Tag: rant

Dell product “designers”

Have you seen the commercial being plastered across the airwaves by Dell featuring the interns and Dell’s product “designers”?
The thought that Michael Dull employs product designers in the first place is tremendously laughable. It becomes more humorous when you notice the products said “designers” are handling:

  • a PDA–designed and produced by an OEM, with Dell’s logo planted on it
  • a printer–Dell has never made printers, does not make printers, and won’t make printers, so there’s no need to employ a printer “designer”
  • a flat-panel display–designed and produced by an OEM, with Dell’s logo planted on it
  • Inspiron notebook computer–the only item featured that actually is designed by Dull’s product “designers,” and is about as inspiring as a Michael Jordan Hanes briefs commercial.

Truly pathetic. Unfortunately, I’m sure Joe Consumer has no concept of how Dull operates, and is buying this hook, line, and sinker.
You want truly innovative product design? Come on over.

Comments spam

I check my email this morning, and what do I find but some idiot has uploaded penis enlargement spam into the comments section of one of my posts (from October 2002, no less).
Comment deleted, IP banned. Don’t you morons have anything better to do?

RIFfed

So the brilliant executive minds at Verizon Information Services finally decided on a plan for its IT personnel, and made said plan known to all of us yesterday at an 8 AM meeting: layoffs, or in corporate jargon, a RIF (Reduction In Force).
On the one hand, I can respect this decision, as I believe it better for the company than the other major proposal that was looked at, which was outsourcing IT personnel under AMDOCS, our main contractor, and provider of much of the core server software the business runs on.
Only everyone pretty much hates AMDOCS; their code is sloppy, as the Toad can well attest, and they’re arrogant to boot, with a “we know better than you” attitude toward even the most techincally competent among the Verizon IT staff (most of whom are more technically competent than said AMDOCS personnel). The only reason this scenario didn’t play out was because Verizon couldn’t get AMDOCS to swallow a lot of salary and benefits issues that would have taken better care of Verizon employees who were outsourced.
So my team lost three people yesterday, and I was one of them. I’m still on the payroll until 24 October, and the severance package looks pretty good.
So potential employers, I’m a Mac geek with a decade of experience in computer support, with a little HTML knowledge I’d like to expand on. I need to stay in the Dallas area, and I’m open to contract, contract-to-hire, or, best of all, permanent positions.

Infuriating

So while the gloom of layoffs settled over the IT groups at VIS for the better part of a year, Chuck Lee, the former GTE CEO who sold us out to Bell Atlantic, is still picking up the perks:
bq. Verizon Communication’s former chairman and co-CEO, Charles Lee, became a “consultant” for the firm when he retired last year. In addition to the standard goodies, like office space, a staff, and use of an aircraft, he’s receiving a consulting fee of $250,000 per month. (That’s not a typo.) You’d think after getting paid $4 to $5 million in salary plus bonus over the past few years, and $27 million in options in 2002 alone, he’d have enough to retire on. Guess not.
So I may lose my job, but heaven forbid that Chuck Lee not get to ride around in the corporate jet while he “consults” on where the company can make cuts…

Hurricane, Himicane, Deshawnacane

I know the Toad has to be ticked off at the latest antics of one of our beloved Congresscritters, People’s Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. She insists that the names assigned to hurricanes by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are too “lily white,” and they should use African-American names as well. She even offered a few examples; none of which are African in origin, and some of which have been completely made up by black Americans. This reader’s response puts it all in perspective:
bq. “You can be sure if there were too many ‘black’ names assigned to hurricanes, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee would instead be complaining that this practice unfairly stereotypes blacks as violent. Let’s hope this silly storm blows over!”
And to think that this is our most pressing problem with racism and discrimination…

Remembering Bob Hope

When I arrived at work today, the flags–American, Texas, Verizon–were all at half-staff, and I thought to myself, “What the…?” I totally missed the President’s directive to fly flags at half-staff on the day of Hope’s burial. That put my mind at ease. (For a brief moment, I thought some VZ employee had died, and this had been ordered by the corporate bigwigs; a big no-no when it comes to proper flag decorum. In an instance such as that, the only flag that should be lowered would be the Verizon flag.)
Born in 1970, I have no memories of Bob Hope’s vaudeville and radio work, though I have heard excerpts here and there. My greatest memories of him were of the television comedy specials he did, as well as the numerous USO shows he performed throughout the 1970s and ’80s. To me, the latter was the great thing about Bob Hope: not that he was a tremendous entertainer, which he was, having worked in every medium of the time–stage, radio, television, and feature film. Rather, he never forgot those who put their lives on the line to defend our nation, the nation that gave him the freedom to do what he did.
Bob Hope gave back. He gave those who needed it the thing his last name stood for. That is a legacy worth remembering, and one all in the entertainment business should recall and work toward.
(Thanks to Rick for the clarification and link.)
UPDATE, 5:15 PM: I felt the President’s words were worth sharing:
bq. “Bob Hope made us laugh. He lifted our spirits. Bob Hope served our nation. We will mourn the loss of a good man. Bob Hope served our nation when he went to battlefields to entertain thousands of troops from different generations. We extend our prayers to his family. God bless his soul.” –President George W. Bush

Kill the album

Steven offers Frank discussion on why some “artists” don’t want to participate in the iTunes Music Store.

Is the demise of the album format, if it even happens, a bad thing? What about the good things might pop up in its place? What advantages come from embracing the tides of change?

[…]

Or maybe, as the market shifts towards being merit-based, there will be a renewed interest in actually making higher quality individual tracks rather than a lot of filler. Wouldn’t that be awful? Maybe songs would have melodies again, or musicians might learn how to play more than one instrument. It’s even possible that lyrics might stray from the tried-and-true “man, my middle-class white male life here in America sure sucks”. It would be catastrophic.

For you, I mean. Not us, the consumers.

Journalist war illogic

Oh, this is rich:
bq. “There was a disturbing attitude from the Pentagon toward unilaterals,” said Campagna, Mideast program coordinator for the nonprofit group. “They gave the perception that if you weren’t embedded, you covered the war at your own risk, and that U.S. troops were under no obligation to at least avoid endangering you.”
Um, yeah. It’s called war, you blockhead. Everyone is participating at their own peril. The military’s job is to accomplish the task handed to them by the politicians. More often than not, this means moving in, engaging and killing the enemy (while trying to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties; but hey, it’s war), then securing the area they now occupy. They do not have time to babysit reporters who don’t play by the rules. Those unilaterals wanted to be where they were. If you can’t stand the heat…

Yellow Pages hot commodity

Knowing the company I work for, the n3rdling thought I would be interested in this article.
Yes, the Yellow Pages business is a cash cow. One of the reasons Bell Atlantic wanted to buy out GTE was that our Yellow Pages business was a major revenue generator; our last year prior to the “merger,” GTE Directories accounted for 20% of all the revenue for all of GTE. I haven’t heard any numbers in the past two years regarding VZ Directories’ contribution to the overall revenue structure, but I’m sure it’s not as high a percentage. In addition to the economic downturn, we’ve got the former Bell Atlantic books dragging us down…

I am Dilbert

Our workgroup maintains a central server for others in the company to access important information re: our projects, software to install, etc. As part of all of this, our sysadmin recently created a report that shows all of the current “advertisements” going out to our users, reminding them they need to upgrade Application X or what have you. Our great and wise sysadmin then puts a link to this report directly on the front page of our server, easy to find, easy to click on, easy to download.
So then my boss decides that this isn’t good enough, and that the report has to be emailed to our opposite numbers on the eastern seaboard. Now the opposite numbers have the exact same access to the aforementioned web page as we do. They can just as easily go fetch this report as any of us can. But now I have to email them a copy of it every week! <sigh>
Anyone want to hire a Mac-head with some basic web design skills? As long as you’re in Dallas and you’ve got killer health insurance, I’m flexible on other stuff…