A gem from
Another gem : I have a theory about what happened there….
Ever Onward I.B.M !
There is a moment in “Pirates of Silicon Valley when white shirt/black tie drones sing a part of “Our I.B.M Salesmen” song from the I.B.M’s official songbook:
“I. B. M., Happy men, smiling all the way.
Oh what fun it is to sell our products night and day.
I. B. M., Watson men, partners of T. J.
In his service to mankind-that’s why we are so gay”
I.B.M employees were singing those songs for a long time, and this is a well known piece of embarrassing corporate lore. In fact a few people scanned or typed up different versions of the songbook in question. The official band was disbanded in 2001, but it looks like IBM recently created an official “Music Reference Room” where you can see photos and listen to the music clips.
So, I wonder, how long before George Lucas will publish the Star Wars Christmas Special on DVD?
Corporate Memorabilia
It looks like I failed to attract any Microsoft readers, but I have at least two readers from the Big Blue. Let the pandering to the audience commence!
As those of you who actually read my journal might know that I used to work for a dot com agency called iXL where I had many unforgettable experiences.
(I finally found a metrocard that casa” posted in his journal a while ago).
Anyway, iXL had a logo that looked like this:
In the beginning it was a hip company – dress code was not enforced and neither was anyone required to come in at 9 AM. I don’t remember what it was, insistance on business casual or the mandatory 9AM meeting that made sysadmin named Lee to make enough of these buttons for everyone to wear in the 9AM meeting.
I Need A New Drugstore
One of the obsessive-compulsive habits that I have is paying close attention to merchandise and it’s displays while shopping in drugstores. Tandems, gondolas, impulse strips and POGs fascinate me. I use that and office supply shopping as a sort of therapy.
Recently I was in a dental product isle looking at mouthwashes. Finally I picked Rembrandt Plus Peroxide Whitening Rinse. Thinking about how good a racket it must be if suckers like me pay $6-7 for a small bottle of “Purified Water, Glycerin, Hydrogen Peroxide Solution, Sodium Citrate, Cremophor RH 40, Flavor, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Saccharin, Sodium Hydroxide”. Hey, I though. This is stupid. I can make my own mouthwash! I can pick my own surfactants, humectants and astringents. Apparently I wasn’t the first one who got that idea.
I will let you know how Deadprogrammer brand non-alcohol, caffeinated, sucralose-sweetened mouthwash will come out.
Fux Delux
I really, really want to smack the makers of Timbuk2 messenger bags for not making a camera inserts for their otherwise superior bags. And I really, really, really want to smack the makers of Crumpler which do make idiotically named camera inserts for the moronic descriptions that they provide on their website.
Like a bunion goes on a foot, the Bunion Insert goes in ya bag. It grows in there; it’s a padded happy chamber but removable. While it’s in there it sucks all your camera gear inside, turns it into pus then miraculously restores it back into your gear when you open the lid”
Silly me, worrying if the insert has enough space for my camera or wondering if it would be easy to take the camera out, or wondering if the partitions are removable. “Turns it into pus”. Yup, that’s useful.
Prize for idiocy goes to the description of the Supersnipe bag:
“Oooh, pap, you got an interesting Idea. It’s a Super Snipe. You could try that, papa, coodin you? Can I have a go, papa? Mmmm, we can find us some bear, papa, some bear…furry good, yessir.”
Arrrgh, I want to give them some of my money, but they are driving me nuts.
What I Learned At Work Today
My cubicle neighbor told me that Krispy Kreme is coming out with a drinkable doughnut. That’s right: doughnuts in liquid form. Great.
Then in the meeting I learned a new word. “Portlet”. A small cute pig is a piglet, a small wave is a wavelet and a small portal is – ta da! – a portlet. Also could be a small port (software, hardware or naval).
That’s it. I just thought I’d share this knowledgelet.
Watch Out, Burt Rutan
Walking down Sheepshead Bay Road in Brooklyn I noticed this sign a few times. Are they really researching and building spacecraft or is it just a stupid name for a custom car shop or some such? I looke them up on the web – nothing. I could give them a call of course…
NYC’s Syntactic Sugar
If you buy food from New York’s street vendors long enough you will notice that New Yorkers developed some of what programmers call “syntactic sugar“. As I mentioned in my post about coffee and Greek cups, “coffee, regular” stands for “milk, two spoons of sugar”.
There’s a more extreme example. I gained a bit of weight recently after I started to have “low carb” bagels from a nearby bagel store for breakfast. I highly suspect that those things are a low carb version of non-fat yogurt from that Seinfeld episode. But while having breakfast there I remembered another example of New York’s syntactic sugar. “Bagel, scooped”. From what I hear a scooped bagel is New York-specific.
Here’s how it’s made : the bagel is cut in half, and then each half is hollowed out with tongs. When you put the two halves back together the hollowed out space forms an empty channel inside the bagel. Thus altered topology of the torus is highly conducive to non-falling-out of cream cheese or egg salad. Indeed, a scooped bagel with cream cheese is much easier to eat on the train without violating the rules about littering. (Although I’ve seen MTA ad signs that say that eating in subway is prohibited there seems to be no rule against eating and drinking non-alocoholic beverages in the Rules of Conduct).
I Have A Degree In Danger
There’s an article called “Degrees Of Danger” in today’s copy of the paper that was founded by a proponent of a strong central government and the author of the Federalist Papers. The article is about crime in and around colleges and universities. There’s a punch list of crimes that happened between 2000 and 2002, from which I selected three bullets.
* NYU : 5,707 pot and drug busts near the campus
* Princeton : 26 sex offenses
* Brooklyn College : two homicides near campus
My Alma Mater scores low on the drugs and sex, but high on murders.
The Diddler And Us
I have insomnia again. This little quote from Ellen Ullman’s “The Bug” keeps going through my head:
“And so we waited. Tick-Tock, blink-blink, thirty seconds stretched themselves out one by one, a hole in human experience. Waiting for the system: life today is full of such pauses. The soft clacking of computer keys, then the voice on the telephone telling you, “Just a moment, please.” The credit-card reader instructing you “Remove card quickly!” then displaying “Processing. Please wait.” The little hourglass icon on your computer screen reminding you how time is passing and there is nothing you can do about it. The diddler at the bottom of the browser screen going back and forth, back and forth like a caged crazed animal. …”
I already forgot that the little widget, the weird faker, which unlike it’s honest brother the progress bar, does not really indicate progress, is called a diddler. It just keeps going back and forth, imitating a progress bar, or takes a form of rotating logo or some other animation. Evil little bastard.
Brooklyn, Around Noon. Well, actually later.
Manhattan, same time. Or maybe not.
