Does your heart rule your mind? GTR (not the Nissan variety)

February 11, 2008 General, Workplace Humor No comments

I usually pride myself on being versed in the ways of the melodic arts, especially the sweet 80′s hair band genre. We have all heard those sweet anthems “To Be With You – Mr. Big”, “Cherry Pie – Warrant”, “Round and Round – RATT”, “Whole Hearted – Extreme”, “Crackling Rosie – Neil Diamond”. One band thou has eluded me untill just the other day, GTR, no it does not stand for Gun’s THEN Roses…

GTR takes the slightly less known members of other well known progressive rock bands and throws them into a melodic blender with some blond hair dye a few bandannas and a ace melting solo. GTR has band members from Genesis, Yes and Asia. You would think that it would be difficult to mix the desires of three separate guitar players and there personal forms of rock, how do you fit it all together? You jam three separate styles back to back in a five min long song…

Three different styles you say… Listen for these in the video below.

(0:00) – Average rock out neck wrenching jam.
(3:20) – What, am i in Egypt because i think a Pharaoh just walked in.
(3:37) – I believe this is what King Arthur listened to at the round table, soothing minstrel music.

Maybe i should give you a moment to recover… Get up, get a drink if you must. How have you never heard of them? Where did they come from? Where are they now? Some questions can never be answer and some should never be.

You will be accredited 20 Gehring bucks if you noticed the timpani drums being played. Now i have heard of Rock bands playing with Symphonies such as the Metallica S&M tour,  but a rock band with these two freakishly huge timpani drums only played during what i have dubbed “Pharaoh’s Entrance”. Touché GTR, Well played.

What amazed me most was this as of this post you cannot touch a used GTR cd for less than $30 USD. Wow that is lasting value, hind sight being 20/20 i would have invested my money in GTR cd’s and forgotton that Enron stock.

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The great Chumby debate!

February 9, 2008 Business, Engineering, General, Product Managment One comment

For those of you that havn’t seen it you can find a chumby here Chumby

The lowdown

  • Wi-fi connectivity • access to the free Chumby Network • 3.5″ LCD color touchscreen • two external USB 2.0 full-speed ports • 350 MHz ARM processor • 64 MB SDRAM • 64 MB NAND flash ROM • stereo 2W speakers • headphone output • squeeze sensor • accelerometer (motion sensor) • leather casing • AC adapter included
  • The dimensions are: 5 1/2″ wide, 4 1/4″ tall, 3 1/4″ deep at the base, and 2 1/4″ deep at the top. Here’s the chumby next to a regular size coffee cup.
  • Plug it in, connect to your wireless network, and use your computer to choose a playlist of “widgets” (the bite-sized applications that run on a chumby)
  • Because it’s always on, the chumby must be plugged in to an AC outlet.
  • The chumby costs $179.95.

The Functionality

Widgets, Screens and Power cables, Ohhhh my! So they are marketing a Widget panel. That’s cool so you can take your widgets with you right? Wrong! it has to be plugged in at all times because it NEVER goes into sleep mode. Not like the pesky iPhone or Nintendo DS. So as long as you are near WiFi and an outlet you will always have weather and email, unlike your laptop. On there website one of the selling points is that it can hook op to your iPod and be a boombox, ony one problem, the songs shuffle and you cannot choose what to play.

The Look

It’s beautiful…. I mean i look at it and see a Lexus Headrest with a LCD mounted in it, don’t you.chumby with mug
It looks so soft you probably want to hold it while you watching Tv on the couch (i hope there is an AC outlet close). The screen is slightly smaller than the iPhones.

Saving the best for last

More amazing than the device itself is the company that produces it. They will defend the product to the ends of the earth, here are some quotes the Chumby senior team;

“the chumby is always in a state of continuous improvement — that’s the real innovation here — and it challenges the point-in-time judgment model (”Am I glad I bought this product or not?” “Was it worth the money?” “Here’s what’s good and what’s bad about this product!”) With Chumby, you’re buying into an “open development vector.” Huh? How in Hell does someone review or pass judgment on that? There’s the rub.“

“Anyone who got one of our early alpha prototypes, and complains that it was very limited, ummmm, didn’t we mention at the time that it was *alpha* hardware? — should be judged on what works, not on what doesn’t work, i.e., it was an early “proof of concept,” not a finished product. And, by that standard, people who understood what this stage means *loved” it.”

“Carping about the limitations of a free prototype seems ungrateful at best. But…whatever…wait until all the teenagers in your neighborhood have one, check it out, and then let us all know what you think.“

“Don’t want to belabor this, and sorry if I’m grumpy and “un-PR” about the topic, but the prototypes were expensive for a start-up and were offered with the very specific and stated quid pro quo that people who took them o requested them needed to be willing to do something of value for us in return — hack it, write widgets for it, play with it and blog about it, provide *informed* feedback after some reasonable expereice with it, whatever.“

My Thoughts

Chumby is trying to compete in a niche market, they are a very small San Diego startup. Microsoft has tried the same thing with there SideShow devices at a $80 price and still hasn’t been able to make it work. I love the line that said “wait until all the teenagers on your street have one”, well, on my street everyone has iPhones, the funny thing is they have a battery, there always connected to the internet, they play video, they have widgets and ooh yea, i almost forgot, IT’S A PHONE!!!

Links

Industry Software Shift

February 6, 2008 Business, Engineering, General, Product Managment No comments

I started out programming with VB and ASP. Over the years i need to expand my skills to Java, PHP, Etc… The marketplace for a long time seemed to be embracing Open Source with “Open” arms. Over the last few weeks though i have heard of multiple large companies shifting to or even back to Microsoft for their solutions. Some that i know of have even gone as far as getting rid of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Sun servers. What is sparking this? Microsoft had not announced or released a new “Messiah” of business suites.

Well, my humble opinion is that my “VB/ASP” generation of developers is now moving into those once coveted VP and CTO positions and they want to got back to what they are comfortable with. If this truly is the case, what will happen when generation AJAX takes the helm?

Where do they come from?

February 5, 2008 General, Workplace Humor No comments

Sometimes I believe that companies scour the sewers of human depravity to fill their lower ranks. To keep myself from going on another interoffice safari I periodically walk the call center area of our fine establishment to clear my head. Today I noticed someone quite odd.

Now step back with me for a quick minute. When you have a call center you do have the distinct advantage of keeping your employees hidden from view, shielded behind miles of copper telephone cable lost in a veritable maze of cubicles. They strip your identity and assign you a number, as if your name wasn’t good enough. These employees are nothing more than another coppertop, another 9 volts powering its self-contained capitalistic machine.

With this being said does that validate our hiring methods. Do we feel the need to just hire anyone to keep our cost down? Why brings me to this tangent?

Yesterday on my walk I noticed an older gentleman. His entire job every day is customer interaction. Imagine him as our company’s personal ambassador to YOUR home. Now picture him if you will.

He’s older, 60-65. Salt & Pepper hair combed over to mask the top of his head, which can only be described as a personal solar panel. His hair is long enough to touch halfway down his shoulders, and looks to be practically dripping with an amalgamation of Bril Cream & Olive Oil. Powder blue turtleneck under a sports jacket, you know the kind with the fake suede elbow patches. The ones designed to convince you friends that your more sophisticated than you really are, like they are going to believe that you actually ride horses and go on fox hunts during the weekends. His eyes actually mildly point in separate directions when relaxed. You never really know if he’s looking at you or just over your shoulders. Both of them at the same time! His beard is constantly in the 1.75-day’s unshaved stage. Finally the “coup de gra”. The first thing you notice about him. The reason you can find him in any maze of cubicles. Why I can trail him down any hallway and always be just out of sight. Around his neck hangs dangling, gaudy, platinum, shiny, oversized, replica of Jesus. That’s right, in complete anguish with full crown of thorns.

This is why companies have call centers. Shielding these people from view. Think about it. What would you do if he showed up at your door to discuss your next bill?

You touch you mom with that hand?

February 5, 2008 General, Workplace Humor No comments

Work again was knawing at the back of my head, projects stacking up like that infernal Jenga game. The risk taker i am i pull the bottom outer block and close my eyes. My work day crashed uncontrollably, allegations flying, fingers pointing and excuses in more abundance that babies at a Rabbit convention in spring. I never claimed to be a fortunate man.

That’s it, i need a break, some solice before i strip down to my boxers, climb atop the cubical walls and hunt my co-workers with makeshift Bolas fashioned from Cat 5 cable and thoes soft foam stress balls. Yea you got it, i hang in the shadows of burnt out florecent lights picking out all thoes people who think the network color printer is their own personal Kinkos. Leaving me as the underpaid minimum wage monkey clearing their paper jams.

** I am Shaun’s loathing of human contact **

Sorry for the tangent. Anyway, i go to the only place i can be comfortable the men’s room. Didn’t you guess it? The men’s room is like a special club, complete with it’s own secret handshake. ;) In the men’s room you can be yourself. People don’t size you up, put on facades. There are certain fact’s you must face while you are there though. Every man passes gas while at the urinal, it’s just accepted.

For instance:
Man A Leaves cubical B going 1.76 mph down Hallway Z to said Mens Room Q. Man A approaches urinal at 1:38 EST. Man C already at urinal E enters conversation G with Man A. Man A winded from Distance Z – B * 1.76 mph passes gas ** I am Shauns contempt for word problems **. How long is the pause in A and C’s conversation?

ANSWER:
0, all men fart at the urinal

Anyway i am standing and releasing all my built up stress, OH and about 64 oz of Mt. Dew. The guy next to me is what i like to call a Urinal Rainman. He won’t talk or even react, just staring forward at the soothing white tiles, probably muttering, “Woppner at 4:30, Gotta se woppner”. So he Pee’s and imitates a OCD laiden nut job. To each their own. But, my point. Yes there is a reason for the rambling.

His cell phone ring’s, during his secret handshake. At this point i am at the sink, as the gem i am i go to the end to leave him room. After he finishes he answers the phone and leaves tha mens room. NO WASHING OF HANDS!!! LIVID.

He walked around all day, meeting and greeting. Basically saying, “Try my secret handshake”. Nobody wants to shake his pants. People like that make me want to vomit, except im not that self centered.

** I am Shauns complete cleanliness **

Proper Introduction

February 5, 2008 General, Workplace Humor No comments

Hello, my name is Shaun and i am 28.

You’re name is? ____(insert name here)____

Well __(inserted name)__, it is very nice to meet you.

Let me take you into my life a little.

I work day in and day out in a cage. No I’m not one of our illustrious city employed zoo keeper nor am I the hunter of all things reptilian. Unlike an animal cage my cage is three and a half walls. Three and one quarter walls are Extruded metal with a fabric face, The last quarter wall is solid frosted glass. Instead of a Bronze plaque with my Name, Latin derivative and complete history of my Kingdom, Genius, Family, Etc… I have a small paper printout velcro’d to the outside of my cube with my name and cube number, ready to be replaced at a moments notice.

Most animal’s in the zoo are better taken care of then me, at least at the zoo the keepers TRY to emulate the animals natural environment. I am in anything but. In front of me is an old PC. Now, in my job I am intended to “Think outside the box”, kind of ironic. I am supposed to come up with new ways of doing things, program computers. The PC in front of me is so old; I actually believe it was purchased at the Watergate closing sale.

At work they try to satiate our desire to go home or be outside by tossing us another t-shirt. Hey, who’d of though? That’s how you make your workers happy. Give them a branded t-shirt to wear around. As if I didn’t feel that work owned enough of me, now when I finally escape I have to be a walking billboard.

I like my job I just don’t like my job. In school they give us that aptitude test. Remember they ask if you have a million dollars what would you do for work. What a crock. If that test worked then I bet there is some fry cook at the local McDonalds kicking himself for giving the answer he did. I mean really if we all just did jobs because we loved them, who would clean our toilets? Who would be that guy that has to check the Ph levels at the sewage treatment plant?

Just think about it!!!

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