So I’ve been out at a conference meeting cluster**** for the last week…
Tasker- Revive dead horse by Thursday.
Funding- $0
Equipment- Zero
Direction- None
Number of committees- Seven
The only ‘good’ thing is a chance to catch up with some old friends. But the thing that really brought this home was a bunch of us went to dinner on Thursday night, and got to talking BSing (well actually telling sea stories that were verifiable, because more than one of us had been there…)
One of the ladies got curious as to how long we’d known each other, because, in her words, “I know all you assholes are old, but y’all ‘cannot’ have known each other ‘that’ long.”
This comment was a result of one of our comments about how we’d been hearing the same s**t for 20 years and the only that had changed was the briefer, and the horse was still dead…
So we started tracking back… seven of us have known each other an AVERAGE of 22 years… The ‘new’ kid, only 11 years, myself and one other guy 40 years this month…
Damn… We’re old…
But after we’d figured that out, she just looked at us in amazement…
Well, that and the fact that one of the guys said his job lately was killing the good idea fairy…
He’d basically been designated as the go-to guy for new ‘innovative’ things… Except all the ‘new’ things were stuff that had been tried before (and didn’t work)… Including one where the kid came in with the next sliced bread idea, and he said he literally pulled a 14 year old document of the bottom drawer of his desk, handed to the kid and watched his face crumble when he realized it was ‘exactly’ what he was proposing… 🙂
But the funniest thing was a fly on the wall moment (actually two)…
I’m standing out on my hotel balcony early in the am Wednesday, and I’m looking at the parking lot next door. It being Kalifornia, there were 20 compact parking spaces, about 6 ‘regular’ parking spaces, and FOUR oversized spaces. I see a Prius come in, and pull into one of the oversized spaces, closely followed by an F-250 crew cab who parks in another oversized space. The driver of the truck says something to the woman about proper parking space, she yells she’ll park any damn place she wants to since she’s the first one there, and it’s closer to the building, yada, yada…
Wednesday afternoon, I look at the parking lot, and there are at least five big pickups in the parking lot, and four or five SUVs, some of which are shoehorned into compact parking spaces.
Thursday morning, I get up and go out on the balcony, look over and all the big trucks are there at 0600, and have taken ALL the big spaces, and all but one of the ‘regular’ spaces are also full of SUVs. I see the Prius pull in and stop short… And she drives around the parking lot about three times, and finally pulls into TWO of the compact spaces and goes stomping into the office building…
Would have loved to be a birdie on the wall for ‘that’ little set to… LOL
Is there any hope for humanity?
When you think about it, you’ve identified the human condition quite succinctly.
Well, that and the fact that one of the guys said his job lately was killing the good idea fairy…
Nearly lost a keyboard when I read that. Reminds one of the old, “Stages of a Project”.
Inital enthusiasm.
Disallusionment.
Panic.
Search for the guilty.
Punishment of the innocent.
Praise and honors for the nonparticipants.
Typical. Wonder what a micro-mini EMP would do to a Prius? And how to build one…
Ah, yessss. I remember one so-called disabled driver who liked to park in the middle of two handicapped spaces. Yes, he did have one of those little blue tags hanging from his mirror.
I watched him arrive one day from my 5th floor office (the only perk was a window and a view of the parking lot and Interstate beyond.) In he comes and parks at-a-slant across two handicapped spaces. I guess he didn’t want his BMW convertible dinged. He then proceeds to RUN about a hundred yards into the building’s lab entrance. I had several engineers in my office and I remarked about his ‘disability.’
One of the engineers knew this driver. The blue handicapped tag belonged to his wife, currently invalided due to an auto accident. A couple of the engineers also commented that the driver, a lower lab manager, was a real a$$hole that no one liked. We continued our meeting.
A half hour later, I looked out my office and she a cop parked next to the Beemer, followed shortly by the arrival of a city tow-truck. The cop scribbles something and leaves it on the windshield. Did I mention, the driver had the top down on the Beemer?
It seems that someone went down to the parking lot, took off the blue handicapped tag, hid it under the passenger’s floor mat and then called the cops. In a blink of an eye, the tow truck hooks up the Beemer and off it goes.
Flash forward to the following week. The same driver arrives, in the same Beemer, and parks in the same spaces, in the same manner. Repeat the events from the previous week.
This action/reaction continues the following week but we no longer saw the driver parking as before. Supposedly, one engineer reports he saw the driver arriving via a MTA bus. According to the gossip that floated through the office, the driver lost his license for six months. His wife was recuperating and was now able to drive, albeit with a bit of difficulty entering and exiting the Beemer…or should I say, former Beemer. It was too low to the ground for the wife. The Beemer, HIS car, was sold and replaced by a mini-van, one more suitable to HER needs.
He didn’t last long. IIRC, he was laid-off a few months later and no one was sorry to see him go.
Death by committee should be reserved for the most heinous of crimes, like taking up extra parking spaces.
We like to give the “new” stuff to the New Kid because it keeps him out of the way. 😉
LL- Yeah, pretty much…
WSF- Hell, THAT was fifteen years ago… sigh…
NC- A three inch in diameter piece of copper wire apparently does a great job… The fire may take a while to put out though… 🙂
Crucis- LOVE IT!!! 🙂
Gerry- I don’t even think they could have made a decision on that… dammit…
BP- LOL, yeah that works too.
I would like to have been a fly on the wall when this Nimrod started moaning
Rick- Yeah, it would have been fun… I was four stories up, so I didn’t hear what he said to kick it off…
I hate Kalifornia. But I am keeping my truck.
I pray everyday my company will relocate to Texas.
Dang…Killing the good idea fairy was a masterful stroke..I almost scared the crap out of the wife with my loud laugh at o dark thirty;) We have people do that park at 2 spaces stuff. I have a picture of one of them with “asshole parking”. I also for funsies have parked my beat up ranger right up against the driver door. I can get out, I also have other people back in right up on the other side and basically pin in the jerk. Yes I am petty…sometimes..I cannot abide rudeness.
I have been told that hypothetically a 750k watt stungun will kick the priuses computer into default mode not allowing it to move until it has been reset through some code entered via either the factory entertainment system (Which supposedly takes several hours) or the data port and a special computer (which take about 45 minutes) Alas, my stungun is only 50k watt model. But it will blister the paint, or so I’m told 🙂