Sample Issue of Sea Power Magazine On Line

The folks at Defense Tech have posted a link to a sample of the electronic version of Sea Power Magazine, if you're at all interested. See it here. Some intriguing stuff.

MS's Euro Issues Still Not Solved

As Microsoft continues to argue with the EU over various issues too boring to contemplate, we were reminded that way back in the nineties, Bill Gates got pied while banging the PR drum on the continent. Our J. Francis McLuggage talked about the holes in Gates' security measures.

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GATES PASTRY ATTACK SPURS NEW CONCERNS

Ann Arbor: In the wake of a Belgian cream cake attack on Microsoft Mogul Bill Gates, industrial security experts are openly talking about a whole new level of threat from terrorists, criminals, the deranged, and consumer advocates. That Gates was sufficiently vulnerable to be hit, not once but three times, with potentially lethal doses of sugar and dairy products just points up the extent to which corporate executives are leaving themselves open to assault. But what measures can a CEO take? Wood-Charles News Service talked to our own J. Francis McLuggage, chairman of the vast WCA holdings.

WCNS: What did you think of the attack on Gates?

McL: The man has no moves. If you watch the footage -- which I have, over and over -- you'll note that his right hand moves in the direction of the incoming custard. Classic panic response, trying to ward off the projectile rather than carrying out his training.

WCNS: Training?

McL: Sure. All Microsoft execs go through extensive threat-reduction training, and they all carry. I happen to know that Bill packs a hand- made black forest torte, plus a holdout eclair in an ankle holster. But in the clinch, instead of trying a combat draw on the cake -- which has a US-made counter-ballistic pastry sight -- tracks the incoming calories with millimeter-wave radar and plots a trajectory right back at the flinger -- all he could do was cringe and get sticky. Wimp.

WCNS: What about his aides and bodyguards?

McL: They panicked, too. You can see one of them trying to hold a portfolio between Bill and the tart boys -- of course, it's one of those useless kevlar-panel things. Sure, it'll stop a nine millimeter, but Jell-O will make a mess out of it, flow around the edges, and keep right on going. I've seen it happen. No, proper doctrine calls for taking out as many of the threat personnel as possible, and for my money, there's only one way to do that.

WCNS: What?

McL: Seltzer bottles. All my direct reports have 'em. Hey, you don't think they all wear those rubber noses for FUN, do you?

WCNS: So you'd really advocate turning a public location into a shootout?

McL: A groceried society is a polite society. Nobody has ever tried that kind of funny business with me, precisely because they know what would happen.

WNCS: What, exactly?

McL: Well, first, you open your eyes really wide, wipe away some of the goop, and say, "Oh, a wise guy, eh?" That freezes their blood -- lets 'em know they're dealing with a pro. Then you grab a seltzer bottle, shout "Front sight!" and let 'em have it. Meanwhile, your protection unit is piling out of their Volkswagen, tripping over each other, and waving their rubber nightsticks around -- that gets the media's attention -- in the ensuing chaos, you pick out a large woman in a formal gown -- there's always one or two around, at affairs like this -- and you duck down behind her so she gets the next pie. If you can't find a woman in a formal, try a guy in a silk top hat. It's almost as good.

WCNS: And then what?

McL: Oh, by then, every body's covered in shaving cream, fighting, and screaming, and you can sneak quietly away and bundle a few browsers in your operating system.

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About Comments on this blog

To post comments, click "comment" at the bottom of any posting. I have it set to "moderate," which means that before your comment shows up, it gets emailed to me for "approval." Comments from people I know get approved -- comments from others don't. Simple as that.

New Restaurant Listings in Culintel Database

The Culinary Intelligence DB has been updated with a couple two-three restaurant recommendations from our Chicago weekend. We particularly liked BOKA. Just search on "IL" as the state and you'll see 'em.

Another Cultural Stone Kicked Over

I had reason to mention "Mommy, Mommy" jokes last night, and a colleague of mine expressed unfamiliarity with the form. Of course, someone has created a web site devoted to them, but first a quick discourse on the nature of the gag. They're a pre-adolescent joke form, usually without sexual, ethnic, or class aspects. They take a simple two-line format in which the first line is a seemingly innocent complaint from a child about some aspect of the parenting he or she is receiving; the second line, delivered usually by the child's mother, reveals the horrifying depths of depravity in which the family unit is existing. Extreme cruelty, to someone, is usually involved.

For example:

"Mommy, Mommy, I don't want to go to Europe!"
"Shut up and keep swimming!"

I seem to remember these from grade school, say two to three years either side of 1960, and as being overshadowed quickly by more sophisticated media-driven humor such as elephant jokes. Later, the set of puns supported by this structure:

What do you call [describe person of disability here]
in a [describe quandry or dire straits here]? [Pun goes here,
usually something about "stew."]

put the superficially horrible circumstances of Mommy, Mommy jokes into the
shade and relegated them to the occasional neuron-firing memory of truly bad childhood humor.

We did discuss the potential of Mommy, Mommy jokes for being at least politically clean in the sense of being hard to direct against individual groups. Here are a few opening lines you can play around with:

"Mommy, Mommy, I don't want to play for Rutgers!"

"Mommy, Mommy, I don't want to be a Federal Judge!"

"Mommy, Mommy, I don't want to have to override a veto!"

If you care, here's a web site that collects some of them.

2006 Sicily Trip Notes Rediscovered

In the fall, last year, we went to Sicily for 10 days or so. It was right in the middle of preparing for our CMMI appraisal, doing our CMMI appraisal, and subsequently getting sick, and in the course of all that, I forgot that I took some notes on my Palm. Here they are, briefly HTML-ized and crudely illustrated. Enjoy.

Some Random Spring Humor from 1999

Because of the Easter reference, here's a resurrected WCA mailing from 1999.
Enjoy, and don't, along with Don Imus, visit the Ho Ho Home Page.

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19990414

RANDOM NOTES FROM THE SPECTACLE

OH, CHEER UP, DAMMIT

Ann Arbor: The ever-insightful Free Press had the following to say, the Monday after Easter:

"Police were searching for suspects Sunday in a Detroit restaurant massacre that left three members of one family and a teenager dead, casting a pall over Easter celebrations."

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SIR, YOU ARE IMPERTINENT

Ann Arbor: After a while, most college instructors get their patter worked out, and the better ones learn to read their audiences and to pitch rhetorical questions at individuals who will play ball. This isn't as easy as it sounds, though; recently, a very new professor got well along off his subject, wandered into a kind of irrelevant, babbling talk about how company networking can be dodgy, and then, feeling the need for an affirmation or something, tried to get his older, more experienced students to agree. Unfortunately, he picked a grumpy gentleman who manages a test lab for Marathon Oil. The instructor asked, :"So you have an intranet, right? Does it always work? How well does it work?" Our colleague said, "We have billions of dollars; it works great."

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CORPORATE MALAPROPISMS

Ann Arbor: There's a fascinating master's degree in comparative linguistics waiting out there for someone, centered around the incidence and propagation of strange, incorrect usage in companies. Just as one example, the phrase, "straw man," (somewhat questionably(1)) used to mean a tentative version of something, is commonly rendered "straw horse" in a large tape drive company of our acquaintance -- apparently a conflation of straw man and stalking horse -- and less commonly but even more strangely as "straw dog" in another corporation. And just yesterday, a manager admitted, right in front of everyone, that "You sent me that file, and I went down like a dead balloon!"

If we weren't such upstanding corporate citizens ourselves, we'd be inclined to mess with this thing a bit -- perhaps trying to introduce such terms as "straw woman" or "barley boy"; "I think we should go off-base, here, and have a conflab, maybe punt around the straw woodchuck and see if we can reach a census."

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AND FINALLY ...

"And any place I flang my cat was home ..."

Cafe newbie: "Do you have, um, diet birch beer? ... What _is_ birch beer?"

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The Wood-Charles News Service has been brung to you by the straw bartenders at Ann Arbor's Odd Town Tavern, and by Ken, "Right Wing Ideologues Don't Waste Your Tax Dollars, The Special Prosecutor Law Does," Starr.

-- 30 --

(1) The book definition of straw man is: "a weak or imaginary opposition (as an argument or adversary) set up only to be easily confuted 2: a person set up to serve as a cover for a usually questionable transaction;" not really, I believe, what most people have in mind when they use the term. The possibility for confusion is increased by the existence of "straw vote," a kind of running-up-the-flagpole of something, and of "straw boss," basically, a project leader.

Another Take on Wikipedia

Wikipedia in the Comics

A Fawlty Towers Moment

Recently, we initiated a project to replace a set of ceiling lighting fixtures, horrible Pottery Barn Art Nouveau crap, reflecting the non-existent taste of the previous owners. We got a tremendously competent old friend in the handyperson business to do the high ladder work (one fixture was 15 feet up in the air, dangling from our great room ceiling), and the whole thing was executed with, from my perspective, efficiency and quality.

The high lights, installed by someone who knows what he's doing and isn't on chemo.	The dining room pendants, those vicious, vicious bastards

However, at the same time, we ordered what looked like a simple set of pendent lights to go over the dining room table, one fixture with four halogen low-voltage drops. And since this was just a normal height ceiling and nothing that required risk of life and limb for someone taking doses of steroids that will keep me out of the Olympics for at least the next few sessions, I said, "Oh, I can do that one."

Visualize, if you can, the Fawty Towers episode where John Cleese has to keep running back and forth to a local restaurant to pick up dinner, since the hotel's newly hired cook has had an alcoholic relapse, and the car keep stalling out.

I discover that, in order to shorten the pendent cords to something less than the 17 meters or so of length they come with, you need to strip them carefully (read with a precision wire stripper) to get just the Teflon coating off), then tease the outer wire mesh apart to reveal the inner conductor, twist the mesh into a conductor of its own, wrap with tape ... you get the picture.

Then, force the newly reconfigured pendent cord up through the strain relief, destroying what you've just done. Tighten the strain relief, redo the conductor work, standing on a ladder, and connect each of the four lamps to its transformer, using wire nuts.

Schlep down to the breaker box, turn the power on, and check to see if all lights light. They do not. Power off. Redo the connections on those that don't. Power on. Hooray, all four work.

Slide the cover, through which the lights are dangling, up to the fixture plate (standing on a ladder), tuck cords neatly away, secure cover. Power on. Test. Two of four lights do not light. This is where the John Cleese bit comes in.

"You vicious, vicious bastard! I've given you fair warning! I've been more than patient, and now I'm really fed up. Now, I'm going to give you a damned good thrashing!"

Actually, what I said as this up and down the damn ladder business went on (redoing wire nut connections, one by one) was substantially more graphic and Americanized, until I realized that I had the dining room window open and that our neighbors small children were playing in their back yard, 15 feet away. Oops, stifle.

Anyway, after more test and rework episodes than my many years of software quality planning would suggest, the damn thing works, but two or three clear-cut results have emerged:

• I am not an electrician
  
• I will never do this kind of job with more than one light again
  
• As long as she avoids the biopsy scar on the back of my head,
  Linda is empowered to administer a dope slap each time I say, "I can do
  that part," at least until the chemo is over with
  

Doesn't bear thinking about

As a friend so aptly puts it, "yikes!"