was now dropping faster than the value of my house, at which one of the attendees laughed more enthusiastically than I thought was necessary.
“Why is that funny?” I asked. I mean, it was supposed to be a little funny, but not laugh-out-loud funny.
“I’ve been there,” she said.
When Gallant has a question for someone, he walks down the hall and asks it.
Goofus keeps fruitless email threads going for weeks.
Here’s an excerpt from the comment thread on a trouble ticket regarding a database record with an incorrect status code.
comment 7563 posted by goofus on 2008-09-10 8:53 AM
I did change the status code in test and this did fix the problem. However, we need to speak with JS regarding this issue as to how this will be affected in production.comment 7611 posted by me on 2008-09-12 9:15 AM
Let's get JS's response so we can close this.comment 7621 posted by goofus on 2008-09-12 9:52 AM
Emailed JS regarding this issue. Waiting on a response.comment 7637 posted by goofus on 2008-09-12 2:49 PM
JS is out of the office until Tuesday, 9/16.comment 7773 posted by goofus on 2008-09-18 2:05 PM
Sent another email to JS regarding this issue.comment 7794 posted by me on 2008-09-18 3:30 PM
You may want to consider walking over and talking to her.comment 7800 posted by goofus on 2008-09-18 3:47 PM
Received a return email from JS and now will be working with MS on this issue. Sent her an email for her input.
“Where’d you get the Wish Hope Dream Post-Its?” I ask a co-worker.
“Why?” she asks. “Is that your mantra?”
“No, I was thinking more along the lines of wishes, hopes and dreams being peeled away one by one until you’re left with nothing.”
“That’s an optimistic way of looking at it.”
“It sure is.”
This chair showed up in my house the other day . . .
“It’s the most comfortable chair ever!” my son raves.
“How much did it cost?” I ask him.
“I dunno. Mom handled the paying part.”
The dog seems to like it as well . . .
Video shows workers abusing pigs
WHAT THAT IS OUTRAFEOUS WHO WOULSD DO SUCH A THING TO APUGS
IM SO MAD I CANT EVEN TYPE
Wait, what — pigs?! Well that’s not good either but on the other hand pigs are not man’s best friend and they are also delicious . . .
— Lightning 
My wife is on the warpath this morning . . .
“Can you believe this?” she says to no one in particular. “I hate that printer. I’m throwing it away. It ran out of ink again! I’m trying to print something and now I have to go buy more ink!”
So I say, “You print a lot of documents. Do you get rid of your car when it runs out of gas?”
“Oh I can’t wait to throw away that printer,” she says, storming off . . .
What I re-learned in Crucial Conversations class is that you can have “better” conversations with people if you’re able to control your initial emotional reactions and apply some learnable communication skills.
I say “re-learned” because I got the same takeaway years ago from reading How to Win Friends and Influence People and Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.
And while it’s been my experience that these techniques really do work, I haven’t used them as much I could have because they also seem to take a lot of the zest out of being alive.
For example: Several years ago, we had an electrical problem at the house, where we weren’t getting power in any of the front rooms.
My wife was home when the electrician came out — I was at work — and he fixed the problem in five minutes.
When I got home, she was unhappy that he’d charged us 50 dollars for five minutes of work.
My first thought was, “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. What should we do? Save 50 bucks and sit in the dark for the rest of our lives? What do you care how long it took him? He fixed the problem.”
As it happens though, I had just finished reading the Mars/Venus book, in which I learned that while men like to solve problems, women prefer a little empathy, so what I actually said was, “Gee honey, that must have been very upsetting.”
Well, that absolutely floored her. And as she stood there gaping at me, I said, “I mean it. That sounds very upsetting.”
So I sidestepped a colossal argument but I also realized that I couldn’t do that on a regular basis because I’d wind up listening to a lot of nonsense, throwing myself on conversational grenades and keeping all of my best lines to myself.
OMG the UCLA bandwagon has crashed so hard, they’re still trying to identify the victims.
Karl Dorrell must be high-fiving people till his arm hurts.
FIGHT ON!
Nothing is inevitable here. We’re pugs, and we never give up! We never quit! Pugs never hide from history. Pugs make history!
Sarah Palin OMG hottest governor ever.
Woof Woof!
— Lightning
[S]tories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. . . . Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.
One of our exercises in Crucial Conversations training was to “think of a person who is really frustrating to work with,” and to describe in writing a recent interaction with that person in terms of what was actually said, and what you were thinking or feeling but didn’t say.
My responses included the following:
- What I Actually Said
- This project presents some unique challenges.
- What I Didn’t Say
- I have a lot of experience managing IT projects, but not in running a day care center or a mental institution, which is what this project requires.
- What I Actually Said
- That’s not quite the way I would have phrased it.
- What I Didn’t Say
- Everyone else in these meetings seems to feel constrained by a sense of professionalism and decency that you appear not to possess.
One of my colleagues at our table of four claimed that based on those responses, she could identify the person I was writing about.
Since she and I and the person in question have never worked on anything together, I said she couldn’t, but much to my amazement, she did.
When we give up trying to convince, we become more convincing.
So — I should give up trying to convince in an effort to become more convincing?
Arnold Palmer may have won a lot of golf tournaments, but his greatest accomplishment in my opinion was to say, “Hey, let’s mix some lemonade in with the iced tea.”
Nothing better on a hot day!
Thanks, Arnie!
