Tag: assholes

Great Sayings – Advertising vs. The News (both suck)

“Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.”

-George Santayana

Over the years, we’ve found ways to skip ads.  We record shows and fast forward through them to watch what we want.

Lately, I’ve been skipping the news because I’m sick of the biased reporting, from either side of the story.

Advertising somehow makes having hemorrhoids, toe fungus, yellow teeth and bad breath seem better.  All of it at the cost of the fast speaker at the end telling you all of the things that will harm you when you use the cure they are selling.

The news tells you all the harm that is happening to you to make you feel worse.  So advertisements during the news hour is a recipe for depression or anger.

I hope all of this crap is just the result of it being an election year and will go away after November.  Unfortunately, since they’ve already gotten rid of Brian Williams, Bill O’Reilly, Matt Lauer, Katy Couric and the rest of the losers and the news still sucks it probably won’t.

I just don’t watch now and I feel better.  Tell me when it changes.

 

Internet Road Rage, You Are Probably a Coward Hiding Behind The Screen

internet road rageWhat is Internet Road Rage?  My definition is that you are willing to engage in hateful, spiteful language aimed at someone whom you either don’t agree with ideologically/religiously/politically/any excuse to vent, or a counter attack to someone who got on you or your ideas.

Here is the caveat.  You most likely wouldn’t act or speak that way in person or to someone’s face with that tone or language.  Most of you have either more self-decency in person or a survival instinct that would prevent you from getting your ass kicked.

Worse, you could or are likely a Porch Dog, one who barks severely, but is no real threat.  In other words, you yap by tapping the keyboard but pose no intellectual threat.

ACTUAL ROAD RAGE

Most people have road rage inside them.   Here is how it works:

Polite drivers may think that dialogue like that is the territory of deranged, out-of-control, or terrible drivers, and maybe they’re right. But according to a new survey from AAA, most drivers in the United States display signs of road rage. So too bad, you supposedly polite drivers.

The survey, published today, polled 2,705 drivers 16 years old and older about their road rage habits. Seventy-eight percent of drivers—more than three-quarters—reported engaging in some kind of aggressive driving maneuver, including tailgating, yelling, honking, gesturing angrily, purposely blocking another vehicle, cutting someone off, confronting someone, and intentionally ramming another car.

The breakdown of each category was fairly unsurprising. Fifty-one percent of drivers reported tailgating at least once; 47 percent reported yelling at least once; 45 percent reported honking at least once. The more bats**t responses—confronting another driver and ramming another vehicle—polled much lower on the list.

INTERNET ROAD RAGE

There is every flavor in the book, more than I can write about.  It started with email flaming.  As soon as forums or ideological websites like Quora, Instagram, Facebook, The Huffpo, Fox News, etc., etc.  The net of it was that people were able to transfer their hate to others online.  The comments are mendacious, eviscerating and frequently ad hominem attacks that most wouldn’t do face to face.

I call B.S. as  most of those people are cowards and wouldn’t stand up to others in real life.  There are of course some that do speak their minds, but they generally have more of a life than pissing on each other online.

What would the other person do?  Back in the schoolyard days, you say something like what is written almost everywhere now and you’d have to fight.  Most people don’t like to fight and there are a few who know very well how to protect themselves.  I’d even bet that a lot of folks who are right wingers fully explore their second amendment rights.  Who wants to walk into that?  There are some who would be very able to kick your ass and would.

WHY DO YOU DO IT?

I use the word you in its’ plural and direct form.  I’m pointing at everyone who reads this because most of you have crossed the line when someone pissed you off.

The reason is that you envision some curtain of invisibility or invincibility because you are typing to a screen.  You wouldn’t say it in person, or wouldn’t say it that way.  Therefore, you are either a coward or a bully.  Most people lose considerable IQ points when you think this way.

So stop it.  Grow up and act like an adult.  Be big enough to pass over some typed letters of venting.  More than likely, there isn’t enough reason for responses that are so harsh.  Before you type it, imagine saying it face to face and see if you would do it, or risk either your reputation or an ass whooping.

can of whoop ass

I Am The Planner for The Analyst Connect Event

I lost this post in the switch from Blogger to WordPress. I’m re-posting it with corrections to accurately represent the facts. I’m retired now and can tell the real story.

Intro:

It’s no secret that Software Group is doing well for IBM.  Analysts should be particularly interested in how and what we are doing, now more than ever. (This part is true, they actually cared back then)

We hold a yearly analyst conference in November to discuss our issues and give the analysts who follow our business the chance to listen to our leaders and ask what they may.

Running the Event:

Each year, one (un)lucky soul gets to be the A/R liaison for this event for logistics with the strategy team.  This year it is yours truly.   I did it once before and it is time consuming and the details are overwhelming.  It’s a job to add to your job.  For the record, I’m honored to do it.

Annotation here. I wasn’t honored to do it because it sucked. They stick this lousy job on someone that they don’t think is busy enough. I’d pulled it off once in 2006 and that was a rousing success. They used this event to fire a colleague (Tom B.). When my manager Amy Loomis told me I was doing it, I said nothing in response for almost half a minute of awkward silence until she said she thought I’d be honored, why I wrote the above. I knew she had it out for me as I made more money for less responsibility than her. I knew it got to her like it did Ray Gorman, two of my worst managers at IBM.

They call it a stretch assignment, but it is a bullshit term for work that they dump on the back of some unlucky person that needs an employee screwing. There were more than 40 A/R reps to take turns at running this and I got stuck with it twice in three years.

It’s a time suck and a thankless job that I didn’t want to do. I did the best job I could to not get fired, but was stymied at many crossroads.

The first one I ran was under Dave Liddell, the best Director of Analyst Relations we ever had. He was reasonable and expected results. This one was under Sarita Torres and Amy, which made the job twice as hard. They couldn’t make decisions and were constantly interfering in the progress in the guise of helping out and giving guidance. Many times I had to not tell them what I was doing to be able to make progress to get the job done. At times it seemed they got in my way or didn’t let me do the job when appearance was at stake.

They clearly were favoring female employees as they put incompetent mangers in place who were a spanner in the works. I missed Dave and Mike Bizovi tremendously during this time suck.

At the end of the conference, it was a party for the retirement of Jerrilyn Glanville, a co-worker. I liked her and she was one of the more competent reps we had. They went on for half an hour at the end of the conference with one brief mention of me running it. It may sound like sour grapes, but that actually worked for me as I hated attention. I was glad they had the girl fest so I could catch a plane to get out of there as quickly as I could. I knew it was thankless if I pulled it off. The only real attention I would have gotten would have been if it screwed up.

I pulled it off flawlessly with maximum social media coverage never seen before at the time. None of them understood it and that got ignored. I was playing the game by a different set of rules. The analysts knew as I was the leading A/R blogger and social media expert in the group. The rest of the A/R team barely understood Twitter at that point.

I had to work around Christy Pappas also. She was a control freak who thought she helped run it when she mostly processed PO’s and got office supplies. She was more of a speed bump I had to avoid to get the job done.

So I made sure that it was run right, regardless of the managerial interference and attempted back stabbing that came with it from management.

After this, my desire to over perform, as I’d done for decades was sucked out of me. I saw how the sausage was made and it stunk. I was glad to get it over with and asked never to do it again. I retired early only 4 years later, something they couldn’t understand.

I’d been saving and paying off every debt so that I could call the shots on when I want to go. When most of them got canned a few years later, they all said they wished they could go out on their own terms like I did. They all were neck deep in debt and mortgages and couldn’t understand how I did it.

Back to the original post.

I’ve decided to blog about it as part of the Social Media outreach.  There will be a second blog residing on My developerWorks (I”ll post the link in an additional blog) so that you can follow our progress and what tools we are going to use.

I’ve been working on it now for a few weeks, but we meet with the powers that be today which really kicks off the event in terms of work to do.

Request for Advice:

Since two way interaction is actual communication, I’m open for (reasonable) suggestions from the analysts who want to find out more and interact prior to the event.  It will only make for a better conference.

We’ll have a closed portal only to those who are registered, so sorry competition, there are some issues off limits.   We’ll provide tons of data and make the conference easier to attend and navigate than ever.

Wish us luck and don’t be afraid to send me suggestions.  Jsimonds@us.ibm.com

More annotation: I put the request for advice to be able to show the girls in charge that I was working with the analysts. That way I could do what I wanted under the guise of Analyst input. It was the only way I could get things done when the girls started meddling in my work. I set the agenda and made the rules to get it done so they couldn’t screw me like they did Tom.

They don’t hold it anymore because it turned into a gabfest. The analysts cared less and less because it was a show rather than an information exchange. I think Covid finally killed it along with firing all the employees who didn’t work at the home office.

At the end of the day, I was smart enough to not let them screw me. I gave them a highly successful and well organized conference. All the time I knew I had to go through the motions, but also knew it was bullshit from start to finish.

The faces of humanity

Update: I posted this in 2005.  My daughters then bf got bent out of shape because I spoke the truth.  He was going to write a rebuttal, but didn’t.  This was before the Kardashian sex tape or their awful show that I never have watched.  It turns out that this was right all along and he’s done a 180 now that he is in the working world.  My sister has lost everything now, but due to financial mismanagement and the inability of her husband to keep a job, not due to natural disasters That is a different story.

I was going to call it the 2 faces of humanity, just thinking of what the folks in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are going through bringing out the good and bad in some, but it occurred to me that there are many flavors of this subject. But for this post, I’ll concentrate on the simple good and bad.

What is happening in those states is devastating. I can only mildly relate as we’ve had some bad hurricanes here (Fran comes to mind in NC where some are still recovering) and a recent ice storm where we were out of power for a week, but it is bad there. My sister lives near Lake Pontchartrain and has likely lost her house. Her family got out in time and are living with my parents right now, lucky them. It’s not the same for those who have lost lives, jobs, family and other things like heirlooms and photo’s which are forever gone.

These catastrophe’s bring out the good in some folks. Already there are local fisherman driving around in bass boats rescuing people from their houses. There are organizations which are gathering supplies, people lining up to donate time and money to help. I read this morning where you can donate like the Red Cross , Samaritans Purse, and other good groups who are sincere in helping out. FEMA is organizing for the biggest relief effort ever. For those that get my feed via RSS, I’ll be visiting del.ico.us today to add them to my list.

Then there is the other side. I’ve seen reports of looters, the construction scammers, insurance fraud and many others. This is also unfortunately something that raises it’s ugly head during these times. I hope that this is kept in check.

Then the way we can act hit me. Through the power of DVR (i was scanning and deleting shows), I happened to watch back to back the hurricane coverage then the reality show, “filthy rich cattle drive” where the spoiled brat kids of celebrity’s are “roughing” it on a cattle drive. This is like going to a zoo to watch animals. These kids are the most narcissistic people I’ve ever seen, worried about how they look, trying to get make up, dry cleaning and Fed Ex in the middle of nowhere and me, me, me. This was supposed to be about helping a charity.  One of them of course was Kim Kardashian.

It’s just to ironic that these two faces of humanity are happening at the same time.

Natural disasters have been happening since the creation of the earth. There was the tsunami last year for example. Fortunately, people have stepped up and helped others through the course of history and I hope and pray it happens here.

A lesson that strikes me (besides the obvious of striving to be good) is to be prepared and to be able to take care of yourself in the many situations life will present to you. Acts of God like this (even for skeptics, this is the clause in your homeowners insurance) will continue, so dealing with it is inevitable. Being ready in anything is half the battle sometimes. Appreciate your family, friends and experiences in life. It’s times like this that remind you how important and fleeting they can be.

So it’s off to my now seemingly trivial day when compared to those now trying to put their lives back together.

Update on Sis: just heard from her and the house made it, but she won’t be able to go back for months. Thanks to those folks who sent regards.