RRRRAWK-Sannne!

Have any of you heard Tom Waits' version of Roxanne? He turns it into
a freaking opera. It's amazing!

Find it. Listen to it.

Love it.

Buster

Blogging a dead horse

Googlette: Gambling and Porn together at last"

So here's the game. Go to Google's image search and type in a girl's name, then turn off the filtering in the bottom left corner of the page. BEFORE you hit search, you gotta place bets on where in the 20 images Google will present you with, where in that list will you see the first pornographic image. Popular choices are, First Ten, Second Ten, First Page, Second Page, Within First 3 Pages, or even more specific, such as First Three. Of course, since this is Roulette you can also put your money directly on a number for the big prize.

You're also going to have to decide what counts as pornography. Any nudity? Full-frontal nudity? I think we can all agree that explicit images of any sex act qualify. Blow jobs definitely count. Now, you can also play this game with the moderate safe search filter on. This is where the longer odds come in. I just tried 'Stacy' with a moderate safe search on, and we got a debatable hit on number 18. Without the filter, images 2-4 are incontestibly hits.

Perhaps we'll need to add a rule or option for 'runs' or 'straights'. Hell, make up your own rules. Only lesbianism counts or only asians or whatever. Hmmm, that gives me an idea...

Gotta Go!

Buster

Eureka MuthaF#$%er!

So, Alex and I have finally figured out the logical thought processes behind choosing what hardware/ machines/ programs our company's president decides to buy into. We were talking about one of our press machines and how it hasn't made any money to date, how our prints are 3 times the cost of others providing the same or better service, and how we as a company keep doggedly throwing money at it only to have to redo jobs several times and destroy all chances of profit.

You know how I think you should figure out whether or not to buy something? Weigh the costs, don't guess, research, get the figures, pay someone else to get it if you can't, get ACCURATE market data, don't expect to be able to CREATE a market that isn't there, don't expect to be able to grow the existing market. Know your competition. How lean is their profit margin? (overhead, machine costs, repair, wages, materials etc.) How do you compare to them in all these areas? RESEARCH,RESEARCH, RESEARCH! Talk to your managers. If they ALL disagree with you, maybe you should look at why and consider that THEY might have a point.

BLAH blah blah. Okay, so you know what strategy he's using? Seriously, I think he's using the

South Park Gnomes Profit Model:

Step 1: Steal underpants
Step 2: ????????????
Step 3: Profit!!!!!

It's all become so clear since we made the connection.

Okay, this is for REAL, this really did happen. We all went to a meeting in our Hamilton store, and the boss got up and started explaining about colour profiling and profits and monkeys on their backs so you can see their bellies (still real, not made up) and then got down to how we do quotes. You know how the entire company does quotes? They crunch the numbers, they figure the costs and our profit margin, they do ALL the math and then...
Put their hands on their guts, throw the numbers out the window and say, THIS price feels right.

Not a single word of a lie. He asked me if that made sense and I said "It fucking scares me."

It still does.

NOW, we HAVE actually been given some tools to standardize pricing and they are improving rapidly. Hurray for the owner! (he's been making all the excel sheets we use - but you can't use them from the Mac because the mac doesn't have excel. Or Word, or any other word processor.)

You know what would be quicker? HIRE A PROFESSIONAL.

Bah*waves hands in disgust* forget it. I'm looking for a new job.

Buster

Dude, 'sall fucked up

I used to think there wasn't any 'politics' at work. I don't know if I was blind or shielded from them or what.  Work politics suck.  They're generally about personal power struggles and not motivated by a desire to help the company or it's employees.  Just mindless, pointless, arbitrary exertions of power.  Designed to frustrate and annoy under the guise of 'security' or what-have-you.

 

Huh, that's interesting. I think my company has adopted a Homeland Security sort of stance.  Which I think is horrendous. And terribly misguided and uninformed. The shit we're doing now seems like half-measures of progress (The owner recently commented to one of his most senior managers "You know what happens if you only go halfway home? You never get home." interesting point in light of my topic) We've finally got a new billing system, so far, its great. I can see how its going to be very useful and a definite time-saver once we get over the learning curve. It does everything from quoting to ordering to invoicing and beyond. You can track the whole job from start to finish.  Which means you have to do all quotes on it, which makes sense, fewer errors, greater consistency, and a standardized format across the company. But we didn't buy enough licenses to let everyone use it.  There's a dance of logging out, logging in, checking to see how many licenses are in use before you log in... blah blah blah. Fecking annoying is what it is. It's driving halfway home.

 

And we've got new computers, finally a standardized tower and programs so we can actually ghost the damn things. They're quite sweet. I love the new monitors. But I can't use Dvorak on them, it's verboten. See previous rant. And only one of the eight people in our office can use the FTP program at any one time. Again, not enough licenses. Just minor things, but they're frustrating and it's happening company wide, and everybody I talk to sounds like they're just FED UP with the nonsense. It's ridiculous, and so unnecessary. This is still a really good company to work for, but they NEED an HR person. The owner is not a very good manager in my opinion, my manager is good, but needs some direction. Actually, what he needs is to not feel like he's always under attack from his boss or our service dept.  I like the service guys, they're a great bunch, they're frustrated because their manager is trying to do everything himself, his actions proclaim he thinks they're incompetent even louder than his words, which leave little to the imagination.  Mr. Sunshine, he ain't. So shit's piling up on everyone's plates here, people are drowning, despair is setting in, apathy ain't far behind and what happens? LOCKDOWN!  Let's see what minor satisfactions do our employees have that we haven't crushed yet? Ooooh! Internet access!  Let's issue a proclamation outlawing it! Let's not just have a meeting to discuss the issue and advise we've had a policy change, here's the new policy, here's why we're doing it, and please sign on the dotted line. No, let's make them feel like criminals. Tell them we've been watching them for the last few months (huh, this internet usage tracking thing seems to work perfectly, but our website is still a piece of shit, and our online planroom doesn't work, and our DPS program is fucking up, and our email's full of spam, and our scanning equipment is ridiculously slow, but let's put those on the backburner - It'll take money and effort to fix those things, and that would only result in increased productivity and job satisfaction Let's shut down their internet instead.) THEN crack down, and spend a week watching them like a hawk.

 

Nice plan. Good management strategy. No, really. It's a tried and true strategy for breaking down people's morale and self-esteem. It's much easier to indoctrinate them then. I'm working in freaking Jonestown.

 

Ah, well. gotta go. I'm posting this through my email (which doesn't send anything anyways, I don't know why I bother) So I expect I'll hear about using company equipment for personal things.

 

Fuck it. Try and tell me THIS ain't work related!

 

Buster Fixxitt