Humor

More blog spam

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Some more gems…  I just can’t help it…

From hairremovalforall
“I love this site, countless occasions I go to web sites and they’re only stuffed with spam. Though, the website here is actual good quality”

Don’t you mean, countless occasions you go to web sites and stuff them with spam?

From Corliss Ontiveros
“Im impressed, I ought to say. Extremely rarely do I come across a weblog thats both informative and entertaining, and let me let you know, youve hit the nail on the head. Your blog is significant; the issue is some thing that not enough people are talking intelligently about. Im definitely happy that I stumbled across this in my search for one thing relating to this problem.”

I seriously want to know what issue?!?  What problem?!?  And, why would you search for just one thing relating to your problem?!?

From Miss Shively
“Im impressed, I ought to say. Quite rarely do I come across a blog thats each informative and entertaining, and let me let you know, youve hit the nail on the head. Your weblog is vital; the issue is one thing that not sufficient men and women are talking intelligently about. Im definitely happy that I stumbled across this in my search for one thing relating to this problem.”

I think Corliss Ontiveros and Miss Shively might be conspiring together…

From slot games
“Best Suggestion Of your Week: When going by means of airport customs and you happen to be asked “do you have any firearms with you?” don’t reply “what do you will need?””

Oh, man.  This one had so much potential.  I was really hooked as soon as I saw airport customs and firearms – why couldn’t you come up with a better reply?

From body acne treatment
“Aw, this was a very nice post. In concept I would like to put in writing like this moreover – taking time and actual effort to make a very good article… however what can I say… I procrastinate alot and by no means appear to get one thing done.”

Well, you don’t seem to have trouble posting spam on people’s blogs.

From adult acne treatment
“An interesting discussion is value comment. I believe that it’s best to write extra on this matter, it won’t be a taboo topic however usually individuals are not enough to talk on such topics. To the next. Cheers”

I don’t even know what to say to this one..

From Dennis Dutt
“Can I simply say what a relief to find somebody who really is aware of what theyre talking about on the internet. You positively know methods to bring an issue to mild and make it important. More people need to read this and perceive this side of the story. I cant consider youre no more well-liked because you undoubtedly have the gift.”

Hmm… “methods to bring an issue to mild”…  “I cant consider youre no more well-liked”…  Because there’s a double negative there, does that mean I’m well-liked?

A pep talk in every drop (TM)

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I’ve been fighting off a cold this week, and it’s the kind that starts with a nagging sore throat and clogged up sinuses.  So, I went for the Halls.  Though I have half a dozen bags of Breezers, I was out of the real cough drops, and that’s what I needed, so I had to buy a new package of Mountain Menthol.  I was surprised to notice that Halls has taken a sort of fortune cookie/cheerleader approach to communicating with consumers with sort throats.  The wrappers are full of brief motivational messages.

– Tough is your middle name.

– Flex your “can do” muscle.

– Get through it.

– Seize the day.

– Impress yourself today.

– Nothing you can’t handle.

– You can do it and you  know it.

– You got it in you.

– Don’t try harder. Do harder!

– Put your game face on.

– Let’s hear your battle cry.

I’m not sure how I feel about this.  First, I don’t have a battle cry, and even if I can do it and I know it, that doesn’t mean I want to do it when I’m sick.  Sometimes I like to think “tough” is my middle name, but not so often.  My “game face” when I’m sick is non-existent.  Even when I do just “get through it,” most people know because I can be a pretty whiny sick person.

Maybe they’re just trying to be cute.  Then again, maybe their marketers think if they push us to keep going when we’re sick, we’ll need to buy more and more Halls because it will take longer to get better.  Either way, I go through stretches of semi-addiction to Halls every year when I get a cold, so these messages will neither make me buy their product more, nor will it make me buy it less.

I think I would be much more entertained, though, if the messages were more along these lines:

– Tell them it can wait.

– Threaten to cough on them.

– If you must go to work, pass us out in meetings.

– Your bed is calling you…

– Stay home!

– Show off your blue tongue.

I will likely be coming back to your blog for extra soon

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Well, guys, you’ll be happy to learn that I am exceeding expectations, creating something that is needed on the web, and have received not just a thumbs-up, but an enormous thumbs up for my labors!  Seriously, though – do you get blog spam like this?  It makes my day!

“I’m also writing to let you understand of the nice encounter my cousin’s girl experienced going through yuor web blog. She noticed too many details, most notably how it is like to possess an incredible helping heart to get folks quite simply fully understand specific multifaceted things. You really did more than my expectations. I appreciate you for giving the warm and friendly, healthy, educational not to mention easy tips on your topic to Kate.”

“You really make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be actually something that I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me. I am looking forward for your next post, I’ll try to get the hang of it!”

“Youre so cool! I dont suppose Ive read something like this before. So nice to search out someone with some original thoughts on this subject. realy thank you for beginning this up. this web site is something that is needed on the web, someone with a bit originality. helpful job for bringing something new to the web!”

“Hey! I just would like to give an enormous thumbs up for the nice information you have right here on this post. I will likely be coming back to your blog for extra soon.”

On workplace lingo

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So, the lingo at my new job is kind of amazing.  I have worked in technology for more than fifteen years, so you’d think I would not be surprised by the language I hear at a software development shop.  That is so not the case!  I find it highly entertaining, so below are a few terms, phrases, and general oddities of speech and language that I’m hearing on a daily basis.

My boss, the one that walks barefoot, managed to use both the phrase “think outside the bun,” and the term, “quiesces” in the same sentence yesterday.  He was responding to someone else’s question about what we might do if a particular solution to a problem we have didn’t work.  He said, “Well, then, we’ll just have to think outside the bun, and if the application quiesces, it will all be moot, anyway.”  He seems to have a real penchant for sayings.  I know I should come up with a better descriptor than “sayings,” but I just can’t quite classify what he says as analogies, metaphors, similes, or euphemisms.  To my mind, they just don’t fit perfectly in any of those buckets.

Then, today, we had a “lunch and learn.”  For you non-corporate types, that’s just a way of saying everyone has to work through lunch to listen to someone explain something you may or may not already understand because the powers that be cannot justify taking away from your normal work time to do something entirely internal, which is not billable to some client.  This lunch and learn was about how to present the company if you were manning a booth at a big software trade show.  Part of the presentation was to discuss the various “messages” we would want to convey to the innocent people that wander too close to our booth.  We are considered a very high-end software consulting company, and we don’t operate like many other consulting companies do – where some big company calls on the consulting firm, and the consulting firm ships a person or three over to the client’s location to do whatever work they need done.  Instead, we build long term relationships, and we do all our work in-house.  That background is only important for you to have some understanding of what my boss tossed out as his opinion of what our company is – or is not.  He said, “We are not a body shop!  We are project based!  Give us your tired, your hungry, your poor……Mm Hmm”

Some other terms that have been bandied about in the past week and a half that are interesting…

When someone’s availability is in question, you do not say, “Does so-and-so have time to do this work?”  You say, “Does so-and-so have cycles.”  And in my case, I received an email that asked not only if I had cycles, but if I “had enough to prosecute this activity.”

In the information age, it is a common problem to have way too much information lying around.  Often, the information is out of date, or there are seventeen versions of some document, none of which tells the whole picture, and some of which completely contradict each other.  My new company’s way to handle this is to insist that a core value is to only recognize a single version of the truth.  I haven’t yet decided what cult-like comparison I can make on this one, but what it really means is that we are all supposed to put information only in one place, and we should worship that place.  There are actually multiple places when it comes down to it – document storage systems, project status forms on a website, time tracking entries in an accounting system, project plans on a server.  My boss calls these “first-order artifacts,” and I can’t tell you how many times I hear the phrase, “one truth,” or the phrase “single truth” every day.

I have begun jotting down the amazing phrases I hear every day, because I know I would forget most of them otherwise.  All I can say is that I’m thrilled that I will not only be making money working at this job, but I will also be expanding my vocabulary, significantly, it seems, on a daily basis.  More on this as it develops…

New people

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So, at my new job, I’ve certainly met some interesting new characters people.  If I were the wuc, I could write amazing and hilarious things about my new coworkers.  In truth, I know I will never be so funny, but, here are a few anecdotes, anyway.

My new boss is a slightly quirky guy.  He sometimes digresses into a personal conversation with himself while he’s talking to someone else.  He does so mostly under his breath, and eventually says, “But, that’s neither here nor there.”  He also ends practically every conversation with, “Mmm Hmm,” even if there is absolutely nothing to affirm at the end of the discussion.  Last, he walks around barefoot a lot.  Well, not completely barefoot – he wears socks, but must not be so fond of shoes.

On Monday, two new tech guys started working with us.  I’m not positive what their titles are, but that’s besides the point.  One of them is clearly from the I-live-in-a-basement-or-some-other-such-tech-nerd-cave tribe.  In technical discussions, training sessions where he is being introduced to new things, even – he is eager to talk and talk, but if I picture him in a social setting, I imagine he says few words – at least without drawing puzzled stares from listeners.  He could stand to wash his hair.  He is a stocky guy, has a very round face with quite small glasses that don’t seem sufficiently big to cover his field of vision.

The other is a very small guy – short, petite, I’d almost say.  He has an accent I have yet to place, is less gregarious in meetings, but asks a lot of questions – probably a good thing when you’re trying to pick things up.  When the answers seem sort of obvious, he tends to try to make clear that is exactly what he assumed.  He, too, wears glasses, but his are really, really big glasses that seem almost as big as his small head, and they are strong.  When you look at him face on, they magnify his eyes in a buggish sort of way.

DISCLAIMER:  In the unlikely event that any of my coworkers ever discovers this blog, and then discovers that I write it, I share these descriptions with the utmost sense of professional affection and absolutely no intention of offending anyone.

Any characters you’d like to share?

Interference

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I knew it was coming.  This new job is draining me of most of my energy, not to mention my time.  I shouldn’t complain – there are still way too many people in the world that can’t get a job these days.  But, I’m sitting here yawning endlessly, determined to get at least a quick post out, and realizing how much harder this is going to be to keep up with.  It’s not that I dislike the job – at least not yet.  It’s only been a week.  It’s that there aren’t enough hours in the day.

So, lacking anything of substance to share tonight, I chose to surf a few weird news websites.  I’ve mentioned before how odd some of the news stories can be from the corner of the country I hail from – Wisconsin.  I used to get my fix for these improbable stories at Odd News, but they don’t have a search feature, and that annoys me because I want to be able to search on Wisconsin, or Sheboygan – which currently has a mayor that refuses to leave office although he recently went on a drinking binge, got in a fight, and passed out in a bar in a nearby town.  Tonight, I stumbled on NEWS of the WEIRD, which looks very, very promising.  One search on Wisconsin, and I found so many brilliant stories it was hard to choose which one to share here.  Here’s one that ties in nicely with Sheboygan’s drunken mayor, though.

“Prevailing medical authority 20 years ago warned that few humans could survive blood-alcohol readings above .40 (percent), but in recent years, drivers have rather easily survived higher numbers (curiously, many from Wisconsin, such as the man in February in Madison, Wis., with a .559). (In 2007, an Oregon driver was found unconscious, but survived, with a .72 reading.) The plethora of high numbers might indicate mistaken medical teaching, or nonstandard machine measurements — or an evolutionary hardiness in American drinkers. [Star Tribune (Minneapolis), 2-15-2011]” (copied from http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/nw110508.html)

In Wisconsin, I’d have to say I vote for “evolutionary hardiness” – how else do you expect people to keep warm in the winter?

Any great stories from your neck of the woods?

 

Blog Spam

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Sometimes the spam posts I get on this blog seem more interesting than my own posts.  In a ridiculous sort of way.  Check this out:

“Pleasant becoming visiting your website yet again, it has been weeks in my opinion. Nicely this written content that will i have been recently continued to wait intended for too long. I need this piece of writing in order to in depth my mission on the inside university, and it has similar subject matter jointly with your article. Cheers, beneficial share.”

I particularly like the second sentence.  It’s almost as hard as reading Middle English, don’t you think?  I want to know what software creates this nonsense – it would be fun to take something I’ve written and run it through this word shredder to see what comes out the other side.  Maybe that’s what happened to my blog title.  It ran away to join the word shredder circus and came slinking home just a mess of characters that no longer make sense.

UPDATE:  I just realized that my messed up blog title doesn’t display as messed up in all browsers, so I thought I’d share a picture of it here.  It’s quite hilarious, when you consider the tagline beneath the title.

Mr. Faucet says, “Please be gentle.”

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This is the phrase on the handmade water-splotched bled-ink piece of paper taped to the wall above the sink in the kitchen at my new job.  What is it about working in an office that turns otherwise normal people into cheesy caricatures of themselves, creating signs that are only appropriate for a four year old?  I only wish the maker of the Mr. Faucet sign at least included a little cartoon picture of a faucet with arms and legs and a smiley face somewhere.

And what about this picture?  I snapped it from inside the bathroom stall with my iPhone.  Should I be worried about the fact that someone feels the need to decorate the insides of the bathroom stalls with calming images?  

When I used to work at the marketing agency, I managed a forty-something Office Manager that would ask me if she could go to the bathroom.  What do you mean, can you go to the bathroom?  Of course you can go to the bathroom.  We’re not in third grade here!  If that alone weren’t enough, the actual words she used were, “I need to go tee-tee.  Is that OK?”  TEE-TEE.  TEE-TEE!  I kid you not.

I once had to referee a difficult discussion between two other employees.  A newbie that had just joined the team asked grass-phobia girl to go out to lunch one day.  Not realizing she was committing herself to become a stalking victim, she agreed to go.  It was an awkward lunch, and grass-phobia girl tried extra hard to avoid one-on-one situations with the newbie from that point forward.  The newbie, however, believed that their single lunch meant they must now be BFF’s.  She stalked grass-phobia girl over instant messenger, tried to corner her for conversations at lunch, hung around after work waiting for everyone else to leave so they could talk.  She did not understand how one day they were BFF’s and the next, she was being blown off.  Eventually, grass-phobia girl confided in me because she just couldn’t take it anymore.  I had to sit them both down and explain to the crazy new girl that not everyone at work becomes best friends, and she needed to respect grass-phobia girl’s wishes to focus on work, not lurid boy and fashion gossip.

I just don’t get it.  Is there something in the air as soon as the corporate door swings shut behind us that taints our ability to act like adults?

Great posts from around the blogosphere

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I noticed on Junebug’s blog that on Sundays, she features blog posts she’s enjoyed from around the blogosphere.  It seems like a great idea, so I’m going to steal it (thanks, Junebug) – not necessarily for every Sunday, but we’ll see.  For this morning, though, here are some of the posts/blogs I’ve enjoyed the most over the past month:

The Wuc – The Wuc’s blog is the funniest thing I’ve read in as long as I can remember.  If you’re not already reading this, do not waste another minute of your life without the sarcasm, wit, and brilliance of this hilarious blog.  I recommend reading ‘About the Wuc’ and the descriptions of all the characters she writes about under ‘who the wuc is…’ before you dive into the posts.  BTW, this is one of those blogs where it is absolutely worth your time to dig into the older posts.  You’ll be doubled over and addicted before you know it.

jonellert – The Taming of the Ground Squirrel – This four-part story will leave you in stitches as jon describes his personal battle with an adorable ground squirrel that is tearing up his prized yard. A must-read. I’ve linked to part 4 of the series, but just follow the links back to part 1.

Bottle Caps and Broken Bits – Check out this brief bit of worldly advice. Simple, but oh, so wise.

And, finally, a few posts about the 80s, which I happen to believe trumps all in music and ridiculous fashions. This post on great 80s films took me back, as did this post on the origins of MTV.

Happy reading. I hope you enjoy these posts as much as I did!

Cat Power

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I have a friend who is crazy for bacon.  I know.  Who’s not?  But my friend’s obsession is extreme (most of them are, like her grass phobia) – so, my partner once took a picture of a package of bacon using my iPhone and associated that image with my friend.  When she calls, I see crispy fried bacon.  All good. She called today, which prompted me to remember another case of iPhone hijacking, but some back story is required.

I’ve written before about the fact that I worked for a marketing agency. The place had trouble with turnover. Someone recently did an official count of how many people were hired and left in the past couple of years. The company averages about 20 employees, but 32 people have come and gone in less than 3 years. Amazing, I know. Anyway, a few years ago, the President of our company hired a person who we were told was a whiz-bang expert at Client Service, which is sort of the holy grail function in a marketing agency, and a role that had gone unfilled for a long time. This guy was awesome, we were told. He had years and years of experience and had started and sold multiple companies, one of which turned into a pretty major player in the digital marketing space. He was going to be our savior, especially since there was a guy that worked in Client Service that all of us in Production secretly wanted to kill. Well, it wasn’t even that much of a secret, actually. This guy made our lives more miserable than a vegetarian eating liver and onions would be.

A few months in, none of us could see the whiz-bang in our new SVP. We didn’t get it. We didn’t get him. He was very Texas, and we were very San Francisco. He liked to talk, but he didn’t understand what we did and he didn’t like to do any actual work.  He was very polite, and the evil and small New Yorker he inherited was meaner than Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. Our “savior” was ineffective, forgetful, and entirely unable to exert any control over The Devil. So, we began to ignore him and go on about our frustrating work. One week a handful of us were in Las Vegas for some client that had a display at a big tech conference. Between courses at a late and luxurious dinner, the big boss checked his email and just stared at his phone – so we all followed suit. Below is the exchange we found in our inboxes, names removed for the sake of privacy:

Email 1
From: Evil New Yorker with Anger Management Issues
To: Entire Staff
Subject: Stuck in Charlotte

Sorry for the mass email, but my quick-in-quick-out has turned into a nightmare. I’m stuck spending the night in Charlotte. My brick is dead and my cell is about to croak. Supposedly flying back to NYC in the morning, so hopefully I’ll be settled by the time you all read this, but if anyone’s looking for me, now you know.

[Guatemalan], we need to cancel the [big alcohol brand] call in the morning.

-The Devil

Nothing big here, nothing to worry about.  Unfortunate for The Devil, but nothing that should cause the endless staring our boss was still engaged in.  BTW, “brick” is the term we used to describe the smart phones our company forced us to use due to their unwieldy size, shape, and weight.

Email 2
From: Whiz-Bang CS SVP (aka Boss of The Devil)
To: Entire Staff
Subject: Re: Stuck in Charlotte

In times like these you need a strong leader (such as myself) and:

  • something warm to drink It should be brown and from the UK; not yello
  • A place to stay the night (remember the guidelines!!)
  • and the knowledge that I will personally help you out of this mess in any way that I can– go to JD’sBBQ and have five shiner bocks, ribs and some potatoes.Take it from me, it’s better than havng a goat’s tongue wake you up in a dirt airport.
  • YOU’LL BE OK. If I can help, lend some support or whatever call me at home ((9X7X2x 3O7–1212 or cell
  • I will however be in a deep ambien trans while my wife is in NYC living the cool life.

But, you an always trust in me –I’m here for you ===^..^=== (cat power !!!)

Are you confused yet?  I have not modified a single bit of the email above other than to change the final few digits of the very weirdly formatted phone number.  I have included it here in all its glory – spaces missing, punctuation missing, letters missing, half words, and the brilliant closing emoticon-ish image of a cat with whiskers.  Eventually, our stares turned to puzzled glances at each other, and finally the big boss broke the silence.  “Hahahahahahahahahaha.  He must be drunk.”  It was not unusual for employees to be drunk – that’s a well known activity that goes with the marketing territory.  Work hard, play hard.  Or, work til you think you’re going to die, then go drown yourself in whiskey.  This was different, though.  Drinking was a group activity, so acceptable drunkenness occurred only when you were with someone else from the company.  And even then, we had standards.  Crazy drunken emails were not part of the package.

The next morning, the entire company was abuzz about the email.  We were obsessed with trying to figure out exactly what Whiz-Bang SVP meant by “cat power!!!”  The Devil had been stuck in Charlotte – was it an obscure reference to the Carolina Panthers?  One brave soul decided to ask.  He said, “When you wrote “cat power!!!”, did you mean “cat power!!!” [said in the style of an innocent high school cheerleader raising a pom-pom high in the air], or did you mean “cat power!!!” [said in the style of the Incredible Hulk]?”  Whiz-Bang SVP replied with something somewhere in the middle, so we were no closer to an answer.  We did print out copies of the email, though, and tape them on the walls around our desks to help raise our spirits on dark days.

A few weeks later, the entire company gathered in San Francisco for some meetings.  We ended one day with an exhausting scavenger hunt through Chinatown and North Beach and our significant others and friends joined us for dinner and drinks.  After we’d had a few, someone convinced my partner to go talk to Whiz-Bang SVP about “cat power.”  He adored my partner, so we all thought she’d have the best luck.  She spoke with him for some time – probably at least 15 minutes, so we were hopeful she’d come back with an answer.  All she learned was that one of the SVP’s hobbies was rescuing cats – a very particular breed of cat I can no longer remember the name of.  She’d had to use every ounce of self-control she possessed to keep a straight face throughout this lengthy discussion of lost cats, and it was all for nothing.  Perhaps he was trying to will the strength of these rescued cats to The Devil, stuck in an airport.  We still had no clear answer, and to this day, no one really knows what “cat power!!!” meant, let alone how the Whiz-Bang SVP knew what it was like to be awoken by a licking goat in a dirt airport.  He “resigned” a couple months later, so we’ll probably never know.  I do, however, still have his phone number saved in my iPhone, and were he to call me, a picture of my own sleeping cat would appear on the screen.