A project manager talking to a business analyst:
PM: Can you have that done by today?
BA: No I can’t, and here’s why. [Lengthy explanation deleted.] I can have it done by next week.
PM: Can you have it done by tomorrow?
The Day Care Worker Killed My Kid
…parents now are pushing for laws that would make it a felony for a day care worker to give a child medicine without written permission from a parent or a doctor’s order. One state already has passed such legislation.
Last month, North Carolina made it a felony to give children medicine without permission. That law was named for 5-month-old Kaitlyn Shevlin, who died in 2001 after being given the generic form of Benadryl. Her care giver, Josephine Burke, served four months in prison on misdemeanor charges of child abuse and neglect.
We Set Our Sights So Low
I think it’s such a shame we set our sights so low. Either you’re stuck with software that works the way it works because you don’t want to break it, or you get an upgrade that causes pain and anguish. I just want my stupid computer to work and it doesn’t. That’s not computing.
That we accept the status quo says such negative things about us as humans . . . Our ambitions are so, so small compared to the opportunity.
In Memoriam: Charles Bronson
The best Charles Bronson movie I ever saw was Once Upon a Time in the West, worth the price of a rental for the opening scene alone . . .
“Looks like we’re shy one horse.”
“You brought two too many.”
Marital Discord Explained
A friend explains to me why he and his wife argue all the time:
Unfortunately, Paul, a lot of married people argue like this, particularly when there’s a large discrepancy in IQ.
Pizza Flashback
We had Papa John’s pizza brought in at work today . . .
Bejeweled
I was trying to get my son to think ahead a little in Bejeweled instead of just clicking on the first match he sees.
Result: He clicks as fast as ever, but he now adds a running commentary in a dopey voice whenever I’m in the room:
Should I click here? Or should I click here? Or should I just sit here thinking and not click on anything? Thinking is better than life. Well — when you put it that way, you have to be alive to think. But still, thinking is the best . . .
Footnote: My high score is still way better than his.
Management 101
I saw the new Jackie Chan movie today . . . it was pretty bad, but the thing that resonated with me was that the movie, like all movies of this type, had an evil villain, and the villain would gather his evil henchmen and say things like
“Which one of you would like to explain this latest failure?”
He sounded just like one of the managers I work with . . .
Self-Portrait
A boy en route to Amarillo, holding a camera . . .
What’s for Breakfast?
“You want waffles?” asks Mom.
“Bacon,” the boy replies, without looking up from his GameBoy.
“How about bacon, and I’ll cut up an apple for you?”
“Bacon.”
“You have to have fruit with it. How about grapes?”
“Bacon.”
“Bacon and fruit.”
Pause. “Is bacon a fruit?”
Worst Band of All Time
Blender magazine has named Insane Clown Posse as the worst band of all time, although I personally think this does a great disservice to Rush — the band, not the radio guy.
Slapstick Science
According to the British Journal of Ophthalmology, wearing a too-tight necktie may increase the risk of glaucoma by boosting blood pressure inside the eyes.
Ouch!
Who volunteers for this kind of thing? Choked blind with your own necktie!?
EppsNet Goes to the Movies
I was buying movie tickets with my 10-year-old boy when a woman with her 20-something daughter smiled at us and said, “When you get older, your kids will take you to the movies.”
Later, in the snack bar line, I asked him, “So are you going to take me to a movie when I get older?”
Introducing a 10-Year-Old to Poetry
Me: (reading aloud from syllabus for UC Irvine Young Writers class, in which my kid is enrolled) “We are going to be doing a variety of activities, including a facade poem, a four season poem, journal writing, and a memory snapshot story.”
Him: Poems blow.
Undercutting the Offshore Bid
Goldilocks and the Three Networks
Diversity on television
White and black characters are overrepresented, while Latino and Asian characters are underrepresented on prime-time TV, according to a recent UCLA study tracking diversity on television.
(I would say first of all that if you want to know anything about diversity, you should definitely ask someone at UCLA. They are all about diversity over there, and here’s what it leads to — “researchers” watching sitcoms with a stopwatch.)
Kids in America
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average child care worker earns $9.57 an hour. This is less than we pay people to cut our hair ($10.40 an hour), shine our shoes ($9.95 an hour) and park our cars ($9.87 an hour).
Repeat: Kids in America are being raised by people earning $9.57 an hour.
That explains a lot . . .
Happy Birthday
We celebrated my son’s birthday yesterday by going to his favorite restaurant of all time, BD’s Mongolian Barbeque in Irvine, only to find that they’d gone out of business, finally beaten into submission by the ultra-popular BJ’s Restaurant & Brewery next door.
Fortunately, 10-year-olds bounce back from these kinds of setbacks pretty quickly, especially when they get the Kung Fu Chaos game they really, really wanted . . .
2 Fast
Costa Mesa, CA. — Michael Allen Hanson was cruising at 100 mph in his new Porsche on the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway when a black car zoomed past Tuesday night.
So Hanson, president of his mortgage company, hit the gas.
Misinformed
RICK BLAINE: I came to Casablanca for the waters.
CAPT. RENAULT: The waters?! What waters? We’re in the desert.
RICK BLAINE: I was misinformed.
My wife and son are in Amarillo for a few weeks visiting relatives. I’m not sure I want to be in Texas in July, but they told me the temperature was in the 70s, so I decided to fly in for a few days.
When I got there, it was 104, although it did drop into the 70s at night . . .