From my post elsewhere on this topic:

Yet another in my ongoing series of headlines about how messed up Microsoft and tech in general is by using just Notepad as an example.

Why Notepad? Because it was supposed to be the most basic built in text editor for the Windows environment. They thing that would always work. The thing that would do exactly what it was supposed to no matter what.

They have messed it up so bad that it’s now an attack vector.

It’s the prime example of how they keep taking things that work and make them worse.

I’m not arguing for trickle down. I’m using their own arguments against them.

I used to debug POP3 issues by going through sessions one line at a time via telnet. Occasionally HTTP sessions too.

Guess I won’t be upgrading my phone this year. And neither will you. Or anyone.

A company with $130 billion in cash reserves is floating 100 year bonds.

So much for billionaires reinvesting profits to trickle down in the economy. Now they hold onto profits, calling in suckers to bet for them and not promising results until all of them are dead.

Most libraries are government property. As a general rule if it’s a government building you can’t carry a weapon. Local, state or fed. My local library has an explicit no conceivable weapons sign at the entrance as per South Carolina state law…

They try to memory hole something in the LOC and every librarian in the country will show them how dangerous the deep state can be. Those “no weapons” signs at libraries will start disappearing into the periodical file.

Everything prior to 2018 is archived in the Library of Congress. It’s where all of my beer reviews are.

Linus uploads to FTP and lets the world mirror. I just let the LOC archive my stuff.

Memory hole: A system for altering or erasing inconvenient historical documents, photographs, and articles.

All that cellphone stuff and the defense contractor were all service/tech/helpdesk.

Much less script based. Maybe you get a script for day one of some launch but otherwise you are on your own in most competent operations once you are out of training and shadowing.

But in sales the script is god until you break free and hit those KPI.

“You go to war with the autism you have, not the autism you want.” – Not Donald Rumsfeld

Funny thing about that. One of my jobs was with the absolutely most rigid follow the script places to have ever existed. The radio ratings. Not only could you never not follow the script verbatim but between calls you could read nothing but the handbook. Countless people must have read this thing cover to cover over the years. But, apparently, not one person had ever understood what they were reading or proof read it. I found 21 errors. And in one of those errors was a little bit of text that explicitly stated to never read the script verbatim.

In most centers the follow the script thing is for newbies. Then you don’t meet the KPI numbers and they threaten you. Then people get desperate and stop following the script. If they get results then no one cares about the script anymore. The top performers never follow the script.

And as a general rule the absolute top performer not only doesn’t follow the script but is a compulsive liar. But they get results and the returns are justified by the sales.

Except at the radio ratings place. Follow the script or die. Even if the handbook has one tiny section that says don’t follow the script.

I left the building each day and left it behind me. One time my roommate worked at the same call center. I was so good about leaving work behind that I forgot to tell her about a bomb threat we had had 2 months before that wasn’t on her shift.

Autistic. But close enough. I sold monthly shareware subscriptions on CDs, Highlander TV show video sets and trenchcoats, animal videos, long distance, gay men’s clothing, bedding sets, golf clubs, did tech support from the days of the Nokia through birth of the BlackBerry, iPhone, Android etc, saw the death of the Windows phones and even spent time at a defense contractor. I’m one of the most overqualified Helpdesk/CS/TS call center people ever.

As a two decade veteran of call centers I have had this happen to me.

Can’t at this time but much later today.

That is, indeed, the one where you fell in love with the Pixies.

I used to think it was a good movie. But kinda dumb. But then something happened. My girlfriend would go to bed hours before I did[0]. For some reason when she did Fight Club was always on. It took me months to realize that this wasn’t an accident. She knew that I would be busy on the computer and never change the channel.

She, and others, always wanted me to start a cult. She was trying to turn me into Tyler Durden. I figured it out. She admitted it. And she kept doing it. Turns out that it’s not a good movie. It’s a great movie. Pacing, story telling, visuals, flips, surprises, foreshadowing, acting etc. On the level with Requiem for a Dream or Trainspotting[1].

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it recently it is definitely worth a revisit.

A drawing I did a little while ago for Inktober.

[0] this is a constant in my life.
[1] a double feature that will mess you up.

Company policy

“…long enough to become the villain.”

Exactly