Business Vocabulary for 2k6

Normally I simply abhore forwarded emails, and I can count on my fingers the number of times I've actually deemed a forward forward-worthy and continued on the chain. This is one of those emails. For those of you that work in a cube-farm office building or the financial services industry, you'll definitely understand.

Essential vocabulary additions for the workplace (and elsewhere)!!!

1. BLAMESTORMING : Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline
was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

2. SEAGULL MANAGER : A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise,
craps on everything, and then leaves.

3. ASSMOSIS : The process by which some people seem to absorb success
and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.

4. SALMON DAY : The experience of spending an entire day swimming
upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.

5. CUBE FARM : An office filled with cubicles

6. PRAIRIE DOGGING : When someone yells or drops something loudly in a
cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going
on.

7. MOUSE POTATO : The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch
potato.

8. SITCOMs : Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What
Yuppies get into when they have children and one of them stops working
to stay home with the kids.

9. STRESS PUPPY : A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and
whiny.

10. SWIPEOUT : An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless
because magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.

11. XEROX SUBSIDY : Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's
workplace.

12. IRRITAINMENT : Entertainment and media spectacles that are Annoying
but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The J-Lo and Ben
wedding (or not) was a prime example - Michael Jackson, another...

13. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE : The fine art of whacking the crap out of an
electronic device to get it to work again.

14. ADMINISPHERE : The rarefied organizational layers beginning just
above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are
often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were
designed to solve.

15. 404 : Someone who's clueless. >From the World Wide Web error Message
"404 Not Found," meaning that the requested site could not be located.

16. GENERICA : Features of the American landscape that are exactly the
same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, and
subdivisions.

17. OHNOSECOND : That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize
that you've just made a BIG mistake. (Like after hitting send on an
e-mail by mistake)

18. WOOFS : Well-Off Older Folks.

High definition static and presidential elections (in this case, they’re not the same thing)

My folks’ TV went out last Tuesday so the quest for a new on immediately ensued (dad really looked sad – like we had to put down the dog or something). The following day they brought home a 36” plasma screen flat panel HDTV. *YUM* Mom and I take it out of the box as dad starts salivating, and as soon as I hook it up, plut it in, and turn it on…static.

“Wow…even static looks better in high def!” says the paternal unit.

No, old man, it doesn’t. Well, maybe it does, but that’s not what he was looking at. The folks didn’t understand that HDTV didn’t mean what we were watching was high def. It just meant a silly little distorted picture of normal TV. See, they didn’t order the high def package from the cable company and dad would sooner pull all his teeth out individually with pliers than pay more to watch television. The TV went back the next day (insert “shot the dog” look here).

At this point mom starts doing research, visiting 5 different stores, talking to different people, looking up dimensions of boxes and televisions, reviewing articles about what the FCC intends to do with TV in the next five years…just to purchase a television that, no matter what, won’t cost her more than $500. Three days of this goes on over $500 when only four hours went into the original $2k purchase. The way she was stewing over this you’d have thought she was single-handedly choosing the next president of the United States!

Anywho, they finally got their TV, a 32” flat screen unit, and they are much pleased with it. Which, I guess, is pretty good considering that I’m not about to package up another TV and truck it back for them. It shows a clear picture and can veto legislation. Live with it.

I know, I've been a slacker

Yes, I'm keenly aware I've not blogged for a while. I've been pushing back my duties to my blog as going back to work after vacation really hit like a freight train. People keep telling me I should write more, though, and the blog is one of the few ways that I actually enjoy doing so on a regular basis so this isn't going away anytime soon...unless, of course, Google starts to charge for this thing at which point I'll drop it like it's a funnel web spider.

Note: Bah. Go figure. When I try to publish this a little yeller icon appears saying it couldn't connect to Blogger.com. Stupid free blog. I demand service!

Note 2: An hour later, it seems to work. Cheers!

Sorry for the delay folks

Yes, I'm keenly aware I've not blogged for a while. I've been pushing back my duties to my blog as going back to work after vacation really hit like a freight train. People keep telling me I should write more, though, and the blog is one of the few ways that I actually enjoy doing so on a regular basis so this isn't going away anytime soon...unless, of course, Google starts to charge for this thing at which point I'll drop it like it's a funnel web spider.

Bah. Go figure. When I try to publish this a little yeller icon appears saying it couldn't connect to Blogger.com. Stupid free blog. I demand service!

This wouldn't be news anywhere else

After 143 consecutive days without measurable rain, a fast-moving storm raced across California only to get to AZ and hit the e-brake for a while. We already broke our single-day rainfall record at the airport with 1.29 inches and counting (still 85 minutes left in our day here). Some places in the metro area even got snow, and up in the middle plateau areas (roughly 5500-6500 feet) they received 28 inches in 24 hours. Here's some pics snapped from around the metro area today...



This one is actually a palm tree with water on the lens...
Evidently ending 143 days without precipitation is enough for even horses to celbrate for...

Vegas, baby!

By this time tomorrow I'll be in Vegas, and by this time next week I hope to have pics of the trip posted somewhere for you to view. Of course, many of you will probably have been there yourselves, so I don't know that you'd be interested. In any case, I'll post when I get back.

You take the bad with the good, I guess

Good: Baseball, at least right now. I love spring training and the early part of the season, but (forgive me for saying this) I think baseball loses its mind in the post-season. But it's baseball.


Bad: Joe Morgan. I wish he'd get picked up by some station in Alaska that would be thrilled to hear his stories about Houston and Cincinnati because I just don't care about them.

I know why I'm good at this now

Back in 1993 a buddy of mine introduced me to my first RTS game - Dune 2. It was the predecessor of the Command and Conquer series... flawed in some respects, but the Dune engine itself was years ahead of it's time. In any case, I ended up spending hours and hours at a time staring at brightly colored little units on a screen doing this and that - whatever I wanted them to do, really - while enemy folk tried to blow up my work. At it's core, it boiled down to how quickly I could manufacture good guys and tell them to shoot at the bad guys. If I hit the ground running and got a good start, I won. If I didn't, I didn't.

It occurred to me that what I do today is largely the same thing. I spend my day staring at brightly colored little rectangles on a screen that represent people answering phones, email, and envelope items - or whatever I want them to do, really - while enemy folk (a.k.a. "members") try to either destroy our work or bog down my team. At it's core, it boils down to how quickly we can manufacture good guys and put them in place to handle the load. If we hit the ground running and get a good start, we win. If we don't, I'm fired.

Today General Patton himself couldn't have managed the war on the phones any better. Five people called in to start the morning. Short on captains (supervisors). Veteran employees performing less than efficiently. Key pieces of software going haywire. Over 22,000 new compromised cards. Credit cards being mysteriously reissued and cross-branded unbeknownst to the department that handles such things. Increased Monday call volume. Preparing more troops to switch to a new system without personel from Training. What, is that a bad day? Hmmm...lemme just move some of these brightly colored rectangles where they need to be, and move this back here, and put that over there, and...yup, there we go! Just as my boss sat down with his boss and his boss' boss to discuss the situation, the queue was cleared. "What back log of calls?"

I hear it's good to make your boss look good, and I owe it to Westwood Studios.

An Interesting Question

Someone at work came up to me today and posed this question:

If you had all your senses taken away but one, which one would you keep?

Something of a sobering thought, yes?

There were seven of us that were asked that and after a few minutes we all independently offered the same response. Take a look inside the comments section and see how yours compares.

A dark week

Every year annual raises are granted based on the two semi-annual appraisals our employees receive. The second one is based on the months of July-December, and typically delivered the last week of January. If an employee receives a rating of "Needs Immediate Improvement" they then have 30 days to turn around whatever deficiencies were stated in their appraisal. This week marks the 30-day mark for most of those employees. Some turned it around. Some didn't. The firings started Tuesday and haven't stopped yet.

I had to pull the trigger on one today. The decision itself was easy - about as cut and dry as they come. Even relaying the decision to her, although certainly not fun, went smoothly. The hardest part, though, was taking the elevator ride down to the bottom floor and escorting her out. That never stops getting awkward.

The joys of being in management.

This same week I find out that an employee of mine who's pregnant with her first child had one of the early ultrasounds on Monday. Not good news. Evidently there's something terribly wrong with the child's heart, and the doctors have recommended termination. If she carries it to term the child will need several surgeries over the first few months, and if it survives, they've said there's no reason to believe the child will live past three to four years old. A decision needs to be made in the next couple weeks, if not sooner.

Ah, the joys of being in management.

I really do enjoy my job and I love my team, but you take the bad with the good.