The waiter at Mongolian BBQ asks how old is my son, which throws me off a little bit because we’ve eaten there many times (we’d eat there every night if the boy had his way) and no one ever asked that before.
Newport Sports Museum
We had a great time today at the Newport Sports Museum for free.
Fred “Mr.” Rogers Dies at 74
Mr. Rogers died yesterday at age 74. His death was announced by — honest to god — Mr. McFeely, aka family spokesman David Newell.
Getting Tired
The Programmer has been out of work for three weeks now . . .
I’m getting tired of trying to sell myself to people who don’t seem to understand what it is I do, outside of how well I “fit” into a narrow job description. I’m getting tired of working in a broken industry.
More generally, I’m sick and tired of people and their goddamn opinions about everything.
And I’m getting pretty sick and tired of myself, too . . .
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Happy Valentines Day
Husband promises to break off affair with office receptionist if wife loses weight and gets breast implants. Wife schedules liposuction and breast enhancement. Husband fails to break off affair as promised. Wife runs over husband with car, killing him.
Colorado mom leaves six kids, ages 6 to 14, home alone with food, a credit card and $7 in cash while she takes a two-week vacation to Italy with her boyfriend.
Ansel Adams at 100
I took my family to see the Ansel Adams exhibit at LACMA. Adams’ work has always meant a lot to me.
Wife: Why are all the pictures so small?
Son: What time does the NBA Slam Dunk Contest come on?
Wife: Are they all in black and white?
Laid Off
I guess I should have seen this coming when they eliminated free bagels on Fridays. Or when we stopped printing things on plotter paper because the paper vendor stopped coming around shortly after we stopped paying him.
The retention list was heavily weighted toward young women with big tits and the managers’ poker buddies. Two of the laid-off developers had to be hired back within 30 minutes of being let go, when someone in authority belatedly realized they were working on the company’s only billable project.
None of us will be retiring on our severance package, since there wasn’t one. We’re now faced with the one thing we all feared enough to stay with this company so long in the first place: trying to find another job in the worst tech market in 20 years.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Reviving Interest in the Space Program
I had no idea we were still launching space shuttles until Columbia blew up yesterday, which is one way of reviving people’s interest in the space program.
President Bush says “the cause in which they died will continue,” meaning manned space flight.
“Send him up there,” my wife says.
Never Trust a Golfer
A 68-year-old South Carolina man was arrested in the 1957 slaying of two Southern California police officers who were shot after they stopped a car for running a red light.
According to the Associated Press:
Gerald Fiten Mason was a solid member of his South Carolina community, a golfer who lived quietly with his wife of 40 years.
I’ve always distrusted a man who plays golf . . .
Another Reason to Restrict TV Viewing
In a local “headless torso” case, two boys were arrested for killing their mom, then cutting off her head and hands to hinder identification of the body, a trick they picked up from watching “The Sopranos.”
This is why I don’t allow a lot of TV viewing at my house . . .
The Ultimate Morale Booster
Cybersex and so-called virtual affairs on the Internet are the all the buzz among professionals who study spouses who stray.
But the truly fertile ground for dangerous emotional attachments outside marriages is much more conventional: the workplace.
The Programmer reflects that perhaps sex in the workplace is a good indicator of employee morale:
I remember my first job, I worked on some great teams and great projects. I also had liaisons with a secretary and a senior systems analyst (quite a coup for a junior programmer).
A married operations manager kind of came on to me, but she had a crisis of conscience at the last minute.
Currently, I work in a low-morale workplace — a low-morale industry, for that matter — no one has any emotional connection with one another, and I get no sex at all.
Of course, I’m married now, but even among my unmarried colleagues, no one really has that ‘I just got laid’ spring in their step on a regular basis.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Job Posting of the Week
From an actual job posting:
Time management and data organization skills are also required.
What kind of world are we living in where that sort of thing has to be explicitly specified in a job description?
Aren’t time management and data organization skills pretty much required for daily life, outside of, say, a prison or a mental asylum?
Thus spoke The Programmer.
I Have a Dream (2003 Edition)
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where my memory is honored by a full slate of NBA basketball games . . .”
Rent Hikes Cause Homelessness?
I read a story in Time magazine about a family in Columbus, OH, evicted from their apartment and living in a homeless shelter because they couldn’t afford a rent hike on the apartment.
The husband was unemployed at the time; the wife was a pizza delivery driver. Both are high-school dropouts and they have three kids.
The lesson here, according to Time:
All it takes sometimes is a sudden rent hike to push a working family into a shelter.
The Forer Effect
Psychologist B.R. Forer found that people tend to accept vague and general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves without realizing that the same description could be applied to just about anyone. Consider the following as if it were given to you as an evaluation of your personality.
Teachers Making a Difference
Ask HW: Why Aren’t There More Black Head Coaches in the NFL?
The conventional wisdom on this is that black coaches are hired on merit, while white coaches are hired by racists.
A Strong Hand on the ‘Rudder’
Headline from a Morningstar newsletter:
Does Your CEO Have a Strong Hand on the Rudder?
Yes! In fact, he had shoulder surgery earlier in the year — I suspect as a result of employing too strong a hand on his rudder . . .
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Introducing a 9-Year-Old to Johnny Cash
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time . . .
“Really? How do you sleep?”
UCLA Hires Karl Dorrell
My son is watching SportsCenter in the other room . . .
He says, “UCLA hired a new coach: Carlos Burrell!”
By which I think he means Karl Dorrell.
That is a great, great hire.
I say that as a USC grad who was sorry to see Bob Toledo go. They might never beat the Trojans again . . .