I was nominated for handling the kids’ activities for our company picnic. Fourteen kids were expected, most in the 4-7 age range. My first idea was sidewalk chalk, an introduction to a lifelong career as a graffitist. Unfortunately, the picnic spot was nowhere near sidewalk. Using the paved parking lot also seemed like a bad […]
Fun dough at the company picnic Read More »
Dear WaMu — can I call you WaMu? If I seem snippy, it’s because I’m that perturbed with your web site’s user interface to download my transactions. I’m writing you because I need to vent. I don’t expect anything more than a form letter back from Firstname LastInitial concatenating various blurbs+ to express unspecific sympathies
Dear Washington Mutual Read More »
If I walk into a store to buy a pair of jeans and I choose a pair labeled in my size, the odds are pretty good that they will fit. The style may be atrocious, like the baggy butt look, an idea that I hope goes away when the designers sober up, or the jeans
Tredecillion talked about a horror of my current role: filling out compliance and regulatory forms. Requests for these come up about once a week, when my salespeople or I are working with a enormous company, government department, or research facility. The Bureau of Self-justification (BS for short), which has ensconced itself in the purchasing loop
Two Rows and Eighty-five Columns of Pure Terror. Read More »
I’m on a mini-trip to a training class in San Francisco. Well, technically Millbrae, as I’m carless, but within a mile of the airport. And only 0.8 miles from one of two In-N-Out burger joints in Northern CA. (While fine, I’m afraid it didn’t live up to my classmates’ hype.) The class is cool, and
Can’t sleep while traveling… Read More »
I’m coining a new term, fomplicated, to describe a product that requires deliberate intervention and expertise from a customer beyond what any sane human being would consider reasonable. The word is a contraction of a well-known English expletive rhyming with firetrucking and the word “complicated.” Although it’s applicable to a variety of things, I’ve been
During my brief “down time,” I attended to a pent up home improvement chore – cleaning the downstairs carpets. Ever since the kids became mobile, prolific artists, the carpets have been subjected to unspeakable abuse. Milk has been spilt, soil has been grounded in, and dry erase marker has embellished. I’m not a neat freak,
My soon-to-be-former* work laptop is perpetually bogged down each day by the impossible trinity+ of software applications: eTrust anti-virus, Outlook, and Instant Messenger. I knew I had a meeting in 20 minutes, but couldn’t remember where. Twenty minutes is just long enough to let the machine get its morning regimen of disk-thrashing, cpu-spinning calisthenics, after
Elvis is about to leave the building Read More »